No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons (Re-reloaded)

With Special Opening Act, Tony Smith! What do Dune, The Road, Blindsight, Anathem, and I Am Legend all have in common? Together, they comprise The Five Worst SF Books EVER, as compiled by my buddy, Tony Smith over at Starship Sofa. Of course, this is hardly the first time Blindsight has been so honored— but […]

“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.” —Martha Graham, as cited by Orphan Black‘s Tatiana Maslany in today’s NY Times.   So as […]

Tough-as-nails lady cop who gets the job done, check. Taciturn mysterious bad-ass stranger haunted by a dark past, check. Dumpy rumpled detective on the take, check. Manic pixie dream girl, check. Warrior Chick Who Takes Shit From No Man, check. Dweeby computer nerd with thick glasses and limited social skills, check. Starched cardboard villain with […]

We open with trailers for Coming Attractions: to the immediate right you can see the French cover for Echopraxie, from Fleuve.  I like it. Whoever the artist is, they’re channeling a bit of a Giger vibe. Immediately below, on the other hand, is the cover for Head of Zeus’s UK edition (they’re the guys who […]

(A lightly edited reprint of a recent Nowa Fantastyka column.) My stuff has been compared, on occasion, to the work of Stanislaw Lem. I find this intimidating. It’s kind of a high bar to clear; when expectations are calibrated to such altitudes, it’s easy to fall short. Fortunately there’s a way to distract from that […]

Let’s get the trivial notes and minutes out of the way first. Echopraxia, “Collateral”, and “The Colonel” all made it onto the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2014. (Still no love for “Giants”, I see, though I continue to love it as perhaps only a father can). Echopraxia (which I’m told has gone into a […]

We open on two civilians waiting to board a train. To their left stands a SWAT cop in riot gear; to their right, a battered drone right out of Blade Runner hovers menacingly at heart level. Glances are exchanged, though no words are spoken: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. […]

Why yes, since you ask; I expect there will be a concluding volume to the Consciousnundrum series. I know how it begins: father and son (what’s left of them) finally reunite, decades after the fall of Icarus hit the world’s reset button. I know how it ends too, although I don’t want to spoil it […]

Let’s start this review by warning you all that major spoilers follow. Then let’s talk about abortion. If I squint really hard, I can sort of see how someone possessed of a belief in an immortal soul— and further, that it slides down the chute the moment some lucky sperm achieves penetration— might hold an […]

Some ominous developments in the politics of the Canadian Surveillance State recently. A postmortem on Echopraxia waiting in the wings, now that the dust has settled. But in the meantime a bunch of links have been piling up, little self-aggrandizing things that, in isolation, weren’t important enough to warrant their own blog posts (they might […]