The Dragon Page "Cover to Cover"
Conversations with Authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy
Timothy Zahn’s a prolific writer with many succesful books both in his own and in other people’s universes.
What’s more, his name makes him eminently suited to be a bad guy in a Star Wars movie himself.
Darth Zahn’s latest book, Night Train to Rigel, delivers why-didn’t-I-think-of-that clever ideas and a zippy plotline that kept me flipping paper to the end.
This is an odd, hard to define, impossible to put down book, first published in 1995, but out in a new paperback edition. The reason I’m bringing it to your attention is primarily due to news of an upcoming film: Christopher Nolan, director of Batman Begins and one of my personal favorites, Memento, will begin shooting an adaptation of The Prestige this month.
Ghost Brigades is a pageturner with surprising emotional rewards, but I’m hoping that Scalzi plans to write more books in this universe, because as it is there are too many ideas here for his own good.
I’d never read Pohl before dipping into Platinum Pohl, but now I find myself eager to expand my Pohl-ian horizons. This is Grand Master science fiction at its finest. Each one of the stories in here is a gem, a well-crafted little machine.
To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the publication of Stephen King’s classic horror novel ‘Salem’s Lot, Doubleday is publishing a new edition of the book in hardcover that includes black-and-white illustrations, a new introduction, fifty pages of additional material deleted from the original manuscript, and two short stories related to events in the novel.
This is an odd book. Simmons envisions a solar system several thousand years in the future. Earth is practically uninhabited—a few hundred thousand “old-style” humans are all that is left of us. So-called “post-humans” left the planet long ago for cities built on asteroids in orbit. The “old-style” humans are each allotted one hundred years of life, at which point they are faxed (quantum teleported) to the rings to live forever with the post-humans. Or so the ordinary humans believe.
I’m not even really sure where to begin with this review. I, along with 6,000 of Sigler’s closest friends, let Scott Sigler pull me around like fish on on an angler’s line for 20 some-odd weeks as he released this fast-paced, bloody mosh-pit of a book in audio form, one chapter at a time.
So yeah, I wanted to kill him on a weekly basis. But back to the story.
Marusek has envisioned his world so clearly and carefully that the technical details feel like afterthoughts. References are made subtly and in passing, the way any of us would refer to a ubiquitous convenience like a cellphone or digital camera, and it takes you many pages to get a full glimpse of how this future society truly differs from our own, while remaining completely human and recognizable.
This is a book that will appeal mostly to geeks, both because it’s SF and because it dwells so enthusiastically on the topic of wireless connectivity and networks and all that. But above and beyond those trappings, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is about family and society: fitting in, feeling left out, struggling for acceptance, struggling for independence.
Juliet McKenna is the thinking fantasy reader’s author, the kind who dreams up fantasy elements and then works out the implications of those elements with the precision and thoughtfulness of a scientist, or, well, an SF writer. It’s clear throughout Southern Fire that McKenna is spinning her tale out of a deep, rich, internally consistent tapestry of details and textures.
This is another installment in the “Justice League of America” novelizations, this one by Roger Stern. Stern is a long-time DC writer who also did the novelization of the controversial death of Superman arc back in the early 90s, The Death and Life of Superman, a book I actually read on my own out of sheer curiosity.
Newbies to the “Pip & Flinx” universe will need a few chapters to catch up because Running from the Deity begins mid-crisis: Flinx, a former thief and singularly talented telepath, is on his way (via his trusty sentient starship) to locate an ancient, planet-sized weapons platform that is wandering Flying Dutchman-style through the universe.
When you ask author Valerie Griswold-Ford how she got her contract for Not Your Father’s Horseman, she will tell you, “Well, Tee suggested I finish the manuscript and then pitch it to Dragon Moon. What Tee didn’t tell me was he pitched it for me to Dragon Moon and got me a contract.” So, yeah, I figured a great motivator in getting your first novel done was a contract.
It’s pretty sad when you’re 33 years old and the highlight of your year is when the next new children’s book is finally out on the market. Deciding to skip the ridiculous lines and midnight “parties,” I pre-ordered my copy online, and only had to chew the tablecloth for four hours from when I woke up at eight o’clock, till the postman finally delivered my book at noon on Saturday.
And, just like last I did with Order of the Phoenix, I forgoed (forgew? forwent?) everything, and did nothing but read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (stopping for the occasional bathroom break) until I finished Sunday afternoon.
God, I love being a geek.
I’ve heard it said that the fear of death so permeates us as a species that all of our endeavors serve as distractions intent on keeping us from thinking about our eventual deaths.
Sometimes, when the clock clicks over at two thirty in the morning, and I can’t sleep, I wish I could come up with more distractions.
Some people apparently decide that rather than distract themselves from thoughts of death, they will turn a brave face into the wind and speculate on the landscape of the undiscovered country.
