In 1953 Alfred Bester won the first Hugo award for his novel, The Demolished Man. It’s easy to see why. This is a fast-paced story in an interesting world, written in tight prose and delivering a haunting climax. The Demolished Man is partly a police procedural but also a crime procedural, much like the story […]
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, […]
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov: A Re-Reading for #SciFiMonth
To finish up my re-reading of Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy, this week I’m looking at his Second Foundation. The novel, published in this form in 1953, is a reprinting of two novellas published in Astounding magazine in 1948-50. This third novel may not have quite the dramatic impact of The Mule (in Foundation and […]
Re-Reading Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Up next in my re-read of Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy is Foundation and Empire. First published in book form in 1952, the novel consists of two novellas originally published in Astounding magazine in 1945, when Asimov was 25 years old. I mention his age since it seems to me that in these stories of […]
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke – A Review
Never having read Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, I picked up her Piranesi with no preconceptions about the sort of book it might be and promptly fell in love with it. It’s a masterful fable about life in this world that introduces us to the mind of a narrator who proclaims himself to […]
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey – Vintage Science Fiction Month
Every now and then a book surprises me, especially when searching through the often dated fiction for Vintage SciFi Month. Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight, first in a mighty line of 23 novels set in the Pern universe, is one of those. It’s a surprise because I’m not a big fan of fantasy, yet I keep finding […]
