Category: Snippets

Beata Sznajder is going to talk about John M Ford’s World Fantasy Award novel, The Dragon Waiting.
Roman will discuss Ford’s novel (published post-humously), Aspects, published earlier this year.

We might also discuss some of his other works…

Note this is a zoom only meeting
Zoom details:
Jul 27, 2022 6:30pm Adelaide / 7pm Melbourne
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89275675259?pwd=UG4rT0RaNFpOOEwyWlJOU0xOcHJ1UT09

Meeting ID: 892 7567 5259
Passcode: CritMass

Some reviews of the books in the bundle:
The Dragon Business by Kevin J. Anderson

“Love this story. Bulldozed through it the first time so taking it slowly second time around to appreciate it more.”– Persis Gretna

Mythology 101 by Jody Lynn Nye

“A great sense of humor.”– Piers Anthony

Mis Spelled by TH Leatherman

“This was an extremely enjoyable book. The hero and the supporting cast were all likable, and I especially appreciated that the hero was able to succeed without violence most of the time. The humor and the world-building were both first rate, and the story ended in a satisfying manner while still leaving room for a sequel.”– Amazon Review

Kradak the Champion by Shawn Inmon

“Well, here I go again down one of Shawn Inmon’s rabbit holes. No one digs them better. Steve, Rista, and Grint are something else. This quest is just the right mix of adventure, drama, darkness, and humor.”– Michelle Gwynn, author

The Thing from HR by Roy M. Griffis

“I laughed far too much as this crossover of office politics and eldritch horrors.”– Reader review

The Night Sheriff by Phil Foglio

“The Night Sheriff is Phil’s first solo-authored prose work, and he brings every bit of genius to it that he normally devotes to the comic-book and graphic novel medium. Know that with The Night Sheriff you’re in for an adventure at the hands of a master storyteller.”– Marion G Harmon, Bestselling author of the Wear The Cape Series

Fools’ Day by Patrick Thomas

“Slick… Entertaining.”– Paul Di Filippo, Asimov’s

His Angelic Keeper by Melinda Kucsera

“…it didn’t take long for things to get interesting and exciting. This book leaves you with wanting to read more. I love these books, they have the fantasy, action, adventure and world building that I enjoy, but they also are “nice” in a way where they are[n’t] as dark or steamy as some books are. I do recommend these, they are a nice change.”– Roberta, Amazon

Magic and Misrule by KM Merritt

“The setting was just immersive enough to complement the fun and brisk plot such that I happily started and finished this story in one sitting! I genuinely laughed out loud multiple times. Lastly, I can’t stress enough how skillfully the author represented some very underrepresented people/characters while completely succeeding in making that representation a nonissue to the plot. I can’t wait to read the next installment of this saga!”– Goodreads Review

Og-Grim-Dog by Jamie Edmundson

“a marathon of craziness that will tickle your sense of humor. Loved all the gritty characters and enjoyed the fast-paced action plot.”– Reader review

Hatched – Dragon Farmer Book One by Caren Hahn

•”The writing is eloquent. The story feels new and different from others I’ve read. Dragon farmers! Genius!”– Reader review

The Simple Delivery by Andrew Claydon

The story has wit and style, is full of great characters, heroes and villians, conspiracies and alliances and a great ending. Loved it and look forward to more of these.– Amazon Review

Quest by A.J. Ponder

“The writing is magnificent. This book is made for reading aloud, it fair rollicks along, a huge vocabulary with marvellous character drawings, funny dialogue and conversations. The best parts though, to encourage fully engaged adult interaction with child, are the footnotes the author has made which are really for adult eyes only. Funny, wicked and sometimes a bit naughty. There is no happy living after in this story either! No handsome prince, no evil witch. So the traditional fairy tale is turned on its head, and I hope to see more of Syvalla’s adventures, because she is well set up to take on more baddies.”– Felicity Murray, The Read

More details: https://storybundle.com/blog/humorousfantasybundle/

Chicon’s Hugo shortlist announced for Best Related Work. Congratulations Lucy! Congratulations Iain and Andrew!

On Wednesday 6 April Iain McIntyre spoke to the Nova Mob in a blend of COVID-imposed isolation prepared talk and live-action Zoom Q & A about Dangerous Visions and New Worlds – Radical Science Fiction 1950 – 1985 edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre. 

On Friday 8 April opened an email from Mob member and former WorldCon Chair & Co-chair Perry Middlemiss:

“Congrats Lucy, and well done Murray for getting the timing of Wednesday’s Nova Mob meeting exactly right.”

Chicon have announced the Hugo shortlists and Dangerous Visions and New Worlds – Radical Science Fiction 1950 – 1985 is on the ballot for Best Related Work! Iain said:

“thanks for the call. We were told a few weeks back but sworn to secrecy so I couldn’t mention anything the other night. It is very exciting.”

We can’t really claim credit for the timing because various circumstances did prevent Iain speaking at the Mob sooner. What wonderful recognition for the book, its editors, and its contributors, including Mob member Lucy Sussex! Here’s hoping it wins its category – the scholarship is certainly worthy of a Hugo.

Each february, the writers/reviewers from Locus magazine publish their recommended reading list.

NOVELLAS

A Blessing of Unicorns, Elizabeth Bear (Audible Originals 10/20; Asimov’s 9-10/21)
A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers (Tordotcom)
“Arisudan”, Rimi B. Chatterjee (Mithila Review 3/22/21)
Defekt, Nino Cipri (Tordotcom)
Fireheart Tiger, Aliette de Bodard (Tordotcom)
“Sleep and the Soul“, Greg Egan (Asimov’s 9-10/21)
Lagoonfire, Francesca Forrest (Annorlunda)
“Philia, Eros, Storge, Agápe, Pragma”, R.S.A Garcia (Clarkesworld 1/21)
The Album of Dr. Moreau, Daryl Gregory (Tordotcom)
A Spindle Splintered, Alix E. Harrow (Tordotcom)
& This is How to Stay Alive, Shingai Njeri Kagunda (Neon Hemlock)
“The Dark Ride”, John Kessel (F&SF 1-2/21)
In the Watchful City, S. Qiouyi Lu (Tordotcom)
And What Can We Offer You Tonight, Premee Mohamed (Neon Hemlock)
The Annual Migration of Clouds, Premee Mohamed (ECW)
The Return of the Sorceress, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Subterranean)
“A Rocket for Dimitrios“, Ray Nayler (Asimov’s 1-2/21)
Remote Control, Nnedi Okorafor (Tordotcom)
“The Abomination”, Nuzo Onoh (F&SF 9-10/21)
“Submergence”, Arula Ratnakar (Clarkesworld 3/21)
Flowers for the Sea, Zin E. Rocklyn (Tordotcom)
The Necessity of Stars, E. Catherine Tobler (Neon Hemlock)
“The Giants of the Violet Sea”, Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 9-10/21)
Comfort Me With Apples, Catherynne M. Valente (Tordotcom)
The Past is Red, Catherynne M. Valente (Tordotcom)
The Secret Skin, Wendy N. Wagner (Neon Hemlock)
Fugitive Telemetry, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
“A Canticle for Lost Girls”, Isabel Yap (Never Have I Ever)

The full list is at https://locusmag.com/2022/02/2021-recommended-reading-list/

A pop-culture giant has shuffled off this four-color coil. Adam West, who played the title role in the 1966 Batman, and later reprised the role in voice and physical form more than once, has died of leukaemia at the age of 88.

Keith R.A. DeCandido picked his five best bat-moments, including the Bat-usi:

the entire scene in the bar that leads up to Batman doing that magnificent dance in “Hi Diddle Riddle,” the first episode of Batman to air, is pretty much vintage West Batman. We start with him entering the discotheque and refusing the offer of a table, instead going to the bar because he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. Reportedly, that scene was the one West read for his audition, and one of the reasons why he got the part was that he played that line 100% straight rather than wink at the camera or be a goof about it. Perhaps the best thing about West’s portrayal was that he took it completely seriously. He refused to stoop to the joke, which is why little kids (like me!) could watch the show unironically and view Batman as a hero who did good. We took him seriously as a hero because he took himself seriously as one.
Even when it was totally ridiculous. Like trying to be inconspicuous while walking into a discotheque while wearing a brightly colored skintight outfit and a big blue cape. And dancing a silly dance, though the latter was after they put a mickey in his fresh-squeezed orange juice.

https://www.tor.com/2017/06/12/adam-wests-five-best-bat-moments/

Critical Mass
Feb 23, 2022 6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82167796217?pwd=M2d0aUMwU01nbVVPa2g0czNXTjQxUT09

Meeting ID: 821 6779 6217
Passcode: 784499

James Bacon: Jo is quite Irish, I wondered if you were trying to bring an extra depth to this character as there was a lot to her history and the first comic was very intense, and what you were trying to do with her, was she your first comic book character?

N.K. Jemisin: She was first one I have wrote myself, I have been a comics fan for years, and I did the same thing with her character that I did with any character I would have written, which was to give her some depth, but I honestly felt that she was a bit shallow as there wasn’t time to really delve into her background or any of the other stuff that is gone on in her life. I was only really able to give a thin sketch of her, and I was a little kinda sad about that, so to hear that she has a lot of depth, great, I faked it [laughter] but I wanted her to be three dimensional, interesting, memorable, quirky, complicated, flawed, she’s an ex NYPD cop, I have a lot of feelings with a  capital F about that and I wanted to not portray her as a one note thing, I wanted her to be layered. If she came across as complex and having some depth, then good, it means I did what I set out to do.

See http://file770.com/far-sector-round-table-with-n-k-jemisin/ for the full discussion about Far Sector

— On the film Blade Runner
In fact, this is what links all the films I love the most: they manifest what I take to be a new cultural logic in SF. The genre has shifted from being a literature of ideas (books are good at ideas) to a literature of enduring, powerful and haunting visual images (films are poor at ideas, but very good at the poetry of beautiful images). This is what La Jetée, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stalker, Alien and The Matrix have in common – their gobsmacking visual aesthetic. But Blade Runner beats all of these. It is the most beautiful, the most haunting, the most visually perfect of all of them. It is Scott’s expert conjuring with near-palpable beams and shafts of light amongst the cluttered, smoky and misty darkness; the shadows blocking out a somatically believable city; the gorgeous design; the detail.
— On Quantum Thief
At the heart it’s a heist story: Jean le Flambeur is sprung from a deep space prison by the enigmatic warrior Mieli and her Banksish sentient spaceship Perhonen, in order to pull-off a complicated crime upon Mars. Meili is in the service of a mysterious, capricious goddess-like being, and the plot unwraps its several mysteries in a very satisfying manner. The Oubliette in particular is a splendid creation; not so much in terms of its far-future hardware as its social codes of privacy, guarded by information-exchange veils called ‘guevelots’, policed by ‘tzaddicks’ – and its currency, time, to be lavishly spent or carefully hoarded as citizens countdown towards a ‘death’ that reprocesses their consciousnesses into ‘Quiet’ machines that do all the hard areoforming and city maintenance work. There’s also a quick-witted Holmes-like youth, with a genius for solving crimes.
— On Chris Priest’s The Islanders
One of the things I loved about The Islanders is that pretty much all the Priestian fascinations and preoccupations are here: doubles; mirrors; dreams; stage magic; the unreliability and instability of narrative, and several intriguing and underplayed metafictional touches (a young [female] novelist writes fan letters to a tetchily unpredictable Kammeston; when her first novel is published she sends a copy to him. It is called The Affirmation). It coheres, or more precisely refuses quite to cohere, very stylishly indeed. It’s an archipelagic novel in more than one sense (always assuming that the word has more than one sense), formally embodying its scattered loosely connected strings of island subjects in loosely connected strings of narratives. There’s a distant family relationship with Borges, perhaps; or Ballard’s anthology of ‘condensed novels’, The Atrocity Exhibition.

Roberts, Adam. Sibilant Fricative: Essays and Reviews . Steel Quill Books.