Speculative Fiction from Around the World
Edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray, this anthology of fantasy stories has a fun concept that acts as a connective thread: all the stories take place, at least partly, in a bar. The same bar. And not just any bar—the Ur-Bar, run by Gilgamesh himself, historical king of Uruk and hero of Mesopotamian mythology.... Continue Reading →
The Universe of Things is a difficult anthology to review, since it is populated by some very difficult writing, and I don't mean the language is hard to understand. By this, I mean that the stories are very challenging, and not straightforward at all. Gwyneth Jones' writing is unsettling, which can be interpreted as a... Continue Reading →
Troubled young runaway Aydee escapes her abusive home and stumbles across a bookstore called Lost Pages. After a series of bizarre encounters with a variety of creatures and divine beings, Aydee is befriended by Lost Pages’ shopkeeper Lucas and his myriad pet dogs. Together with Lucas, Aydee works and grows up at Lost Pages while... Continue Reading →
The Best Erotic Fantasy & Science Fiction edited by Cecilia Tan and Bethany Zaiatz is a cohesive, balanced collection of stories that definitely live up to Circlet Press’ goal to find new ways to break open the strictures and formulas of the science fiction and fantasy genres in tandem with breaking open the formulas of... Continue Reading →
A review of "Welcome to the Greenhouse" (ed. Gordon Van Gelder)
Tesseracts is a historic semi-annual anthology of Canadian science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Each volume is put together by a different pair of editors. Jean-Louis Trudel's history of the series up until 1998 can be found in Tesseracts 7. Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing acquired Tesseract Books (which published Tesseracts from its fourth volume... Continue Reading →
Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places is a single-author collection by Argentine writer Gustavo Bondoni, put out by the small press Altered Dimensions and available in paperback and ebook editions. The twenty-two stories comprising this volume are primarily idea-driven science fiction. According to the author, all were originally written in English, rather than having been... Continue Reading →
The publisher, Cheryl Morgan, has this to say about Dark Spires: I’m not going to wax lyrical about its chances in awards, because it is not that sort of book. Dark Spires was not created to compete with the blockbuster anthologies produced by the likes of Ellen Datlow or Jonathan Strahan. ... Rather it was... Continue Reading →
Apexology: Horror is a digital only anthology of dark fiction from Apex Books. The anthology's editor, Jason Sizemore, states in the introduction that the anthology's goal is to "promote the authors on the Apex roster in a cost efficient manner." There is a mixture of reprint and original stories. As with all anthologies, the stories... Continue Reading →
Sword and Sorceress, XXV, edited by Elisabeth Waters, takes the reader on a waltz through divergent worlds and heroines. Add a dash of romance and derring-do, not to mention a generous portion of sorcery, and we're presented with an all-encompassing panorama of awesomeness. The twenty stories within the anthology were pretty darn good. The vast... Continue Reading →
The World SF Blog 