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Reviews of chapbooks and stand-alone novelettes and novellas.
Words Written Backwards by Gemma Files
Gemma Files writes dirty, which in her deft hands is a good thing. She’s the author of two collections, Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart, which saw her charting a similar gothic, transgendered, human/monster terrain as that explored in the work of writers like Caitlin R. Kiernan and Poppy Z. Brite. Which is […]
Continue ReadingThe Situation by Jeff VanderMeer
In the chapbook novelette The Situation, Jeff VanderMeer takes us on a wild ride into the innards of a weird office. Or, should we say, an excruciatingly, painfully slow visit? Instead of high-octane adventure, VanderMeer presents us with the very bureaucratic, dull life in a run-of-the-mill office. And, at the same time, presents a daily […]
Continue ReadingThe River Horses by Allen Steele
In Allen Steele’s novella, The River Horses, Marie Montero and Lars Thompson are banished from the colony of New Boston on the frontier planet, Coyote. The savant Manuel Castro—a man who has had himself transferred into a mechanical body—chooses to go with them for reasons that Marie does not understand and Lars does not care […]
Continue ReadingIllyria by Elizabeth Hand
Elizabeth Hand is the twice-Nebula Award-winning author of Last Summer at Mars Hill, Mortal Love, and other novels. Her latest novella, another fine piece from PS Publishing is—at 36,000 words—almost so long that it is a full-length novel, and therefore excluded from review by The Fix. That it slips in is a pleasure.
Those familiar with […]
Of Love and Other Monsters by Vandana Singh
In Vandana Singh’s novella, Of Love and Other Monsters, Arun begins life where his memory begins, after the fire his rescuer, Janani, pulled him from. Capable of indolence in his recovery, Arun discovers that he is wildly different from his peers and neighbors. His mind has a reach, a dimension, beyond itself. He […]
Continue ReadingStrawberry Man by Eric Shapiro
In Eric Shapiro’s novella, Strawberry Man, Ben Klein is trapped in the Peaks Restaurant atop one of the world’s tallest buildings. Klein, called “The Strawberry Man” by others engaged in corporate agriculture, wakes after a storm of all storms to find water lapping at the windows of the restaurant. He also discovers he is trapped […]
Continue ReadingStarship Summer by Eric Brown
Eric Brown’s Starship Summer is a novella about Conway, a man who recently moved from Earth to a colony planet. Although the planet is famous for its Golden Column—religious pilgrims flock to it—Conway has come only to escape the tragedy of his past. Conway buys a spaceship to use as his home, expecting it […]
Continue ReadingThe 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 […]
Continue ReadingDead 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 […]
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