I needed something to take the weight of Arrival off my mind. Daryl Gregory’s Spoonbenders was a very effective and enjoyable salve. It’s Daryl’s clever observations about life and the poesy he wraps it in that makes Spoonbenders such potent…
Sensibility and Discovery in Ted Chiang’s Speculative Fiction
It’s been months since I finished the stories in Ted Chiang’s Arrival. Before that I had binged Rick Remender’s Black Science comic book series. It was a struggle to get through the opening story in Ted’s book. After the kinetic…
Billy Dean Sounds Out War
WARNING SPOILERS!!! As I read David Almond’s The True Tales of the Monster Billy Dean Telt By Hisself I kept thinking of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. Both stories center around preadolescent boys who have become part of an ad…
Mirror Reflections
WARNING SPOILERS FOR BOTH MIRROR IN THE SKY AND KAZUO ISHIGURO’S NEVER LET ME GO 1928 International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation mural at 75 Broad St, NY. According to NY Songlines it is meant to represent “Commerce uniting the hemispheres…
The Gorgeous Dhampir D
It was hard to read Hideyuki Kikuchi’s Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Part 1 and 2 without scrambled images from the hero’s 1980s anime popping up in my head. Doris with the giant saucer-shaped, anime-eyes and ample cleavage, hunting dinosaurs…
Otsuichi’s Zoo
WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS! Hyon Gyon Park, Phantoms on Parade, Shin Gallery (2013) Otsuichi’s short story collection, Zoo, starts from the perspective of a killer and ends with the perspective of a survivor. Many of the English language Goodreads reviews of…