Scary Books

Thu 17 Oct 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Every October I think, Darn it, should have posted about our scary books so instead of occasionally thinking that for the next two weeks here’s a skeleton’s handful of scary books all pretty much guaranteed to be a mistake to start reading after 10 p.m. (Although maybe I should have included Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius which is terrifying in a completely different way.)


Readercon 2024

Wed 10 Jul 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

I’m looking forward to Readercon this coming weekend. It looks like we will be there from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning. I am hoping to attend a panel on Naomi Mitchison on Saturday afternoon and then lie around and not do much. A number of Small Beer authors will be there —

Benjamin Rosenbaum
Greer Gilman
Jeffrey Ford
Sofia Samatar
Susan Stinson

— and Kate and Jonathan will have some of their books at the Small Beer/Book Moon table in the dealer’s room.

I am both intrigued to go to a convention for the first time since Boskone 2020 (what a close escape as there was an early superspreader event at another Boston convention that month!) and also nervous about 120-year-old me running out of steam very quickly. Oh well! It will be a lot for everyone.

Quite a few people are down with Covid so we’ll be using our carrageenan nasal sprays, wearing our N95 masks, and cross our fingers that everyone doing the same will keep us all safe.

screenshot of many titles by Benjamin Rosenbaum Greer Gilman Jeffrey Ford Sofia Samatar Susan Stinson


Speeches Not Delivered

Tue 31 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

I’ve written a few acceptance speeches that didn’t have to be given — although in 2015 I did not write one when Monstrous Affections was up for the World Fantasy Award as the ballot was so strong. Ellen had won the award before, George and Gardner had won the year before, Michael Kelly happily won this year, and Long Hidden is a spectacularly good book. I didn’t even notice that Gordon Van Gelder was leading me back from a playdate for our kids to the awards in time for the announcement. Anyway, I was surprised and a little embarrassed to be the person throwing out random words instead of organized.

So this year I got ahead of things and a week before the convention I wrote this speech with Kelly and emailed it to Jeff Ford who kindly agreed to accept on our behalf. The award went to Matt Ottley, for The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness, which looks like a great book. If I have to writer one of these, it’s usually along the lines of thanks to the writers, the readers, the booksellers, and librarians.

This year’s version is here:

First, thanks to the marvelous Jeff Ford for accepting this award for us. And huge thanks to the writers we published over the years, but especially Richard Butner and Robert Freeman Wexler, whose books we published in 2022, and the contributors to 2 issues of our zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

We are sorry not to be here in person: Gavin never tested positive for Covid but after an brief illness in December 2021 he has now has something which seems to be long Covid/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This has much diminished his physical capacities. This is also why we are publishing many fewer books. We still wear masks everywhere we go.

We have mixed feelings about missing conventions, this one in particular. Missouri has passed anti-trans and anti-lgbtq laws that mean it is not a safe place for many people. Can we support these inequalities with our tourist dollars? Also, how would we have travelled here? By plane? With climate change we find it harder to justify getting on a plane for anything these days. Even so, we miss being here so a last thanks to this gathering, in person or online, for making community out of some great, very weird books.


Readercon 2023

Mon 10 Jul 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Readercon is back in Quincy again this year and while we’re not going the lovely Steve Berman of Lethe Press will have a few Small Beer titles available at his table so that when you hear Jeffrey Ford, Greer Gilman, Elizabeth Hand, Sarah Pinsker, or Susan Stinson read you can dash over and pick up one of their books.

Steve will also have 1 or 2 other SBP titles — and maybe a couple of copies of Kelly’s White Cat Black Dog?  — but he only has one table, so there won’t be the whole cit and kaboodle, he spoonered. These books will be there — email me ahead of time if there are any others you’d like to pick up there:

Liz Hand books


Congratulations World Fantasy Award finalists!

Wed 20 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Congratulations to all of the World Fantasy Award finalists and especially to:

Isabel Yap for her collection Never Have I Ever
and her novella “A Canticle for Lost Girls”

Jeffrey Ford for his collection Big Dark Hole

Sarah Pinsker for her story “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” — originally published in Uncanny and collected in her 2023 collection Lost Places

The news came in just too late to put in the forthcoming late issue of LCRW which might even be mailed out this month, that part is out of my hands.

Anyway, congratulations to all the finalists, what fun!


Locus Reading & Panel

Wed 22 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

As part of the Locus awards readings and celebration, Kelly will do a zoom reading on Thursday June 23 with Michael Swanwick and be on a panel on Connie Willis and Gary K. Wolfe on Saturday, June 25:

Thursday, June 23 – 4 p.m. PDT/7 p.m. ET – Reading: Kelly Link and Michael Swanwick

Saturday, June 25 – 2 p.m. PDT/5 p.m. ET – DONUT SALON: In Conversation: Kelly Link, Connie Willis, and Gary K. Wolfe (bring your own donuts!)

Jeff Ford and Sarah Pinsker are two of the many readers and panellists. Should be fun. I’ve lifted the post from the Locus site so check here for updates.

Event links at Locus Awards Online 2022 will become live at their scheduled time. Here’s the full list of events from Locus:

LOCUS AWARDS SCHEDULE

Wednesday, June 22  –
4:00 p.m. PDT–  Reading: José Pablo Iriarte and Nnedi Okorafor
5:00 p.m. PDT–  Reading: Nalo Hopkinson and Catherynne M. Valente
6:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Fran Wilde
Thursday, June 23  –
4:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Kelly Link and Michael Swanwick
5:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Suzanne Palmer and Wole Talabi
6:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Jeffrey Ford and Angela Slatter
Friday, June 24 –
4:00 p.m PDT – Reading: Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Cat Rambo
5:00 p.m PDT – Reading: John Wiswell and Connie Willis
6:00 p.m PDT – Online Hangout with Connie Willis and Locus folks
Saturday, June 25 –
10:00 a.m. PDT – PANEL: “Hauntings & Histories” with Akemi Dawn Bowman, TJ Klune, Darcie Little Badger, Sam J. Miller
11:00 p.m. PDT – PANEL: “Power Dynamics in New Worlds” with Daniel Abraham, C.L. Clark, Fonda Lee, Sarah Pinsker
12:00 p.m. PDT – PANEL: “Writing Rules and How to Break Them” with Charlie Jane Anders, Charles Payseur, Sheree Renée Thomas, A.C. Wise
2:00 p.m. PDT – DONUT SALON: In Conversation: Kelly Link, Connie Willis, and Gary K. Wolfe
(bring your own donuts!)
3:00 p.m. PDT – LOCUS AWARDS CEREMONY with MC Connie Willis

 

*Memberships include a set digital subscription to the magazine, from our February 2022 issue (our Year-in-Review issue with Recommended Reading List and Poll and Survey) to August 2022 (with the Locus Awards photo coverage and writeup) and everything in between. Member subscription is non-transferable and does not affect or extend existing subscriptions.

Connie Willis
MC Connie Willis

Locus Supports Inclusivity! Thinking of attending? Please do. We encourage people of color, women, people with disabilities, older people, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people to attend. We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, age, size, nationality, religion, culture, education level, and self-identification. Locus associate editor Arley Sorg will serve as our PoC/LGBTQQIA Ombudsman.  Feel free to reach out to him in advance at locus@locusmag.com subject: Arley Ombudsman. Our Code of Conduct is available here: Locus Science Fiction Foundation Code of Conduct.


Celebrating Jeffrey Ford’s new book Big Dark Hole with a Warehouse Clearance Sale!

Tue 6 Jul 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

July 6th, 2021: We are celebrating a new book, Jeffrey Ford’s Big Dark Hole, and 20 years (. . .) of Small Beer Press books with a Warehouse Clearance Sale!

It’s been 20 years since we started publishing books as Small Beer Press and we are going to celebrate in a couple of different ways beginning now and continuing later this summer — mostly by making books or sending even more books out into the world, ha!

First Thing

We are delighted to celebrate 20 years of really rather good books by publishing Jeffrey Ford’s new collection Big Dark Hole. It’s a stoater!

This is Jeff’s sixth collection — seventh, really, as there was a Best of from PS last year — and every one of them is a cracker. We’re already planning our next collection with him — who wouldn’t when you look at this list I grabbed from his site:

The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, 2002, Golden Gryphon Press

The Empire of Ice Cream, 2005, Golden Gryphon Press

The Drowned Life, 2008, Harper Collins

Crackpot Palace, 2012, Harper Collins

A Natural History of Hell, 2016, Small Beer Press

Big Dark Hole, 2021, Small Beer Press, natch, comes out today, July the 6th, 2021, and it is a short, sharp shock of fantastic fiction.

There are a three new stories first published here in this book, “Monkey In the Woods,” “Inn of the Dreaming Dog,” and “The Match.” That third one there will have you stopping what you’re doing and making sure you read the rest of the story before someone interrupts.

You can read one of the stories, “Not Without Mercy,” online, but, really the book is shiny in surprising places and feels good in the hand. Sign up now for Readercon — online in August — where Jeffrey Ford and Ursula Vernon will be the guests of honor.

Second Thing

We’re putting on our first warehouse sale in many years. Long time readers will recognize the screenshot below from our pre-WordPress website — and now 10+ years later we’re basically doing the same thing.

The sale is going to run on the Book Moon website and will have a few rules and limitations:

  • alphabetical buying encouraged but quite difficult given the price-ordered list, but it’ll be fun, honest.
  • no buying over 5,000 books unless you really want to build something interesting out of them.
  • On second thoughts if you want to buy over 5,000 copies, you do you.
  • Discounts range from 0-94% off retail prices.
  • Order some full-price titles (such as the first one on this page,Travel Light, or Big Dark Hole) and we’ll throw free titles from the sale list.
  • Orders on this Easthampton, Massachusetts-based bookshop website will be shipped as fast as we can put them through from the Tennessee warehouse of our fabulous Minneapolis-based distributor, Consortium.
  • Gosh we love these books. We loved publishing every single one of them and right now we’re lining up some surprises and new books for the couple of years. It is true that I am an enthusiast, still, about all this and our warehouse people will tell you that, yes, I am very enthusiastic when I put the print orders in. More joy all round, says I.
  • There are a few books in the sale that are rarer and we will ship them from Book Moon.
  • This Decennial Warehouse Clearance Sale will run for one (1) week, July 6th-12th with the possibility of being extended for one (1) more week.
  • We only ship within the US & Canada.

I imagine if we keep publishing for another 10 or 20 years, we’ll have more clearance sales. Imagine that: 2030. 2040. What funny looking numbers. 2030 looks more like a time than a year. 8:30 already?

Who knows. Maybe by 2040 we’ll all be ordering small pills from Bookland that download the latest story virus into our chips. If you trust Bookland and your shipper, of course.

Anyway, please pass the word around and stock up: it’ll be Jolabokaflod before you know it.

Right, here’s that all important Warehouse Clearance Event link.

Thanks for reading, spreading the word, buying books, and keeping this Small Beer contraption on the road!


Big Dark Hole in July

Thu 14 Jan 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Big Dark Hole cover - click to view full sizeSome might argue we’re at the bottom of a big dark hole now (but, really, isn’t it generally the human condition?) but just wait until July when Jeffrey Ford’s new collection Big Dark Hole drops.

The book had been scheduled for March but July, with the possibility of a slightly brighter world — and Jeff being one of the Guest of Honor at Readercon — beckoned, and the switch has been made.

Preorder here or on Bookshop (why is the cover not showing there? How uninterestingly mysterious) or at your fave indie bookstore and to keep you going Jeff has posted a new story on his own website.


Double Jeffrey World Fantasy Awards

Wed 8 Nov 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

A Natural History of Hell cover - click to view full sizetl;dr 2 Jeffs won awards, so did other people. We love books and good drinks.

We went to cloudy and muggy, phew, San Antonio*, Texas, last week for the World Fantasy Convention and on Sunday — while we were at the airport waiting for our flight and chatting over a very much enjoyed beer with Scott Andrews of Beneath Ceaseless Skies — the awards were handed out.

I am delighted to report that Jeffrey Ford won for his collection A Natural History of Hell and doubly delighted to say that Jeffrey Alan Love, whose art graces the cover of that book among others, received the award for Best Artist. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners!

Jeffrey Alan Love made a huge impact at the con by pulling out his paper, pens, ink and pads and making (and giving away!) pieces of art at the bar and at the (massive! overwhelming!) group signing event on Saturday night. I took one home with me and am still amazed by his process. Can’t wait to pick up Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Norse Myths: Tales of Odin, Thor and Loki which Jeffrey illustrated.

I spent most of my time in the dealers room chatting with people, checking out all the books, the lovely books, that everyone had brought, buying books, and sometimes selling books. We sold most of the books we brought, a lovely thing! I wonder sometimes if book rooms like this will still exist in five or ten years. They’re just like indie bookstores: if people want them to exist, they shop there. If they don’t care, they don’t buy books there, and the book room (or bookstore) disappears. I’m for them going on and on. I do love poking around and finding books I knew and did not know I wanted.

Meghan McCarron had recommended to all that the Esquire bar should be checked out and wow, that was a great hot tip. I loved the cocktails upstairs but the downstairs Cocteles de Maíz were the cocktails of my heart: that the menu was designed and printed (on paper made of corn!) by a local press, Snake Hawk Press [really, click that link], helped but wow. Also yum. What creations.

Of the Guests of Honor, I met David Mitchell and he was lovely, yay! Here’s Kelly’s picture of him chatting with Ted Chiang. I caught up briefly with Tananarive Due (one of my Clarion instructors!); I saw Gregory Manchess signing lots of books and enjoyed his art in the art show; I picked up a book by toastmaster Martha Wells; and I was sorry to miss Gordon Van Gelder being roasted, see my note above about the Esquire bar and not having a reservation there that night, darn it. Next time.

The final Guest of Honor Karen Joy Fowler did a couple of readings (thanks, schedulers!) so I got to the second one. She read chapters two and three of her next novel and all I can say is I hope it comes out sooner rather than later. She is a hell of a writer. Karen signed copies of her collection What I Didn’t See for us but then we sold them all, sorry. In fact, Kij Johnson and Kathleen Johnson signed copies of The River Bank and we sold out. Howard Waldrop then signed copies of Howard Who? and Horse of a Different Color and we sold out but we still have a few signed available from a previous visit, phew once more.

Then we came home, somewhat exhausted and ground into the floor by the act of talking to people for many days in a row — yup, that’s too much. Luckily now I get some quiet time to try and catch up on shipping and reading and erk, better go do that. (Smooth outro? Achieved!)

* — on the day we left, the day of the awards, the town was busy, people were going on about their lives, except for the 26 people murdered in a church 30 miles away. The gun laws and the amount of guns in this country are insane. Why are people allowed to have machine guns?


Shipping Going Well

Mon 19 Dec 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

At least, it’s going well from here — thank you! It’s busy as all get out but we are up to date to Thursday’s orders and by the end of today will have caught up again — unless there are too many orders to ship, woohoo, bring it! The post office says that US Priority Mail orders will still arrive by Christmas if ordered by 12/21, go for it!

Want some last minute present ideas? (OK, these are all going to be Small Beer books, I think.) Nothing here will stop the howling void of despair and depression taking over all from the electoral shenanigans but they will distract for various amounts of time:

Margaret Atwood selected Ursula K. Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter as one of her favorite books of the year in the Walrus:

It was a pleasure to encounter renowned SF and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s book of essays, Words Are My Matter, and to hear her wise, informed, elegant, and occasionally testy voice discussing such joys as the early H.G. Wells classics such as The Time Machine and China Miéville’s Embassytown—which surely owes a debt to Le Guin’s own The Left Hand of Darkness, now out in a sumptuous new Penguin Galaxy edition.

And Nora Jemisin recommended the book in the New York Times Book Review. Also: there was an Ursula K. Le Guin symposium at the University of Oregon.

Sit back (or go jog, or shovel some snow) and listen to David Naimon and Sofia Samatar chat about The Winged Histories on the Between the Covers podcast. The Winged Histories was chosen as one of the best books of the year by NPR — yay!

The Valley Advocate ran a 3-page spread on John Crowley’s The Chemical Wedding which included interviews with Crowley, illustrator Theo Fadel, and designer Jacob McMurrary. The paper edition had many illustrations. Meanwhile the book was reviewed on Tor.com.

See the Elephant ran a review of Joan Aiken’s The People in the Castle, which was also selected as one of the year’s best books by the Washington Post. Double yay!

See the Elephant had previously run a review of Jeffrey Ford’s A Natural History of Hell which much to my enjoyment began “Hellishly Good Stories.” Jim Sallis revelled in Ford’s collection in F&SF (“Formally Ford’s stories are object lessons in how to stage a narrative.”) Alvaro Zinos-Amaro reviewed it on IGMS and DF Lewis wrote reaction posts while reading the stories. Hazel and Wren also liked the book. What can I say? It struck a chord.

There is a new issue of LCRW and meanwhile the previous issue received a strong review in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination and another in New Pages.

And Mary Rickert’s collection, You Have Never Been Here, came out so late in 2015 that a lot of people read it this year, i.e. Sallis (“Reading a Mary Rickert story quite often is like sinking through layers of such worlds. We begin in one place, blink, and open our eyes to somewhere—something—else.”) in F&SF and William Grabowski in See the Elephant: “Rickert’s work, its superbly subtle handling of deepest human yearning for something to heal the howling void behind our increasingly demythologized world, shows the ineffable power—and value—of fantastical storytelling.”

Quickshots:
— Afrofuturism? The Liminal War
— Density? Prodigies
— The underworld? Archivist Wasp
— Digging a hole? Secession? Sherwood Nation
— Middle grade ecothrillers? The Fires Beneath the Sea

screen-shot-2016-12-08-at-11-45-03-am

Toodles!


A Natural History of Autumn

Mon 31 Oct 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

A Natural History of Hell cover - click to view full sizeJeffrey Ford’s story “A Natural History of Autumn” was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It was nominated for both World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson awards and went on to win the Shirley Jackson Award — which gives some idea of the shape of the story. Yes, it is spooky. “Mythic and creepy” even, as Josh Johnson at Hazel and Wren calls it. If, even though it is obviously fiction, it has some nugget of truth about the season of autumn in it, it does makes me wonder if even in the height of summer I should ever be looking forward to the (Northern hemisphere) cooler days of autumn. Of course if I turn my mind to the election instead of the natural world, it is a terrifying time.

Jeff was interviewed about inspirations for the story and the research he did before writing it on the F&SF blog and for fun included “a list of my top ten favorite works of fiction (at this moment) from Japan.”

The story was reprinted in Ellen Datlow’s anthology The Monstrous, is collected in Jeff’s new collection, A Natural History of Hell, and appears today on Lithub for your enjoyment.

Update: today Late Night Library posted a new interview with Jeff:

AUSTIN WILSON: Animals feature in several of the collection’s stories, sometimes as no more than pets or wild creatures, but also anthropomorphic monstrosities. What do you think we fear more: the familiar turning on us, or the attack of the unknown?

JEFFREY FORD: I think “the familiar turning on us” is actually an aspect of “the attack of the unknown.” For most scary stories the mood and scene are more important than the menace. As for animals in the stories, it makes sense. I live in a house with 3 dogs and 6 cats. There are cows and goats and horses just across the road. Out back, there are deer eating from our garden and apple trees, and in the winter, I suppose, coyotes eating deer in the snow covered, stubble fields. At night, in spring, the fox comes, stands behind the garage and cries out with a sound like Satan choking on a wishbone. The animals are everywhere.

Read on


Holiday Gift Guide … Which Holiday?

Mon 3 Oct 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

A Natural History of Hell cover - click to view full sizePerhaps you and your family and/or friends exchange horrible gifts and favors on Halloween? Perhaps you’ve been wondering what to give your demonic friends who seem to have all the slavering zombie tchotchkes in the world? Publishers Weekly says Jeffrey Ford’s A Natural History of Hell is:

This is the perfect reader-who-has-everything gift for fantasy fans with a literary bent or vice versa. Ford brilliantly cross-pollinates the grim suburban settings of literary fiction with fantastical elements, adding dashes of humor and empathy to provide some light in dark days.

Also on the sf&f part of the Holiday Gift Guide are the new one-volume hardcover edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Unreal and the Real as well as the huge new book of collected novellas, The Found and the Lost, Nisi Shawl’s Everfair, and N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season.

Anyone who received all five books would be a lucky reader indeed!


Free Reads: Jeffrey Ford’s New Book

Fri 10 Jun 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

You have one week to enter to win a free copy of Jeffrey Ford’s mind melting A Natural History of Hell:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

A Natural History of Hell by Jeffrey Ford

A Natural History of Hell

by Jeffrey Ford

Giveaway ends June 17, 2016.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway


Victor LaValle says

Fri 6 May 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

“Jeffrey Ford can pull off any kind of story he damn well pleases. I was sure of that before I even reached the end of this excellent collection. By the end he’d accomplished more than I would’ve imagined possible. A Brief History of Hell offers genuinely disturbing moments but it also veers into high comedy. There’s bits of myth and history, heartbreak and profound insights. I’ve been a fan of Ford’s for years. Every new book he publishes is a reason to celebrate.”
— Victor LaValle, author of The Ballad of Black Tom


Who isn’t jealous of Jeff?

Fri 8 Apr 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, just sent us this!

“No one writes more beautifully about American nightmares and dreams. Every story is great but my favorites are “Word Doll,” “Rocket Ship to Hell,” “The Last Triangle,” and — especially — “The Prelate’s Commission.” Ford takes ideas that most writers would cling to and milk for three or four or five hundred pages and tosses them off left and right like they were nothing on his way to new worlds he seems to create out of thin air. If these stories weren’t so god damn enjoyable they’d make me jealous as hell.”


“any kind of story he damn well pleases”

Mon 28 Mar 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

How’s your Monday? Ours is pretty great, thanks to Victor LaValle — whom you may have heard on NPR recently discussing his latest book, The Ballad of Black Tom — who just read Jeffrey Ford’s A Natural History of Hell and sent us this:

“Jeffrey Ford can pull off any kind of story he damn well pleases. I was sure of that before I even reached the end of this excellent collection. By the end he’d accomplished more than I would’ve imagined possible. A Natural History of Hell offers genuinely disturbing moments but it also veers into high comedy. There’s bits of myth and history, heartbreak and profound insights. I’ve been a fan of Ford’s for years. Every new book he publishes is a reason to celebrate.”

Jeffrey Alan Love, whose art graces the cover had some good news, too:


Jeff Ford says

Mon 13 Jan 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

“Eileen Gunn’s terrific new story collection, Questionable Practices, is a unique amalgam of big ideas and versatile styles packed into short pieces devoid of loose threads and excess baggage. Gunn manages to perfectly balance themes of thought paradox, gender politics, corporate culture, time travel, steampunk, with a storyteller’s ability to immediately draw the reader in through character and drama. Real science fiction, great humor, and some cool collaboration with Michael Swanwick make this a good choice for SF short fiction fans.”

Sounds about right to us!