Goran Lowie
Very interesting. The author obviously cares more about science fiction (literature) than he does Tarkovsky. He has a lot of knowledge regarding cinema/literature/speculative fiction and uses this to put Tarkovsky & his works, especially Solaris, into the “science fiction” context. If you're a fan of Tarkovsky and you're a fan of speculative fiction (like I am), a great read!
This was excellent. Some stories were really interesting, some were downright brilliant. I realize most of them were supposed to be funny but they never really made laugh, even if I did find them “clever”. A couple stories in particular I really loved. This felt like one of those magical realist short story collections by Calvino, except much more mathematical/scientific.
Een subtiel en rustgevend boekje. In slechts 150 pagina's worden de personage's toch heel mooi ontwikkeld. Een minimalistisch beeld van een kindertijd. De complexe emoties, relaties en gevoelens van een kind worden op de zachtste manier neergepend.
Way more philosophical than I was expecting. The final passage is beautiful in its melancholy:
“Years have passed, I suppose. I'm not really counting them anymore. But I think of this thing often: Perhaps there is a Golden Age someplace, a Renaissance for me sometime, a special time somewhere, somewhere but a ticket, a visa, a diary-page away. I don't know where or when. Who does? Where are all the rains of yesterday?
In the invisible city?
Inside me?
It is cold and quiet outside and the horizon is infinity. There is no sense of movement.
There is no moon, and the stars are very bright, like broken diamonds, all.”
Decent!
Standouts for me:
– “The Equations of the Dead” by An Owomoyela
– “Swear Not by the Moon” by Seanan McGuire
– “Complete Exhaustion of the Organism” by Rich Larson
Flowers That Die confused me, being a work consisting of 80-something poems that feel like baby's-first-poetry, at once overly simple yet trying to be complex. While they are certainly quick reads, none of them really had a lasting impression on me.
Would recommend for young readers.
Average: 3.43, rounded down to 3.
Individual ratings:
The Nation of the sick - 3
Pretty interesting letter-turned-eulogy to some kind of future genius.
Different People - 3.5
Parallel universes are real, invented by a group of people who accidentally ended their own universe. A woman from the other universe appears and proclaims to be his wife from the other world, and they soon fall in come. Quickly, he starts to compare himself to his other self, and things continue from there...
Inselberg - 3
Reminded me of the tour guy friend from Downward to Earth. Nothing special.
Do Nothing - 3.5
Interesting piece on freedom. As apocalyopse nears, there's a simple choice: either die with the rest on Earth, or become a bodiless being in space. Is survival of our human race worth leaving behind everything material?
A Tableau of Things That Are - 4.5
Great stuff. Criminals don't get sentenced to jail but instead become a statue. Our protagonist ‘awakens' from a 10-year statue sentence, remaining a man of stone. His stint has permanently changed him.
Wolf Tones - 3
Sad to say this one lost me a little bit. Pretty good prose, but I have no idea what it was actually about, besides some superficial story beats. But it definitely had a very wintery vibe!
When You Die on the Radio - 3.5
A strong story about grief, being (un)able to come to terms with a loved one passing, and sacrificing for the sake of others. A radio that allows you to help people in need, at a terrible cost...
How to Become a Witch-Queen - 3.5
Retelling/sequel of Snow White with a feminist twist. Classic Theodora Goss.
Definitely one of the least interesting Uncanny issues I've read in a while, unfortunately. Some short reviews:
The Night Dance (3/5)
This is one of those typical fae dance stories. It's a lovely read, but I feel like I've read it plenty times before.
The Calcified Heart of Saint Ignace Battiste (2/5)
Prose was a little too obtuse for me, not translating to a captivating enough story.
Ribbons (3/5)
A queer story about accepting your identity and coming to terms with certain things. Not altogether bad, but again, just not enough for me.
The Haunting of Dr. Claudius Winterson (3.5/5)
A concise story about survivors guilt.
Lily, the Immortal (4/5)
A pretty fantastic story about people living forever via AI interpretations and deepfakes of who they were when they were alive.
Hundred-Handed One (2/5)
/
How to Safely Store your Magical Artifacts after Saving the World (3/5)
One of those list-based short stories we've been seeing the past few years.
The Clockwork Penguin Dreamed of Stars (4/5)
Lots of great, quick worldbuilding in this. Manages to feel both whimsical and melancholy at the same time.
Midnight Mass Talks Too much but still manages to compell
Review of a TV show. Skipped.
The future in the flesh: why Cyberpunk can't forget the body
An interesting essay on why the cyberpunk genre is not as dead as it seems and why the role of flesh in cyberpunk is often understated.
Even after death: an essay in questions
Mostly about River Solomon's' The Deep and other afrofuturist works exploring death (and other things).
Gone with the Clones
An essay on the star wars prequels- skipped.
POETRY
Crustacean on Land (3.5/5)
The House Snakes (3/5)
a sinkhole invites a street to consider its future (3/5)
Weaver Girl Dream (2/5)
Second read, 2 -> 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4 cause goodreads is stuck in 2005)
This was always the one McKillip I didn't like. After rereading it I'm able to appreciate it much more and find the story to be very simple and typical of McKillip- I distinctly recall finding it near incomprehensible on the first read! But this is a sweet comfort read that packs a lot more than I remembered.
———–
PRIOR REVIEW:
I absolutely loved The Changeling Sea & The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and went into this book with high expectations. Unfortunately, it didn't deliver. It was boring, didn't really feel like fantasy, and the plot often went nowhere. The writing style, which seemed so beautiful to me in her other books I've read, felt more like an obstacle.
This one took me a very long time to read, because I essentially read it in two parts (after it lost my attention almost halfway through, when it shifted to the main focus of the book). It's definitely not a simple read, and it has some interesting moments regarding (post-)colonialism, feminism, ecology, ... but unfortunately it just lost steam for me halfway through and was never able to win me back.
Still a good read, but unfortunately a bit disappointing, especially after hearing so much praise.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 ELGIN AWARD
A delightful collection of scifaiku. They are collected in themes- mathematic, physic, tectonic, geologic, climatic, atmospheric, lunaric, solaric, astronomic, and other.
“You might say he was a machine with a hobby. He had never been ordered not to have a hobby, so he had one. His hobby was Man.”
—
Prior review, January 2nd 2022:
A post-apocalyptic story turned creation myth.
—
Prior review, 31st of december 2020:
With it being New Year's Eve and all, I was reminded of this story, because it felt like I'd read this a few times before around this time. I just checked and apparently I first read it in March of 2017, re-read it January second of 2018, and didn't read it all in 2019 or 2020. So I figured it was time again to re-read this.
This really is a wonderful story. You have the robots carrying on after mankind has died out just like in There Will Come Soft Rains, where they almost revere the extinct race as some kind of gods, with a growing desperation to learn more about mankind. What is the nature of man? What does it mean to be conscious?
It's a wonderful story that still feels so resonant, all these decades later.
—
ORIGINAL REVIEW, MARCH 2 2017:
This is one of the best short stories I've ever read. It has aged extremely well. It explores the definition of humanity, the limits of A.I. and the (re-)birth of humanity. I recommend it to all fans of the post-apocalyptic genre, fans of science fiction, fans of fantasy, fans of books, fans of breathing.
“How far can a tree escape from its roots?”
Halfway through, it finally pulled me in. Patricia McKillip's usual beautiful lyricism shines brightly here, in a marginally better sequel. This series is still a very conflicting thing for me– beautiful, yes, but much more generic feeling compared to her other books. There's some small greatness in here, and I glimpsed a masterpiece... It's not quite that, but it's still a great read.
This is a fun little fungal monster story. It's a clear precursor to many current-day stories, though this one never feels like real “horror”- it's more of a travelogue-esque description of an encounter.
3.5, rounded down to a 3.
Read as part of the “Voices from the Radium Age” anthology.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 ELGIN AWARD
This collection of scifaiku and very short poems is a quick read and contains a variety of space-based poems. I particularly liked some of them for their imagery, though others I thought were too wordy. It's a decent collection.
This is a very beautifully written fairytale. It was my first Marillier, and it did not disappoint. An intriguing story of the fae, clearly feminist in nature, tightly plotted. There were a few lesser parts– it's clearly young adult, for one, lacking in character depth and sometimes a bit too unsubtle when it came to villains, character motivations, and so on. But then it is a fairytale, isn't it?
The prose was good but nothing amazing. I read her with Patricia McKillip in mind, since McKillip's most common cover collaborator also made the cover for this book, and because they obviously write very similar type of stories, but I found Marillier to be no match for McKillip's beautiful, flowery language.
A fun read.
This is a wonderful collection of poems. It's my favorite type of poetry—science fiction and fantasy, mostly free verse, mostly narrative. I have read the occassional Marisca Pichette poem in magazines, but this was the first time I read some of her poems together. I found it to be a rewarding experience.
“Nobyl”, a wonderful post-apocalyptic (almost solarpunk-feeling) poem about some people living in a new forest growing over a destroyed city. Wonderful, quickly established setting.
“For a place in the family of things”, a three-parter on some primeval(?) water-based beings. Has just the right amount of creepy mystery to keep me intrigued, and wanting for more.
“Paper boats”, containing the title line, with such wonderful imagery in short bursts, almost feeling like (more indirect) haiku from a strange creature's diary.
“At the wedding of Death and Time”, great concept!
“Oddkin”, I'm not entirely sure I understood what this poem was about but it didn't matter because I was enthralled by the images it created in my mind.
“vigil”- extinction nears.
Overall, while those specific poems I liked the most, there were almost no duds to think of. A more-than-solid collection.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Most of these stories I didn't care much for initially. I have read some of Le Guin's other non-SFF stuff, such as her essays and novels like The Beginning Place, but this was the first time I've ever had to push myself to continue reading her work. Largely a miss for me. After finishing however, some of them are very much growing on me
One story was an instant poignant hit for me. It concerns a man who pleads a great impresario to play a work he's written. The man is overworked, constantly distracted by busiwork and household chores- what he's presenting to the impresario is the work of over a decade.
But the man will never amount to anything. He will never release anything of note. He has the talent and the perseverance to create something beautiful, but he has the time nor the support to actually do it. A great talent is wasted by his inability to spend time on it.
It's a depressing story, but it still echoes in my mind. Might be one of my favorite Le Guin stories.
Favorite stories: “An die Musik” (aforementioned) and “The Lady of Moge”.
What a joy! It's clear how influential this story was. You've got cryopreservation, cyborgs, dying earth, deep time... all in one single short story from the 1930s. Reads like the kind of stuff Olaf Stapledon wrote around the same time but actually fun to read. It's a great initial vision of the sad death of our world. This one definitely felt Golden Age.
Read as part of the “Voices from the Radium Age” anthology.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This was a pleasant surprise! Narrative-based poetry, which are always my favorite, with a strong focus on empathy and understanding others. Biggest themes here are nature, people who are missing, escape artists/illusions and space.
There's some poignant stuff here. Sometimes relatable, other making you go “huh”, in-your-face or riddled with symbolism.
In one word? Aching. That was the biggest feeling I got throughout this entire collection, reminiscent of Patricia Lockwood but more on the speculative side. Recommended!
Favorites:
Once They Sainted a Mermaid
The Current Will Push and Pull You
Lacunae
Grow Your Own Little Forest
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.
This is a decent anthology with a huge variety of content. It consists of some non-fiction (mostly touching on subjects such as women in SFF, BIPOC in SFF and hot topics in speculative fiction, some microfiction detailing “alternative endings” to 2020, a bunch of reviews of various pieces of media (books, movies, tv shows and videogames) and some short interviews with SFF writers.
If you're looking to read more content from diverse writers, you should definitely read this. As I've been getting into more niche SFF things like speculative poetry and (feminist) small presses, this anthology came at a kind of perfect moment, since it's full of recommendations and introductions to exactly those things.
The only thing I didn't care for much were the reviews/articles on horror and anime, since I don't much care for those. But that's what you get with such a varied anthology as this!
Happy to have been introduced to Interstellar Flight. I was already familiar with several of their works (Can you sign my tentacle, field guide to invasive species of minnesota and local star) but had no idea they were all published by the same publisher. A small press to keep an eye on.
The concept of this short story is kind of ridiculous yet strangely fun. It's kind of like the Zones of Thought/Fermi Paradox but for air travel: some mysterious monster in “air jungles” prevents people from going over 30,000ft in the air. You get the gist of the story fairly quickly, but it's a cool (if super dated) idea for its time.
3.5, rounded down to 3. Read as part of the “Voices from the Radium Age” anthology.
I went into this with some skepticism (it just seemed like a Penric rip-off!) and left pleasantly surprised. It's a excellently structured novella that reads like a train and never overstays its welcome. I got about 1/4 through SIXTEEN WAYS TO DEFEND A WALLED CITY about a year ago and just really didn't like it, so I wrote Parker off. Glad I decided to give him another try!
These three stories all pertain to the (often broken) dynamic between a mother and son. The protagonists are always conflicted beings, often selfish or doubtful or in other ways unlikeable. Yet we never really hate them- they are too lifelike for that, too “real”, too reminiscent of flawed people we know.
I liked the second and third the most. They both felt like simple morality tales, while the first was more of a wordy dream-like experience. All three were certainly compelling, although I often found it hard to fully connect with the protagonists.
The thoughts and worries had by these people are timeless, reflections on family.
It's a very brief yet enthralling collection, though it felt a little dry at times.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.