Category Archives: Books

G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen

Alif is a young man, a “gray hat” hacker, selling his skills to provide cybersecurity to anyone who needs that protection from the government. He lives in an unnamed city-state in the Middle East, referred to throughout simply as the … Continue reading

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Ed Lacy’s Room to Swing

Ed Lacy’s Room to Swing won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1958. It is now republished by Poisoned Pen Press as a part of their Library of Congress Crime Classics series.  The lead in the book is small time … Continue reading

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Larry Niven’s Ringworld

Louis Wu is 200 years old, and he’s bored. It’s his 200th birthday, and he’s using transfer booths to extend the celebration of it for a full twenty-four hours, and he’s really bored. Then, when transferring from one birthday location … Continue reading

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Roger Zelazny’s Roadmarks

Whereupon Paul takes the road to the Last Exit to Babylon and once again explores a classic of the Roger Zelazny oeuvre, Roadmarks and finds some pleasures, but also some potholes as well. The road goes ever on and on and … Continue reading

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Emery Robin’s The Stars Undying

Emery Robin’s debut novel, The Stars Undying, attempts, with uneven success, to transplant the story of Cleopatra and Gaius Julius Ceasar to a space opera setting. Long ago, or perhaps long from now, in a galaxy that may or may … Continue reading

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Roger Zelazny‘s A Night in the Lonesome October

Snuff is our narrator, here, and he’s a smart, interesting, likable dog. He’s the friend and partner of a man called Jack, and they are preparing for a major event. Jack has a very sharp knife, which he and Snuff … Continue reading

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Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Series: The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, and The Wastelands

The Gunslinger “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” With those deceptively straightforward words, world-renowned horror writer Stephen King launches (and rather neatly sums up) the first volume of his sprawling epic fantasy series The … Continue reading

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William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive

Wes Unruh wrote this review. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. — William Gibson, Neuromancer The future world of the Sprawl series is a world of crumbling governments supplanted by multinational … Continue reading

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Stephen King’s Under the Dome and Blockade Billy

At first blush, it may seem odd to review these two Stephen King works together. After all, one is a weighty tome – literally, clocking in at nearly 1,100 pages – about a small Maine town trapped beneath a bizarre … Continue reading

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Ben Aaronovitch’s The October Man (Rivers of London #7.5)

This entry in Rivers of London is, for variety, set in Germany, and involves a German river. Or two. And river goddesses. Tobias Winter is an investigator for Abteilung KDA, the German version of Britain’s Folly. He’s on leave when … Continue reading

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