tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50357132010-03-11T13:32:31.697-05:00<b>mataglap</b> <i>-- an Indonesian word meaning "dark eye" or, probably, "dilated eye." It is an indication that someone is about to go berserk and start killing people at random. Used in Walter Jon Williams' novel <b>Aristoi</b> as the name of a berserk form of nanotechnology that devoured the planet. </i> <p>You can e-mail Mataglap SF at <a href="mailto:mataglap@yahoo.com">mataglap@yahoo.com</a></p>Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-31882651196433929892010-03-11T13:30:00.001-05:002010-03-11T13:32:31.705-05:00

(Asimovs, October-November 2009) Locus 2009 recommended list   Horton Year's Best A mildly provocative title reveals a more pedestrian story from the planet Barsoom, and I'm not enough of an ERB fan to know whether it's supposed to be that Barsoom.  It doesn't really matter, as the races and names introduced here borrow from American Indians, Scotland and the Middle East, so Garcia seems to

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-9938322133555250652010-03-10T12:10:00.000-05:002010-03-10T12:10:16.736-05:00

Anything Mieville writes by definition will be interesting and he has yet to deliver a bad book, although his last nominee "The Iron Council" was a bit too circumspect for my taste.  Here he goes to the opposite end of the spectrum, delivering a basically straightforward murder mystery novel, and keeps the mellifluous-meter down a notch and gives the characters terse, Mamet-esque dialog,

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-70576410309978588202010-03-08T23:06:00.001-05:002010-03-08T23:07:08.024-05:00

(Analog, October 2009) Locus 2009 recommended list Flynn is an engaging writer who always comes up with original concepts for stories, with real characters and unique settings, and it seems each new story is completely different from all the others, no small accomplishment.  This novella has a lot going for it and is well worth reading, but it suffers a bit from an identity crisis. The

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-22144244480422310602010-03-07T11:21:00.001-05:002010-03-07T11:22:58.386-05:00

(Analog, December 2009) Locus 2009 recommended list   Strahan Year's Best  Not much big-name hard sf in the novelette category this year, but Baxter is always worth a read.  Unfortunately this story seems to take place within a larger narrative of his Xeelee universe, and I haven't read any of those novels, so at the end it's more than a bit unsatisfying.  This tale concerns itself with the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-48256987331584962010-03-06T22:03:00.000-05:002010-03-06T22:03:35.340-05:00

Asimov's April-May 2009 Locus 2009 recommended list   Dozois Year's Best    Strahan Year's Best  A somewhat pretentious title, taken from a Kipling poem, sets the tone for a poetic story typical of Broderick, whose short fiction seems to be fairly sporadic but is always worth seeking out.  This time around the setting is Titan, where an ancient spaceship has been uncovered, inexplicably sealed

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-80892176445963023702010-03-04T21:37:00.002-05:002010-03-06T21:49:54.120-05:00

(Other Earths, Nick Gevers & Jay Lake, eds.) Locus 2009 recommended list   Hartwell/Cramer Year's Best    Horton Year's Best  The lead-off story in this anthology of alternate history stories deals with the Civil War, probably the most common period of history for meddling in this sub-genre.  But Wilson doesn't go the obvious route where the South wins the war, but instead takes the premise

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-65924885756957339152010-02-27T09:27:00.001-05:002010-02-27T09:29:01.095-05:00

(The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds.) Locus 2009 recommended list   Dozois Year's Best    Horton Year's Best  Kessel works outsidie his normal areas of interest in this engaging space opera spy story, set in the far future where humanity has died out and been recreated somehow by somebody.  The protagonist is a monk from a planet called, for some reason, Helvetica,

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-74750490504843310132010-02-24T16:30:00.001-05:002010-02-24T16:32:08.679-05:00

(The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois &  Jonathan Strahan, eds.) Locus 2009 recommended list   Dozois Year's Best    Strahan Year's Best  The Latin title, from what I can tell, means "both worlds", a reference to a treatise by English philsopher and cosmologist Robert Fludd, or more specifically an illustration in that work depicting man positioned between the earth and the heavens.  This

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-55377176688946977602010-02-23T16:44:00.000-05:002010-02-23T16:44:52.260-05:00

I've always liked Nancy Kress's work, I think she almost always hits the right combination of an interesting science premise taken from current research and characters whose lives are changed by that science.  This book continues in that mode, although the balance is weighted more in favor of the characters.  Told from multiple viewpoints, the story concerns the Atoners, Earth's first encounter

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-82809864515574523732010-02-22T23:21:00.000-05:002010-02-22T23:21:11.229-05:00

(The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds.) Locus 2009 recommended list   Dozois Year's Best    Horton Year's Best   Strahan Year's Best   Hartwell/Cramer Year's Best I've only read one thing by Peter Watts before, his Hugo-nominated novel "Blindsight" from a couple of years ago, which was probably the most blow-your-mind, sense-of-wonder nominee in recent memory.  This

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-602204241559919652010-02-22T00:20:00.000-05:002010-02-22T00:20:13.405-05:00

Just a few weeks left until Hugo nominations close, and short stories are always the best category to vote for because there are so many possibilities, the subject matter is all over the map, and people have wildly differing opinions on which ones were the good ones.  So let me weigh in on what I've reviewed in the last week and what I'll vote for based on that. Locus recommended 62 short

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-59513421588039980902010-02-21T23:30:00.000-05:002010-02-21T23:30:00.662-05:00

"Catalog", by Eugene Mirabelli (F&SF, February 2009) Locus 2009 recommended list      Horton Year's BestThis story makes an attempt at straddling both SF and fantasy, starting with the latter, in a somewhat typical seemingly random series of improbably occurrences in centered around John, who suddenly finds himself taken out of his normal life and confronted with people and situations who don't

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-24763900838887415772010-02-20T10:27:00.003-05:002010-02-20T10:31:59.561-05:00

 "Bespoke", by Genevieve Valentine (Strange Horizons, 7/27/2009) Locus 2009 recommended list   Hartwell/Cramer Year's Best    Horton Year's Best This is a nice little vignette from an author I haven't heard of before, telling the story of Petra, who works in a clothing shop for people who need period attire for their trips back in time.  While there seem to be rules around time travel, they

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-3501451962433688192010-02-17T19:51:00.002-05:002010-02-22T16:15:52.076-05:00

"The Motorman's Coat", by John Kessel (F&SF, June/July 2009) Locus 2009 recommended list   Strahan Year's BestThis little Twilight Zone-esque parable is set in the Czech republic, where an antique dealer is presented with the opportunity to buy the eponymous coat, an artifact of an earlier age of Czech history for which he has to pay a huge amount but has expectations that he can turn it around

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-80524086814249559392010-02-16T15:08:00.003-05:002010-02-22T16:18:27.116-05:00

"Going Deep", by James Patrick Kelly (Asimov's, June 2009) Locus 2009 recommended list   Strahan Year's BestThis is a somewhat depressing entry from the usually positive Kelly, who has somehow managed to get a story into every June issue of Asimov's for 25 years in a row.  A young girl named Mariska lives on the moon, going through the last year of her schooling with a small group of actual

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-34709812692548715752010-02-14T22:46:00.001-05:002010-02-14T22:51:01.127-05:00

Hugo winner 2002 This novella follows two students Miri and Juan through a class project in a future where people's integration with information and technology is ubiquitous and effortless.  Nothing in the story that I noticed seems to denote a particular point in the future, probably with good reason because the pace of technological progress seems to be so hard to predict.  So everything

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-52256459928823739982010-01-31T22:17:00.001-05:002010-01-31T22:22:00.180-05:00

BSFA nominee 2005 After several successive largish volumes of baroque dystopian space opera with a hard astrophysics slant, Reynolds tries something marginally different by combining a similar baroque dystopian background with a 50's noir crime story set in Paris.  Floyd is the hard-boiled protagonist detective, hired to investigate the apparently accidental death of a young woman by her

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-17141732362561049122010-01-16T10:41:00.001-05:002010-01-16T10:45:11.719-05:00

Hugo nominee 2009 First published in Asimovs SF, July 2008 Here's an odd little existentialist story, more a collection of vignettes and observations surrounding Aimee and her 26 monkeys, who travel around performing at local fairs.  The big finale of their act involves getting all the various types of monkeys into a bathtub, from which they abruptly disappear.  No one knows how they do this,

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-67525584558413303012010-01-15T21:41:00.001-05:002010-01-15T21:55:37.577-05:00

Hugo Nominee 2007 First published in Asimovs SF, December 2006 Those poor souls who don't like to read fiction tend to claim, "Why would I want to read about something that never happened?"  Even moreso with science fiction, where you typically read about something that can't or won't happen.  So along comes Michael Swanwick, who out of his disturbed imagination pulls together bits and

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-475176641938986202010-01-12T21:18:00.000-05:002010-01-12T21:18:15.648-05:00

This story and author both came out of nowhere as a pleasant surprise.  A longish novella by an unfamiliar name would normally not inspire my confidence, but it was liked enough to get nominated, and it turns out with good reason for once.  Melko, who has written a handful of stories prior to this but none that achieved much notoriety, has put forth a well-plotted, well-paced, character driven

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-54701591191497905902010-01-06T21:48:00.001-05:002010-01-06T21:49:50.673-05:00

First-time nominee William Shunn puts forth this intriguing short novella, probably nominated more for its potential than for what it actually ends up with, but still a very readable story in its own right.  In some indeterminate future there exists a massive space station, home to two million workers who've been there enough generations to evolve into their own quasi-socialist society, although

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-83403100483169339002010-01-03T22:26:00.001-05:002010-01-03T22:30:56.249-05:00

Anyone who has browsed around on this site knows Ian McDonald is one of my least favorite writers, but it's not necessarily his fault, and of course he has many admirers who think enough of his work to get just about anything nominated that has his name on it.  So here we have this story, set in the same universe as "River of Gods", which I still haven't been able to bring myself to read yet,

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-27717147745247272702010-01-02T15:15:00.001-05:002010-01-02T15:17:13.132-05:00

Rosenbaum's story takes place towards the latter end of the universe, where some sort of post-human priest named Matthias is tinkering with a number of individual worlds in various stages of creation. A pilgrim, representing the "old ones" who created him, comes to visit, having heard of his efforts to create a brand new universe, in which they are very interested as the current one is dying.

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-91852100611003321462009-07-05T21:18:00.002-04:002009-07-05T22:50:58.864-04:00

Two previous nominees team up to deliver a story that manages to be way out there and yet deals primarily with a small cast of characters. What these characters are, despite their human names, emotions and speech patterns, isn't entirely clear, they would seem to be parts of some sort of cloud of replicated intelligences, with tentacles and gills and yet behaving more like a group consciouness

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5035713.post-82936434444530847632009-07-03T21:06:00.002-04:002009-07-03T23:43:39.392-04:00

While a couple of this year's novella nominees are so sfnal as to be essentially incomprehensible, Finlay gives us a story that is a compelling read and throws around a few questions and ideas worth pondering, but could be accused of not being science fictional enough. Following along from his 2002 Hugo-nominated novella "The Political Officer", this story features the return of that tale's

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018287699918509559noreply@blogger.com0