Welcome to the third and final instalment of a review series covering the finalists for the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. Before we go on, now would be a good time to look back at what has already been covered…
2020 Hugo Awards Reviews: Novelettes – Part 2
Continuing our reviews of the 2020 Hugo Awards finalists in the Best Novelette category, we move on to “Away with the Wolves” by Sarah Gailey and “For He Can Creep” by Siobhan Carroll.
2020 Hugo Awards Reviews: Novelettes – Part 1
Welcome back to this series of reviews covering the prose stories on the 2020 Hugo Awards ballot. The previous posts in the series looked over the Best Short Story category; now, let us move on to the category for stories of 7,500 to 17,500 words: Best Novelette…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Vestal
Charlee Jacob’s vampire novel Vestal was published in 2005, the same year that Stephenie Meyer gave vampires a newfound popularity with Twilight. Jacob had tackled vampires before, of course: her debut novel This Symbiotic Fascination was in part a vampire tale, and she also wrote enough vampire short stories to fill an entire anthology, The…
Hugo Awards Reviews: Short Stories – Part 3
Concluding the exploration of the Hugo Awards Short Stories category (read part 1 and part 2) with the final reviews below, we have journeyed from a fantasy empire to an apocalyptic future, met cloud-people and the living dead, and heard tales of cannibal women and dancing dolls. Along the way, it is hard to miss…
2020 Hugo Awards Reviews: Short Stories – Part 2
Continuing our reviews of the 2020 Hugo Awards finalists in the Short Stories category, we move on to “Blood is Another Word for Hunger” by Rivers Solomon and “As the Last I May Know” by S. K. Huang.
2020 Hugo Awards Reviews: Short Stories – Part 1
The pandemic may have led to conventions around the world being cancelled, but many of their events have managed to survive in virtual form – Worldcon’s annual Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy being one example. The awards are scheduled to be presented in August, under different circumstances but retaining the same spirit as…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Vampires in Reflection
Mihail Baranga, teenage son to a family of circus acrobats, is surrounded by glamour and extravagance. But he yearns for a darker existence: he wants to become a vampire.
[Patreon Exclusive] The Fighting First Lady: Red Sonja in the 1970s
Our monthly Patron-exclusive essay series continues. You can read all of these incredible analyses for as little as a dollar a month on our Patreon. Back in the 1970s, comic covers hailed her as “Fantasy’s #1 Fighting Female” and “the Fighting First Lady of Swords-and-Sorcery”. Decades later, she retains iconic status even among people who would…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Monsters of the Psyche
Charlee Jacob’s 1998 story “The Border in Zen” is set after a nuclear war and takes place in a village named Persephone’s Pity. Here, the people lead a peaceful, ecological, egalitarian existence, eager to avoid the atrocities of the past. But this post-apocalyptic culture has a darker side: a preoccupation with the sullying of innocence….
Our Darkest Dreams Described: Horror Fiction in the 20th Century by Jess Nevins
Horror fiction has a history problem. While its cousin, the science fiction genre, has been eagerly mapped by decades’ worth of enthusiasts, much of horror’s heritage has been documented in comparatively little detail. Perhaps this is due to the genre’s aura of disreputability; or maybe we can point to so many of horror’s finest specimens…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Cities and Guises
Charlee Jacob’s novella “Up, Out of Cities that Blow Hot and Cold” – which debuted in the 2000 collection of the same name before being reissued as a standalone book – is a story that takes the concept of urban decay literally. All around the world, cities are being hit by disasters: the Eiffel Tower…