For many people, poetry is a strange new land, as bizarre as any landscape imagined by Tolkien, Heinlein, or in extreme cases, Lovecraft. As the number of poetry reviewers at The Fix grows, I will be taking some time each month to discuss the mechanics of poetry. This guide will not make the landscape any […]
Continue ReadingElectric Velocipede is an eccentric zine edited by John Klima with work ranging from literary fantasy to slipstream science fiction to the quirky and comical. A host of mostly unknown authors find a home in its pages in issue #13, but several pieces of fiction read as if crafted by pros thirty years past their […]
Continue ReadingParasitic ghosts possess a child. Zombies storm a library. Aliens receive murder lessons from a serial killer. A mute screams. This haunting and often surreal issue of Postscripts (a publication with which I was previously unfamiliar) makes me wish I could regularly subscribe. Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers have assembled an intriguing cast of writers […]
Continue ReadingThe January 2008 issue of Asimov’s offers a variety of tales, ranging from straightforward SF to subtle fantasy.
In “Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick, Silver and Gold are two old men who met each other as kids in the titular shop, which purports to sell magic tricks. They are now ninety-year-olds in […]
Eleven issues in, Black Gate seems to be finding a distinctive voice. Of course, the downside of a distinctive voice is becoming predictable, but so far, there’s been no sign of that. The table of contents contains nine stories, four from authors new to the magazine and three continuing stories. Of these, […]
Continue ReadingSome reviewers seem to be blessed with total recall. They can remember in great detail every story and every author they’ve ever read and make scholarly comparisons to boot. I, on the other hand, seem to have lost ground in the memory department these past few decades, especially since my preschool grandchildren moved […]
Continue ReadingElectric Velocipede (No. 12, Spring 2007) is a very well put together little magazine. It is straightforwardly but comfortably designed, there’s nothing in the way of internal art, but the presentation and sensible typography mean that the plain pages of text are easily navigated and contribute to a pleasurable physical experience. The quality of the […]
Continue ReadingIn 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 […]
Continue ReadingOn 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 […]
Continue ReadingIs 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 […]
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