Mataglap SF

Last day in Denver, and let’s be honest there’s not a lot going on here other than your general outdoor activities. Still had a few panels to attend in the morning, including the one panel for the entire convention devoted to Doctor Who. Not that I’m who-centric or anything, but with two nominations in best […]

It was day two of Worldcon, and today’s panels were a little more interesting, although even though I got a good night’s sleep I still passed out for a few minutes during one of them. First I spent some time in the dealer’s room and got a few paperbacks of Asimov and Silverberg, hoping to […]

The first day of the Worldcon had finally arrived and for once we were already in the city and ready to get started. I got going so I could register before the first panels started at 11:30. Although I arrived at the convention center and found the right line at 10:45, it was almost an […]

I try to avoid having too many posts end up as eulogies, and Algis Budrys died several weeks ago now, but I’ll make an exception for him because he was one of the first sf writers who ever really grabbed me. I have specific memories of reading Rogue Moon in high school, and being fairly […]

“Magic with Thirteen-Year-Old Boys”, Robert Reed (F&SF, March 2007) This story seems a bit uncharacteristic for Reed, exploring more overtly fantastical underpinnings of an otherwise mundane premise of a group of young boys who discover an odd collection of pornographic pictures stashed in an abandoned backpack in the middle of the woods. Told in a […]

“By Fools Like Me”, Nancy Kress (Asimov’s, Sept 2007) Kress almost always has a solid idea behind her stories and this is no exception, evoking a post-apocalyptic society where trees are so rare as to be sacred, there is too much carbon dioxide in the air, the weather is harsh and unpredictable, there are terrible […]

“Saving Tiamaat”, Gwyneth Jones (The New Space Opera, Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, eds., Eos) Jones puts a novel’s worth of background into this story about two ambassadors from a war-torn planet, Baal and Tiamaat, who are being hosted by the narrator Debra in a giant converted asteroid. While humanoid, the two aren’t human, and […]

“The Lustration”, Bruce Sterling (Eclipse One, Jonathan Strahan, ed., Night Shade Books) This is a very weird story and not what I would expect from Sterling, although I can’t recall reading much of his recent work. His setting appears to be a world that is completely made of wood, or at least everything in it, […]

“The Drowned Life”, Jeffrey Ford (Eclipse One, Jonathan Strahan, ed., Night Shade Books) This story would seem to be informed by either personal nightmare or a Twilight Zone marathon, an eerie, abstract account of a man named Hatch, stuck in a job at an HMO denying people’s claims, with just as many problems at home. […]

It’s that time of year again, let’s see if I can have a positive effect on the Hugo nominations for short story. Since I can’t read everything, I’m focusing on those stories recommended in the Locus best of the year list, and that aren’t in some small press anthology. Except for the seven in “Eclipse […]