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Returning My Sister’s Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice by Eugie Foster

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ March 1, 2009

Up till now, fans of Eugie Foster’s clever, crystalline fairy tales, drawn from Chinese and Japanese mythology, had to seek out single instances of her stories in various magazines and anthologies. However, with the March publication of Returning My Sister’s Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, old aficionados can relish 12 [...]

Harsh Oases by Paul Di Filippo

By Joshua Reynolds ⋅ February 15, 2009

Harsh Oases is Paul Di Filippo’s 13th collection, bringing together works both new and old under the PS Publishing banner. The stories fall mostly into the science fiction category, with a few debatable exceptions, and are, by and large, thoroughly enjoyable. There’s a wonderful and well-deserved introduction by Cory Doctorow as well, which sets the [...]

Nursery Rhyme Noir by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

By John Ottinger III ⋅ February 3, 2009

For those in the know, flash fiction is one of the most innovative and creative writing forms in existence today. So it was with pleasure that I read Nursery Rhyme Noir: The Hasp Deadbolt Files by David C. Kopaska-Merkel. Published by small press Sam’s Dot Publishing, this little book brings together 26 flash fiction tales [...]

The Next Fix by Matt Wallace

By Ziv Wities ⋅ January 15, 2009

The Next Fix is Matt Wallace’s first short story collection. Many of the offerings in it were originally published as podcasts at Variant Frequencies, while others were first published in good ol’ print, and plenty of them are worth your attention.
“Absolution, Insured” suggests an America where karmic retribution is not only an unavoidable reality, it’s [...]

Filter House by Nisi Shawl

By Lyndon Perry ⋅ January 11, 2009

Nisi Shawl is not for the casual reader. Not that her stories aren’t entertaining. Many are. But the 14 stories collected in Filter House seem to be crafted for those who read critically as well as for escape. As such, with a couple of exceptions, this collection offers a fulfilling, if challenging repast. In honesty, [...]

PS Showcase #5: Impossibilia by Douglas Smith

By Mike O'Driscoll ⋅ December 16, 2008

In his elegant and perceptive introduction to this latest showcase collection from PS Publishing, Chaz Brenchley reminds us that “the proper focus of a story, any story, lies in the characters that inhabit it.” In the three novelettes that comprise Impossibilia, Douglas Smith attempts—and on the whole, succeeds—in laying bare the psychological and emotional fragility [...]

Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories by Craig Laurence Gidney

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ November 12, 2008

Craig Laurance Gidney loves words…sensually, sexually, omnivorously. He streams out floods of them in his stories so that you, too, can taste their deliciousness. He wields them with abandon and precision to create little worlds that rise off the page and engulf you in snow globes of sparkling beauty and perceptiveness. Each story in his [...]

Mama’s Boy by Fran Friel

By Michele Lee ⋅ November 11, 2008

Don’t let the first story in Fran Friel’s collection, Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales, deceive you into thinking this is some sort of “Horror Lite” book. The first story, “Beach of Dreams,” is a surreal, exotic tale of a man visiting a native tribe who is one day privy to examining strange things that [...]

Islington Crocodiles by Paul Meloy

By Douglas Hoffman ⋅ November 10, 2008

My first glimpse of Paul Meloy’s fiction was a sparkler published in The Third Alternative—”Dying in the Arms of Jean Harlow,” a blue-collar urban horror-fantasy sharp as a crack on the back of the head with a bottle of lager. The story impressed me with its deliciously nasty sense of humor and its roller coaster [...]

PS Showcase #2: Conscientious Inconsistencies by Nancy Jane Moore

By Lyndon Perry ⋅ October 24, 2008

Conscientious Inconsistencies by Nancy Jane Moore is the second volume in PS Publishing’s series of “mini-collections of brand new short stories by some of the best and brightest new writers on the genre fiction scene.” And I have to say I was impressed. Although touted in the introduction as a sampling of stories influenced by [...]

Six Silly Stories by Geoffrey Maloney

By John Ottinger III ⋅ October 3, 2008

The “silly” in the title of Australian author Geoffrey Maloney’s collection, Six Silly Stories, refers not to the childlike humor we normally associate with the term, but instead is synonymous with “odd,” “strange,” or even “weird.” The stories in this collection, subtitled “The City Sextet,” take the hum-drum tasks of everyday life, from doctor’s visits, [...]

Space Magic: Stories By David D. Levine

By Nader Elhefnawy ⋅ October 1, 2008

I must admit that I had not encountered David D. Levine’s work before I was offered this assignment, and suspect that most of those reading this have not done so either—a point on which Bruce Holland Rogers lingers in the introduction, wryly titled “Some Guy Talking About Some Other Guy’s Stories.” As he notes [...]

PS Showcase #4: Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes by Mark Samuels

By Joshua Reynolds ⋅ September 18, 2008

PS Showcase 4: Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes is Mark Samuels’s third short fiction collection, after The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (Tartarus Press, 2003) and Black Altars (Rainfall Books, 2003). There is some carryover from the previous two collections (notably the story “Patient 704″), but, for the most part, Glyphotech and Other Macabre [...]

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

By Fábio Fernandes ⋅ September 10, 2008

Even though Kelly Link’s collection, Magic for Beginners, was published in 2006, it still deserves acknowledgement. Link’s stories are surprisingly original and beautiful, and one thing that stands out is her choice of words. The way she savors language is not unlike John Crowley’s writing, such as in his novel Little, Big. She cares about [...]

The Turing Test by Chris Beckett

By Alvaro Zinos-Amaro ⋅ July 30, 2008

The Turning Test, a collection of fourteen stories by Chris Beckett, provides entertaining journeys into interstellar space and the distant past, excursions into the nature of AI, VR, and human identity, and even musings on alien art and theology. These stories were all originally published in Interzone and Asimov’s, and though there are no direct [...]

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