The Little Red Reviewer offers a fresh interview with Ellen Datlow, editor of The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen, while over at Amazing they reprint an interview from 2013.
For information on The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen, visit the Tachyon page.
Cover by Josh Beatman.
At the Little Red Reviewer, Andrea Johnson gushes over the new James Morrow novella The Madonna and the Starship.
With a cover like this and promises of provocative satire, how could I not read it?
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But The Madonna and the Starship isn’t just about aliens crashing a TV show and causing a live show to be filmed with no script. Kurt is a science fiction writer, and Morrow takes ample opportunity to touch on people’s preconceived notions of what science fiction writing is. Is it straight up pulpy kids stuff, like Connie thinks, or is it respectable literature that teaches as it entertains? While you’re thinking about that every few pages, Kurt’s internal monologue is reminding us that he would never, ever put the cheesy lines people say into any of his stories. and it’s funny!
At novella length, The Madonna and the Starship is an entertaining and highly satisfying quick jolt of fun, fast readers will be able to zip through it in an afternoon. Morrow’s characters start plenty of conversations that due to a deadline they are unable to finish, and I wouldn’t have minded if Morrow had skipped right through novella word count and made it a full length novel. Now that I think about it, I’ll bet the point of those unfinished conversations was because Morrow wanted his readers to finish them themselves.
For more on The Madonna and the Starship, visit the Tachyon page.
Cover and design by Elizabeth Story.
Andrea Johnson, aka the Little Red Reviewer, included the final Kage Baker collection In the Company of Thieves, in her contribution to the SF Signal Mind Meld: What Lesser-Known Books Deserve More Attention?
Everyone talks about Kage Baker’s Company series, but it’s a long series that has to be read in a certain order, making it look almost as intimidating as McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga (or moreso, since very few people will tell you what The Company series is actually about). Want just a taste to see if The Company schtick is for you, not to mention Baker’s writing style? Plant yourself in front of the short story collection In The Company of Thieves for a handful of short stories that take place in the world of The Company. There are contemporary tales, a comedy of errors, plenty of history fiction, and even a steampunk story. I can’t think of a better way to get introduced to Kage Baker if you’re not familiar with her work. I always get a little sad thinking about this series, because there will never be another book written in it.
For the rest of the selections, visit SF Signal.
For more information about In the Company of Thieves, visit the Tachyon page.
Cover art and design copyright © 2013 by Thomas Canty
