Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Baen Published: 1995 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating The latest of Lois McMaster Bujold`s Miles Vorkosigan adventures, Cetaganda, is, by Bujold’s own testimony, a rather light-hearted romp, a bit of a step down in seriousness and apparent ambition from Barrayar and Mirror …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Harper Collins Published: 1995 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating Greg Egan is one of the most inventive and exciting current SF writers. His SF is distinctly “hard”, rife with “cutting edge” speculations, and also generally “through-composed”, in that he tries to set …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Tor Published: 1996 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating This is really, really, good. Set in the 23rd century, the Russian narrator (Maya, making at least three major SF novels this year to feature a major character named Maya (also Holy Fire and …
Genre: Fantasy Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Published: 1997 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating Penelope Fitzgerald is a rather well-known author in the U.K., having been short-listed for the Booker Prize four times and winning once (for Offshore (1979)). The Blue Flower is the story of the romance …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: William Morrow & Co. Published: 1968 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Jonathan M. Sullivan Reader Rating Gods, but I miss Roger Zelazny. Didn’t know the man, although I did have a chance to meet him once, when I was fifteen, at the second Phoenix LepreCon, St. Paddy’s …
Genre: Cyberpunk Publisher: Bantam Published: 1997 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Jonathan M. Sullivan Reader Rating On the face of it, Holy Fire is about a woman’s quest for youth, for some small measure of immortality. But look deeper, and you’ll see that when Sterling’s 90 year-old protagonist, Mia, undergoes an …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: William Morrow & Co. Published: 2000 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Jonathan M. Sullivan Reader Rating In the final analysis, this is another hard sf disaster novel a la Lucifer’s Hammer. The difference is that Eater doesn’t depict a Big Dumb Space Object Headed for Earth, but …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Harper Collins Published: 1998 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Jonathan M. Sullivan Reader Rating By the late 30th century, human beings have split into several different manifestations. Most people reside as virtual consciousness in the polises, independent city-states embedded in virtual reality. Others, the gleisners, occupy robot …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Ballantine Published: 1999 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Jonathan M. Sullivan Reader Rating Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species, as originaly formulated by Darwin himself, paints a picture of changes occuring in populations at a slow, steady rate. Such a view does not jibe with the …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Ballantine Published: 1998 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Jonathan M. Sullivan Reader Rating My reading stack already contains more volumes than I could hope to get through in a lifetime, so there’s a better than even chance I’d never have gotten around to reading Bloom. But I …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates Published: 2000 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Jonathan M. Sullivan Reader Rating Who says Mars belongs to Kim Stanley Robinson? Here’s a confession: I never finished Robinson’s Mars trilogy. I know that’s a little like saying you’ve never sat through ne With the Wind …
Genre: Cyberpunk Publisher: Putnam Published: 1999 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Jonathan M. Sullivan Reader Rating So you’re a hundred pages into All Tomorrow’s Parties and you’re thinking: “Okay. This is typical Gibson. It’s pungent with detail, brimming with flavor, palpable with grit. The new characters are razor-sharp, real. The old …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Warner Books Published: 1998 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating There are plenty of wonderful older books that may not have received their due notice. I won’t venture too far into the past: Sewer, Gas, & Electric is a long, inspired, hilarious but …
Genre: Fantasy Publisher: St. Martin’s Press Published: 1999 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating The dedicated SF reader does well to scrounge other then the Science Fiction shelves. Many books are hard to categorize, and many books are categorized for marketing reasons rather than any formal genre …
Genre: Fantasy Publisher: Wildside Press Published: 2001 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating Fortunate SF readers will have encountered William Sanders’ earlier novels Journey to Fusang, a fine, funny-serious, alternate history about a North American colonized by the Chinese instead of the Europeans, and The Wild Blue …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Pantheon Books Published: 1999 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating Here we have Eric Idle’s second adult novel, The Road to Mars. Idle, of course, is a member of the great British comedy group Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and a reasonable successful comedian, …
Genre: Fantasy Publisher: Grove/Atlantic Published: 1976 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a famous 20th Century Russian novel. It’s also a fantasy novel, and certainly of interest to genre readers. It’s set in Moscow, apparently in the ’20s or …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates Published: 2001 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating Ascendant Sun is a sequel to two branches of her “story so far”. It follows the journey of Kelric, hero of The Last Hawk, a Nebula Award nominee, as he returns to …
Genre: Fantasy Publisher: Wildside Press Published: 2000 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating Wildside Press, under the direction of John Gregory Betancourt, has been a respected small press in the field for some time. One of their most worthy projects is the reprinting of most of Avram …
Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Bantam Published: 1995 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Richard R. Horton Reader Rating Iain M. Banks has been publishing SF novels for the past several years, as well as publishing mainstream novels (with horror and/or slipstream SF facets) as by Iain Banks. He has received considerable praise …
