Butterflies
“I am well versed in fairy tales where centuries skitter past in less than a sentence, but in reality, when one is lying all dressed up in one’s finest garments with whalebone corsetry digging deep in the spaces between one’s ribs, each day stretches out like a possible lifetime and all one can do is to listen, and discretely fidget.”
They End Up In Space
What happens when you mix a masochistic homophobe, hipsters, a Nova with a souped up alien engine, and a penis shaped art gallery? Read this first place winner in our New Voices Contest to find out. Primo Halifax Primo steps out of the Nova’s passenger seat onto the asphalt, pausing to hunch and kiss […]
Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer
A Suspenseful, Eerie Page-Turner Jeff VanderMeer’s star has been rising for some years now, and if Annihilation, the first book of The Southern Reach Trilogy is any indication, this series will satisfy long-time readers and earn him many new ones. The story unfolds as a group of four women scientists travel into “Area X” a […]
Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow
If You’re Not Doing Anything Wrong… Marcus Yallow is a 17-year old geek genius living in a near-future San Francisco where kids are monitored constantly by cyber-security on their school-issued laptops, radio frequency ID chips in their library books, and gait recognition software in the halls. Marcus delights in getting around the system with harmless […]
Freaks’ Amour, by Tom De Haven
Mutants on the Outside, Looking In Hardcore. That’s the word that comes to mind. But not just because Freaks’ Amour refers to a XXX rated show where Normals go to watch mutant men rape their wives and girlfriends (and for a finale the Normals pelt them with rotten fruit). The sex scenes are not particularly […]
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, by Genevieve Valentine
This novel, which received a Nebula nomination for Best Novel, takes place in a post-war landscape. The particulars are left vague: we know that there were bombs and radiation, followed by smaller wars for control, and the creation of city-states. Outside of these, borders have become fluid, and life brutal. To stay out of trouble, […]
Osama, by Lavie Tidhar
Wishing Terrorism Was Only Fiction Many people have compared the novel Osama by Lavie Tidhar to books by Phillip K. Dick. It is similar in that the main characters come to realize that reality is not at all what it seems, and that there are those who would stop them from learning the truth. However, […]