Book Review
Reading A Drop of Corruption and Memory together Last year, during my ill-fated and soul-crushing encounter with the 2025 Hugo nominees, I accused Robert Jackson Bennett of writing a book redolent with fasco-libertarian dogwhistles: The Tainted Cup. Not an unentertaining book full of fasco-libertarian dogwhistles, so when the sequel, A
Book Review
Reviewing How to Create the Perfect Wife by Wendy Moore It often seems most history books intended for the general audience are written with moms in mind, unless they’re about World War II or Abraham Lincoln. Nothing else could tempt a sixty-something dad out of his beer garage. Mom
Literature
John Galsworthy Should Be Turning in His Grave The Brits dropped a new TV adaptation of The Forsyte Saga so of course I rushed to PBS to watch it. My mother and I discovered the early 2000s adaptation but a year or two ago, and since then every time we
Book Review
Every year I read The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy (BASFF) collection to see what’s going with (relatively) mainstream SFF. What I enjoy most about BASFF is the cycling guest editor. Every year the survey comes in at a fresh angle, the beam of our attention guided by
Book Review
Approaching Samuel Delany’s Conan/Semiotics Slash Fiction Have you ever wished Conan the Barbarian were the kind of guy to read critical theory? No? Too bad, because today we’re discussing the first volume of Samuel Delany’s Nevèrÿon stories. Nevèrÿon is a sword-and-sorcery-and-semiotics series heroically compiled by Wesleyan
Book Review
The Only Qualification for Being a Science Fiction Writer Is Being Insane A few years ago I went to Pittsburgh and at a used bookstore I bought a copy of Charles Platt’s Dream Makers which had at one point been deaccessioned from the Fort Worth public library. A few
Book Review
Architectonically Sublime, or What? After many years of manifesting it into the used bookstore shelves before me, I finally located and acquired John Crowley’s Little, Big, in a lovely, aged first paperback edition. You might ask, “Why didn’t you just buy the book online or something, if you
Book Review
Of late, friends and advisors have provided me with leads on books about fantasy versions of Italy, to provide touchstone references for a manuscript I’m preparing which also involves a type of made-up Italy. Of these, I have recently completed The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch, the third
Book Review
Yes, I Read War & Peace! Look, it’s not classy, but I gotta take my victory lap. I read War & Peace, all one-thousand two-hundred and twenty-four pages of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. The project did require two months and I did return the book to the library
Book Review
I encountered the work of Peter S. Beagle for the first time recently. Yes, I’ve never even read The Last Unicorn. Am I a Fake Fantasy Fan? Indubitably. I have seen the animated film, which is weird and yet touching and yet baffling. I know that Peter S. Beagle
Book Review
At last, at last, at long last: I have concluded my read of the 2025 Hugo Best Novel nominees. It got…a little bit easier here at the end. There were some weird mushrooms and freaky beasts. But there were also unexpected challenges. The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
Book Review
I Have Been Obliterated By 1 Million Words of Power In September I set off on an epic journey which I only barely survived. This journey was a walk from beginning to end through the three (sometimes four) volumes of Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn series. I chose to