REVIEW SUMMARY: Very fun pair of stories by one of the new stars of science fiction.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Bob Howard is a h4x0r who stumbles upon secrets man was not meant to know. Well, it turns out men do know it, but the knowledge is restricted and protected in order to keep people from opening a doorway that lets in the elder gods to feed upon us all. So Bob is press-ganged into a super-secret branch of the SAS and the fun begins.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Awesome combination of the bureaucracy of government agencies and incursions from the planes by evil entities.
CONS: Starts out a little rough and enjoys asides a little too much.
BOTTOM LINE: A really enjoyable book that I read very quickly. I recommend it if you enjoy a little occult science fiction.
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Posted by Scott Shaffer at Friday November 20, 2009 at 12:25 AM
I'm not sure this is as useful for kids as it is creepy that Wonder Woman just shows up uninvited into some house whose owners left their kids apparently alone.
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| Category: TV
Posted by John DeNardo at Friday November 20, 2009 at 12:18 AM
Dreamworks' next project, How to Train Your Dragon, an animated adaptation of Cressida Cowell's book, hits theaters March 2010. Here's a nice-looking trailer
[via CG Hub]
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Posted by John DeNardo at Friday November 20, 2009 at 12:10 AM
Interviews/Profiles
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Posted by Charles Tan at Friday November 20, 2009 at 12:05 AM
Check out this awesome award-winning short film, Skhizein by Jérémy Clapin, in which a meteor strike causes a man to feel beside himself. By exactly 91 centimeters.
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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday November 19, 2009 at 11:29 AM
Here's author Dan Abnett talking about Ultramarines, the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 adaptation.
[via Quiet Earth]
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| Category: Books, Movies
Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday November 19, 2009 at 12:25 AM
Here is a handy index to our interview series with most of the contributors to The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar:
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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday November 19, 2009 at 12:15 AM
Trouble-prone teen Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out school - but that's the least of his problems. The gods of Mount Olympus and assorted monsters seem to have walked out of the pages of Percy's Greek mythology texts and into his life - and they're not happy. Zeus' lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect. Now, Percy and his friends must embark on a cross-country adventure to catch the true thief, save Percy's family, and unravel a mystery more powerful than the gods themselves.
Note to Percy: When James Bond gives you a pen...you take it without question.
Oh, and wicked-cool Medusa!
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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday November 19, 2009 at 12:12 AM
Interviews/Profiles
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Posted by Charles Tan at Thursday November 19, 2009 at 12:05 AM
[Interviewer's Note: This is a series of interviews featuring the contributors of The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar. It'll run every Monday to Friday until I run out of interviews. Two of these interviews will be reprinted in Apex Magazine but the rest are exclusive to SF Signal.]
Zoran Živković was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, in 1948. In 1973 he graduated from the Department of General Literature with the theory of literature, Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade; he received his master's degree in 1979 and his doctorate in 1982 from the same school, where he is currently a professor of creative writing.
Živković is the author of the eighteen works of fiction: The Fourth Circle (1993), Time Gifts (1997), The Writer (1998), The Book (1999), Impossible Encounters (2000), Seven Touches of Music (2001), The Library (2002), Steps through the Mist (2003), Hidden Camera (2003), Compartments (2004), Four Stories till the End (2004), Twelve Collections and the Teashop (2005), The Bridge (2006), Miss Tamara, The Reader (2006), Amarcord (2007), The Last Book (2007), Escher's Loops (2008) and The Ghostwriter (2009).
He lives in Belgrade, Serbia, with his wife Mia, their twin sons Uroš and Andreja, and their three cats.
In 2003. Živković won the World Fantasy Award for his mosaic-novel The Library.
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Posted by Charles Tan at Wednesday November 18, 2009 at 11:29 AM
Fiction and fantasy book covers can be as awe-inspiring as the stories they are trying to sell. We asked this week's panelists:
Read on to see their favorites ...and not-so-favorites...
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| Category: Art, Mind Meld
Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday November 18, 2009 at 12:29 AM
Interviews/Profiles
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Posted by Charles Tan at Wednesday November 18, 2009 at 12:05 AM
[Interviewer's Note: This is a series of interviews featuring the contributors of The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar. It'll run every Monday to Friday until I run out of interviews. Two of these interviews will be reprinted in Apex Magazine but the rest are exclusive to SF Signal.]
Nir Yaniv is an Israeli writer, musician and editor living in Tel Aviv. His first story collection, "One Hell of a Writer", was published in Israel by Odyssey Press in 2006. His stories appeared in various Israeli magazines and publications; some of them were translated into English and German, and appeared in such magazines as Weird Tales, Shimmer and the German InterNova. His collaboration with Lavie Tidhar - the novel "The Tel Aviv Dossier" - was published in 2009 by the Canadian-based Chizine Publications.
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Posted by Charles Tan at Tuesday November 17, 2009 at 11:29 AM
Good news: Updated special effects and a rock soundtrack.
Better news: No shirtless Harry Hamlin!
Following up his question on the best book endings, John at grasping for the Wind asks bloggers about The Worst Endings in SF/F/H.
My 2 pennies are listed along with many others. (That's a lot of pennies!)
(See also: Our own Mind meld: Which SF/F Books Have The Best and Worst Endings?)
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| Category: Books
Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday November 17, 2009 at 11:24 AM
Song: Vampires in Love
Artist: Marvelous 3
Album: Hey Album!
Sometimes, I feel like I've missed my true calling in life. While I love writing and recording songs about Science Fiction and Fantasy, I think that I would be an awesome Music Supervisor for movies and TV shows. No offense to music supervisor extraordinaire Alexandra Patsavas, but she totally dropped the ball by not including this week's Tuesday Tune in the upcoming "New Moon" soundtrack. I've yet to see "New Moon" or "Twilight" for that matter, but come on! The title of the song is "Vampires in Love". It's a no-brainer!
Read more...
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| Category: Music
Posted by John Anealio at Tuesday November 17, 2009 at 12:25 AM
REVIEW SUMMARY: Another fine audio anthology from Infinivox
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A 3-CD set (totaling 224 minutes) that features a trio of science fiction audio stories involving aliens.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: All three stories are good;
CONS: None of these stories are what I would deem superb (not that that stopped them from appearing on Years Best lists an awards ballots)
BOTTOM LINE: A solid collection of science fiction audio stories that match the theme of alien rule.
The latest audio anthology collection from Infinivox is Aliens Rule edited by Allan Kaster. It's a 3-CD set that features 224 minutes of narrated science fiction. The three unabridged stories included (1 novelette and 2 novellas) are themed around alien occupation. The stories are expertly narrated by familiar Infinivox voices Vanessa Hart and Tom Dheere. As with the other Infinivox titles I've reviewed (Mini-Masterpieces of Science Fiction and The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction, both also edited by Allan Kaster) this was an enjoyable experience overall as the stories were of good quality, their delivery was well done, and the audio format itself allowed me to squeeze in fiction when I was otherwise unable to.
Individual story reviews follow...
Read more...
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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday November 17, 2009 at 12:24 AM
Your Mission (should you choose to accept it): Tell us which cover you like best and why.
Books shown here:
NOTE: Bigger, better cover art images are available by clicking the images or title links...
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| Category: Art, Books
Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday November 17, 2009 at 12:22 AM
Comments (2)
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| Category: Free Fiction
Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday November 17, 2009 at 12:14 AM
So...you think you're a trivia master of The Matrix trilogy, huh? Think you know everything there is to know?
Prove it. Head on over to AMC's SciFi Scanner where they're running the Matrix Quiz that I put together, then leave a comment there with your score. My grandmother got 80%.
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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday November 17, 2009 at 12:08 AM
Interviews/Profiles
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Posted by Charles Tan at Tuesday November 17, 2009 at 12:05 AM
[Interviewer's Note: This is a series of interviews featuring the contributors of The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar. It'll run every Monday to Friday until I run out of interviews. Two of these interviews will be reprinted in Apex Magazine but the rest are exclusive to SF Signal.]
Jamil Nasir has published short fiction in numerous science fiction venues in the US and UK, including Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Universe, Interzone, and Aboriginal. His third novel, Tower of Dreams, was runner up for the Philip K. Dick Award for best US sf paperback of the year, and (in translation) won France's top sf award, the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. His fifth novel, The Houses of Time, has recently been published by Tor Books.
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Posted by Charles Tan at Monday November 16, 2009 at 11:29 AM
REVIEW SUMMARY: A Salvador Dali painting in prose form.
MY RATING: 
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: John Finch, detective, must solve a double homicide of a human and gray cap, even as the city of Ambergris slides into chaos.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Surreal tone; emotionally powerful; great mashup of the real and unreal
CONS: Anti-climactic ending; early difficulty in understanding sentence structure
BOTTOM LINE: The vibrant storytelling of a perversely beautiful city and its hard-boiled detective is well worth the reading.
In this gritty crime noir/fantasy mashup, World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer creates a narrative that is distressingly real, and yet so unreal as to be absurd. Like a Salvador Dali painting in prose, Finch mixes the mundane and the fantastic and then melts them together into one surreal but powerful work.
Read more...
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Posted by John Ottinger III at Monday November 16, 2009 at 12:27 AM
Comments (0)
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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday November 16, 2009 at 12:11 AM
Interviews/Profiles
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Posted by Charles Tan at Monday November 16, 2009 at 12:05 AM
Sci Fi Wire, the online news arm of the SyFy Channel [still cringes at new name], has canceled their weekly written columns. This includes long-running and well-respected series from John Clute, Wil McCarthy, and Michael Cassutt, who have been asked to remain as contributors in "other ways". The reason given for this decision is that columns are considered an antiquated form of communication from the days of print.
I say hooey. Mostly because I like saying hooey, but also because I suspect it's more a matter of money.
Read more...
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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday November 15, 2009 at 12:25 AM
Synopsis: After Professor Joseph Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) gives a lecture on Chinese vampire legend, a student informs him that the legend is true and that he knows the location of the village in the legend. The student asks Professor Van Helsing if he would be willing to travel to the village and destroy the vampire menace. Van Helsing agrees and embarks with his son, the student and his six kung-fu trained siblings on a dangerous journey funded by a wealthy widow (Julie Ege). The seven golden vampires, however, are acting under the guidance of Count Dracula himself, masquerading as a mad taoist monk.Anything that mixes vampires with King-fu can't be all bad, can it? Read more...
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| Category: Movies
Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday November 15, 2009 at 12:20 AM
Comments (0)
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| Category: Movies, Tidbits
Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday November 15, 2009 at 12:05 AM
Interviews & Profiles
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Posted by John DeNardo at Saturday November 14, 2009 at 12:08 AM
[Interviewer's Note: This is a series of interviews featuring the contributors of The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar. It'll run every Monday to Friday until I run out of interviews. Two of these interviews will be reprinted in Apex Magazine but the rest are exclusive to SF Signal.]
Han Song is a Chinese science fiction writer of some note, and works as a journalist for the Xinhua News Agency. He won China's Galaxy Award four times for short fiction and is the author of several novels, the most recent being Red Ocean (2004).
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Posted by Charles Tan at Friday November 13, 2009 at 12:29 AM
economic times know no boundaries...
[via VideoSift]
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| Category: Battlestar Galactica, Humor
Posted by John DeNardo at Friday November 13, 2009 at 12:15 AM
Today we're giving away a rather cool book, Draw Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The book is "filled with tips, techniques, practice space, and translucent overlays to make you a master of drawing. Start with stick figures, move onto basic shapes, and finish up with the details. Use the included double-tipped metallic-colored pencils and black marker to make 20 Clone Wars characters come to life." Hopefully that will work even for some so devoid of any artistic talent, like me.
For more info, you can visit the official site here and/or watch this short video:
It's not all tracing though, as stated above the book does walk you through the basics and the tracing paper is scattered throughout the book. Kind of a nice idea.
We have 5 copies to give away and one of the winners will receive an autographed, by Bonnie Burton, copy! If you'd like to win, here are the rules:
Good luck!
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| Category: Contest
Posted by JP Frantz at Friday November 13, 2009 at 12:12 AM
Interviews/Profiles
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Posted by Charles Tan at Friday November 13, 2009 at 12:05 AM
[Interviewer's Note: This is a series of interviews featuring the contributors of The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar. It'll run every Monday to Friday until I run out of interviews. Two of these interviews will be reprinted in Apex Magazine but the rest are exclusive to SF Signal.]
Tunku Halim was born in Malaysia in 1964 and he lives in Tasmania, Australia. He is the author of two novels and five collections of short stories, the latest being 44 Cemetery Road and Gravedigger's Kiss.
His novel, Dark Demon Rising, was nominated for the 1999 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award whilst his second novel. Vermillion Eye, is used as a study text in the Language and Literature course, The National University of Singapore. His short story has also won first prize in a 1998 Fellowship of Australian Writers competition.
Tunku Halim also writes non fiction. Other than his father's biography, he has also written A Children's History of Malaysia and has recently published History of Malaysia - A Children's Encyclopedia.
He can be reached at tunkuhalim@gmail.com and has a blog at http://tunkuhalim.wordpress.com.
Read more...
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Posted by Charles Tan at Thursday November 12, 2009 at 11:29 AM
We have our winner for the Stargate 15th Anniversary Blu-Ray Edition disc and it is:
- John Broky, Orlando, FL
Congratulations John, the disc should be in the mail shortly!
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Posted by JP Frantz at Thursday November 12, 2009 at 9:34 AM
Welcome to the fifth serialized installment of J.C. Hutchins' human cloning thriller 7th Son: Descent. A recent review in Publishers Weekly said, "(T)hriller readers seeking edge-of-your-seat action flavored with conspiracy and futuristic tech will love every page."
If this is your first exposure to our free serialization of 7th Son, you can easily catch up by experiencing part one, part two, part three and part four. You can also dive in right
now, right here...
THE STORY SO FAR: John, Kilroy 2.0, Father Thomas and the other "Beta Clones" were told that John Alpha's plans for chaos reached well beyond the recent assassination of the U.S. president. Their villianous progenitor possessed terrifying technologies that permit him to record and implant human memories into anyone.Meanwhile in Washington D.C., Vice President Charles Caine visited a civilian hospital to receive a routine physical examination...but things did not go as planned. Back at the 7th Son facility, the clones solved the riddle Alpha had left for them. Its solution was cryptic: the song L.A. Woman, by The Doors.
Check out this week's installment below.
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| Category: Free Fiction
Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday November 12, 2009 at 12:25 AM
Comments (0)
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| Category: Free Fiction
Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday November 12, 2009 at 12:20 AM
The contents of Interzone #225 (Cover art by Adam Tredowski) have been posted:
Stories
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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday November 12, 2009 at 12:11 AM
Interviews
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Posted by Charles Tan at Thursday November 12, 2009 at 12:08 AM
[Interviewer's Note: This is a series of interviews featuring the contributors of The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar. It'll run every Monday to Friday until I run out of interviews. Two of these interviews will be reprinted in Apex Magazine but the rest are exclusive to SF Signal.]
Dean Francis Alfar (born 1969), is a Filipino playwright, novelist and writer of speculative fiction. His plays have been performed in venues across the country, while his articles and fiction have been published both in his native Philippines and abroad, such as in Strange Horizons, Rabid Transit, The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, The Apex Book of World SF, and the Exotic Gothic series.
His literary awards include ten Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature -- including the Grand Prize for Novel for Salamanca (Ateneo Press, 2006)-- as well as the Manila Critics' Circle National Book Awards for the graphic novels Siglo: Freedom and Siglo: Passion, the Philippines Free Press Literary Award, and the Gintong Aklat Award.
He was a fellow at the 1992 Dumaguete National Writers Workshop as well as the 20th and 48th UP National Writers Workshop.
He is an advocate of the literature of the fantastic, editing the Philippine Speculative Fiction annuals, as well as a comic book creator and a blogger.
Alfar is also an entrepreneur -- running several businesses. He lives in Manila with his wife, fictionist Nikki Alfar and their daughters Sage and Rowan.
Read more...
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Posted by Charles Tan at Wednesday November 11, 2009 at 11:29 AM
REVIEW SUMMARY: There's a venue for Interstitial Fiction.
MY RATING:
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: 20 stories of Interstitial Fiction, as well as an exhaustive introduction and interview with the editors.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Two standout stories, and a lot of very good stories.
CONS: While there are not outright bad stories, seven fall just below the "very good" category, which actually isn't too detracting.
BOTTOM LINE: A solid anthology of Interstitial Fiction, with a fairly consistent quality of writing.
The distinction between Interstitial Fiction and other genres isn't such a big deal to me although the introduction by Henry Jenkins makes for a compelling argument as to why this genre (or rather, lack of a distinct genre) is appropriate for this generation of readers. For me, this is simply a collection of great stories, each of which tries something different and unconventional.
At first glance, Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing is quite good. The stories are memorable and does something outstanding, but not what you'd call all-time favorites. And then I came across two stories which made an impression:
There are a lot of other good stories here, including from personal author favorites like Jeffrey Ford, M. Rickert, Theodora Goss, and David J. Schwartz. But there were also new discoveries for me such as Alaya Dawn Johnson, Peter M. Ball, and Lionel Davoust. More interesting are the stories that are certainly above mediocrity, and are in many ways "good enough", but aren't that particularly memorable for me, at least compared to the other terrific stories included here. That, at least, is certainly not a bad criticism.
I do want to point out however that at the end of each story, there's an afterword by the author. The effect these have range from genuine insight to a need by the writer to defend why their stories are interstitial.
Those that are also curious as to what interstitial fiction is would do well to pick up this book. There's an interesting interview at the end, as the editors share their own perspectives. And if anything, the stories themselves speak out for what could fall under this non-category.
Individual story reviews follow...
Read more...
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Posted by Charles Tan at Wednesday November 11, 2009 at 12:20 AM
Your Mission (should you choose to accept it): Tell us which cover you like best and why.
Books shown here:
NOTE: Bigger, better cover art images are available by clicking the images or title links...
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| Category: Art, Books
Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday November 11, 2009 at 12:18 AM
Is there any property that has been the source of more parodies than Star Wars? What follows is a sequel (of course!) but can also see the original and original special edition versions.
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| Category: Humor, Star Wars
Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday November 11, 2009 at 12:15 AM
Interviews/Profiles
Comments (1)
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Posted by Charles Tan at Wednesday November 11, 2009 at 12:05 AM
[Interviewer's Note: This is a series of interviews featuring the contributors of The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar. It'll run every Monday to Friday until I run out of interviews. Two of these interviews will be reprinted in Apex Magazine but the rest are exclusive to SF Signal.]
An early encounter with Ray Bradbury's "A Sound Of Thunder" led to Anil Menon to both science and fiction. However, the blatant bias of research journals towards science rather than fiction eventually led him to switch careers from software R&D to spec-fic. His short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Albedo One, Apex Digest, Chiaroscuro, Interzone, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, New Genre, Strange Horizons and anthologies such as TEL: Stories, Apex World SF, Shockwave and From The Trenches. My YA novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet (Zubaan) is scheduled to appear in November 2009. He can be reached at iam@anilmenon.com
Read more...
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Posted by Charles Tan at Tuesday November 10, 2009 at 11:29 AM
The winners of our giveaway for The Prisoner - The Complete Series on DVD or Blu-ray have been notified. They are:
Thanks to everyone who entered.
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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday November 10, 2009 at 11:25 AM
