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Microreview: The Passage by Justin Cronin

Okay, I’ve read THE novel of the summer. I’m still trying to figure out why it’s THE novel.

Justin Cronin’s The Passage has plenty of hype. But when you get right down to it, it’s really an over long post-apocalyptic SF novel. (Although for some reason the local library stuck a “Mystery” tag on the […]

Book Review: Tomorrow! by Philip Wylie

It was an era more than half our population knows only through history. It was an era in which the United States went from being the only nation possessing nuclear weapons to facing the reality that the “Godless Commies” also had them. It was an era in which the Cold War blossomed, together with fear […]

Book Review: The Secret History of Science Fiction edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel

The Secret History of Science Fiction, a new anthology aimed at questioning the existence of genre boundaries, could be a victim of the very issue it seeks to address. It uses the term “science fiction” in the title.

The anthology proceeds from an interesting premise. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow was nominated for the 1973 Nebula […]

Book Review: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Science fiction — excuse me, speculative fiction — loves series. For whatever reason, readers — and evidently authors — can’t get enough of particular worlds or characters. And just as Margaret Atwood distances her fiction from science fiction, she may be taking the concept of a series in a different direction.

Atwood’s latest novel, The […]

Book Review: The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

Writing an adroit novel is a challenge any time, but especially if you’re going to throw in ninjas and mime troupes. Setting the story in a post-Apocalyptic world also requires more than a bit of imagination. Throwing in a twist readers don’t see coming but find entirely acceptable is a Chinese puzzle in and of […]