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Recent Posts
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Most Beguiling Cookbook
- What’s New for the 13th of April: Anthony Bourdain in print and video; Calexico, Giant Sand and related music; new recordings of ragas, Nordic songs, and vocal jazz, ‘The Night They Drive Old Dixie Down’ performed by The Band
- A Kinrowan Story: We Lost The Cheshire Cat
- What’s New for the 30th of March: Space Opera by Niven & Pournell, Arkady Martine, C. J. Cherryh, Elizabeth Bear, Simon Jimenez and more; Kage reads for us ‘The Empress of Mars’, a novella she wrote; a grab bag of music including new Buryat folk music; The Ukrainians; live music from the Scottish band Iron Horse; Gail Simone graphic novels; Farscape; and of course chocolate
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Our Rooms
- What’s New of 16th of March: A variety of mysteries; some new Scottish music by an old band, new jazz, and splendid archival reviews; ballads in graphic novel form; and chocolate in Paris
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Pub Ghoulies
- What’s New of 2nd of March: Kibbles and Bits including ghostly stories, the Hotel California, music picked by Gary of course
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Quotes that aren’t
- What’s New for the 16th of February: Books by and about Bob Dylan, and music by Dylan and others; plus some new world music and jazz
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Unreliable Narrators
- What’s New for the 2nd of February: All about the Oz books, green man lore, and gargoyles; Baltic polyphony, East-West ambient psychedelia, and a grab bag of other music
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Knit One, Purl Two
- What’s New for the 19th of January: Go Ahead, Be Pleasantly Surprised At What’s Here
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Ancients and Venerables of Guild of St. Nicholas
- What’s New for the 5th of January: A look back at books Gary reviewed in 2024; some seasonally appropriate Nordic music and a little new jazz
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Biscuits
- What’s New for the 22nd of December: A Solstice Story, Crow Girls, Scrooge, Marley, Elizabeth I, Revels and more festive holiday reading; The Lion in Winter on stage and screen; Jethro Tull, Steeleye Span, Christine Lavin, swinging jazz and more holiday sounds
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Fireplaces
- What’s New for the 8th of December: Elizabeth Bear fiction; some holiday related offerings including new music from The Unthanks, Americana tinged jazz, Polar Express, and more
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Eggnog
- What’s New for the 24th of November: Norwegian winter holiday music, archival jazz, new roots music from around Europe, and more; books and what not about things fictional & medæival
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Pudding
- What’s New for the 10th of November: a grab bag of books from our favorite authors; Richard Thompson and Stephane Grappelli on film; music from all over; and comfort food
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Brandy (A Letter to Tessa)
- What’s New for the 27th of October: The Byrds Live, Trader Joe’s Organic Hot Cocoa Mix, Some Excellent Music Reviews, Folkmanis Puppets of an Autumnal Nature, The Mouse Guard begins…
- A Kinrowan Estate story: All The World’s A Stage
- What’s New for the 13th of October: Elizabeth Bear tends a pot of turkey stock, Groot and Rocket Raccoon, A Video and Fiction set in India, Tasty music reviews, and music from Irish trad band Clannad
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Autumn is Here (A Letter to Anna)
- What’s New for the 29th of September: Louisiana’s Lost Bayou Ramblers, live music by Kathryn Tickell, Ottawa based urban fantasies by Charles de Lint, Norwegian saxophonist Karl Seglem, Gus on the Estate Kitchen garden and other Autumnal matters
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Tag Archives: speculative fiction
Jodi Taylor’s Doing Time (The Time Police #1)
The invention of time travel led to the Time Wars, which led to the Time Police, who solve problems by ruthless, thorough, application of force. Stop the illegal time travelers, bring home for prosecution any who are unaccountably still alive, … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged detective fiction, speculative fiction, time travel
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R F Kuang’s Babel
R F Kuang’s Babel is an audacious and unrelenting look at colonialism, seen through the lens of an alternate 19th century Britain where translation is the key to magic. Kuang’s novel is as sharp and perceptive as it is well written and … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged babel, Paul Weimer, r f kuang, speculative fiction
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Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140
So I’m going about this backward. I’ve already read and reviewed Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 speculative fiction tome The Ministry for the Future, in which likeable and powerful people grapple with the climate crisis in the near future. Now I’m … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged science fiction, speculative fiction
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Jo Walton’s Half a Crown
In the conclusion to her Small Change trilogy, which began with Farthing and continued with Ha’Penny, Jo Walton returns to a postwar Britain that has negotiated peace with Hitler in exchange for a supposed autonomy. In reality, fascism has infiltrated … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged alternate history, speculative fiction
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Jo Walton’s Ha’Penny
Jo Walton’s 2006 novel Farthing was set in an imagined Britain-as-it-might-have-been, if instead of battling Hitler the British had let him have continental Europe in exchange for leaving them their island of autonomy and freedom. As the story unfolded, though, … Continue reading
William Gibson’s Zero History
Zero History is the third book in William Gibson’s series that began with Pattern Recognition and continued in Spook Country. The best-selling series brought Gibson out of the ghetto of genre fiction into the limelight of more mainstream fiction, which … Continue reading
Neal Stephenson’s Anathem
One of the joys of Anathem is the way it unfolds slowly, bit by bit, with every newly revealed detail exposing another unsuspected layer of complexity beneath. Stephenson’s world-building is on the truly fantastic level in Anathem, but it is … Continue reading
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Tagged science fiction, speculative fiction
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William Gibson’s Spook Country
One of the characters in William Gibson’s new book Spook Country is addicted to a particular kind of tranquilizer. During the book’s course he takes two slightly different versions of it, with different brand names. I was curious about just … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged literary science fiction, speculative fiction
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William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition
Folklore used to be songs, dances and tales told around the fire, in the inns, before the hearth, that connected us with our past. The first mass media, radio and television, put the hearth in an electrical box that we … Continue reading
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Tagged literary science fiction, speculative fiction
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Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon
Wes Unruh wrote this review. Not your average technothriller, Cryptonomicon has nothing to do with the eldritch gods of H. P. Lovecraft. Instead, it is the best treatment of cryptography since Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Gold Bug,” and a hundred … Continue reading
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Tagged science fiction, speculative fiction
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