Share on TwitterMass Market Paperback: 400 pages Publisher: Roc (May 1, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 0451464508 In an age where fantastic inventions of steam and brass have elevated Britain and China into mighty empires, Alice Michaels faces a future of technological terrors… Once, Gavin Ennock sailed the skies on airships and enchanted listeners with his [...]
Share on TwitterMass Market Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Ace; Reprint edition (April 24, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 193700743X Official Description: When the black spheres filled the sky, anyone caught beneath them would vanish in a flash of blue-white light. Huddled indoors, the survivors were unaware if what was happening in their neighborhoods was happening worldwide. [...]
Share on Twitter The magic returns (or comes into being) to our technological modern day world is not a new idea in fantasy. Rachel Pollack’s Unquestionable Fire. The novels of Alyx Dellamonica. The roleplaying games Shadowrun and GURPS: Technomancer hypothesize what would happen if magic erupted into the modern world. Other novels and stories [...]
Share on Twitter Thomas Marcinko’s new anthology, Astronauts and Heretics, treats the reader to seven highly entertaining and imaginative stories. The first story, Faith in a Higher Power, tells of a world where super powers are strictly regulated and many treat their ‘gifts’ as an addiction. Despite this, the tale is playful and upbeat. Next [...]
Share on Twitter Orson Scott Card‘s second book in the Ender series, Speaker for the Dead, takes place years after humanity’s war against the alien ‘buggers.’ Ender Wiggins, the former child hero of the Bugger Wars, has spent twenty years traveling from world to world, speaking for the dead – telling the truth about the [...]
Share on TwitterIn episode 93 of the Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome Lou Anders back to the show to chat with E.C. Meyers about Young Adult Fiction. About Lou Anders: Lou Anders is the 2011 Hugo Award winning editorial director of Prometheus Books’ science fiction and fantasy imprint Pyr, and editor [...]
Share on Twitter Paperback: 480 pages Publisher: Prime Books (November 22, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 1607013045 Official Description: Lightspeed (www.lightspeedmagazine.com) is the critically-acclaimed, online science fiction magazine edited by bestselling anthologist John Joseph Adams. Lightspeed publishes all types of science fiction, from near-future, sociological soft sf, to far-future, star-spanning hard sf, and anything and everything [...]
Share on TwitterAirships! Secretive assassin-monks! Fanatic cults! The world at stake! Don’t let the airship on the dustjacket fool you, this isn’t your expected steampunk novel. Ash is pursuing an official vendetta. He is a member of the Roshun, a secretive order providing protection services through the use of living ‘seals’ that die with their [...]
Share on Twitter Paperback: 376 pages Publisher: Night Shade Books; First Edition edition (January 3, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 1597803901 Official Description: Moby Dick meets Duel in John Love”s debut novel of Space Opera and Military Science Fiction! Faith is the name humanity has given to the unknown, seemingly invincible alien ship that has begun [...]
Share on Twitter Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: Roc; Original edition (December 6, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 0451464311 Official Description: Matt Lowell is in hell-and there’s no place he’d rather be. At a training camp on the backwater planet of Earth, he and his fellow cadets are learning to ride Mechas: biomechanicals sporting both [...]
Share on Twitter Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers (February 7, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 1442420294 Available: February 7, 2012 Editor: John Joseph Adams Authors: Peter S. Beagle Jonathan Maberry Catherynne M. Valente Tobias S. Buckell Joe R. Lansdale Robin Wasserman Austin Grossman Garth Nix Celebrate 100 years of John [...]
Share on Twitter Kafkaesque Adjective Marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity e.g. Kafkaesque bureaucracies. Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger. In the manner of something written by Franz Kafka. There are precious few writers whose names have transcended their status as a proper noun. Dickens has become [...]
Share on Twitter Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card may possibly be the best novel I’ve ever read. That’s not a statement I make lightly. While my other favorites – Stranger in a Strange Land, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Death World – have all effected me in different ways, none has moved me as [...]
Share on TwitterIn episode 87 of the Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome back Peter V. Brett and Myke Cole. Links: Myke Cole (author’s website) Peter V. Brett (author’s website) Myke on Twitter Peter on Twitter © 2012 Patrick Hester and John Anealio This podcast features original music by John Anealio & [...]
Share on Twitter Captain Darian Frey has had some more reversals of fortune. Despite the encounter at Retribution Falls, keeping his beloved aerium fueled airship The Ketty Jay is serious business. His navigator is still weird and possibly inhuman, his daemonologist is still haunted by something he won’t talk about, his outrider fighter pilots [...]
Share on Twitter “The book does prominently feature three of the foundational touchstones of all things steampunk: giant airships, brass computers, and kinky feminine underwear.” ~ Bruce Sterling, Afterword, The Difference Engine When I first delved into The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, I had no previous experience reading [...]
Share on Twitter Its late 19th Century Seattle. The gold rush of the Klondike a couple of decades earlier meant that the city was large and growing when inventor Leviticus Blue’s magnum opus due too greedily and too deep, releasing a gas that turns those who breathe it too deeply into the walking dead. Those [...]
Share on Twitter Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, grabs the reader from page one and refuses to let go. The characters stand out, the setting is fantastic, and the situation dire. What better way to start a horror story? Set in the late 1800′s during the Civil War, the scientist Leviticus Blue invents an incredible [...]
Share on TwitterIn episode 81 of the Functional Nerds Podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome TOR author Ed Lazellari to talk about his new book, Awakenings. From TOR’s website: EDWARD LAZELLARI has worked as an illustrator and graphic artist, doing projects for Marvel Entertainment, DC Comics, and Jim Henson Productions. His short story, “The [...]
Share on Twitter Dealing with the running of Heaven, the creation of a new Earth, and a literal administrative Hell has the newly deified Kate and Daniel both frazzled and emotionally drained in Earth, the third book of Mur Lafferty‘s Afterlife series. Despite their godly powers and knowledge, they lack the experience to handle [...]
Share on Twitter(Author’s Note: BEWARE: here there be spoilers!) “We tell the truth best by becoming lies.” – Avice Benner Cho To start this review, I need to make a brief confession: I have had Embassytown in my possession for a few months, and finished reading it weeks ago. But when I sat down to [...]
Share on TwitterIn the 75th episode of the Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome Andrew P Mayer, author of The Falling Machine, Book One of The Society of Steam, available from PYR. Links: Andrew P Mayer (author’s website) Andrew on Twitter The Falling Machine (Amazon) © 2011 Patrick Hester & John Anealio [...]
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