Category Archives: Books

Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, Jeffrey D. Smith, eds., The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3

Anyone experiencing art, particularly with the goal of commenting on it, inevitably faces a quandary: how much of the meaning was the intent of the artist, and how much was supplied by the audience? This observation is particularly relevant to … Continue reading

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Jerry Hewitt and Daryl F. Mallett’s The Work of Jack Vance: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide

Jack Vance is one of those authors who — well, simply put, if you haven’t read anything by Jack Vance, you really can’t claim to have read science fiction. His work has been what we are pleased to call “seminal,” … Continue reading

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Jack Vance’s This Is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is I)

Jack Vance has been one of the most continuously productive and popular and arguably one of the most influential writers of science-fiction. He’s also a mystery writer of note. (His is a name that I see popping up again and … Continue reading

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Jack Vance’s Tales of the Dying Earth

Jack Vance has been, throughout his long career as a science-fiction writer, one of the most consistently creative universe-builders in the field. From the far-flung stellar civilization of The Demon Princes to Alastor and The Dying Earth, his creations are … Continue reading

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Jack Vance’s Hard Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance

Hard Luck Diggings collects fourteen of Jack Vance’s earliest published stories, originally appearing between 1948 and 1959. As editors Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan point out in their Introduction, what we see here is Vance not only mastering his craft, … Continue reading

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Cliff “Oats” Williams’ One More Train to Ride

This review was written by Craig Clarke. What does the average reader really know about the culture of the American hobo? Mostly they keep themselves out of sight due to the misdemeanor status of actions necessary to their survival (e.g., … Continue reading

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Maria V. Snyder’s Poison Study; Michelle Sagara’s Cast In Shadow; Deborah Hale’s Destined Queen

Mary Sue (n.) : (1) A type of story where characterization, plot and theme is supplanted by the author’s quest for his or her own wish fulfillment. (2) any character that is a thinly disguised idealized version of the author … Continue reading

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Jack Vance’s The Kragen; Thomas M. Disch’s The Voyage of the Proteus: A Eyewitness Account of the End of the World; Cat Rambo and Jeff VanderMeer’s The Surgeon’s Tale and Other Stories

You may recall that we here at GMR are extraordinarily fond of the small presses that publish so many of the things we discuss. We are fond of them because they bring us all-but-forgotten classics, exciting new works from important … Continue reading

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Ursula K. Le Guin’ Always Coming Home

Some fifteen years ago, Le Guin created Always Coming Home, an ethnographic history of a people living in a future version of Northern California. Though it’s possible that this might be a far future version of our culture, Le Guin … Continue reading

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Ursula K. LeGuin’s Gifts

The uplands of the Carrantages are a place of small holdings devoted to sheep herding, cattle, hunting, and farming, inhabited by families who all possess what they call “gifts.” The Barre gift is calling, mostly used to call game to … Continue reading

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