I once read that most novel plots could be reduced to two great starting points: a stranger comes to town, and someone goes on a journey. In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s comic and thought-provoking Service Model, the one-time valet robot named Charles embarks on a journey to discover the source of a fatal error in his routines. […]
The City in Glass by Nghi Vo
While reading Nghi Vo’s beautifully crafted and deeply imaginative The City in Glass, I kept wondering where the story was going, even what it was for. Don’t get me wrong, this short novel is completely enjoyable and brilliantly written, but I was missing something that was hard to pin down. On one level it is […]
Taking on My Fantasy TBR – Assassin’s Apprentice and The Book That Wouldn’t Burn
With ever less time for blogging due to various physical annoyances, I’m limited in what I can contribute to Wyrd & Wonder this time around and so decided to offer an overview of two books in my stretchable comfort zone. I may return to one or both of these for fuller discussion at some point, […]
Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi
Wole Talabi, in his brilliant story collection Convergence Problems, offers an intriguing idea about how stories can be told. It contrasts sharply with the method made famous by James Joyce in Dubliners where characters reach a climactic moment of epiphany in which they grasp some great truth about themselves. That approach has been done to […]
Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope
After yet more downtime caused by, first, the misery of a post-covid illness, something like a cold from hell, and then happy times during a special family birthday gathering, I managed to start reading again with Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope. I was so impressed with her earlier The Monsters We Defy […]
True Names by Vernor Vinge
The passing of Vernor Vinge, author of the great A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep, led me to go back to one of his earliest ground-breaking works, the novella True Names, first published in 1981. It’s regarded as the inspiration and first detailed working out of what William Gibson would […]
Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon
(Revised 3/31/2024) It’s a month since I came down with covid, and I’m still dealing with weird aftereffects. But an excellent way to get my brain going again came to hand in the form of The Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon. A lot of collections refer to their stories as “unforgettable” but this set of […]
Makeover World – Part 3
Here is the third installment in Makeover World, one of the Stories of Elektra series. Like Time Islands, this is a longer story so I’m publishing it in three parts on three successive days. Makeover World is a standalone but is related by setting, character and theme to the others in this series. Here is […]
