What Writers Can Learn from The Walking Dead

Michonne from The Walking Dead TV series

Beyond the Zombies … True Horror I have a love/hate relationship with zombies as they are portrayed in American culture. They’re crude and redundant: all they do is stagger around looking for something to eat. They never get full or tired, even when their rotting limbs are falling off. I can’t resist the gory little […] Read more »

Review of Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson

Serving the Spirits In this near future, post-apocalyptic Toronto, the wealthy live in the suburbs. In the inner city, government and social structures have disintegrated after a series of riots. “The ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t get out,” use a system of barter, and live under the shadow of crime-lord Rudy and his posse. Ti-Jeanne, […] Read more »

Short Stories by Kelly Link, a review

Review of Kelly Link, by Melanie Lamaga, The Metaphysical Circus

Nobody writes cooler stories than Kelly Link. Link’s stories draw from fairy tales, myth, pop culture, experimental, horror, gothic, and detective fiction, the tabloids, dreams, nightmares, and half a dozen other things. But this is not merely pulp fiction—wham, bam, thrill and chill. Link uses the tools of pulp fiction to deal with literary concerns: […] Read more »

Waking the Moon, by Elizabeth Hand

Cover art of Waking the Moon, a novel by Elizabeth Hand, reviewed by Melanie Lamaga, The Metaphysical Circus

The Moon with a Knife-Sharp Edge Three unwitting college students stand between the reawakening of a dark goddess and the Benandanti, a secret society of magicians who have been running the world for thousands of years. Waking the Moon, which won a Mythopoeic Award and a James Tiptree, Jr. Award, is part horror, part coming […] Read more »

A Review of Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes

A Noir Detective Pagan Cyberpunk Novel Zoo City is a ghetto in Johannesburg, populated by outcasts. Each person there is marked by the wild animal that appears just after they kill someone (intentionally or not). Animal and human become extensions of one another, and any “Zoo” unfortunate enough to lose her animal gets a visit […] Read more »

Among Others by Jo Walton, a Review

This very readable book (which won the Nebula Award for Best Novel this year) is part coming of age, part fantasy and part uber-geek love-letter to the classics of science fiction. Much of the drama has already happened before the novel starts. We learn that Morwenna and her twin sister Morganna spent their childhoods playing […] Read more »

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, a Review

An epic magical realist saga of family and country, connecting far-flung dots into a revealing portrait of the first thirty years of India’s independence from Britain. The narrator is Saleem Sinai, the first of 1000 “Midnight’s Children,” born the first hour of August 15, 1947, when India officially became independent of Britain. Saleem is the […] Read more »

Review of Little, Big by John Crowley

Little, Big is a modern classic of fantastic literature, a book that is praised far and wide, and with good reason. It’s a beautifully written, deep meditation on complex and arcane philosophies of magic and metaphysics (from Plato to Rosicrucian and Theosophist) and the challenges of living an ethical life in light of such considerations. […] Read more »

Women Writers Take Top Honors at 2011 Nebula Awards

Congratulations to Jo Walton (novel) and Kij Johnson (novella), Delia Sherman (young adult science fiction and fantasy), Connie Willis (Damon Knight Grand Master Award), and all the other winners of this year’s Nebulas! The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. has announced the recipients of the 2011 Nebula Awards®. Novel Winner: Among Others, Jo Walton […] Read more »