Review of Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb's debut trilogy, The Farseer, is one of the most mixed bags I've ever encountered in a fantasy series. It starts good, gets better, then kills the momentum in a streeeeeeetched 700+ page conclusion. Good intentions, but incongruous execution. It didn't put me off Hobb, however. Something else did (more to come). But when the stars aligned, and I finally read Hobb's next offering, it had me asking: has a new arc of quality begun? Lets' look at Ship of Magic (1998).

Ship of Magic takes readers to a new location in Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings setting: the Pirate Isles. First book in a trilogy, it shifts away from kings, queens, wizards, dragons, and pseudo-Medieval villages, and moves toward pirates, treasure, slavery, sea serpents, plunder, trade, and port city ribaldry. It also anthropomorphizes calling ships “she”--making bowspirits of bowsprits. And it's a massive success. But I get ahead of myself.

Review of The Men in the Jungle by Norman Spinrad

By the time the late 60s rolled around, America had had enough of the Vietnam War (or what the Vietnamese call the American War). Unable to shit or get off the pot (same situation Russia currently finds itself in Ukraine), the US kept sending troops and armament to 'fight the war on communism' (Russians are 'fighting the war on Nazis') but never committed enough firepower to actually win the war. And the North Vietnamese, using their own brutal, ruthless methods, fought back, hard. From a certain viewpoint, it was animals fighting animals, killing for the sake of killing, ideology a far cry. Commenting on, or at least seeming to want to comment on the war, is Norman Spinrad's The Men in the Jungle (1967), a science fiction tale/allegory of dubious execution.

Ousted asteroid dictator, Bart Fraden, sets his sights for power on a new destination, the planet Sangre. He invites along his mistress, the power-loving Sophia O'Hara, as well as General William Vanderling, a strategist Fraden hopes will easily knock over the military dictatorship on Sangre. The trio's plan is to peddle pleasure narcotics among the elite and sow discord among the rural villages, then wait for the right moment to engage with uber-weapons. The drugs work among the Brotherhood of Pain, leaders of Sangre, but rousing the villagers runs into a little trouble, one of an atavistic nature.

Review of Dagger Key & Other Stories by Lucius Shepard

There are a number of waypoints in a science fiction and fantasy reader's journey. Some enjoy the latest published hype and never look elsewhere—the years the waypoints. Others branch out, maybe taking a look at what uncle Joe was reading or what an obscure blog (Speculiction, cough cough) recommends. If uncle Joe was reading in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and kept up with genre, there's an extremely good chance he knew the name Lucius Shepard. Writing almost exclusively in short form, story to novella, perhaps Dagger Key and Other Stories (2007) is something a reader looking to explore might find on his dusty shelves?

The collection kicks off with the novella “Stars Seen through Stone”. It begins with a man contemplating life on the steps of the town library. A record producer named Vernon, he recalls the events leading him to contemplation—a demo he'd received from a preternaturally talented blues musician. An emotionally immature, overweight teen who expects the world but is unwilling to put in the effort, Jason Stanky is not the most likable guy. But his music is, and Vernon attempts to reconcile his disgust to get a record deal that will earn them both a little cash. But it’s in relating the town’s history to Stanky one day that things begin to take a turn for the weird for Vernon. Escalating alongside the potential for the young man’s success, their small town of Black William, RI finds itself on the map in ways no reader can predict. This is cited as one of Shepard's best stories for a reason.

Culture Corner: Italy - Tuscany to the Dolomites: Part II

Continuing from Part I, here is the second half of our Italy trip, Lago di Garda to the Dolomites.

#B1 - Classic di Garda – starting at 800 euros per hour. We didn't go for a ride, just dreamed of James Bond.

Culture Corner: Italy - Tuscany to the Dolomites: Part I

As is annual tradition here at Speculiction, we like to take a break from cublicle life to post photos of our vacations - not as pseudo-Instagram fodder, rather as a celebration of the beautiful places and people there are to experience with our time on Earth.  As proof, you will not find my ugly face muddying the crystal blue waters.

The following is the first of two posts related to our Italy vacation.  We started in northern Tuscany, visited a few places in the region, moved to Lago di Garda for a few days, and finished in the Dolomites.  It was even better than the photos.

#A1 – The first week in Italy was spent in Tuscany at this villa, spending time under the sun, going for walks, swimming in the river, and otherwise relaxing.

Review of Strange but Not a Stranger by James Patrick Kelly

Nobody remembers now (due to the past couple decades of history feeling like a millennium), but once upon a time James Patrick Kelly's Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories was a major talking point in science fiction. The publishing sphere was contained enough that most readers were aware of the majority of what was happening, and the collection was a triumphant capture of one the genre's brightest new voices. An established name, Kelly followed it up with another collection, 2002's Strange but Not a Stranger.

The collection kicks off with a piece of Cold War Americana pierced by the uncanny: “10¹⁶ to 1?”. It's the 1950s and young Ray lives for superhero comic books. Playing in the woods near his Long Island home one day, he discovers an odd man, a man who seems to know the future. Ray's life twists sideways in the aftermath, and through that transition Kelly gives readers a twisted piece of Golden Age American loosely reminiscent of Jeffrey Ford's “Shadow Year” or Harlan Ellison's “Jeffty is Five” .

Review of Mortedant's Peril by R.J. Barker

An important aspect of reading and reviewing fiction is (to attempt) to discern author intention. Just what is he/she trying to do here? Common answers are: art piece, zeigeist rider, bildungsroman, genre mish-mash, veiled imitation, character examination, etc. Another is: insular entertainment, aka quality escapism. In some ways such entertainment is the purest form of fiction. Less subjective than more ambitious efforts, the reader/reviewer can focus on how well it tells a story—technique, character, scene setting, prose, plot, etc. Such intentions 100% clear, enter Mortedant's Peril by R.J. Barker (2026).

Mortedant's Peril is one, unfortunate week in the life of Irody Hasp. As a mortedant, he is a respected member of society, a person who can read the final thoughts of the dead and offer comfort to those still alive. In the opening pages, Hasp is called to the dusty, dingy home of one of Elbay's bean counters, a dime-a-dozen civil servant in the lower tiers. Hasp thinks nothing of the last thoughts being around the berries the man ate. He collects his fee from the grieving wife and returns home to discover the berries actually meant something and he is being accused of murder. The grand magister of the mortedant's priory is able to grant Hasp a reprieve, however. He gives the unlucky mortedant a guard, one of the city's large alien osters, and one week to solve the crime himself. Or be hanged. Little does he know it, but Hasp is about to uncover threats to more than just his own life.

Review of Galactic Empiires ed. by Neil Clarke

On the west side of the Atlantic, science fiction and fantasy were built upon big, strong, cartoonish foundation stones—Buck Rogers, Barsoom, E.E. Doc Smith, Edmond Hamilton, Conan, and H.P. Lovcraft among them. Genre has iterated multiple times since, from Silver Age to New Wave to the wide-wide beyond. Technique has generally improved. Theme has more often found expression. And certainly some works have transcended genre. But the foundation stones remain. Laser pistols, space adventure, and the massive backdrop of the universe remain. A curated anthology, Neil Clarke's 2017 Galactic Empires looks to bring to the table a quality selection of what the early 21st century has to offer in the way of power structures across vast distances.

Galactic Empires kicks off with “Winning Peace” by Paul J. McAuley. An indentured scavenger is assigned the task of going to a remote location in space to find out what happened to a fellow scavenger who had been teaming up with an alien Cha!. He has a plan up his sleeve to escape indenture, a plan only accelerated by what he finds upon investigation of the location. Not everything is predictable, however, in this classic story rendered in contemporary voice. “Night's Slow Poison” by Ann Leckie is a mixed effort. It tells of a galactic voyage in which a guardsman is forced to confront an uneasy history through the eyes of his dead lover. Leckie has not shortage of imagination, but technique is a challenge, making this a rough read. Continuing with alternate perspectives, “All the Painted Stars” by Gwendolyn Clare is a human encounter told from the alien's view when its octopus-self gets stuck aboard a human ship. The ship is not of human origin, however, and the alien finds itself in a compromising situation. More classic sf in a modern voice.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Kira-ai: The Duel

Our board game collection consists of games big and small. On one end we have giant boxes like Tidal Blades: Rise of the Unfolders, the Ashes Reborn all-in box, and the mother of them all, old school Fireball Island. On the other end, we have Pax Transhumanity, Radlands, and Hannamikoji—games that fit snugly in a shoebox, together. But the smallest game of all, smaller than the size of a wallet, is Kira-ai: The Duel (2023). And here the adage is true: size doesn't matter.

If you enjoy games where you sit across from an opponent, trying to discern what's going through their mind as they do precisely the same to you, Kira-ai is one to check out. No fluff. No draw a card and see. No roll a die. It's mind games, only mind games, wrapped tightly around the theme of a samurai duel.

Review of The End of Everything by M. John Harrison

Over the past few years, my thoughts return with increasing frequency to the Camus-esque absurdity of normal life. Juxtapose the thousands of years of work, sleep, family, food, etc. with the fresh soil modern humanity is tilling (AI, screens, globalization, politicized media, etc.) and its mindblowing—in slippery yet sturdy, bizarre yet normal, out of touch yet 100% palpable, Camus-esque fashion. There are people following the love advice of chatgpt. That's a human doing what humans would do given such an opportunity, yes? But chatgpt?!?! Capturing this (seeming) juxtaposition pitch perfect artistically, narratively, and thematically, is M. John Harrison's The End of Everything (2026).

Boil away the skin and hair, muscles and organs, and in its bones The End of Everything is a near-future alien invasion of Britain. The iGhetti have appeared slowly and steadily in myriad forms on the island nation's shores, sometimes invasive of daily life and sometimes just hovering on the perimeter. In the wake of their arrival, government is degrading, a dense fog has descended on Europe, and all manner of the odd and uncanny is washing ashore. Two characters, Philip the beachcomber and Marnie the senior citizen artist, attempt to come to terms with their evolving world.

Review of The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel

It's always an interesting question: what will the current generation go down as when all is said and done. It's an interesting question because, the youngest generation always faces the harshest criticism, yet seems to defy that criticism in interesting ways as time goes on. It's still too early to tell with Gen Z, but one thing for certain is that their youth will be youth, going off doing the wildest, logic-defying things that the youth of every prior generation did. Optimism is priceless, but only for a time, when a price must be paid. Matthew Kressel, in his 2026 novella The Rainseekers, features the lives of people reflecting on their youth.

The Rainseekers is a quasi-frame story. It is ostensibly about Sakunja, former holo star on Earth now journalist on Mars. She recounts for the reader this path, including her joining a group of people on an excursion to be the first to witness rain on the red planet. During the overland journey, she talks with her fellow travelers, and agrees to write the stories of two for her newspaper—an orphaned engineer and a reformed Muslim truck driver. That is, until a not-so-proverbial wrench is thrown into the works of the excursion.

Review of Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin

Robert Heinlein is best known these days for a handful of novels—Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. But before these books were published, Heinlein had built a foundation on YA fiction featuring silver space ships, clunky computers, intergalactic aliens—he helped shaped the stereotypes. Almost two decades later, when science fiction was near the end of the generation which followed Heinlein's YA work, New Wave sf, Alexei Panshin decided to throwback with Rite of Passage (1968), and oddly enough, was rewarded for it.

Rite of Passage is as classic a YA bildungsroman as classic YA bildungsromans can be. It tells the story of Mia Havero, teenager living aboard a galactic ship that moves from planet to planet, trading knowledge for the goods its limited population need to stay alive. Eugenics are part of the reason the population is tight, but another is that every teen must go through a rite of passage. Each year the group of teens coming of age are dumped on a strange planet with basic supplies, and thirty days later the ship returns to pick up the survivors. Hotheaded, arrogant Mia has a lot of work to do to get ready for this trial.

Review: I Hear a New World by Alan Moore

In 2022, Alan Moore signed a Bloomsbury deal to write a five-book series. At the time Moore was excited, saying he bubbled with fiction (I paraphrase). A difficult feeling to sustain, Moore nevertheless delivered a sparkling, exuberant effort two years later in The Great When. An irreverent mix of Dickens, Joyce, and Aleister Crowley, Moore deployed his singular style on an alternate, mid-20th century London indeed, in bubbly fashion. But could Moore maintain the groove in 2026's I Hear a New World, second book in the series?

It takes a fun, meandering road, but I Hear a New World eventually picks up on the happenings of our weak-chinned hero, Dennis Knuckleyard. Roughly ten years after the events of The Great When, Dennis is still possessor of the key brought back from Long London, and in the early going, he uses an opportunity at a socialite party to pass possession to Joe Meek, a music producer. Meek's never the same after, and Dennis finds himself caught between an occult rock and octogenarian hard place.

Review of Loss Protocol by Paul McAuley

Aldous Huxley may be most well known for his dystopian novel, Brave New World. But he wrote the counter point, also. No, not his novel Point, Counter Point, but the utopian Island, which tells of a near-perfect society created through the communal living, hallucinogens usage, ritual trances, contraception, and “uplifting propaganda” (dispersed by mynah birds, interestingly). Regardless intentional or not, Paul McAuley's 2026 novel Loss Protocol acts as a counter point to the counter point—the Jonestown-side of believing narcotics, living in dream-states, and homesteading are humanity's enlightenment.

It's 2070 and Marc Winters is the ranger/steward of a small British island, a nature reserve in the process of re-wilding. Despite the isolation, Winters is not a lonely man. The mainland is a short boat ride away and there is no shortage of scientists, researchers, and tourists who visit the island. It's on one such excursion that something odd happens: a break-in at his small houseboat. Nothing is stolen but an environmentalist slogan is spray painted on the wall—odd considering the island is a reserve and he the protector of it. But that is just the beginning of Winters' story. Rather than look for clues, the police come to Winters with suspicious questions, particularly about his sister, a woman who he thought dead years ago as part of an environmentalist mass suicide. When no answers are forthcoming from the constabulary, Winters decides to get them himself.

Review of The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey

2024's The Mercy of Gods introduced readers to a new space opera series from James S.A. Corey, the pen name of writer duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Where their prior series The Expanse focused on a human war in the solar system, the new series, The Captives War, looked to the universe beyond and the myriad of alien life possible there. Humans just one of hundreds of sentient species, in The Mercy of Gods they were taken as slaves by an alpha lobster race called the Carryx. The second book in the series, The Faith of Beasts (2026), looks to tell the next chapter in humanity's attempt to escape captivity.

The Faith of Beasts picks up where The Mercy of Gods leaves off. It follows the surviving members of the team who have been tasked with scientific research in support of the Carryx's galactic war. At the start of the novel, the team are split into groups, sent to separate locations or planets, and given new research goals. They are also tasked with growing the human population, a task the group sets about doing, not through regular Friday-night orgies, rather embryos developed in artificial womb sacs. Power dynamics within the human moiety, let alone the universe at large, are put to strong test by the new research tasks, complicating the scientists' secret plans to overthrow the Carryx.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Etherstone

The Dark Crystal is a 1982 film for families and children. Jim Henson, creator of Sesame Street, brought his muppet-style to a dark fantasy world, spent a good chunk of money on puppetry and set pieces, and told a harrowing tale that will have even the most hardened adult squirming with emotion. One of the reasons for this is the film's baddies, the skeksis, anthropomorphized vultures who cackle and gloat while competing among themselves to suck the souls from the film's elfen heroes. The 2025 board game Etherstone gives me skeksis vibes. <cue cackling glee>

Both strategic and tactical, Etherstone is an engine building game for 2-4 players that is not multi-player solitaire. There is a small but important degree of interaction that forces players to pay attention to game-state as a whole. How it plays is, after a one-time card draft, players take turns drafting dice, collecting etherstones, playing cards to their engine, triggering card effects, and attacking NPCs, all in an effort to build the best points engine. The player with the most points when there are no more points in the pool, wins.

Review of Nonesuch by Francis Spufford

The horrors of WWI, while brought home to Britain in body bags, nevertheless occurred on continental ground. The country remained almost entirely intact, the artillery blasts and machine gun fire happening in France, Belgium, and other places. It was WWII that brought war home. In an effort to subdue the Brits, Hitler launched unending waves of attacks—rockets, bombs, and fighter jets. Those who survived were inevitably faced with soul searching possible only when mortality is at stake. In dynamic, colorful, dramatic, and comedic fashion, Francis Spufford's Nonesuch (2026) digs into the life of one such mortal.

Nonesuch is the story of Iris Hawkins, her romantic adventures as Britain emerges from the Great Depression, and the arrival of Hitler's bombers over London rooftops. She's a free-spirited young woman who enjoys a night out (or seven) with handsome young men, typing her way through a menial clerk's job at a stockbroker's by day. But her routine takes a turn when she has an encounter with the uncanny after a one-night stand. And then everyone's lives in London take a turn when the luftwaffe start dropping bombs.

Culture Commentary: What You Wanted: The Mandalorian & Grogu

Let's do it. Let's fight the power. Let's break the modern media mold. Let's give a reasonable, balanced opinion. The Mandalorian & Grogu is a good Star Wars movie with caveats.

Depending which corners of the web you haunt, your algorithms will attempt to feed you media based on other media you've consumed prior (with a strong dose of sponsorship). If you're not careful, I mean really careful, this can quickly swing to one extreme or another. Love-love-love! Hate-hate-hate! Love-hate-love-hate.... And on and on spins the media monster we've built. Mandalorian is crap! It's great! Disney is doomed! Star Wars is back! The truth often lies in the middle, and the film is no exception.

Review of The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner

Cli-fi has slowly and unsteadily become a sub-genre of science fiction. Works have appeared here and there—Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife, Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140, Matt Bell's Appleseed, Lily Brooks-Dalton's The Light Pirate, and Ned Beauman's Venomous Lumpsucker among them, all with varying visions of nature's power in relation to human life. Whether they know it or not, most of these visions owe a debt of gratitude to the granddaddy of all the environmental novels, The Sheep Look Up (1972) by John Brunner.

If something could go wrong for humanity in The Sheep Look Up, it has. A Greta Thunberg wet dream, pollution chokes cities, forcing people to wear masks in public. Epidemics of food poisoning, accidental and intentional, occur with the randomness of clouds. Potable water doesn't exist anymore save through treatment. Viruses and infections sweep through society like granny's Saturday morning broom. Oily sludge covers coastal and inland waters. Agricultural practices have denuded prairies, forming dustlands. It's bad.

Review of The Ends of the Earth by Lucius Shepard

What a world the West has woven. Technology, with its mantra of making life easier, has in fact made our lives more busy and inundated us with information, so much so that our lives are ever more consumed by the present. It hurts my heart clicking on links to 'Best SF of All Time”, or “Top 100 Fantasy Ever” and seeing that 75% of the books were published after 2000. The efforts of so many brilliant writers are invisibly crumbling in the public eye. Not quite vanished but on the verge is Lucius Shepard. Once one of the absolute titans of fantastika in (semi) short form, few if any of the younguns have even heard his name. The Ends of the Earth (1991) may just well be the best collection he produced, and if not, at least has several horses in the race. Beyond himself, the collection likewise contains some of the tip-top best short stories to come out of the late 20th century.

The collection kicks off with the title story “The Ends of the Earth”. A down-on-his-luck NY writer tries to get away from it all in Guatemala. He meets an alluring young French woman in a lonely tourist town, but has his advances blocked by a weed dealer who is trying to translate a native board game he found into English. The writer's advances eventually go too far, and the small town is turned on its fantastical head. Out of all the stories to choose to title the collection after, I'm lost why this is the one. It's a loosely developed, forced concept with random “fantasy” coming alive in a form that is intended to be horrific but doesn't go beyond cheap 80s slasher. If the idea was to ease readers in, one toe at a time, then fair enough. Because...