Review: Redstone Science Fiction #1

Welcome to the first issue of Redstone Science Fiction. Thanks for dropping byâ€.

Thus opens the newest pro-market, SFWA wannabe, magazine to hit the speculative market scene. It is the brainchild of Michael Ray (previously interviewed here on Diabolical Plots) and Paul Clemmons. Mr Ray has been waging an ambitious ‘get out the word’ campaign for his project. He has used facebook, blogs, emails, and my favorite writers workshop, hatrack, to alert as many lovers of speculative fiction of its coming arrival and to solicit material for its pages.

Review: Eight Against Reality

Eight Against Reality is an anthology put together by a very exclusive writers group called Written in Blood. It’s eight members vowed to help each other through thick and thin. So confident are they with each other’s abilities that they all contributed a story for all of us to read.

Bull Spec #1 Review

If you are looking for variety in your Speculative Fiction, Bull Spec is the magazine for you. The stories cover a wide spectrum for fans of all types. The reviews and interviews follow the same pattern. I believe that is wise if the editors are looking for a wide audience. I did see one thing that linked them all together. All the stories, as well as the subject in the chief interview, were a shade on the darker side. Could be it was just a coincidence but I worry it could become common because of the prevailing tastes. Knowing that all the works of fiction carry that same theme would make them predictable over time.

The Best of Escape Pod

I’ve listened to every single Escape Pod story that’s been published to date, 239 full length episodes and many flash fiction extras. iTunes estimates 6.5 days of audio for all of this. And from all of those stories, I’ve picked my top 10 ranked favorites, along with 6 more that almost made the list. In truth, there were a lot more that I would’ve liked to put on the list, but I really wanted to keep it at a top 10, not a top 100 or 200.

Review–Cell by Stephen King

Cell is one of King’s weakest books to date. The flaws of this book are different than his usual, so I’ll give him a credit for trying something different. Usually he spends the first three-fourths of a book giving character background before getting to the main plot of the book. This one was very short for him, at only 350 pages, and the action starts right away on page 2, but the characters in Cell are surprisingly lacking in defining features. Each of them is one-dimensional and none of them felt like real people to me.

Niche Game: Earthworm Jim 1 & 2

The stages and villains of the game are weird and varied, Psy-Crow being the least interesting of the group. “What the Heck?” takes place on a Hell-like planet called Heck, which is ruled by Evil the Cat (we all knew a cat was behind it, admit it). The background music for that one involves elevator music and tortured screams. The level is patrolled by briefcase toting lawyers who use their briefcase to block your blaster fire, and also snowmen. In the end you face off against Evil himself. Then there’s Major Mucus, a being made entirely out of phlegm. You have a bungee jumping battle where each of you try to knock the other into rock walls to break the other’s cord.

Review: The Golden Compass and His Dark Materials trilogy

But starting with the second book, The Subtle Knife, the anti-religion message began to coalesce even as the quality of the story declined. The third book, The Amber Spyglass, has an anti-religion message as subtle as a club with nails in, which I might’ve been able to overlook with great effort except that the story was weak as well, serving only to provide the framework with which to hang the message. Major characters constantly take a 180 degree turn in traits without any warning or provocation, even including our protagonist, Lyra! They spend embark on quests with no clear goal and much of the time is spent with secondary characters in other worlds that end up having no appreciable effect on anything!

Walking the Tightrope: Tad Williams

Tad Williams is a science fiction and fantasy author who has written many excellent novels, including the Otherland series and the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series. Shadowmarch is his current series in progress, with the third of fourth books scheduled to be released in early 2010 with the title “Shadowrise”. He is also writing a young adult series called Ordinary Farm with Deborah Beale, his wife, with the second book scheduled for 2010 titled “A Witch at Ordinary Farm.”

Game Review: “Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier” for the PS2

As in previous installments, through the course of the game, Jak acquires weapons and abilities that bring a lot of variety to the gameplay. Instead of just retreading old territory with eco-based powers from previous games, however, this game brings a whole slew of new toys, including a weaponized ball of energy you can throw at enemies, temporary eco-crystals you can grow to change your environment at strategic locations, an ersatz jet-pack, and the ability to slow time (okay, that one was from previous games).