If you want to drink wine and chat with smart enthusiastic people about a buzzy book in an extremely cool lounge, the publisher Random House has your back. Continuing their pattern of innovative New York City event planning after their fun Book Fair for Grownups last fall, Penguin Random House launched a swanky new monthly…
Portrait of an Artist: Frida Kahlo Is Perfect for Art Lovers Young and Old
Frida Kahlo is one of the most recognisable artists who ever lived. While her likeness has been highly commodified in recent years, the potency of her art and her fanbase is larger than ever — and constantly increasing. Her home, her Blue House, has now become a regular stop for art lovers in Mexico City,…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Dread in the Beast
Bodily fluids flow freely through horror fiction. Whether the substance in question is sucked out by vampires or splattered across walls by serial killers, there is a good chance that a novel of the genre will contain its share of blood, brains and viscera. In the more erotic corners of horror literature, readers are apt…
One Order of Murder Mystery, Hold the Regressive Politics, Please
After seeing Knives Out, I, for one, felt a new resurgence of my love for murder mysteries. There are many great murder mysteries of course, but one of the reasons Knives Out felt so rejuvenating is that it sidestepped a lot of the conservative political assumptions of the genre. Excitingly, however, there is a rich…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Haunter or Soma
Charlee Jacob invoked atrocities from across human history in the same way that a Romantic poet might invoke the Arabian Nights. Sometimes she delved into the past and found inspiration in such familiar horror reference points as Jack the Ripper, Elizabeth Bathory and the witch-hunts; other times she ripped tales of murders and warfare from…
Machina Delivers Suspense and Robots
Machina takes place in a near(ish) future, in which it has become increasingly clear that humans cannot stay on Earth longterm with any expectation of survival. That’s why rival tech companies are competing for a choice Government contract to send their AIs to Mars: to begin terraforming for humans to eventually migrate. Two rival companies…
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is a Careful Study on Indian Society but Has a Disappointing Plot
When a child goes missing, nine-year-old Jai decides to use his amateur sleuthing skills to find the missing boy. He enlists his best friends, Pari and Faiz, to help him. But try as the trio might, they can’t stop more children from going missing. But with no substantial clues to follow, and absolutely no help…
Vampirella: Blood Invasion Breaststrokes Boobily Down the Stream
Dynamite Entertainment ventures into the world of prose novels with Vampirella: Blood Invasion, featuring a gorgeous cover by Jenny Frison. Unfortunately, the inside pages could use a little more polish.
Copter Crash: Isabel Fall and the Transgender SF Debate
On New Year’s Day, the latest issue of the digital science fiction magazine Clarkesworld went live. The line-up included a mixture of established talents and new names; in the latter category was Isabel Fall, who contributed a story entitled “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter.” Isabell Fall’s piece was available on the website for…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: This Symbiotic Fascination
Having spent years charting a landscape of atrocity, degradation and twisted ecstasy across her short fiction, as discussed in the previous post in this series, Charlee Jacob made her debut as a novelist in 1997 with This Symbiotic Fascination. This novel tells the story of two employees at an electronics shop, Tawne Delaney and Arcan Tyler;…
The Vampyre’s Legacy, Part 12: One More Decade
Two centuries ago, Dr. John Polidori’s story “The Vampyre” was published, and vampire literature was born. The Vampyre’s Legacy series has charted the evolution of the genre over two hundred years, taking one story from each decade to use as a case study. But the most recent decade presents a problem: the period is still too…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Dark as Ever
“I want to be the woman in red,” says Grace to her tattooist. It is the latest step in her journey of transformation. Grace has tried dressing in red, adorning herself with an array of sanguine garments: “Rustling scarlet taffeta. Crimson velvet as thick and soft as bat flesh. Wine colored underthings clinging like guilt.”…