Review of The Ragged Astronauts by Bob Shaw

As is obvious to everyone except the people who believe in the value of sff awards, popularity does not automatically equate to literature that transcends it's era. Accordingly, many if not most of the nest sff books of the past century lie outside that matrix. And it's that type of book I hope to find exploring those strange byways of literary history. I have heard a few whispers that Bob Shaw is a name virtually lost to genre history worth a read. Let's take a look at The Ragged Astronauts (1986).

Land and Overland, sister worlds separated by only a few thousand miles, are the setting of The Ragged Astronauts. Things begin on Land, a planet with no metals. Technology and industry plant-based, but the manner in which people organize themselves remains familiar. Although the first quarter of the novel takes its time settling in, it eventually does on the character Toller, a rebellious but natural reader employed in menial labor for the Philosophers, a group of people who speculate on and research the latest scientific breakthroughs. Slowly depleting itself of resources, the monarchy Toller is a reluctant part of makes some drastic decisions to fix its situation, his role in the transformation soon to be more than menial.

Review of Pharos by Guy Haley

In Act II of the Horus Heresy, a couple strong symbols emerge. One is most certainly Vulkan's immortality; his body can be killed time and time again, but he keeps coming back to life in one form or another. Another clear symbol is Pharos, the beacon of light shining in the Ruinstorm that the loyalists use to withstand Horus' attack. Guy Haley's book of the same name (2015) takes the Heresy to the beacon's location to see which direction the needle of power swings in the aftermath.

Pharos is a novel firmly in the Imperium Secundus phase of stories. With Guillaume and El'Johnson holding down the loyalists' fort in Macragge (see Angels of Caliban), bits and pieces of Ultramarines and a scattering of other legions hold the perimeter, including the alien beacon on Mount Pharos. Watching in the shadows, waiting their moment for a surprise attack, are the Night Lords. Pharos' light leading Konrad Kurze's men to the fight, the secrets of the one thing mysteriously keeping the Loyalists connected are finally revealed.

Review of Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop

Spend enough time in the world of book reviews and you regularly encounter words like 'mainstream' and 'core' and maybe even 'vanilla'. They refer to books which stick closer to commonly known devices, stereotypes, and other tropes more than experimental or unqiue ideas. Michael Bishop's wonderful novel Brittle Innings (1994) is anything but mainstream, core, or vanilla. With the American south in WWII, minor league baseball, and Frankenstein as the novel's prime ingredients, Bishop produces something fantastic in more ways than one.

Brittle Innings is a few months in the life of one Daniel Boles. His father a soldier support the war in Alaska, seventeen-year o ld Boles is living with his mother and enjoying backyard games of baseball when a recruiter shows up and pays his way to a minor league team in Georgia called the Hellbenders. The team a true motley crew of men, the new guy Boles has trouble fitting in with most, but not his roommate, the team's giant first baseman everyone calls Jumbo. Over the course of the next few months, Boles finds a place on the team and in the surrounding community. But something constantly burns beneath the surface, and when it catches fire, Boles and the whole team must bear the heat.

Review of Bridge by Lauren Beukes

W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage is cited as a classic coming-of-age novel. About a boy named Philip born with a club foot whose parents die within months of one another, the novel describes his growing up, chasing dreams, and coming to terms with his reality—not growing up, rather “growing up”. Philip's early 20th century London is different than London today, however. Technology has made a difference. There was no Facebook or Instagram to play with his teenage self-conception. There were minimal medical treatments available to help with his condition—to bring his club foot closer to “normal”. Writing a coming-of-age novel in 2023 is something entirely different. Capturing our information-saturated world in literal and figurative means with a genre twist is Lauren Beukes' Bridge (2023).

Her parents having divorced at an early age, Bridget has spent most of her life in the custody of her mother, a woman named Jo who focuses on her career more than her daughter. Bridget is an independent teen for it, and in keeping with the stereotypes of millennials, feels she understands the world backwards and forwards despite the massive struggles of her teen years. But then Jo contracts brain cancer, and dies. Pretending not to care, Bridget starts going through her mother's belongings, including the refrigerator, in which she finds something that will take her life in a new direction. In the mother of all centrifuges, Bridget's life spins into the absurd.

Review of A Stroke of the Pen by Terry Pratchett

Early in 2023 I read Rob Wilkin's fine biography of Terry Pratchett. Putting to bed any theory of a vault of unpublished Discworld stories waiting to be released posthumously, Wilkins describes how the USB containing all of Pratchett's unused story ideas was ceremoniously crushed by a steam roller upon the author's passing. But the one thing the steam roller could not destroy were short stories Pratchett published (under his own name and pseudonyms) in various newspapers as a journalist many years before he became a household name. Collecting those early seeds of Pratchett's imagination is A Stroke of the Pen (2023).

Before getting into the stories, the question hovering on many people's lips will be: is this a money grab? The answer is yes and no. The content itself is weak. When you've had Chinese food in China it's tough to like much of the Chinese food available in the West. In other words, the stories are not on par with the Disc. That being said, it's clear Rob Wilkins, Neil Gaiman, and the other people who worked to pull this collection together did so out of love and a desire to give Pratchett fans something new, something unique—that last little unknown scrap of goodness that exists in the world. A Stroke of the Pen, regardless what else it is, is that.

Review of Communications Breakdown ed. by Jonathan Strahan

Jonathan Strahan is one of the few, old-school sf&f editors still kicking. Commissioned anthologies are not the pillar of genre they used to be.  But Strahan, by staying on top of the political zeitgeist, keeps his work relevant.  And it's for this that, despite my misgivings of his politics, that I regularly check in. His 2023 finger-on-the-pulse anthology is Communications Breakdown.

Communications Breakdown opens with a typical Strahan introduction: a high-falutin' raison d'etre for the title and theme. I say high-falutin' as, Strahan rarely sticks to theme—which is a good thing. But why then the waffling? Regardless, it sets in place the theme of: “when the future doesn't quite make it to your door”. A recipe for victim narratives? Let's see.

Review of Deathfire by Nick Kyme

Iron Maiden song? Latest exhaust system for customized cars? Magic the Gathering card? No! Deathfire by Nick Kyme (2015) is the thirty-second book in the Horus Heresy series!

Deathfire picks up events from the Salamanders' point of view upon the conclusion of The Unremembered Empire. Vulkan's body, with the fulgerite spear still protruding from his chest, lies in a coffin. The dozens of Salamander Astartes who remain alive after the massacre on Isstvan V elect to brave the ruinstorm and return Vulkan's body to Nocturne, to cremate his body in the fires of that volcanic planet. That is, if the war—and Chaos—will allow them.

Console Corner: Review of Nioh

I am of the Nintendo generation. Three lives, and game over. Die at the final boss with your last life? Too bad. Game over. Start again. It's nothing like today's generation of games. The Uncharted series, for example, is positively soft compared to games like Super Mario Bros., let alone Ninja Gaiden, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, or Battletoads, which, in the context of today's games are more akin to Guitar Hero (i.e. the precise sequencing of buttons for an extended period of time) rather than loose “action adventure”, as is the case with so many more modern games—Uncharted, God of War, Assassin's Creed, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc. And then there is Nioh (2016), a fantastic PS4 game in which I relearned what “difficult” video game means.

In some ways, Nioh is the natural evolution of Ninja Gaiden. The player takes on the role of a samurai in feudal Japan and must battle all manner of humans and monsters toward uncovering a plot to takeover the island nation. Extremely nuanced, the game offers a true rpg level of character customization. From weapons to ninjutsu, armor to intangibles, elemental effects to spirit guides, the game offers a phenomenal amount of character customization for such a simple concept of fighting baddies.

Review of Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison

M. John Harrison has always been an author apart. Sure, he has books which seem straightforward, but closer examination reveals not everything is as it seems. His Viriconium sequence begins on what one might describe as core genre, but three books later, via impressionism and cubism, the reader has arrived at something abstract—fiction anything but genre. Harrison's 2023 (anti-)memoir Wish I Was Here is a look back at his life, muse, the writing “process”, and left-field observations. It may just be the culmination of everything Harrison.

As the title indicates, Harrison sees himself at a distance. Wish I Was Here manifests itself in both life and fiction. He writes openly of “The fight not to be a writer.", as well as strong desire to exist outside the norm.

“I hate concepts. Having a concept isn’t having something to write: having something to write about is having something to write. Never favour plot. Story is fine, but plot is like chemical farming. Closure is wrong. It is toxic. Work into a genre if you like, but from as far outside it as possible. Read as much about Hollywood formalism as you can bear, so you know what not to do.”

Review of The Unremembered Empire by Dan Abnett

Dan Abnett is proving to be my favorite flavor of Horus Heresy authors. He has more subtlety to his style than most of the others writing in the universe, best sets a scene, and perhaps most importantly, deviates furthest from the formula of what HH novels can be. Prospero Burns, Legion, Know No Fear—these are definitively singular books in the series. Which had me asking: what will he do with the continuation of the Ultramarines fight in The Unremembered Empire (2013)?

The Unremembered Empire is a critical juncture in the overarching HH storyline. Conflating a couple key sub-plots, it's unmissable for those sticking to the spine of the series. The story begins on Macragge, Robout Guillaume's Ultramarine powerhouse planetary system—the powerhouse system now that Calth has fallen to the surprise attack of the Word Bearers in Know No Fear. A massive fleet arrives at the doorstep of Macragge, that of Lion El'Johnson and his Dark Angels. Guillaume welcomes their presence, that is, until a couple of surprises occur that set all the balls in the Horus Heresy pinball machine bouncing around, triggering lights and bells that call for major decisions.