Magazine Review: If May 1961 managing editor Frederik Pohl If was a science fiction magazine that ran from 1952 to 1974. It was considered a “second tier” magazine due to frequently low sales, but that should not be confused with “second-rate.” By 1961, If had become a sister magazine to Galaxy, publishing in alternate months. Under editor… Continue reading Magazine Review: If May 1961
Tag: cancer
Book Review: Octavia’s Brood
Book Review: Octavia’s Brood edited by Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha One of the many uses of science fiction is to talk about current issues in a speculative setting. One can posit a world in which current trends have become exaggerated to dystopian levels, or where a solution has been found to a current… Continue reading Book Review: Octavia’s Brood
Book Review: Life Is Beautiful
Book Review: Life Is Beautiful by Sarah M. Johnson In 2008, an airplane carrying humanitarian workers to a remote village in Guatemala, where they were to build a school, crashed and burned. The crew and most of the passengers were killed; one young woman survived relatively unharmed, though she had lost half her family, and… Continue reading Book Review: Life Is Beautiful
Book Review: Great Historical Coincidences
Book Review: Great Historical Coincidences by Pere Romanillos “Serendipity” is the good fortune that comes when you discover something useful or interesting while you were looking for something else. Knowing how to grasp the opportunity offered by serendipity is one of those skills that every scientist and artist should have at their disposal. This book, originally… Continue reading Book Review: Great Historical Coincidences
Book Review: Four Reincarnations
Book Review: Four Reincarnations by Max Ritvo My genes are in mice, and not in the banal way that Man’s old genes are in the Beasts. Max Ritvo was diagnosed with terminal cancer at age sixteen. Aggressive treatment put him into remission for some years, but the Ewing’s sarcoma came back during his senior year… Continue reading Book Review: Four Reincarnations
Manga Review: Inuyashiki #1-3
Manga Review: Inuyashiki #1-3 by Hiroya Oku Life is tough for Ichiro Inuyashiki. He’s only 58, but looks a good ten years older. His wife and children think he’s a loser (and they’re not entirely wrong,) he gets pushed around by jerks, and now he has cancer. The prognosis is terminal, a few months at… Continue reading Manga Review: Inuyashiki #1-3
Book Review: Superheroes
Book Review: Superheroes edited by Rich Horton Superheroes as we know them more or less started in the comic books of the late 1930s, with the most obvious first “true” superhero being Superman. And comic books have largely shaped our perceptions of costumed superheroes ever since. But sometimes prose is a perfectly acceptable way of… Continue reading Book Review: Superheroes
Book Review: The Sea-Wolf
Book Review: The Sea-Wolf by Jack London Today is an ill-omened day. It began with a heavy fog in San Francisco Harbor, and the ferry carrying literary critic Humphrey Van Weyden colliding with another ship. He managed to get into a life jacket, but was swept away from the other survivors by a freak tide… Continue reading Book Review: The Sea-Wolf
Book Review: The Opposite of Everyone
Book Review: The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson Paula Vauss was born with blue skin, so her mother Karen (“Kai”) named her Kali Jai after the Hindu goddess of destruction and fresh starts. Estranged from her mother for many years, Paula has become a divorce lawyer, far better at the destruction part than the… Continue reading Book Review: The Opposite of Everyone
Magazine Review: Water~Stone Review Volume 18: All We Cannot Alter
Magazine Review: Water~Stone Review Volume 18: All We Cannot Alter edited by Mary François Rockcastle. This is the latest volume of Hamline University’s annual literary magazine, which I picked up at the Rain Taxi Book Festival. The subtitle comes from one of the poems in this issue, “Is This What Poets Do?” by Elizabeth Oness.… Continue reading Magazine Review: Water~Stone Review Volume 18: All We Cannot Alter