By the time I cracked John Langan’s MR. GAUNT AND OTHER UNEASY ENCOUNTERS, Halloween had already passed, and the ghosts and ghouls were retiring in preparation for the Super Bowl of feasts — all except Langans’ little beasties. The book is a collection of five ghostly tales, for which he did a beautiful job of reanimating classic creatures into a fresh, bumpy arm full of goose flesh.
The first encounter, “On Skua Island,” begins with a gathering of friends around the dinner table in an old house on the cape, as a storm blows in off the ocean on a cold February night. I was like a guest of the house as the eight moved with their drinks from the table to the comfy, fire-lit living room. They entertain each other discussing classic horror tales, their origins and how they tapped basic human fears. Dracula, mummies and zombies banter back and forth as movie adaptations and the creative quirks put forth into each manifestation are discussed.
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The introduction to YEAR’S BEST SF 14 by editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer lets you know you’ll be reading pure science fiction from the best writings of 2008, with a clear genre boundary. Each volume — this obviously being the 14th — attempts to represent different tones, voices and attitudes in sci-fi.
Sneaking a peak at the contents page, I noted there was a smorgasbord of 21 individual stories, some with bizarre tittles. I figured I would love some and hate others, but looked forward to the exposure. The introduction also includes an interesting snapshot of the writing world that is science fiction, and how the scene is changing as niche magazines are failing to turn a profit and falling by the wayside. Regardless, I like the editors’ idea of exposing readers to what’s current and fresh in sci-fi, giving voice to new writers and keeping the faith alive.
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Two things make THE TERMINATOR one of my top 10 movies: Time travel — wrap your head around going into the past, conceiving a son who in the future sends you back to the past so that he will be born (boy, I love that) — and one Terminator’s never-ending pursuit to kill his target. In Timothy Zahn’s TERMINATOR SALVATION: FROM THE ASHES, the official prequel to this summer’s TERMINATOR SALVATION movie, you won’t get any of the mind-bending time issues, but you get plenty of Terminators.
L.A.’s been nuked, but much like Hiroshima, people still live there, struggling to survive. A group of freelance resistance fighters, led by someone you might be familiar with — John Connor — is trying to gain attention and thus support from the official military resistance. Several other groups of humans sprinkled throughout the city are also in a struggle to hold on to what they’ve got, worried more about street gangs just around the corner than the machines flying overhead.
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STARFINDER is the first in what looks to be a series of novels by John Marco. It takes place in a forbidden zone called The Reach, an area humans have been ordered never to enter, where fantasy mixes with mythology in a land of mermaids, fairies, centaurs, gargoyles, dragons and the titular Starfinder.
The book’s opening narrative talks of aerodromes, speaking tubes and nights lit by gas and candlelight, which led me down a path I thought was filled with elements of steampunk and I wasn’t sure I would enjoy. However, the novel’s cover depicts an armored dirigible chasing a boy and girl astride a dragon, leaving me wondering what type of reading adventure I was to experience.
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COLLISION, Jeff Abbott’s latest thriller, does what a good thriller should: grab you by the throat and take you for a ride, threatening to push you out at 60 mph. It centers around two unlikely allies who don’t prefer the company of one another. Pilgrim is the archetype special ops/black ops warrior, while Ben Forsberg is a corporate consultant specializing in government contracts, whom we meet on his mental last leg.
The love of Forsberg’s life was killed in a random act of violence while honeymooning, and now, just as his fragile psyche attempts to crawl back to normal, evidence links him to a couple homicides. Pilgrim, a key member of a CIA false-flag operation called Cellar, actually had something to do with the murders and in pointing the finger at Forsberg.
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