Strange Horizons Reviews, April 11-15

This week's Strange Horizons reviews kick off with Martin Lewis's take on Source Code, which is decidedly less positive than mine (see also the discussion in the comments).  Maureen Kincaid Speller reviews the first two volumes in Alaya Dawn Johnson's YA fantasy trilogy, Racing the Dark and The Burning City, and is disappointed in their handling of the main character.  Finally, Nathaniel Katz finds Mark Charan Newton's City of Ruin an improvement over the previous volume in its series, Nights of Villjamur, but still somewhat lacking.

Strange Horizons Reviews, April 4-8

This week's reviews kick off with the third installment of Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's series in which reviews Isaac Asimov's series The Great SF Stories (see also parts 1 and 2).  This time Alvaro takes a look at the stories of 1940.  L. Timmel Duchamp follows with a review of Julia Holmes's Meeks, a novel that Timmi finds frustrating in its refusal to engage the reader with any of the conventions of storytelling.  Chris Kammerud rounds up the week with his review of the Peter S. Beagle-edited The Secret History of Fantasy, the companion volume to The Secret History of Science Fiction (review here), which he finds worthwhile even as he questions Beagle's thesis about the genre's evolution and current state.

Strange Horizons Reviews, March 28th-April 1st

This week's Strange Horizons reviews cover two short story collections and a movie.  Niall Harrison is impressed with the Jonathan Strahan-edited The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson, finding that many of the themes he's admired in Robinson's novels are ably expressed in his short fiction.  Anil Menon reviews Beth Bernobich's collection A Handful of Pearls & Other Stories and also likes what he finds.  Less positive is Adam Roberts's review of Battle: Los Angeles, a film he likens to "the experience of sitting inside an oil drum for two hours whilst people hit the outside with metal rods and drop firecrackers in at the top."

Strange Horizons Wants You

Over at the Strange Horizons blog, I've published a call for reviewers, and particularly female reviewers.  This is a follow-up to Niall Harrison's recent project to examine how genre review venues break down according to gender.  Click through to read more, and if you're interested in writing for Strange Horizons, by all means drop me a line.

Strange Horizons Reviews, March 21-25

This week's Strange Horizons reviews kick off with one of the most talked-about books of the last few months, Jo Walton's Among Others, which charms reviewer Michael Levy by being as much about the experience of being a genre fan as a genre story itself.  Graham Sleight takes a look at the seemingly puzzling combination of Michael Moorcock and Doctor Who tie-in novels in Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles, and concludes that the groundbreaking author and the classic-but-revitalized TV series have a lot in common.  Today's review is of the anthology Sprawl, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, a collection of fantastic stories by Australian authors from Twelfth Planet Press that deeply impresses its reviewer, Dan Hartland.

Strange Horizons Reviews, March 14-18

This week's Strange Horizons reviews kick off with Matthew Jones's take on Caprica, which is a little more negative than mine and, interestingly, more concerned with the technological questions raised by the series's premise, which the show neglected in favor of political and social storylines and, of course, soap opera.  On Wednesday, Hannah Strom-Martin reviews the anthology Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die, which I (and I think Hannah too) had taken as nothing but a gimmick, but which she finds surprisingly thoughtful and worthwhile.  Today, David McWilliam reviews Charles Stross's latest Laundry novel, The Fuller Memorandum, which he thinks is a welcome return to form after the disappointing Jennifer Morgue.

At Strange Horizons: Two Things

1. The results of the Strange Horizons 2010 readers' poll are in, and, alongside such winners as Theodora Goss (best short story), Marge Simon (best poem), and Orrin Grey (best article), I'm stunned to announce that I was voted best reviewer.  I'm joined in that category by Adam Roberts, Niall Harrison, Matthew Cheney, and Farah Mendlesohn, which is such an august group of reviewers that I can't believe anyone would rank me above them. Thanks a lot to everyone who voted, and congratulations to the other winners.


2. Genevieve Valentine joins Strange Horizons as a columnist this week, and her first column is about reading the film Winter's Bone as a fairy tale.  I saw Winter's Bone just last week, and at the Strange Horizons blog I discuss Genevieve's column and some of my reactions to the film.


3. Actually, the absence of a thing: I've let my series about the Strange Horizons review policy lapse for, quite frankly, lack of time.  I'm hopeful that I'll be able to revive it before the end of the month.

Strange Horizons Reviews, March 7-11

This week's Strange Horizons reviews kick off with Richard Larson's discussion of one of the most talked-about science fiction novels of the last year, Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, with Richard joining in the novel's near-unanimous praise.  On Wednesday, Andy Sawyer puzzles over Ken MacLeod's The Restoration Game, and the meaning of its twist ending.  Today's review, by Duncan Lawie, is of a debut that we might have called urban fantasy a few years ago when that term had a very different meaning, Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London (Midnight Riot in the US).

Strange Horizons Reviews, February 28-March 4

This week on Strange Horizons, Nader Elhefnawy rounds off February with his review of L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s Empress of Eternity, which Nader thinks has its strong points, but is ultimately a disappointing execution of an interesting premise.  Dan Hartland kicks off March on a more positive note, with a glowing review of Zoran Živković's short novel The Ghostwriter.  Continuing the trend, C.B. Harvey is also quite pleased with Col Buchanan's debut fantasy, Farlander.  John Clute is less cheerful in the latest installment of his column Scores, in which he is decidedly unimpressed by three recent novellas, Tobias Buckell's The Executioness, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Alchemist, and Elizabeth Bear's The White City.

Strange Horizons Reviews, February 21-25

Before I get to the week's reviews, I'd like to mention that the Strange Horizons readers' poll, where you can vote for your favorite stories, poems, articles and reviewers, is open until March 6th.  Vote early and vote often (though only your last ballot will count).

Now the reviews: the week kicks off with Jonathan McCalmont (who has just joined Strange Horizons's staff as junior articles editor and a contributor to the blog--welcome aboard, Jonathan!) writing about Mira Grant's Feed, which he argues is a vicious satire of the state of contemporary journalism.  William Mingin discusses Harry Connolly's Game of Cages, a dark fantasy detective story and the second in the Twenty Palaces series featuring Ray Lilly.  We end the week with some nonfiction in Raz Greenberg's review of Douglas E. Cowan's Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television, which Raz concludes is more about transcendence than SF film and TV.

Strange Horizons Reviews, February 14-18

This wasn't a conscious plan on my part, but it seems rather appropriate that on Valentine's Day, Strange Horizons should have run T.S. Miller's review of Robert Silverberg's The Last Song of Orpheus, a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Miller finds Silverberg's retelling oddly cold, but his review is as much a discussion of the myth itself, of earlier, including medieval, versions of it, and of other retellings of myths by genre writers.  Hannah Strom-Martin is a great deal more positive about David Moles's alternate history novella Seven Cities of Gold, whose only flaw, she concludes, is that it may be too clever, too layered, and too sophisticated for its own good.  Kelly Jennings, on the other hand, is disappointed by Lois McMaster Bujold's Cryoburn, which, she concludes, teeters on the edge of engaging with issues of economic inequality and exploitation, but veers away in order to tell a fun, consequence-free adventure story.

Strange Horizons Reviews, February 7-11

This week on Strange Horizons, Roz Kaveney discusses the suddenly very topical Deep State by Walter Jon Williams, a novel about a popular revolution in the Middle East powered by the internet.  Sara Polsky is impressed by the Kate Bernheimer-edited My Mother She Ate Me, My Father He Killed Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, in which authors from the literary and genre ends of the scale retell fairy tales.  Finally, Niall Alexander raves about Joe Abercrombie's latest The Heroes, which he calls a return to form after the disappointment of Best Served Cold, and an expression of Abercrombie's fondness for gore and unsavory characters.

Strange Horizons Reviews, January 31-February 4

The last Strange Horizons review of January is Edward James's take on Kate Elliott's Cold Magic, which is actually a reflection on the two fantasy sequences Elliott has already written, to which the trilogy that Cold Magic begins is a continuation.  On Wednesday, Graham Sleight reviews Susan Hill's ghost story The Small Hand, which he finds a little old-fashioned in its willingness to tie up all its loose ends, especially compared with other modern literary ghost stories like The Little Stranger.  Yesterday Nathaniel Katz made his Strange Horizons debut with a review of Haruki Murakami's After Dark, a novel which, according to Nathaniel, makes a fantasy setting out of nighttime Tokyo.

Strange Horizons Reviews, January 24-28

As well as my own review of The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman, these week Strange Horizons features Matthew Jones's review of the film Monsters, which makes me all the more eager to see it.  There's also an interesting discussion in the comments.  Today also marks the Strange Horizons debut of Aishwarya Subramanian, who reviews Karl Alexander's sequel to his 1979 novel Time After Time, Jaclyn the Ripper.  She finds the novel utterly baffling, but the review is a lot of fun to read.

Strange Horizons Reviews, January 17-21

This week's Strange Horizons reviews kick off with something a little different: Karen Burnham's review of Mary Roach's popular science book Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, which Karen finds funny and fascination.  On Wednesday, Shaun Duke (in his reviews department debut) makes an argument in favor of Tron: Legacy and its worldbuilding, though the discussion in the comments has turned mostly on whether the film's plot holds together.  Today, Hannah Strom-Martin enthuses about Mike Allen's third collection of "strange and beautiful" stories, Clockwork Phoenix 3.  In addition, John Clute's column Scores appears this week, and its subjects are Johanna Sinisalo's recently-translated Birdbrain and M. Rickert's new collection Holiday.

At the Strange Horizons Blog: What to Review

In the second post in my series about reviewing at the Strange Horizons blog, I discuss the question that occurs long before the editor gets down to editing: which books (and films and TV shows) to commission reviews of?

As seems to happen quite often in discussions of genre or reviewing, the question of what to review boils down to a choice between prescriptive and descriptive. Is a reviews department a paper of record, reporting on the state of the genre and on the important names at its core, or is it a partisan platform, evangelizing for little-known writers and works and reflecting an inevitable editorial bias? Is its purpose to report on tastes, or to make them?

Follow the link and add your thoughts.

Strange Horizons Reviews, January 10-14

This week's Strange Horizons reviews begin with Paul Kincaid's take on 80! a festschrift published for Ursula K. Le Guin's 80th birthday last year and now being made publicly available.  On Wednesday, Chris Kammerud take his first look at Philip José Farmer's writing in Up the Bright River, a collection of Farmer's short fiction, and finds Farmer more interesting and more varied than he expected.  Finally, Kelly Jennings reviews the two latest books in Liz Williams's Inspector Chen series, The Shadow Pavilion and The Iron Khan, and finds them both entertaining and interesting.

At the Strange Horizons Blog: On Reviewing

I've been the Strange Horizons reviews editor for just over two months, and in that time two things have become crystal clear.  One, the zombie novel thing has gotten completely out of hand, and two, I need to articulate what I want from the department's reviews, and what I think a review should or shouldn't do.  As I say in my post at the Strange Horizons blog:

It's easy, when you're writing your own stuff, to get by on gut instinct—something feels right or it doesn't, and if you've got a good editor (like Niall) they can often help you articulate what isn't working, what you're trying to accomplish, and how to fix it. ... since I've started editing other people's writing, I've found myself struggling for words, for the tools with which to explain what I want for the review department, and how specific reviews are failing to bring their point across, or sometimes just muddling it.  I've felt a keen awareness of the need for some sort of guidelines—for myself, as much as for the reviewers I edit.

Today's post is the beginning of what I hope will be an irregular series through which I can formulate these guidelines, so if you're interested please click through and add your thoughts.

But seriously, enough with the zombie novels.

Strange Horizons Reviews, January 3-7

Before I get to the year's first reviews, the big news at Strange Horizons this week is that the magazine's blog is switching to full-time activity (whereas before it published mainly to advertise the magazine's yearly fund drive).  Editor in chief Niall Harrison has already got some posts up, as well as an editorial detailing other changes in the magazine's publishing schedule (while at the same time getting ready to hand over the reigns to Torque Control to Vector's incoming editor Shana Worthen and its reviews editor Martin Lewis), and I will hopefully have something up there this weekend.  You can follow the blog on RSS, and it's also syndicated on LJ, and while we're at it, here are the RSS and LJ links for the reviews feed as well.

On to the week's reviews: as has become traditional, the reviews department rings in the new year by looking back at the previous one.  We asked our reviewers what their favorite, and least favorite, genre-related things in 2010 were, and I think the answers give an interesting and pretty accurate snapshot of the department's focus and interests.  Farah Mendlesohn's review of Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death appeared on Wednesday, and was significantly less positive than the book's reception elsewhere has been (see also Jonathan McCalmont's review at The Zone).  Balancing that out is Richard Larson, who is over the moon about Paul Tremblay's short story collection In the Mean Time, which was also one of his picks for best genre-related thing of 2010.

Strange Horizons Reviews, December 20-24

The last 2010 issue of Strange Horizons (the magazine will be on hiatus next week) features Tanya Brown's double review of K.J. Parker's novel The Folding Knife and novella Blue and Gold, two works that Brown describes as historical fiction set in a world not quite our own, and centering on a pseudo-Roman Empire.  Tony Keen reviews the anthology The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories, edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates, which he finds comprehensive, as well as a good way of exploding the perception of alternate history as being obsessed with stories about Hitler and/or the Confederacy winning their respective wars.  Finally, Hannah Strom-Martin reviews Ken Scholes's Antiphon, the follow-up to Canticle and Lamentation (also reviewed by Hannah), and finds that though it has its strong points, on the whole the book is a disappointment.

Have a good holiday, those of you celebrating, and the rest of you, have a good weekend.