I read this book for the Science Fiction and Fantasy book club that I'm a part of. Wow. What a book. Throughout the first 100 or so pages, I kept thinking, "Is there a plot line?" Characters die and the main is continually "chasing heat" to keep from freezing to death aboard this wacko ship. In t...
When I picked up 'Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology' I was hoping for an anthology of cyberpunk. That was not exactly what I got. Maybe my understanding of the cyberpunk genre is wrong, and it was just my ignorant expectations that were disappointed. Cyberpunk, I thought, was the genre 'Neuro...
James Gunn’s masterpiece about a human fountain of youth collects the author’s classic short stories that ran in elite science-fiction magazines throughout the 1950s. What is the price for immortality? For nomad Marshall Cartwright, the price is knowing that he will never grow old. That he wil...
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I went into this book with low to zero expectations. That proved to be a good strategy because the rather slow start and getting to know the people and world took a little patience. This is a very early novel, possibly the first for Greg Bear. My copy of the book shows it was originally written i...
----------------------------------------------I've been amazed at the number of readers that have been so underwhelmed by Eon. This astounding book was published in 1984 and did not anticipate the end of the Cold War, only half a decade away. Some say, with self-righteousness nurtured by hindsig...
As a huge fan of Greg Bear's various wonders of the universe, but I found this to be very dull and disappointing. I love science fiction that is grounded in biology, and Greg Bear has some fantastic biology-driven novels: Blood Music is my favorite, but see also Darwin's Radio, Legacy, and Hull Z...
Tales featured in this fantasy anthology include 'Webster', 'The White Horse Child', 'Sleepside Story', 'Dead Run', 'The Visitation', and the Nebula Award-nominated 'Petra'.
Yoshio Kawashita is a great warrior until aliens whisk him away during World War II. They put him on a desolate planet far from his home, where he is destined to remain forever, leaving him alone in his new hell. Then Anna Nestor appears. This empress does not see planets as homes for their inhab...
This is a SF author that I enjoy a lot and this novel was no exception, although it was more a supernatural horror with a SF twist at the end. A number of strange occurences are happening throughout America. In a remote log cabin, animals freeze solid, only to come alive again as they thaw and a ...
From the winner of the 2001 Nebula Award comes three novels with a common theme: the female psyche, multiplied and divided. Features Sisters, Scattershot, and Hardfought. Original.
Sequel to the visionary yet slow and painful Forge of God, Anvil of Stars is a completely different work, both in character and tone. After the destruction of the Earth, surviving adults settle to live out the end of their lives on Mars, while children volunteer to enact The Law, seeking vengeanc...
When I got this out from the library, I didn't realize it was short stories. And even then, it wasn't until I sat down with it and started to think that, hey, some of these stories seem awfully familiar, that I realized that a couple of years ago I read that mammoth book of Greg Bear's short stor...
The Serpent Mage" - book two - picks up shortly after Infinity Concerto leaves off. Michael Perrin is back home, living with his parents and continuing his training. Arno Waltiri has left his estate and the disposition of his papers and recordings to Michael. Waltiri has also left his house to Mi...
Still enjoying these collections, still marveling at Asimov's ego. His introductions are a little better than they were in the original Hugo series, with *slightly* more emphasis on the authors and the stories themselves. But Isaac still has that self-deprecating-but-not-really tone that says (to...
‘In ‘Foundation and Chaos’, one of science fiction’s greatest storytellers takes one of its greatest stories into new and fascinating territory. Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation series is back. Hari Seldon, approaching the end of his life, is on trial for daring to predict the Empire’s fall. At ...
A Case of Conscience: A Catholic priest faces aliens with morality but no religionOriginally posted at Fantasy LiteratureGreat A-side, dreadful B-side. This is James Blish’s 1959 Hugo-winning SF novel, expanded from the1953 novella. Part One (the original novella) is set on planet Lithia, introdu...
The title, summary, and about the first third of this book intrigued me very much, which made me all the more disappointed when it all went flat. Bear incorporates some excellent fantasy elements -- Lamia, the Crane Women, humans confined to a sort of ghetto in the realm of the Sidhe, the mystic...
Mmm, I've read this before in paperback quite a long time ago. This time in kindle format, I found it a bit disjointed, the viewpoint changes from one character to another without anything to give you a clue there's a transition. This may be down to the kindle formatting rather than the author th...
As a fairly regular reader of science-fiction, I had seen many of Greg Bear’s novels on the shelves at my local library. I can be rather narrow-minded when it comes to exploring new authors. I vaguely recall having read at least one other Greg Bear novel; so long ago I don’t even remember the t...
Set three years after the events of The Phantom Menace, Rogue Planet sees Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker sent to the mysterious world of Zonama Sekot to discover the truth about the planet and the disappearance two years before of the Jedi Knight Vergere.(view spoi...
A big, old-fashioned adventure story, Dinosaur Summer starts from the premise that the events of The Lost World (the 1912 novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, not the Michael Crichton novel) are real. In Dinosaur Summer, Conan Doyle and his fellow adventurers discovered a hidden world in South Americ...
This book is pure emotion.I don’t actually know how I feel about it. There are parts of it that are probably some of my most favourite scenes I have ever read, and I highlighted a whole bunch of shit just because I really really liked the way it was written. And there are a bunch of parts that ma...
Wow. Not one of Greg Bear's finest, I would say. Although the last third does try to make up for the plodding two thirds. Like most sci-fi written in the past talking about "the future" that is now our past, it has a few stumbling blocks where he didn't get it quite right. Forge of God was writte...
Without doubt, this is one of the finest movie novelizations ever written. In a genre of literature that is so often a cash grab in modern times, 1932's King Kong by mystery writer Delos W. Lovelace is a cut above the rest.If you've seen the movie, you know the story: reckless film director Denha...
Do you dream of a city at the end of time?In a time like the present, in a world that may or may not be our own, three young people–Ginny, Jack, and Daniel–dream of a doomed, decadent city of the distant future: the Kalpa. Ginny’s and Jack’s dreams overtake them without warning, leaving their bod...
Explore fascinating, often chilling "what if" accounts of the world that could have existed–and still might yet . . . Science fiction’s most illustrious and visionary authors hold forth the ultimate alternate history collection. Here you’ll experience mind-bending tales that challenge your view...
For years, The Year's Best Science Fiction has been the most widely read short science fiction anthology of its kind. Now, after twenty-one annual collections, comes the ultimate in science fiction anthologies, The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction, in which legendary ...
Sprague De Camp; in fact, most of the current popularity of that particular sub-genre can be attributed to Turtledove’s own hot-ticket bestseller status. Turtledove has published Alternate History novels such as The Guns of the South, dealing with a timeline in which the American Civil War turns ...
Water was scarce out here. The "tanks" were mostly empty and of course the cattle were long gone. This was a land of flyaway dirt and dusty, half idled oil wells and gray scrub—and Mexicans flowing north, heading for anywhere but Mexico.William was thinking about how those Mexicans could be usefu...
"You're lying to me," Jeshua said. "No! Stop." Thinner stood in the river and held up his hands. "You're right." "I know I am." "But not completely. I'm from Winston, and I'm speaking like a city chaser for a mason. And speakingaccurately, mind you." Jeshua frowned. The boy no longer seemed a boy...
Indeed, to a great extent Kirk himself didn't know. When they were through, Chekov and McCoy inspected the device—Chekov paying particular attention. The shield was a cubic cage about two meters on a side, made of black pipe with smaller red cubes at each of the eight corners.Mason sat on a fold-...
All she wants now is to crawl into bed and sleep, straight sleep, without the pre-dream child vid she often uses, just simple sleep./ SLANT 109And then she sees that dreadful facelessness again. Her breath quickens and she moans. She gets out of bed and walks in her thin silk robe into the living...
They are bricks! Try enlightening bricks!He smiled his sad, narrow smile. Enlighten them, he said.I left the Giants chamber in a rage. I did not have access to the great wheels board of time; so I couldnt know exactly when the execution would take place. But I guessed-from memories of a grumbling...
Their branches are etched sharp against the drab neutrality. Their pattern is fixed and will not change. The gray has no quality, not even the vibrancy of sight behind closed eyes. More than winter, this is certainty; the final image found rn the eyes of a dead man. Now ask: do you want peace and...
The atmosphere within the chamber was thick with dust. Dust sifted from the ceiling, puffed from the outer halls as ceilings collapsed elsewhere in the ruin. Tendrils on the floor moved with deliberation toward Jabitha, encircled her. Sekot itself would protect the Magister’s daughter. In some fa...
She watched it appear as she sipped tea on her back porch. Because of the peace radiating from the three images—a lion, a lamb, and a dove—she did not feel alarm or even much concern. She was not an overtly religious person, but she experienced considerable relief at having a major question—the e...