Aug 13 2018
One of the hard problems of writing far-future science fiction is just how strange humans of that era are likely to appear to present-day readers. Quite apart from the changes that technology and any move of setting from the terrestrial are likely to bring, the ways that societies change over time are likely to render …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/13/too-like-the-lightning-by-ada-palmer/
Aug 12 2018
One of the niftier things that Cory Doctorow does in Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom is to show a basically sympathetic character making a series of bad decisions for reasons that I, as a reader, could understand why he was taking those actions but I wished he wouldn’t and hoped he would figure …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/12/down-out-in-the-magic-kingdom-by-cory-doctorow/
Aug 12 2018
Sometimes an author is much more interested in a major character than I am. Writing about Raven Stratagem, the second book in the Machineries of Empire series, I already noted that Lee’s interest in writing about Shuos Jedao was starting to exceed my desire to read more about him. Revelations late in the book showed …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/12/revenant-gun-by-yoon-ha-lee/
Aug 05 2018
In John Sclazi’s first series of science fiction novels, Old Man’s War and its several sequels and companion volumes, the Milky Way near earth (well, near in interstellar terms) teems with life and spacefaring civilizations. Humanity has to make its way in a galactic neighborhood that’s full of life, and nearly as full of war. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/05/the-collapsing-empire-by-john-scalzi/
Aug 04 2018
When the first character a book introduces is a boy named Isaac, and the two adults closest to him in the odd collective where he is growing up are Avram (Dr. Avram Dvali) and Mrs. Rebka, even this heathen knows the book is going to be about encounters with transcendence and possible sacrifices. Axis is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/04/axis-by-robert-charles-wilson/
Aug 01 2018
Pacific Fire follows its predecessor, California Bones, as an adventure caper set in a darkly magical California that is both contemporary and off kilter. Transport within Los Angeles, for example, is all on boats in canals, the city a gargantuan Venice, and the head of the Department of Water and Power is a feared water …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/01/pacific-fire-by-greg-van-eekhout/
Jul 18 2018
Quite by accident, Steffen Möller has found himself one of the most famous contemporary Germans in Poland. He moved there in the mid-1990s for no particularly profound reasons — looking for work, looking for things to be slightly different, looking into a society that was changing rapidly, looking at a place that was at once nearby …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/07/18/viva-warszawa-by-steffen-moeller/
Jul 18 2018
What if all of those 19th-century notions about the nature of the solar system were true? Venus is swampy and rainy, Mars is mostly dry but turns out to be good country for kangaroos, Neptune is covered by an immense and stormy ocean, the moon really does have seas. And more: the moons discovered by …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/07/18/radiance-by-catherynne-m-valente/
Jul 16 2018
At the opening of The Maid of Orleans, as Schiller’s five-act verse tragedy is known in English, France is divided among three parties: English troops who have taken Paris and the north in pressing their king’s dynastic claim to the French throne, southern lands held by the Valois king Charles VII, and Burgundy in the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/07/16/die-jungfrau-von-orleans-by-friedrich-schiller/
Jun 26 2018
Abe, a cranky retired history professor who’s pretty good on the harmonica. Joanna, a flight attendant who’s logged plenty of miles but still has a ways to go before she can stay on the friendly ground. They’re an unlikely pair, and they maintain their separate residences, separate worlds, but sixteen years together have been good …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/26/summerlong-by-peter-s-beagle/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire