'Prepare to Die': Not Your Average Superhero Story. Worse.
I admit I have a fascination for stories about superhumans and I’m always on the lookout for new novels featuring super-powered characters. This fascination stems from all the potential inherent in...
View ArticleSci-Fi/Fantasy Books to Read Along with Your Kids
School's in session, and that can only mean one thing: More free time for parents! What's a parent to do with all that free time? Margarita lunches! Okay, what's a responsible parent to do with all...
View ArticleCrime Thriller Meets Time Travel in 'The Man From Primrose Lane'
"Wouldn’t that be impossible?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that be a paradox?”
View ArticleLibrary of America Goes SciFi
With regards to world events, they say those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it. As applied to literature, I would modify that statement to read that those who don't know their...
View ArticleRobin Maxwell's 'Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan'
The year is 1905, the place Cambridge University. Jane Porter, a headstrong and passionate young woman, is the first female student to be admitted to the university’s sole anatomy laboratory. While she...
View ArticleA Brief History of the Vampire Novel
Vampires have captured our imagination for centuries. Béla Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula has defined the appearance of the creature in all manner of media, while more recent works in film and...
View ArticleDemystifying Science Fictional Terms (+ Reading Recommendations to Help You...
Science fiction is often accused of using hard-to-understand terms. Well... Okay, guilty as charged. But just because science fiction has an occasional tendency to use complex language doesn't mean...
View ArticleR.A. Salvatore Takes Reader Questions at Reddit
Fans of New York Times bestselling fantasy author R.A. Salvatore are in luck. Salvatore, who has sold more than 10,000,000 copies worldwide, will take part in Reddit's Ask Me Anything Fantasy series...
View ArticleIn Praise of Frances Hardinge
A few months ago, I was visiting my favorite bookstore and asked the friendly bookseller for recommendations of awesome Middle Grade books (my exact words). I was promptly handed a copy of Frances...
View ArticleCan't-Miss Science Fiction and Fantasy Books for October
I know what you're saying, gentle-but-overwhelmed readers: "The are so many books being published, I have no idea where to start!" That's true—there are a lot of books being published every month. But...
View ArticleRevisiting Bram Stoker's Horror Masterpiece, 'Dracula'
For our previous column, we looked broadly at the evolution of the Vampire novel, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Christabel to Stephanie Meyer's more recent Twilight series. Yet, despite the number of...
View ArticleBefore Honor, There Was Stephanie: 'A Beautiful Friendship'
Stephanie watched the intruder vanish with a sense of wonder which only grew as the creature disappeared. It was small, she thought—no more than sixty or seventy centimeters long, though its tail would...
View ArticleIain M. Banks Revisits The Culture with 'The Hydrogen Sonata'
Sentient space ships. Drug glands. Multi-species societies. Biological immortality. These are just a few of the futuristic elements readers have enjoyed about The Culture, the anarchist society that...
View ArticleOctober: The Perfect Month for Zombies, Vampires and Ghosts
Thanks to Halloween, October is traditionally the month that readers look to the weirder side of the fiction spectrum. And there's no shortage of books to satisfy your zombie, vampire and ghostly...
View ArticleMax Gladstone's Delightfully Misleading 'Three Parts Dead'
“Before this case is over, Abelard, you may have to choose between the city you believe you inhabit, and Alt Coulumb as it exists in truth. What choice will you make?”
View ArticleGetting From Here to There in Science Fiction
A while back we took a look at space elevators as a way of moving things into orbit from the planet's surface. When you consider the range of activities required for space travel, it turns out that...
View ArticleH.P. Lovecraft and the Other
Living in New England, it's hard to escape the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The northeast corner of the United States is well known for its horror and fantasy authors: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe...
View Article'Only Superhuman': Hypersexualized Ridiculousness
In the year 2107, humanity has banned any human genetics modifications—other than the basic mods needed for human survival on Earth and the immediately adjacent colonies, that is. But while Earth and...
View ArticleGeneration Starships: Fiction and Fact
Last week's article on Getting From Here to There in Science Fiction offered a brief look at several methods science fiction writers use to move characters about in their stories. Some of these...
View ArticleThe Book Smugglers’ 10 Recommended Halloween Reads
It’s that time of the year. Monster movie marathons are on TV, costume shops are filled to capacity, and tempting fun-sized goodies are materializing out of thin air. This can only mean that...
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