2011: Collections

Robert Boyczuk, Horror Story and other Stories

This was a delightful surprise. To begin with, I know the author – I studied C and systems design under his direction in my second foray into the academic world about 25 years ago, and I remember at the time he did mention working on some short stories. So when I wandered across his name in a list of recent speculative fiction publications, I just had to a) see if was the Bob Boyczuk I remembered, and b) read the book. Well, it was and I did.

The stories in this collection inhabit the worlds between fantasy, science fiction and horror. They are well-written, original, sometimes very provocative, often very powerful, and always interesting. And they are available under Creative Commons licence (https://cs.senecac.on.ca/~robert.boyczuk/writing/collected-works.htm) if you can’t find a dead tree version. Read. Spread the word.


Peter S. Beagle, We Never Talk About My Brother
Peter S. Beagle, The Line Between

Beagle is truly one of the masters of the short form in speculative fiction. I savour every new collection of his stories that I read. Beagle tells such quintessentially human stories, with such range and depth, that his work regularly takes my breath away. If you are looking for a more considered examination, you could always look at the articles in this issue of Green Man Review devoted to Beagle and his work (http://www.greenmanreview.com/oneoffs/peterbeagle.html) or you could just go and read anything he’s written.


Lavie Tidhar, HebrewPunk

Fantasy and alternate history that makes use of Jewish tradition, myth and archetypes is rather rare. I may be that I have been missing out on many such examples, but I am hard-pressed to think of many who have made significant use of Jewish culture and tradition in their works. The names that come first to my mind are Peter Beagle, Lisa Goldstein, Ellen Galford, Michael Chabon, Avram Davidson, and of course (though he is claimed by the literary fiction people as one of their own) Isaac Bashevis Singer. – and now, Lavie Tidhar. In this collection of four linked fantasy stories, Tidhar gives us a wealth of characters out of Jewish tradition. I am looking forward to reading more of his work.


Gwyneth Jones, The Buonarotti Quartet

Four stories set in the same universe as Jones’ Aleutian Trilogy, which use the existence of an instantaneous transit technology as the foundation for storytelling. Jones discusses these stories – which I found as thought provoking as I have come to expect Jones’ work to be – in a post on the Aqueduct Press blog: http://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2009/05/gwyneth-joness-buonarotti-quartet.html

A GRRM Epic indeed

G. R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
G. R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
G. R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

Of course I'd heard of Martin's voluminous epic, collectively known as The Song of Ice and Fire, long before last year. And from time to time I'd thought about checking out the first volume, just to see if it was worth all the fuss, But I had previously been gravely disappointed by Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which became quite unreadable - for me, at least - after the first couple of volumes, and to which ASoIaF had been frequently compared.

But then the news came out that a TV series was being made of the epic, and I decided to read the first volume to see if the series might interest me.

Well... the first volume was better than I'd feared, and I did find myself identifying quite strongly with some of the main characters, so despite the unrelieved grimmness and the somewhat disorienting choice of an ever increasing number of POVs, I kept on reading. I've invested enough in this that I will likely continue reading to the end - I really do want to know what happens to Arya and Daenerys - but I can't quite shower it with the praise that so many others have. It seems that when it comes to multi-volume epics with casts of seemingly thousands, in which each volume is pushing 800 pages, I still prefer Michelle West and Kate Elliott over Martin (with honourable mention to Katharine Kerr, whose Deverry series has several volumes that are rather less than 800 pages, but makes up for that by having 15 volumes in the series).