PS Showcase #1: Sanity and Other Delusions: Tales of Psychological Horror by Gary Fry

The first of PS Publishing’s new Showcase range, Sanity And Other Delusions by Gary Fry is a collection of short stories which explores the human mind, takes the reader on a journey through the seemingly mundane, and forces them to face those nightmarish fears that keep us all staring at the ceiling after the lights […]

The City Beyond Play by Philip José Farmer and Danny Adams

Being the early labors of Philip José Farmer and the later workings of his grand-nephew, Danny Adams, novella The City Beyond Play is a pristine piece of science fantasy. The fantasy half revolves around a secluded cut of California re-created to represent a pre-17th-century Europe, known to all its accepted inhabitants as Scadia, while […]

CrossTIME Science Fiction Anthology, Vol. VI, edited by Anthony Ravenscroft

The CrossTIME Science Fiction Anthology VI publishes the best of the stories contributed to the Crossquarter Annual Short Science Fiction Contest in 2006. The competition has been running since 2001 and is organised in memory of Paul B. Duquette, a friend of the publisher’s and an sf fan. The Crossquarter competition specifies that it […]

Analog, July/August 2007

In his Hugo-nominated novel, Eifelheim, based on a short story of the same name that appeared in Analog (11/1986), Michael F. Flynn demonstrated an understanding of the way the thought processes of Medieval man differ from modern man. It is so much more than just a matter of believing in “superstitions.” In “Quaestiones Super […]

Dead Earth: The Green Dawn by Mark Justice and David T. Wilbanks

Do yourself a favor and skip the introduction to Dead Earth: The Green Dawn. In a nutshell, it says that Dead Earth is a fine postapocalyptic novella, makes a couple of comparisons to explain why that isn’t such an easy thing to achieve, and then proceeds to ruin two of the three strong […]

On Spec #69

On Spec is a Canadian magazine publishing speculative fiction of all stripes (SF, fantasy, magical realism, horror, and anything in-between). Because it receives public grants—a concept we here south of the border should consider—from the Canadian government, 80% of the fiction published within its covers must be by Canadian authors. Although I have little […]

Heroes in Training, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Jim C. Hines

I approached Heroes in Training expecting stories starring child and teen heroes undergoing rites de passage in order to prove their maturity. The term “hero” is much more loosely defined in this book, however. Within its pages, we meet a variety of species, ages, and moral orientations, whose common challenge is a […]

Analog, October 2007

Is it possible in the twenty-first century for science fiction to be sustained solely by ideas? Should the intention to generate a sense of wonder be the summit of the genre’s ambition? As children, when we read, we tend to be more forgiving of weaknesses in style, characterisation, and ambition, particularly if the story manages […]

GUD Magazine, #1

There’s one hell of a lot of content in #1 of GUD Magazine: over 200 pages with most of the contributors unknown to me. Starting the magazine felt like sitting down at a banquet without quite knowing what was on the menu and realising that it’s going to be a long meal. Was it […]

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 2007

Cover by Cory and Catska Ench

“Osama Phone Home” by David Marusek is a bold choice to open December’s issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. This is the story of a group of old college friends who come together with one common goal—to track down Osama Bin Laden. They pool their collective talents, […]