The Kinokuniya bookstore above Shinjuku Station in Tokyo has become one of my favorite stores for its excellent selection of English-language books. They have a really good sci-fi/fantasy section, and on a recent visit, they had a whole rack dedicated to recent award winners where I noticed the winner of a new award for African speculative fiction — the Nommo Award — and was intrigued enough to buy a copy. And let me just say that if there’s a better science fiction book this year […]
This series is so great, I can’t recommend it enough.
And the final Murderbot adventure is over. Well, not final, I guess, since there is going to be a Murderbot novel in 2020 (hooray!), but final FOR NOW. The initial arc of Murderbot becoming a person has concluded. We come full circle in Exit Strategy, with Murderbot traveling back to rescue Dr. Mensah, and teaming up with the initial group of humans from All Systems Red. Murderbot’s irrational grudge against Gurathin continues to give me life: “I don’t want to be a pet robot.” “I […]
Just as good as the first, maybe better?
I was not disappointed by this sequel. P.S. writing this on my phone. I don’t actually have much to say about the book. I enjoyed it a lot, and I was worried that I would have forgotten everything that happened in the last book, and I sort of had, but Scalzi makes it easy for you to catch up. Cardenia is still emperox, Kiva is still a profane little firecracker, Marse is traveling around giving lectures about the flow collapse, and the effing Nohamapetans are […]
Transformers meet Voltron
Transformers meet Voltron in Mech Cadet Yu Volume one by Greg Pak, Takeshi Miyazawa and Triona Farrell. I would like to point out when I say Transformer and Voltron I do not mean the modern-day versions but the awesome 1980s versions I grew up on. The story itself is totally today, but still the creators are paying honor to the classics. The story is every few years giant robots from outer space come to bond with cadets from the Sky Corps Academy. Sixty-years ago, the […]
…to wound the autumnal city.
[BINGO 3] I’ve read Dhalgren so many times. Every time is different. Sometimes I devour it, blocking out everything else going on around me. Other times, I read it slowly, with long breaks, dipping in here and there, and savouring each section as I go, as if it was just a collection of stories. I’ve been reading it again in 2018, and not surprisingly, this time felt completely different. One thing is for sure about Dhalgren, it is regarded as Samuel R Delany’s masterpiece of science fiction, but […]