That is one singularly unattractive piece of anatomy. That is just... that is bad design, is what that is." -- From a story by Joe Abercrombie, "Two's Company"
Quote:
Everything smelled hard and sharp, as though we lingered dangerously close to the boundary between always and never.
Read:
1/2025
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year, Volume Thirteen
“Mother Tongues”, S. Qiouyi Lu
“Olivia’s Table”, Alyssa Wong
“The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington”, P Djeli Clark
“Yard Dog”, Tade Thompson
“The Woman Who Destroyed Us”, SL Huang
“The Blue Fairy’s Manifesto”, Annalee Newitz
“The Starship and the Temple Cat”, Yoon Ha Lee
“A Brief and Fearful Star”, Carmen Maria Machado
*“Field Biology of the Wee Fairies”, Naomi Kritzer
“Intervention”, Kelly Robson (Infinity’s End)
“The Bookcase Expedition”, Jeffrey Ford
“A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies”, Alix E.
“The Staff in the Stone”, Garth Nix
“Okay, Glory”, Elizabeth Bear
“Widdam”, Vandana Singh
“Dreadful Young Ladies”, Kelly Barnhill
“The Only Harmless Great Thing”, Brooke Bolander
*“The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society”, T.
“When We Were Starless”, Simone Heller
“If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again”, Zen Cho
“Blessings”, Naomi Novik
“Meat and Salt and Sparks”, Rich Larson
“Nine Last Days on Planet Earth”, Daryl Gregory
“Golgotha “, Dave Hutchinson
“Flint and Mirror”, John Crowley
“An Agent of Utopia”, Andy Duncan
“You Pretend Like You Never Met Me, and I’ll Pretend Like I Never Met You”, Maria Dahvana Headley
“Quality Time”, Ken Liu
“The Storyteller’s Replacement”, N K Jemisin
“Firelight”, Ursula K Le Guin
*Stories I really loved!!
Quote:
There have only ever been two kinds of librarians in the world: the prudish, bitter ones...; and witches. -- From "A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies"
Quote:
"That sheep gets lost a lot," muttered a third one. -- From "The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society"
Quote:
"All the rocks remind me of her." -- From "The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society"
Quote:
Southern Silence. -- “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth”
Read:
1/2025
The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year, Volume Twelve
Contents:
“The Mocking Tower”, Daniel Abraham
“Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue”, Charlie Jane Anders
“Probably Still the Chosen One”, Kelly Barnhill
“My English Name”, R. S. Benedict
“Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance”, Tobias Buckell
“Though She Be But Little”, C.S.E. Cooney
“The Moon is Not a Battlefield”, Indrapramit Das
“The Hermit of Houston”, Samuel R. Delany
“The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine”, Greg Egan
“Crispin’s Model”, Max Gladstone
“Come See the Living Dryad”, Theodora Goss
“Bring Your Own Spoon”, Saad Z. Hossain
“Babylon”, Dave Hutchison
“The Faerie Tree”, Kathleen Kayembe
“Fairy Tale of Wood Street”, Caitlin R Kiernan
“The Worshipful Society of Glovers”, Mary Robinette Kowal
“An Evening with Severyn Grimes”, Rich Larson
“The Chameleon’s Gloves”, Yoon Ha Lee
“The Smoke of Gold is Glory”, Scott Lynch
“Sidewalks”, Maureen McHugh
“Concessions”, Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
“The Martian Obelisk”, Linda Nagata
“The Secret Life of Bots”, Suzanne Palmer
“A Series of Steaks”, Vina Jie-Min Prasad
“Belladonna Nights”, Alastair Reynolds
“Eminence”, Karl Schroeder
“The Lamentation of their Women”, Kai Ashante Wilson
“Confessions of a Con Girl”, Nick Wolven
“Carnival Nine”, Caroline M. Yoachim
Quote:
"Well then," Corrina said. -- Probably Still The Chosen One
Quote:
Zero-gravity puke was a truly terrible thing. -- The Secret Life Of Bots
Quote:
Magic does from time to time so boil one's piss. -- The Smoke Of Gold Is Glory
Quote:
"God, this is a good way to die," he said. -- Bring Your Own Spoon
Fun read of fictional letters to home from a soldier in the U.S. Army during World War I.
A few objectionable racist terms appear, sadly.
I read the Project Gutenberg e-book version.
A free e-book (short story) download about two guys, cousins, named Lenny (who appeared in another book that takes place before) who have acquired a large quantity of "E" and need to sell to...someone. Good story.
I liked the first book so much I read it twice, then I bought the second book and several others by the author. I signed up for his emails and I got one that asked if I wanted to get free preview copies in return for a review. I don't think the author has seen how poorly I write!
A complicated future cybernistic world with replicators and all kinds of stuff. Robin is some sort of undercover espionage soldier. Took about 80 pages to get going. Good story. Some Prisoner references, some library stuff.
Words I Had To Look Up:
Verminous (pg. 21) -- Having to do with vermin. Obvious!
Auto-da-fe' (pg. 90) -- Act of faith.
Osmotically (pg.115) -- by means of osmosis . Another doh!
Apoptosis (pg. 115) -- A form of cell death.
Panopticon (pg. 131) -- A prison constucted so all prisoners can be seen at one time. I think I've looked this up before.
Sic transit gloria panopticon (pg. 168) --Thus passes the glory of the, well, panopticon!
Louche (pg. 240) -- Of questionable taste or morality; decadent.
Quote:
Be seeing you. (pg. 275)
Quote:
Neither Janis--nor I--is remotely qualified to be a real dark age librarian, with their esoteric mastery of catalogue systems and controlled information classification vocabularies, but we can run a small municipal lending library and reference section with a bit of scurrying around and a lot of patience. (pg. 127)
Crime in near-future Edinburgh. Lots of cybertalk, very Neal Stephensonish, but about two hundred pages shorter. On Amazon a commenter says the book is told in second person. I don't know if that is correct, but it certainly is written in a different-than-usual style.
Earth is taken up and stuck on a big, flat disk. A really BIG, flat disk!
On page 86, if Lenin is one head, Stalin is another, and the big is third, who is the fourth head mentioned in the text. And I quote, "Gagarin brings his binoculars to focus on the fourth head." Not to mention that the illustration on the facing page shows three heads...
The book jackets says this is the "Signed, Lettered Edition" priced at 150 bucks. But I don't see any signing, nor lettering. Did the library get ripped off? Is this some scam edition?
Words I Had To Look Up:
Dirigiste (pg. 44) -- Directed by a central authority.
S Doradus (pg. 62) -- The brightest star in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Gnomically (pg. 78) -- In a gnomic, didactic, or sententious manner. Yeah, cleared THAT up!
Fraught (pg.84) -- . "...boring and fraught." 1. Filled with a specified element or elements; charged: an incident fraught with danger; an evening fraught with high drama. 2. Marked by or causing distress; emotional. I think, it's #2.
Instantiations (pg. 96) -- A representation of an idea in the form of an instance of it
I was afraid I had already read this, but it turned out I read a previous book. Edinburgh Detective Inspector Liz Kavanaugh runs a unit that specializes in finding criminals using the internet. I'm not quite sure how the book ended. I was not always able to decipher the author's mixture of computer jargon and Scottish accent.
Bob Howard, UK investigator of the occult, goes to a lot of meetings in between saving the world incidents. Really hate the typeface used on chapter and sectional headings!
Book three in the The Merchant Princes series. Miriam gets in serious trouble, gets engaged for a few minutes, and is either a prisoner or on the run most of the book. Mike the DEA agent and former date of Miriam shows.
A sort of parallel world corporate science fiction import-export story. Pretty good stuff.
Words I Had To Look Up:
Aeron chairs (pg. 13) -- Never heard of them until my son mentioned the other day, and here they are in this book!
Demesne (pg. 95) -- manorial land actually possessed by the lord and not held by tenants.
Plaited (pg. 153) -- A braid, especially of hair. Or in this case, complicated family relationships.
Orangery (pg. 203) -- A sheltered place, especially a greenhouse, used for the cultivation of orange trees in cool climates.
Quotes:
...discreetly holstered M-16s... (pg. 177) -- Big holster! But these were on horses, so maybe they are in scabbards.
...patented dumb-schoolgirl simper... (pg. 177) -- I just like that image.
...the locket from the chair around her neck...(pg. 202) -- I've heard of millstones around the neck, but a CHAIR?
...that a prince's wife wll not die of childbed fever... (pg. 127) -- semi-dup.
...some countess doesn't succumb to childbed fever... (pg. 247) -- semi-dup.