<$BlogRSDUrl$>


Saturday, November 29, 2008

Expansions 

This past week I wrote a review of the second Best American Fantasy anthology, again edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, for Locus Magazine. It should appear in the January issue, or possibly the February since I was a bit past the nominal deadline for reviews. In any case, it's a book worth reading for anyone interested in unconventional sorts of fantasy. And it's nice keeping my hand in writing reviews, even if only once a year or so for the magazine, and informally here in this blog.

I've also been working a couple expansions of the Locus website this weekend, which you will hear more about when they are complete and ready for prime time. These involve Paypal buttons for subscribing and other purchases, and one or more blogs for posting breaking news and commentary by various members of the Locus community, which will somehow be embedded in the Locus Online homepage.

With those tasks, and business trips, my recreational reading has fallen a bit behind this past month, but I can certainly plug Ian R. MacLeod's Song of Time, a near-future novel about an elderly concert pianist who pulls a naked man out of the surf near her Cornwall house. The novel's examination of the narrator's life and family nicely dovetails with developing future history at the end of the 21st century, where the new technology of 'crystals' that capture dead personalities is key but not the primary focus of the book.

Jack McDevitt's The Devil's Eye, his latest novel about archaeologist/antiques dealer Alex Benedict and his assistant Chase Kolpath, is better than last year's McDevitt novel, though it's not as cohesive as his best works. It's about a mysterious message, and bequest, from a famous horror novelist, which leads Alex and Chase to a remote planet where they discover an official conspiracy to hide a vast threat. The novel breaks into three parts, with the central section involving a classic hard SF solution to a detective mystery of the sort that is McDevitt trademark, but the first half of the book is meandering, and the last third, with its too-easy diplomatic interaction with aliens, pallid. And at the end, you have to wonder, why would that horror writer, having stumbled upon such a secret, send a message for help to... an antiques dealer?
Comments: Post a Comment


king under the dome

doctorow makers

banks transition

kress steal sky

atwood year flood

roberts yellow blue tibia

wilson julian comstock

 ness ask and answer

collins catching fire

collins hunger games

sawyer flashforward

baker hotel

disch proteus

tan tales

mazzucchelli asterios

zebrowski empties

morrow shambling

hamilton cpt future

beckett genesis

meller evo rx

bsg2

kurzweil transcend

sawyer wake

ness knife never letting go

barzak love we share

mcewan cement garden

holland sci-fi art

gladwell outliers

bittman food matters

baggini what's it all about

Still in progress:

ross rest is noise

aldiss billion year spree

pollan omnivore's dilemma



Mark R. Kelly
Profile
Email

The opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of Mark R. Kelly, and do not reflect the editorial position of Locus Magazine.
Locus
Links
Latest Posts
Archives

  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • March 2006
  • February 2006
  • January 2006
  • December 2005
  • November 2005
  • October 2005
  • September 2005
  • August 2005
  • July 2005
  • June 2005
  • May 2005
  • April 2005
  • March 2005
  • February 2005
  • January 2005
  • December 2004
  • November 2004
  • October 2004
  • September 2004
  • August 2004
  • July 2004
  • June 2004
  • May 2004
  • April 2004
  • March 2004
  • February 2004
  • January 2004
  • December 2003
  • November 2003
  • October 2003

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?