John Kessel
John Kessel. Iteration. (Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 5)
A good example of pitching a story just right.
John Kessel. Clean. (Asimovs, March 2011).
A sequel to Kessel’s first Asimov story – ‘Hearts Do Not in Eyes Shine’, all the way back from October 1983.
John Kessel. The Closet. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2010)
A short piece written as part of a festschrift to Ursula K. Le Guin, which touches on one of the themes in her writing.
The New Space Opera 2. (ed Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, Eos 2009).
A big book, with a huge amount of top quality SF.
Jonathan Strahan. The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 3.
A collection of excellent stories.
John Kessel. Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance. (New Space Opera 2).
Tight drama with an interesting background.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June/July 2009
Robert Reed. Firehorn. Prolific Reed is partly able to keep up his amazing output through dint of his capacity to mine his life, both recent and distant, for stories (to varying degrees of success, it has to be said, lest there be any suspicion that I am a Reed fanboy who will blindly praise all [...]
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 2008
Sean McMullen. The Twilight Year. A historical tale with the merest whiff of the fantastical. England in the mid-sixth century is the setting, with the populace struggling under the few remaining vestiges of Roman rule, and under the blanket of volcanic cloud spewed from the eruption of Krakatoa. In such times perhaps a mighty hero [...]
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2003
One of the occasional F&SF special issues devoted to a particular author, which I for think is a nice touch. This issue is by way of a tribute to Barry Malzberg. John Kessel. Of New Arrivals, Many Johns, and the Music of the Spheres. Malzberg has written a handful of stories in which the setting [...]
Asimovs, February 2008
Michael Swanwick. From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled… The opening paragraph is a doozy – it describes the titular city on Europa, and does so quite beautifully across several sentences, and then kicks into a higher gear as the narrator describes herself : a simulation of one of the humans killed in the destruction of [...]
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