Pohl’s Jem may not be a “gem” but is still worth a look

In various profiles of Frederick Pohl, I have more than once seen Jem (1979) listed as one of his best and most important novels. After giving it a read I can see why it’s considered “important,” but I haven’t read enough of his work (at the time of this writing) to know if it’s [...]

Happy (Sci-Fi) Thanksgiving!

If you’re done eating turkey and you’ve parked yourself in front of the computer to sit and digest your dinner a while, be sure to take a look at this John Scalzi Sci-Fi Scanner post in which he tells us what he’s thankful for in terms of science fiction movies.
Science fiction is worth giving thanks [...]

“The logical and analytical type” — yeah, works for me

There’s this site called Typealyzer that has a cute shtick: enter the address of a blog, and they claim to provide a personalty profile of the blogger. So hey, just for kicks I thought I’d see what they had to say about me. Their “analysis” put me in a group labeled “the [...]

Some golden and not-so-golden stories from Sturgeon

If you’ve read many of my reviews, you may have noticed I’ve said repeatedly that my preference is for novels, and I don’t generally find many short stories to my liking. However, I have set myself the task of reading more stories, in light of the role they’ve played in the history of science [...]

It’s science fiction, not science class

A few days ago, Peggy over at Biology in Science Fiction posted a series of questions about the relationship between science and science fiction, particularly relating to the promotion of the former by the latter, and invited scientists and sf writers to respond. This was in conjunction with ScienceOnline09, a conference on promoting public [...]

Rogue Moon, another great classic

I’ll tell you what, I’m really enjoying the experience I’ve been having this year of immersing myself in all these old classics that I had overlooked before. I’m also realizing how many great books were published particularly in the 1950’s and 1960’s — what a great time that was for science fiction! Add [...]