April 2008

My best friend when I was twelve was inflatable.

Title: 20th Century Ghosts
Author: Joe Hill
Genre: Horror/Surreal/Literary
Year: 2005

Either you know who Joe Hill’s father is, or you don’t. Once you do know, it’s hard to read his work without the comparison somewhere in the back of your mind . . . until of course you realize that [...]

{ 1 comment }

I’ve just read through my contributor’s copy of the fourth issue of Kaleidotrope and the magazine continues to impress. There’s a healthy dose of surreal scifi and cross-genre slipstream shorts between the covers, and a variety of poetry and prose poems. But it’s the quirky humor of Fred Coppersmith that really comes through in [...]

{ 0 comments }

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.

Title: Old Man’s War
Author: John Scalzi
Genre: Military Science Fiction
Year: 2005

Old Man’s War is a book with a hook, the sort of easily-conveyed original premise that tells you enough about why you might want to read it in [...]

{ 3 comments }

The sight of Ngatun in a cage angered him; the Ilyassai believed that the souls of their dead occupied the bodies of lions before returning to animate a human of a succeeding generation. Thus was Ngatun the most honored of foes; only by slaying a lion and freeing an Ilyassai soul [...]

{ 5 comments }