Gemsigns and Binary by Stephanie Saulter (Jo Fletcher Books, 2013 & 2014) (Originally published in Vector 278) I can cut a long story short in reviewing Stephanie Saulter’s first two novels, Gemsigns and Binary (collectively part of the slightly clumsily named (R)Evolution series), by saying that I recommend them highly. Like most early-career authors, there […]
Noir and La Femme edited by Ian Whates (Newcon Press, 2014) (originally published in Vector 277) Ian Whates, through Newcon Press and the Solaris Rising series, has established himself as a key editor in UK short fiction and I, like a number of authors, have reason to be grateful for his generosity. But it is […]
So, I wrote this review a long time ago but I’ve never been happy with it and I tried to rework it and get it to say what I wanted but its never quite worked the way I saw it in my head. The tl:dr version is that while I broadly agree with the criticisms that […]
I, like lots of other people, got a bit excited when the organisers of Loncon3 sent out the draft schedule for this year’s Worldcon – but I’ve had some ongoing website problems, so it’s taken a while to get this online. But, at last, for anyone who might be interested, these are (provisionally, I think) the […]
So, the Hugo nominations are out, and there are a number of things I like and many things I have absolutely no interest in. In the end I weakened and nominated some stuff, just so I could feel properly entitled to moan at the final shortlist. I think four of the items I nominated made […]
Daniel O’Malley’s first novel, The Rook, won the 2012 Aurealis Award for best SF Novel published by an Australian and comes laden with praise from writers like Charlaine Harris, Charles Yu and Lev Grossman. I found it hard to understand why. The Rook is the story of Myfanwy Thomas, holder of the eponymous title in […]
I have no interest in nominating anything for the Hugos, but people have been bemoaning the shortage of things they can nominate for the Short Form Dramatic Presentation category outside the usual television episodes. I like short movies, and think it’d be nice to see more of them recognised, so here are some short movies […]
So my grumpy review of James Smythe’s The Echo is now online at Arcfinity. I’m not normally bothered by the science being wrong in fantastic fiction if it makes the story better – that’s normally true when the author has made a deliberate choice to warp or twist reality. What bothered me by this book (and […]
Okay, so, if I wanted this to be any use to anyone I’d have done it weeks ago, but I didn’t and there was always just one more book to try and squeeze in… And if I wanted this to be remotely interesting to anyone, I’d probably have written a long explanation as to why […]
The thing that I like best about Chris Beckett’s short stories in general, and this new collection, The Peacock Cloak, in particular is the rage that is bubbling under the surface and that occasionally erupts from the page. Not all the stories grip you by the throat, “Atomic Truth”, the first in this collection, is […]