June 5, 2010

The Loving Dead by Amelia Beamer (Nightshade, July 2010: $14.95)

Following Tim Pratt, another great editor of Locus Magazine makes a giant leap into a novelist career. Amelia Beamer is a staff writer of SF&F newszine, Locus. She’s also a critic and writer, writing for small magazines and Interfiction anthology. Now she’s a novelist, too. Her debut, The Loving Dead is a novel of zombie romance, but I can’t resist an old impulse to call it a novel of Love, Sex, and Death. Well, especially love. It’s the most poignant love story our genre has ever produced. Forget the terrible review of Publishers Weekly. The ending is beautiful. The story is rather simple. In the streets of Berkley, weird looking homeless guys start to attack the pedestrians. Our heroine Kate finds a strange behavior of her girl friend and it turns out she’s a zombie now. Zombies are lascivious, and her friends easily become their prey. Kate sees zombies everywhere and trying to escape, she and her boyfriend seek refugee in Alcatraz prison. OK, there’s a very useful cell phone app to tame zombies and that kind of modernity and hilarity are everywhere in the novel. It’s sensuous, with a lot of sex scenes, and it’s humorous. Entertaining and witty. But the last scene is very moving and memorable, despite dark and disconsolate. Wow, Amelia Beamer has a very bright future now.

April 16, 2010

Steampunk

Hayakawa's SF Magazine will run a steampunk specla issue this month. Here's TOC of the feature part:
Fixing Hanover by Jeff VanderMeer
Shattered Teacup by George Mann
Tanglefoot by Cherie Priest
Chain of Fools by Jay Lake
What's the Soundtrack of Steampunk? by Brian Slattery
The Corset Manifesto by Katie Casey
And a brief book list and an introduction by Takashi Ogawa.
We've done the translation. It'll be published in a week.

Clifford's Love of Books

Clifford has a serious taste for books. He first found love for Hardcovers.




And then he found a very handsome tradepaperback.







But now he finds a new thing. E-books. He loves a Kindle.
Except he's a biting kind. Look at the corners. He left his marks.



He's my lovely dog.

March 12, 2010

Best of 2009 International

Locus Online features the best of 2009 international version which includes my take. Please note that I have to exclude HARMONY/ by Keikaku Ito because it was published at the end of 2008.

February 11, 2010

Rock Novels

Recently I've read a bunch of Japanese rock novels. Yes, we have now a good tradition of rock novels. I've just posted a review on some. See how we treat the music differently from US/British model. Check it here.

January 17, 2010

Takumi Shibano

The godfather of Japanese fandom, Takumi Shibano, has passed away on Jan 16 from pneumonia. Very sad.