Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Currently based in Berlin, following stints in Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Atlanta. Previously blogged at A Fistful of Euros, though that is now largely lost to link rot.
Most commented posts
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — 9 comments
- White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies — 7 comments
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 7 comments
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments
Author's posts
Every literature should be so fortunate as to have a Nobel laureate write a textbook history of its development. The only down side I can see to The History of Polish Literature — so far, that is, I am up to the middle of the 18th century, although that’s just a little less than the …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/18/the-history-of-polish-literature-by-czeslaw-milosz/
Twenty years and more after reading Stand on Zanzibar for the first time, I was surprised at how vividly its opening had stayed with me. First up the extended epigraph, a quotation from McLuhan, a warning to the unwary about what Brunner is about to spring on his readers, unsuspecting as they may have been …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/16/stand-on-zanzibar-by-john-brunner/
In the mid-1990s, Steffen Möller went against the usual tide of migration and moved from Germany to Poland. He started with a two-week language course in Krakow, which he found out about from a poster hung in his university’s cafeteria. From such a simple starting point, his whole career grew: first as a student of …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/10/viva-polonia-by-steffen-moller/
The Science Fiction Writers of America announced the winners of this year’s Nebula Awards. Novel Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer [Laura reviewed Annihilation as part of its trilogy, and didn’t like it as much as the SFWA did.] Novella Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress Novelette “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” Alaya Dawn Johnson (F&SF 7-8/14) Short …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/07/nebula-award-winners-2015/
Reading Europe In Autumn was more disorienting than usual for an alternate history. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the protagonist of this story set in a slightly-alt near-future Europe could easily have been a slightly-alt me, and not just in the sense that the author had created a sympathetic figure …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/04/europe-in-autumn-by-dave-hutchinson/
Eric plays on the Faust legend, and it read to me as a slighter work than the Discworld novels that immediately preceded it in publication. Wikipedia tells me that Eric was originally published in a larger format, fully illustrated by Josh Kirby, who did most of the covers of the UK editions of the Discworld …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/02/eric-by-terry-pratchett/
Guards! Guards! , the eighth Discworld novel, introduces Captain Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork’s Night Watch, to which the book’s back cover assigns the apt adjective “ramshackle.” Pratchett is perfectly clear about what he’s up to in the novel. He dedicates it as follows: They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/31/guards-guards-by-terry-pratchett/
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By Doug Merrill in Alternate History, Coming Attractions, Doug, Eastern Europe, Essay, Fantasy, Lists, Mystery, Politics, Russia, Science Fiction, Short Stories
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May 27, 2015
The good news is that at present I can buy books faster than I can read them. The bad news is that at present I can buy books faster than I can read (and review) them. Here are some new things that have appeared (somehow!) in the to-be-read pile, along with what some of my …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/27/to-be-read-1/
A thirty-year-old fantasy adventure novel has aged less badly than a seventy-year-old Hollywood novel. That’s the first thing that struck me thinking back on Steven Brust’s Jhereg, and comparing it to the other book that I just recently finished. Though to be fair, I suppose I should check back in another forty years. I’ll mark …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/16/jhereg-by-steven-brust/
I skipped a good sixty or seventy pages of this book in the hope that jumping ahead would prevent me from pronouncing the Eight Deadly Words, but in the end it didn’t. As the copyright page tells any reader, “The novel What Makes Sammy Run? was originally published by Random House, Inc., in 1941. Copyright …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/14/what-makes-sammy-run-by-budd-schulberg/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire