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A to Z Reviews: Sync, by K.P. Kyle
K.P. Kyle’s debut novel Sync is the first of three novel-length works that I’ll be looking at in this series. Published by Allium Press, in 2019, Kyle offers the story of Brigid, who picks up a...
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Vintage Treasures: Cave of Stars by George Zebrowski
Cave of Stars (Eos/HarperCollins, December 2000). Cover art by Bob Eggleton I don’t know much about George Zebrowski. I probably should. According to ISFDB he’s written more than a dozen science...
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Vintage Treasures: Tangled Webs by Steve Mudd
Tangled Webs (Questar/Popular Library, August 1989). Cover by Blas Gallego There was a time, not so many years ago, when my reading was spontaneous. My wife would mention an intriguing mystery she’d...
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Worthy of His Hire: The Day’s Work by Rudyard Kipling
The Day’s Work (Penguin Classics, October 4, 1988) I spent most of my childhood and adolescence in a house with large built-in bookshelves, occupied by books passed on from my grandmother. Among the...
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A to Z Reviews: “The Butcher of Darkside Hover,” by Jonathan Sean Lyster
Jonathan Sean Lyster only has two published stories, the first appeared in 2020 and the second, “The Butcher of Darkside Hover,” appeared in the October 2022 issue of Analog. There is a strong...
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Vintage Treasures: Frontera by Lewis Shiner
Frontera (Baen Books, August 1984). Cover by Vincent Di Fate I first discovered Lewis Shiner in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies, where he was a regular, and one of my favorite...
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A to Z Reviews: “The City of Silence,” by Ma Boyong
Over the past several years, the Anglophonic worlds has become more aware of the science fiction being published in modern China. This is due, in part, to the work and outreach being done by Science...
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Christopher Moore and His Very Dirty Job
When talking about banning books, nobody mentions Christopher Moore. No doubt Moore is upset about this, because he’s out to offend pretty much everybody. The fact that he does this with glee,...
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Lovely Ladies and Pleistocene Behemoths: A Visit to the Hollow Earth with...
Caroline Munro, and a pair of Pleistocene behemoths, in At the Earth’s Core I’ve had a lifelong fascination with “hollow earth” stories, a style of fantasy fiction that presents ancient, lost...
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A Year of Demonic Public Service: The Fallible Fiend by L. Sprague de Camp
The Fallible Fiend (Signet/New American Library, February 1973). Cover uncredited This is another in my series of looks at fairly obscure SF from the ’70s and ’80s. In this case, I rescued a book that...
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Remembering Carl Jacobi
Revelations in Black by Carl Jacobi (Jove/HBJ, January 1979). Cover uncredited D.H. Olson delivered this eulogy for Carl Jacobi on Friday, August 29, 1997 at Lakewood Chapel in Minneapolis, Minnesota....
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In the tradition of Conan: The Kyrik and Kothar Novels by Gardner F. Fox
The Kyrik novels by Gardner F. Fox (Leisure Books, 1975-1976) I’m getting ready to embark on a series of posts about Philip Jose Farmer, but got distracted looking through my shelves and decided to...
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A Patroller for a Vanished Federation: In the Hands of Glory by Phyllis...
In the Hands of Glory (Timescape/Pocket Books, November 1981). Cover by Rowena Morrill Here’s my new look at an SF paperback from the ’70s/’80s. Phyllis Eisenstein’s In the Hands of Glory is a book I...
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Vintage Treasures: The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H.P. Lovecraft
The Doom That Came to Sarnath (Ballantine Books, November 1976). Cover by Murray Tinkelman H.P. Lovecraft, creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, was one of the greatest horror writers of the 20th Century....
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The Tuvela Theory: The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz
The Demon Breed (Ace Books, September 1979). Cover by Bob Adragna Earlier this year, I visited my city library during a book sale. One of the things I spotted on their shelves was a novel by James H....
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The End of Time and Me: Michael Moorcock’s Dancers at the End of Time
The Dancers at the End of Time trilogy: An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands, and The End of All Songs (Avon Books, September and November 1977, and June 1978). Cover art by Stanislaw Fernandes When I...
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The World of Tiers and Beyond: Philip Jose Farmer, Part I
The World of Tiers, Volumes 1 and 2 (Science Fiction Book Club, November 1981). Covers by Boris Vallejo Philip Jose Farmer (1918 – 2009). Farmer was a versatile writer. I discovered him from his Sword...
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Some Remarks on an Unremarkable Space Opera: Galactic Gambit by Roy C. Dudley
Galactic Gambit (Lenox Hill Press, September 1971). Cover by Herbstman In my recent looks at less-remembered novels of the ’70s and ’80s I’ve covered some obscurish works by well-remembered writers...
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Tarzan and Beyond: Philip Jose Farmer, Part II
Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (Playboy Paperbacks, August 1981 and July 1981). Covers: uncredited, Ken Barr Read the first half of this article, The World of Tiers and Beyond:...
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Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction: The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Chessmen of Mars (Ace Books, December 1962). Cover by Roy Krenkel, Jr. Chess in Sword & Planet fiction: I learned the basic rules of chess in grade school and liked that it was a game that...
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