Originally posted on Notes From The Slush Pile:
A big part of any good speculative fiction story is building a believable world. A bit ironic, considering that the genres of science fiction and fantasy are built around the willing suspension of disbelief, but there it is. This isn’t to say that the setting for any…
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard My rating: 2 of 5 stars Read for the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge and the SF Masterworks Reading Challenge. Method of the world’s destruction: fluctuations in solar radiation melt the polar ice caps, causing massive flooding in most of the world’s major cities, rising heat, and heavy rains that […]
Read More Book Review: The Drowned World by J.G. BallardOriginally posted on Notes From The Slush Pile:
So submissions for Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores reopened recently, and I’ve already spotted a trend in the Slush Pile irritating enough to make me jump back into the blog, despite still being on holiday. Unconvincing and poorly written characters and settings can ruin any story. I…
The Many-Colored Land by Julian May My rating: 4 of 5 stars Read for the 12 Awards in 12 Months Challenge, the LGBTQ Speculative Fiction Challenge, and the Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge. This novel won the Locus Award and was nominated for a bunch of others. My first acquaintance with the work of […]
Read More Book Review: The Many-Colored Land by Julian May…I apparently read a lot of outstanding books over the course of the year and simply could not pick a top ten list! More than twenty of the 56 that Goodreads tells me I read (my goal was 50,) I gave a rating of five stars to. And choosing which ones stayed with me the most between […]
Read More I Tried to List the Top Ten Books I Read in 2016, But…A thought-provoking article worth considering. Some of their data isn’t quite up to date, but this doesn’t hurt the article’s ideas or sentiments; though the simple answer for why we’re not doing all this is not that the points aren’t valid, and that some of these speculations may well be correct, but we’re literally looking […]
Read More Are We Looking for Aliens in All the Wrong Ways?Web of the Witch World by Andre Norton My rating: 4 of 5 stars Read for the Women of Genre Fiction Challenge. I think I really like Andre Norton. This is only the second book of hers that I’ve read, the second of the classic Witch World series. I really love what she’s done here […]
Read More Book Review: Web of the Witch World by Andre NortonWitch World by Andre Norton My rating: 4 of 5 stars Read for the Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge and the Second Best Reading Challenge (for sci-fi/fantasy books that were nominated for awards but did not win). Anne McCaffrey, C.J. Cherryh, and Andre Norton – the forgotten triumvirate of women who moulded the science […]
Read More Book Review: Witch World by Andre NortonI’m publishing a lot of book reviews I’ve already done if I don’t have anything else to post for the day, until I run out of book reviews worth sharing. (No, I’m not reading this fast. I’m just establishing the flavour of my content because the site is new.) Here’s my review of another one […]
Read More Book Review: Stand on Zanzibar by John BrunnerFool’s War by Sarah Zettel My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the Women of Genre Fiction Challenge and the Space Opera Challenge. The book has received a lot of mixed reviews. I think the big reason why is that no matter what you’re expecting, this book is not what you expect. Is it […]
Read More Book Review: Fool’s War by Sarah Zettel
