Every now and then, a book comes along with a great premise and solid execution that a lot of people like and recommend with great gusto. Ready Player One by Ernest Kline is such a book. And it is good — very good — except for the places where it can’t get out of its own way fast enough.
When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine. My local grocery store carried it. I also noticed there was a competitor to Mad called Cracked, and I started buying that as well. The age of magazines eventually passed into relative obscurity, and the magazines themselves had to change or die. I don’t see much from Mad anymore, but Cracked seems to have survived the digital transition to become a website that lives in my RSS feeds and that makes me laugh every day.
So when Cracked.com senior editor David Wong released a novel called John Dies at the End, I knew it was fairly likely that I’d enjoy reading it. Thing is, I never got around to it, not until the filmed version was available on demand. I decided it would be best to read the book first.
And then I spent four days trying to figure out how to write the review.
(Warning: this review contains mature language.)
With the ever-decreasing cost of professional-grade digital recording, editing, and special effects equipment, filmmaking has truly come to the masses. One only need scour Vimeo or YouTube to find a great short film (and a lot of bad ones). But even three years ago, director Eddie Lebron made a hugely-popular (more than 430,000 views in 2010 alone) fan film of the video game Mega Man — and things back then cost more and were more difficult to produce.
Now, in 2013, Lebron is back with Sonic, a fan film that reimagines the colorful, cartoonish world of the iconic Sega video game.
The very first film I put into my Netflix instant queue was TiMER. At the time it seemed like a cute little sci-fi film. It sat there, right at the top of my queue, for… geez, must be two years now… before I finally decided that it was time to watch it.
So I did. And now I am reviewing it for you.
This review contains spoilers for the first two Death’s Daughter books, Death’s Daughter and Cat’s Claw.
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So here’s the thing about Serpent’s Storm, the third Death’s Daughter book by Amber Benson: at first I thought she’d turned into Laurell K. Hamilton. Then I thought she was writing a madcap roller-coaster adventure. Then I got completely lost. Once I got to the end, I was really pleased with the destination… but unfortunately the journey didn’t work for me.
If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, this may come as news, but I’m stepping down as editor of Escape Pod. I am very sad to do so, but all of my projects are spreading me too thin, and I don’t feel as if I can give any project my best effort. I don’t want EP to suffer because of this, so I’m stepping down.
I’m delighted to announce, however, that Norm Sherman, our part-time host, has agreed to take over editor duties. I love Norm’s intros, and his sense of humor, and I know he can keep up the vision Steve Eley had of Escape Pod allowing science fiction fans to “have fun.”
I will officially step down on December 31, and Alasdair Stuart of Pseudopod fame will be taking over as interim editor for a few weeks, then Norm will take over. I’m excited to see what he does with the podcast, and assure you that you’re in excellent hands.
Happy holidays, and have a fun and mighty new year.
~Mur
This review contains spoilers for Death’s Daughter by Amber Benson.
Following her enjoyable adventure through Hell with Calliope Reaper-Jones, Death’s middle daughter, I think it was pretty much understood that actress and author Amber Benson would return to her Death’s Daughter universe. She did so in 2010 with Cat’s Claw, a sequel that pretty much depends upon the main character making bad decisions for the story to succeed. Make no mistake, I still had fun reading the book, but there was an awful lot of narrative convenience in it.
If you’re a fan of Escape Pod, you’re probably a fan of Clarkesworld, even if you don’t know it. Many of our reprints first ran in CW, and they’ve always been very gracious about letting us run Kate Baker’s narrations for the stories nominated for the Hugo Award. It won the Hugo Award last year and has some of the best fiction and nonfiction writing in SF today.
They’re doing a subscription push right now because editor Neil Clarke has had a rather bad year (heart attack and job loss only two of the circumstances.) I wanted to spread the word not only to help Neil, but because Clarkesworld is a damn good magazine and deserves your attention. If you like EP, I’m fairly sure you’ll like CW. So subscribe already. We’ll be here when you’re done with a new story tomorrow!
Congrats to the contest winners, whose stories will be purchased for a future EP flash episode!
In first place, Four Tickets, by Leslianne Wilder
In second place, Life Sentence, by Ben Hallert
In third place, The Future Is Set, by C. L. Perria
See the full announcement here.
And coming soon- the Editor’s Choice awards!
I’m not a huge fan of military SF. But I am a fan of post-apocalyptic SF. I’m not a huge fan of augmented-humanity SF. But I am a fan of humans-aren’t-the-most-powerful-people-in-the-universe SF. So when author Jonathan C. Gillespie put out his new novel The Tyrant Strategy: Revenant Man I wasn’t sure if it was going to be my cup of post-apocalyptic, augmented humanity, military-style, humans-aren’t-so-great tea.
That’s an awfully complicated blend, by the way. Not too many people sell it.