William Hall
While there was a lot of research went into this story covering both 14th century medieval Europe and theoretical quantum physics, there were too many quotes and references to these subjects that went far beyond the everyday reader's comprehension (at least this reader's comprehension). Dialogue in various languages, including German, French and Latin without translation is very frustrating. Also, this reader found the overwhelming number of characters hard to keep up with and often became lost trying to remember who in the story was who, especially after the aliens were given human names. On the positive side, the story of a damaged craft from another world and the interaction between the alien passengers and the human population of a small 14th century village steeped in ancient Catholic religious beliefs was interesting. The smaller interspersed parts of the story dealing with the interactions between the husband-and-wife scientific partners, one looking into the mystery behind the history of the village decimated by the black plague and never resettled and the other researching new theories within quantum physics was less interesting (less comprehendible).
I just finished Gateways to Abomination: Collected Short Fiction by Matthew M. Bartlett. This was a very quick read with very short chapters telling stories that seem to be interconnected. It is one of the weirdest books of horror I've come across, like riding a wave into insanity, but I found it refreshingly different. It's probably a book that individual readers will either love or hate. Just remember, if you ever find yourself tuning the radio dial in Southwestern Massachusetts and radio station WXXT pops up, you're most likely doomed.
This book is just tangentially Science Fiction. Yes, it is set in the near future and yes there is space travel to other worlds; however, most of the story deals with narcissistic New Yorker Capitalist (but wants to be Communist) rich man Ben Belson's problems dealing with a troubled childhood and with romantic relationships with women. During most of the first part of the story Belson is constantly fixated on his sexual impotence and his failed relationships. Earth is running out of power and Belson, trying to find himself, refurbishes a Chinese spaceship named after a girlfriend, Isabel, and using some of Earth's last remaining uranium fuel, sets out on an illegal voyage with a crew (space travel has been banned) to find a source of "safe" uranium on another planet. There is a brief part of the story where Belson becomes a morphine addict and communes with the first of two found planets, Belson, named after himself. Two discoveries are made on the journey, a plant that provides a non-addictive treatment for pain is found on Belson and a source of "safe" uranium is found on the second planet, Juno named after a horse that gave Belson comfort during his bleak childhood. The rest of the story mainly deals with Belson's return to Earth, his legal troubles, finding his mojo again, and negotiating with Communist China in getting his cargo released from impound so that he can continue to be filthy rich. The story reads like a bad Woody Allen movie. To be frank, I was not impressed with a Science Fiction tale containing not much Science Fiction.
Considered a “sensationalist” novel of the mid 19th century, this complex story of love, friendship, betrayal, tragedy, deviousness and heroism was highly entertaining. Set in the world of 19th century England, with its caste system, the many and varied characters that come and go throughout the twisting plotline bring life to the story.
This example of weird horror fiction was satisfyingly creep at its opening through the majority of the story, but then for this reader fizzled out in a cacophony of words trying to describe the indescribable toward the story's resolution. The substance of the tale contains a bit of Stephen King's The Mist mixed with a pinch of Lovecraftian cosmic horror and some of Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy strangeness. The story mainly centers around the Bradley family within the small town of Millwood, New Hampshire. Young Stuart Bradley discovers a mysterious door that has appeared within the local woods where he plays with his imaginary friends. After he opens the door and tosses a rock into the black abyss found behind the door, it triggers a cascade of events that leads to his death and subsequent possession of his corpse by the “Visitor” escaping the abyss. Unfortunately, the frigid blackness begins to escape the open door as a cloud subsuming life and horribly mutating everything in its path as it grows. While other characters within Millwood are horribly destroyed by the cloud or another otherworldly stranger seeking to find the “Visitor,” Stuart's mother Heather, his little brother Mica and to a lesser extent his father Will are the main protagonists. What happens to them and how they are touched by and respond to the growing horror shapes the somewhat unsatisfying outcome to the story.
After watching the streaming series Black Sails that is billed as a prequel to Treasure Island, I decided to pick up and read the original classic. Treasure Island has always been tilted toward a young adult readership. This is logical, since the main narrator and protagonist of the story is a young boy caught in an exciting, life-endangering pirate adventure. Even though many of the characters in Treasure Island appear in the streaming series prequel, I would never recommend the very adult themed streaming series to a young adult audience. It was interesting to see the continuing storylines and fates of many of the characters from the streaming series, so I can recommend this book to adults who watched Black Sails if interested in following the continuing story and to young adults as a stand-alone pirate adventure.
I've read and enjoyed Peter Clines' Threshold series of books, although Dead Moon didn't seem to fit with the other three books in the series and I didn't think the fourth book Terminus was on par with the first two books 14 and The Fold. This book was another page turner that merged sci-fi/horror with Jason Borne-like intelligence agency, black ops bloody action. Such stories often work when a hard-bitten ex-agent teams up with a government-exploited child running from the bad men. There are only a couple of criticisms I have with the story. One, it doesn't do enough to explain the origin of the creepy phenomenon that affects the little girl Natalie and the other exploited children within the off the radar government “Project.” However, the concept that the children taken for experimentation come from the victims of those crossing the U.S. southern border illegally may unfortunately be closer to reality than fiction. Secondly, I was troubled that Clines, like so many in media today, was always hinting that racism is rampant in the U.S. The hero/protector Hector and the little girl Natalie are both Hispanic. The story mainly takes place in the Southwest where the Hispanic population is large and for the most part accepted, so why write that Hector constantly has to be worried about being targeted because of his race? It just seemed like another cheap shot at pushing division based on racial stereotypes to the general readership.
In this weird horror anthology Mark Samuels takes the reader into strange and unsettling places within his prolific imagination. Unlike a lot of weird fiction I actually found these stories to be quite creepy in a “Twilight Zone” kind of way. The one that really left a lasting impression was Vrolyck. To me it included facets of Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow horror mythology combined with H. P. Lovecraft's darkly dangerous universe and mixed together with a monstrous Science Fiction tale. It impressed me so much that I had to go back and read it again.
This book introduces the character Cormac, a new recruit in Polity Earth Central Security forces (the ECS). Through flashbacks the reader is introduced to Cormac and his mother and brother when he was a child. He has known little of his father, a soldier on the frontlines of the war between the Polity and the crab-like alien Prador civilization. Some strange events that happened to him as a child involving a shadowy scorpion-shaped combat droid now seem to gain significance as Cormac's first assignment as a raw recruit soon entangles him in a terrorist plot by Separatists embedded within his own unit. After narrowly escaping with his life after being captured by Separatists, Cormac is recruited into a Sparkind unit made up of both enhanced human and near-human AI driven machine agents. Their goal is to hunt down the leader of the Separatist unit who escaped with nuclear-like explosives that can be used as terrorist weaponry against AI Polity governance. Cormac will see his first combat against the crafty Separatist who always seems one step ahead of his unit. At the same time he will move closer to finding out about the fate of his father.
While I didn't dislike this book, I'm not sure why so many highly recommend it. Like so many authors, Nayler delivers a prediction and a warning about a future collapse of Earth's ecosystem, zeroing in mainly on the destruction of the Earth's ocean life. It is a world of fully developed AI and ruthless corporate/scientific machinations. In Southeast Asia a protective area has been set aside after an intelligent species of octopus is discovered to be creating its own form of civilization in that area. Split into three separate storylines, it can be somewhat hard to follow any connection between them until the very end. While the interaction with the octopi is the most interesting aspect of the story, it is disappointing that this aspect is not covered nearly enough. Subject matter of the book also considers the problem of finding a mode of communication between humanity and any form of possible future alien intelligence.
It's hard to describe the plot of this book. It has elements of a murder mystery mixed with starship travel in both space and time. There is also the coming destruction of Earth as what is called the Terminus is working its way back from the future ever closer to the present set in 1997. As the main character, a one-legged female member of a special branch of the space faring navy, looks into the brutal slaying of a family and a missing teenage daughter of the family, it is slowly revealed how this case has ripples through space and time that connect the case to the origins of the Terminus. The plot becomes quite complicated as the main character slips between 1997 and decades into the future looking for answers. She meets many of the same people at different ages but with different storylines. Can she trust the version of the future she travels to for answers? What is sure is that everywhere she goes a bloody trail of bodies is left in her wake. An interesting but brutal Sci-fi story.
The fictional manuscript account of the exploits of Dr. Rudolph Pearson, Detective Matthew Leahy and Pearson's resolute partner and love interest Jordan Gabriel combines Sherlock-like tales of mystery combined with Lovecraftian horror. While each short story can be read independently, if read in order, the tales build one upon the other as Pearson is forced to confront realms outside accepted reality and the things that dwell within those realms. Another interesting read for those following the Cthulhu Mythos.
Grand finale to an epic saga of human survivors pitted against vampiric mutant hordes. Cronin is expert at creating well-developed, believable characters that makes the saga more than just another zombie tale. In this third and last installment Cronin includes the tragic background story of the man who came to be patient Zero and last of the original mutants who control a personal army of the virals. The story timeline jumps from the time of the original outbreak and collapse of modern civilization to a century later and finally to a thousand years later. It is a tale of fear, tragedy, love, hope and triumph where a core group led by the mysterious ageless woman Amy must confront and defeat patient Zero or risk the end of the human race. A must read for fans of the science fiction/horror genre.
Excellent continuation of the epic saga that began with the original The Passage. As in the original book the story transitions between the original vampiric apocalypse to about one hundred years later. The Twelve refers to the original subjects (death row inmates) of a viral experiment by the military. These “immortal” vampiric mutants, like queen bees, control hordes of those they have turned. And then there is the mysterious long-lived girl Amy, who received a version of the experimental virus but did not turn into a monster. With her help characters readers were introduced to in the first book will attempt to hunt down the mutant leaders in order to destroy them and hopefully end the vampiric plague that has stripped the land of every warm-blooded living thing. But perhaps just as dangerous are the human monsters that stand in the way of humanity's survival and recovery.
I have no qualms about giving a rating of five stars to “The Passage.” Justin Cronin's writing is on par with Stephen King. In fact, “The Passage” in some sense can be compared to King's “The Stand.” But some of the plotline also reminds me of Max Brooks' “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War,” since parts of the book take place in a far future time looking back to events as referenced in one of the main character's diaries. This is not a quick read and will take a commitment of time to complete the book; however it is well worth it. Cronin unwinds the story slowly, making sure to cover every detail completely. The reader gets to know and comes to care about the characters and their struggle for survival. Similar in theme to many modern day horror fiction tales, a viral apocalypse is mistakenly unleashed upon the world by a covert military lab in the western United States. When the infected escape the lab, a growing carnivorous horde of monstrous vampire-like mutated humans is set free that will bring modern civilization to an end, leaving the dwindling number of the human race to seek survival in any way possible. The story picks up around a century later and the reader is introduced to the core group of protagonists living in a California sanctuary; a sanctuary harassed by virals by night and whose days are numbered, as the supply of electricity to maintain the warding nighttime perimeter searchlights will eventually fail. As tensions rise within the sanctuary the small core group leaves on a dangerous quest to find the source of a mysterious radio signal in the Colorado mountains. With them will travel a strange ageless girl, Amy, who after approaching the sanctuary had been mistakenly wounded by one of the guards. With her recuperation it is discovered that she has the ability of telepathic communication and seems to have some mental connection with the virals as well. The reader follows the small group through their trials and tribulations as they fight to reach their goal and possible answers to the survival of the human race; some will not survive the ordeal. This is the first book in “The Passage” trilogy but can be read as a stand-alone story if the reader so chooses.
While remaining true to the Lovecraft Mythos and its pantheon of the Great Old Ones, Michael Shea provides his own more modern unique and entertaining twist on the Mythos in this anthology. Shea moves the focus of the majority of the Lovecraftian horror from the New England east coast to the west coast San Francisco Bay area, although he does return to Antarctica in couple of the stories where HPL set his story “At the Mountains of Madness.” There is a running theme throughout the anthology of the Great Old Ones, with the help of their minions, beginning to establish a beachhead on Earth where they seek to reveal themselves to various individuals and either recruit them or physically absorb and merge them into themselves. A quote from the end of the short story “Dagoniad” points this out. ““But I've been hearing things. Before all this I mean. I've been hearing about shoggoths. I've been hearing about Cthulhu himself. “ What are you telling me?” “That somehow, this is a focus. That the Great Old Ones are...at the gates. Are picking the locks.”” These stories are full of skin-crawling horror that should satisfy fans of H. P. Lovecraft.
This anthology of Cthulhu Mythos short stories is ghoulishly entertaining and a grand homage to Lovecraft, who was a friend (and in some cases collaborator) to the youngest member at the time of the Lovecraftian Circle of authors, Robert Bloch. A short foreword to each story gives more insight into Bloch's treatment of Lovecraft's Mythos.
Science Fiction and Horror are my favorite go to reads. I especially like reading classic weird/horror around spooky season. This B&N leatherbound classic contains the original Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The String of Pearls; or, The Tale of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street along with many other weird/horror short stories. Unless you read the originals, never think you know these wonderful classic tales. And, the leatherbound edition looks great on the bookshelf.
This book was an early collaboration between the brothers Blake and Jordan Crouch. A police detective looking into the missing person cases of some upper-tier men leads him to a high-paid prostitute that turns out to be his estranged sister. When he confronts his sister at her brownstone home and place of “business” he comes in contact with an unknown force that has trapped his sister within the brownstone's walls and has now trapped him as well. The part of the story that takes place at the beginning within the brownstone is quite creepy. However, I thought the ending became a little too schmaltzy and let the air out of the horror. Also, I didn't think the horrific death of a character earlier in the story made much sense when matched up with the story's ending. But, I give it three stars for being a fast read and 2/3 of a disturbing horror story.
People of the Earth are vanishing without a trace. At first only a few people disappear, but then the vanishings begin to accelerate leading to huge motorcar pileups, planes falling out of the sky and many other tragedies. Many evangelical Christians believe it is the tribulation that is thought to be referenced in the Holy Bible. Others think there is a more logical scientific explanation. Several people who have been tragically touched by the vanishings join together to help the emergency U.S. government try and find the cause of the phenomenon before a point of no return for the human race is reached.
The story is fast paced with an interesting premise that draws in the reader. An exciting culmination to the story leads to an opening into the second book in the Gone series.
The book introduces the first meeting and opening conflict between the Polity and the violent Prador race. The beginning of the war was first referenced in the action-packed book Weaponized set in the Polity universe. Both books are full of gory violence and non-stop action. The reader learns that at this opening of the war the Polity ships are outmatched by the superior armored Prador vessels. The descriptions of the monstrous lobster-like Prador, their caste system and their appetites for both human flesh and the flesh of their own kind are detailed. While this book is a recommend, personally I enjoyed even more the first book Weaponized about a colony of humans running up against an almost unstoppable adaptive native raptor on their chosen new world. That being said, I look forward to reading the next Polity book Shadow of the Scorpion.
This was an amazing and imaginative story set in a far-flung future. In this future world of the Polity, AI has come to govern human civilization that has spread out across the galaxy using both physical spaceships and matter transmitter gates called runcibles. It is not an overtly despotic rule, since humans can now live for centuries in relative comfort exploring personal interests within certain AI guidelines. It is also a future of very advanced nanotechnology in which each person can change and augment their physical forms in specialized ways. However, some balk at AI control and augmentation and long to be free to explore what it means to be a truly free human being. Some turn to violence against AI control that the AI easily quashes, while others look to less violent means to become more independent with AI's permission. As an aside, over the centuries of exploration ancient ruins containing highly advanced technology left by an extinct advanced race called the Jain has been found on worlds throughout the galaxy. However, it appears that the Jain purposely left this technology knowing that its use by any future races would only lead to their ultimate destruction.
Through continuous flashbacks between past, near past and the present the story unfolds through the eyes and memories of the main character Ursula Ossect Treloon, who after surviving a period of ennui that happens to the long-lived, with AI's permission has used her lifetime's amassed fortune to gather 800 others like herself to set up a colony on Threpsis, a remote and very hostile world away from most Polity AI control. She and the members of her colony hope to find a path to a more human existence. Under a blazing sun, all lifeforms on the desert-like planet are hostile and deadly, forcing the colonists to turn to the one non-colonist and Polity provided enigmatic scientist Oren Salazar to provide upgraded nanosuites to enhance their makeup and the makeup of their crops in order to adapt and survive. But there is one nightmarish life form, an apex predator or cacoraptor, that begins to kill and consume the colonists; a life form that is able to quickly adapt to outmaneuver any defenses the colonists can throw up, and whose sole focus seems to be the eradication of the colonists. After the raptors destroy the colonies means of escape off the planet, it seems inevitable that Ursula and her dwindling number of colonists will have to request the Polity retrieve them from Threpsis. However, before the colony can be rescued, another hostile galactic race, the Prador, is met by the Polity and a galactic war breaks out in which the Polity is soon at a disadvantage against the Prador's invincible ship armor. With hope of rescue gone, the remaining colonists face another threat when a damaged Prador shuttle lands near the colony and Ursula and the remaining colonists must give up more and more of their humanity and turn to evermore drastic nano augmentation to survive the onslaught of the raptors and hopefully attack and defeat the Prador in order to take their ship and leave the planet. And, Ursula continues to question why AI scans of Threpsis supposedly never revealed the existence of the raptors or of Jain technological ruins on the planet.
There is non-stop action throughout the book, which crosses the boundaries between Science Fiction and Horror, much like the Alien franchise. It is well worth a read and I'm looking forward to other books by the author set in the Polity universe.
A fast read that kept my interest. However, I can't help compare the story to a blend of four Sci-Fi TV series: Sliders, Quantum Leap, Stargate-SG1 and with a little Time Tunnel thrown in for good measure. I take off some marks for reliance on the overused Nazi trope. Come on authors, find something new and imaginative rather than relying on the evil Nazi stereotypical villains. It wouldn't hurt to have some Stalinist Soviet Communist villains for a change. I was also disappointed that the ending left a lot of questions unanswered, but I guess the author plans to write a sequel or sequels to this book.
