March has Ides, April has cruelties in spades, but September...September has a respectable list of books I managed to get through! From dark fantasy to Stephen King's particular brand of horror to yet more Dungeon Crawler Carl books, this has been a busy month. Let's go on a merry jig across the list, shall we?... Continue Reading →
Trope Check: The Pariah by Anthony Ryan
https://youtu.be/MwsyGpzHJJ4 What is a trope but a key to genre conventions, a shorthand for the various concepts by which the genres we love become instantly recognizable? Today, I take another look at The Pariah by Anthony Ryan, which I reviewed earlier this week. Prepare yourselves, for these are a post and video most Spoilery! If... Continue Reading →
My Essay on “The Braindead Megaphone” by George Saunders
Several words come to mind when I look to describe this first experience with George Saunders: rewarding, gratifying, even fertile. Saunders is a fine satirist and a better essayist, a man who, like David Foster Wallace, has his finger on the pulse of the American society. This is a fruitful comparison, though the two writers... Continue Reading →
The Short Story Reader #73 – LOL, Said the Scorpion by Rich Larson
Previous | Next Rich Larson is having a strong year across the spec fic market! This is the third story I've read from him, the previous two, "Spitting Image" and "Reproduction on the Beach", both excellent, both published in issues of Apex Magazine. "LOL, Said the Scorpion" is reminiscent of "Reproduction on the Beach" in... Continue Reading →
The Short Story Reader #72 – Stranger Shores by Gregory Feeley
Previous | Next What a breathtaking story this is. Gregory Feeley writes of posthuman intelligences in the far-off future, filled with longing and curiosity for their far-off human past across what cannot have been less than ten thousand words (it is, in fact, just under nine-thousand). The Minds were inorganic, self-aware as humans simply cannot... Continue Reading →
The Pariah by Anthony Ryan is Gripping Dark Fantasy | Book Review | A Covenant of Steel #1
Watch and Like this review on YouTube (It helps!): https://youtu.be/tpTXjbyMSfs It's such a joy to click with a novel. Those initial pages which plunge you into the world and characters, the expectations you build of who the central cast might be… to then see those expectations continually undermined by the changing circumstances of Anthony Ryan's... Continue Reading →
The Short Story Reader #71 – Happiness by Octavia Cade
Previous | Next Octavia Cade tells an ambitious and lengthy story in the pages of Clarkesworld #199, and I enjoyed the reading of it even as it failed to appeal to me. I loved the form of this story. You could, if you wanted, pick a variety of options and read the story that way,... Continue Reading →
Death’s Door Retrospective: The Game That Dared
https://youtu.be/3c7STc-n_lU You know what I like? Birds. Nature is not kind to birds. It is not fair. It is not just. Why? Because nature never gave birds the one thing they need, the one thing they could use to fulfil their feathered potential: opposable thumbs. This is where Death's Door comes in. If there was... Continue Reading →
Is This a Newsletter? #1: Scattered Thoughts From Throughout The Week (September 18-22)
Hey, hi, hullo! I have a lot of interests. Too many, some might argue. (They would be right.) There comes a time, on a Friday like this one, when I need to sit back, relax, and munch on at least some of the reading, media, and art I've read, witnessed, and experienced over the week.... Continue Reading →
The Short Story Reader #70 – False Dichotomy by Mary Soon Lee
Previous | Next I came across a poem by author Mary Soon Lee a few days ago and shared how much I loved it. As a result, I was recommended two stories by her by Interzone's bluesky account - "False Dichotomy" is one: So Broadback stood, pondering, unaware that the universe was stranger than he... Continue Reading →