Apr 04 2020
Re-reading The Forgotten Door was a gift to my third-grade self. It’s the first book of any length that I remember reading, and the cover was still lodged in my brain after all of these years, not that I would judge a book that way, no. I remembered the barest bones of the story: a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/04/04/the-forgotten-door-by-alexander-key/
Mar 24 2020
Sarya was raised to believe that she is the last human in all the known universe by her adoptive mother, Shenya the Widow, a member of a matriarchal arachnid-like race of killing machines. On Watchtower, the space station where they make their home, Sarya passes as a low-intelligence member of a species bearing a resemblance …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/03/24/the-last-human-by-zack-jordan/
Mar 12 2020
Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did Re-Coil evolve? A. It started out as a horror novel. Well, sci-fi horror. Think Alien or Event Horizon. I just had this image of a derelict ship full of bodies. Maximum creepiness. But as …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/03/12/an-interview-with-j-t-nicholas-author-of-re-coil/
Mar 02 2020
Re-Coil is set in a future where humanity has spread to colonize the solar system, having achieved immortality via the use of coil technology, a hybrid of quantum computing with genetic engineering that means you only lose as much of your life as you neglected to back up in your secure file. Carter Langston is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/03/02/re-coil-by-j-t-nicholas/
Feb 23 2020
Wow, this book. Dark River tells the tales of two women, separated by millennia but whose struggles eerily echo one another’s as they both embark on perilous migrations in the face of environmental disaster. Shaye is a Neolithic woman whose tribe is concerned at the way the waters of their plenty time place have begun …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/23/dark-river-by-rym-kechacha/
Feb 18 2020
And so the Embers Of War series closes in the bright glow of conflict and its aftermath, a truly terrific, action-packed space opera that ponders as well what it means to be human, in all our splendor and sordidness. As Light Of Impossible Stars begins, the sentient warship Trouble Dog is desperate for fuel and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/18/light-of-impossible-stars-embers-of-war-3-by-gareth-l-powell/
Jan 11 2020
How does a human civilization react to news of its possible impending collapse, with the only option for survival a major upheaval touching every person in it and changing its power structure entirely? That’s the overriding question of John Scalzi’s Interdependency series. The Consuming Fire is the second part of the story, following The Collapsing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/01/11/the-consuming-fire-by-john-scalzi/
Dec 24 2019
I just don’t get it. This isn’t a terrible book. But it’s not a very good one either, and I am utterly mystified by all the acclaim it’s been getting. Never mind my hostility to the introduction of magic into what was a solidly sci-fi series till partway through book two. Never mind my brain’s …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/12/24/the-stone-sky-the-broken-earth-3-by-n-k-jemisin/
Dec 14 2019
Oh gosh, how does any collection live up to its own hype of being “the definitive anthology of space opera”, especially when it’s the second of a series? Tho perhaps the series altogether is meant to be definitive? Regardless, if you love you some space opera, this is a great place to not only immerse …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/12/14/infinite-stars-dark-frontiers-infinite-stars-2-edited-by-bryan-thomas-schmidt/
Dec 08 2019
Of the predecessor to Seven Surrenders, Too Like the Lightning, I wrote that Palmer directly tackles the problem of how different far-future humans will be from present-day people. As Mycroft Canner, her unreliable narrator, says near that book’s beginning, “You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/12/08/seven-surrenders-by-ada-palmer/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire