July 2010
22 posts
3 tags
July 22
The End of Mr. Y - Scarlett Thomas - A graduate student named Ariel finds a mysterious book called The End of Mr Y, which supposedly kills all who read it. Her professor has disappeared, and so has the author. She discovers that through the book you can enter into other dimensions through the minds and consciousnesses of other people, and that others have also tried to tap into this mysterious...
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July 21
The Safety of Unknown Cities - Lucy Taylor - The graphic, violent and sexual story of Val, whose mother gouged her eyes out with a spoon when she was a child. Val seeks intense stimulation and experiences, especially sexual, and when she hears about “The City”, a fabled place full of excitement and sexual depravity, she tries to find it and lose herself. Meanwhile, someone is trying...
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July 19
The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces - Ray Vukcevich - Skylight Howells is a detective who is also brilliant at disguising himself. So brilliant that he sometimes forgets who he really is. He’s also addicted to tap-dancing. Bad. Can he solve the mystery of the missing brother of the beautiful woman who’s also wanted for the murder of several software documentation specialists? ...
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July 18
The Grand Ellipse - Paula Volsky - A Female academic, author and explorer named Luzelle Devaire participates in a world tour race called The Grand Ellipse. The prize for winning this race is a private audience with the King. The world is threatened with war and the neutral King, although he may have the means to stop invading armies, prefers to stay neutral. Will the beautiful and intelligent...
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July 17
Opalite Moon - Denise Vitola - in the future, life is cripplingly beurocratic, the world is a poverty stricken metropolitan nightmare where everyone is looking for new-agey answers and people can only be convicted of a crime if they’re caught in the act. Detective Ty Merrick and her partner Detective LaRue are tasked with investigating the triple homicide of members of a religious sect. Oh,...
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July 15
The Atrocity Shop - Kurt Von Trojan - Mr. Bonus Adulator works in ‘The Atrocity Shop’, where he sells films, photos and other documentation of atrocities to the well-to do. Originally banned, and the cover artist withdrew illustration the night before publication, so the cover shows…the author’s butt!?
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July 14
High Times: An Alien Paradise - Mark R. Viliborghi - The author claims that this book is fiction in movie form from a very lucid dream. It involves the house band at ‘High Times”, a group of quirky characters leading a pseudo-hippy lifestyle who eventually discover that aliens have been living in the basement and stealing their power. Includes terrible-sounding sex scenes and ample...
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July 13
Stardoc - S.L. Viehl - An earth doctor escapes her stressful life and overbearing father and moves to a Free Clinic on another planet, populated by aliens and only a few humans. She struggles with her own family issues, a pushy and telepathic co-worker, her lack of knowledge of alien physiology, and her father pressuring her to return home. Then the planet is struck by an epidemic that throws...
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July 11
Nurk - Ursula Vernon - (8+) Nurk is a small shrew who, equipped with a boat made from a snail shell and a mysterious letter asking for help, goes off to rescue the prince of the fireflies, or some such creature. A big adventure for a little guy.
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July 10
Empire of the Ants - Bernard Weber - A down on his luck locksmith and his family are bequeathed an apartment by their uncle who was killed by a swarm of wasps. The only condition is: don’t EVER go in the cellar. Only the dog goes in the cellar, and then comes back dead, followed by most of the rest of the family, the police and firemen. Also, this book follows the story of a colony of...
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July 9
Mockymen - Ian Watson - An aging Norwegian commissions a young couple to create a puzzle featuring themselves, nude, in front of a specific statue. The puzzle turns out to be some sort of Nazi occult bullshit, and everything goes haywire. Somehow this is connected to the Mockymen, aliens who arrive to future earth with dangerous drugs, which leave people open to possession. Can one savvy broad...
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July 7
Mood Shifts - Dan Weiss - In the future, people have the ability to enter places similar to spas and change part or all of their minds forever. Lose memories or traits that are undesirable, or change their character totally. The future is shallow, and only Fred Duff the professional consumer seems to notice or care how hellish things have become…
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July 6
The Apocalypse Troll - David Weber - Colonel Ludmilla Leonovna must travel from the 25th back to the 21st century to protect earthlings of the past from the giant Kanga Trolls who have also traveled back in time to hit humanity where it hurts. What is a Kanga Troll? I can’t tell you eeeverything!
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July 5
Astronomy - Richard Wadholm - A female agent, Susan, is sent to Post-war Germany to tackle the monsters called into our dimension by Nazi occult dabblers. She and her fellow agents are trying to save the world from these monsters by working with some of the terrible monsters of the Third Reich…horrifying!
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July 3
WE - Yevgeny Zamyatin - A 1920’s precursor to Brave New World and 1984 explores the world of the 26th century where all minds and actions are controlled by the One State. Living quarters have glass walls, art and sex are manipulated and scheduled, and happiness is doled out in controlled quantities by the State. As the society are about to spread their lifestyle to other planets, the...
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July 2
The Flaxen Femme Fatale - John Zakour - Zach Nixon Johnson is the last freelance private investigator in the world, and he is asked to find the military’s missing secret weapon: a dangerous, powerful psychic named Natasha. She appears in a dream, asking to be left alone, but he pursues her. She turns the whole world against him to show her powers, but he keeps at it with the help of his...
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July 1
Lord Demon - Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold. Kai Wren is a powerful but reclusive demon, part of a group of exiled demons who live on another plane. Kai likes to capture/contain people, creatures and worlds in bottles which are used by other Demons as retreats from their regular lives. But someone wants to Kill Kai. Who could it be…?
June 2010
28 posts
3 tags
June 30 - 50% There!
Happy Half-birthday to you, 365daysofscifi. I hope you don’t die of SIDS before the year is through :)
The Age of the Pussyfoot
A man wakes from cryopreservation 500 years after his death. He explores his complicated new world, which includes an electronic personal terminal called a “Joymaker”, aliens that want to destroy earth, and earthlings that are out to get him.
I...
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June 28
The Atrocity Exhibition
A fragmented story with the theme of how the mass media invades and splinters the private mind of the individual. A man reenacts important moments in history in order to make sense of them to himself. He tries to create his own world war three. Yippee!
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June 27
Battle Angel Alita
In a future where the world is a scrapyard fed by a giant floating island, an amnesiac, legless female cyborg is revived. She knows an ancient martial art, and connects with her forgotten martian past through its practice.
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June 26
Berserker
In the future, Robotic, self-replicating machines left behind from an ancient war want to destroy all organic life. This does not bode well for anyone.
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June 25
The Bikers
A group of monster-like motorcycle gangs terrorize 1970’s Britain. Watch out punksters, someone’s going to rip the safety pin out of your Anarcho-face…
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June 22
Swans Over the Moon - Forrest Aguirre. It’s hard for me to determine what actually happens here. It’s a world with daylight that causes madness, inhabited by soldiers and monarchs. While the inhabitants of this moon fight the force of darkness, a King fights against his daughters who rally other forces to defy him. King Lear, space-style!
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June 21
Hothouse/The Long Afternoon of Earth - - Brian W. Aldiss. The Earth and moon are locked in orbits which keep one side of them facing the growing, almost Supernova-ing sun. The part that faces the earth is a jungle which has grown all sorts of amazing adaptive vegetation, including spider-like plants that have built webs that stretch to the moon and back. The adults of the remaining human tribe...
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June 19
The Sparrow-Mary Doria Russell A first contact/survivor story. The Jesuit order sent a contact team to the planet Rakhat, which was broadcasting music into space. Only one man, Sandoz, survived, and his return to earth leads him to recount his story. Upon reaching Rakhat, the Jesuits tried to survive and mixed with the locals, eventually introducing agriculture to some of them. This proved to...
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June 18
Take Back Plenty-Colin Greenland
Tabitha, a female pilot, takes on a delivery job for an old fling Marco, who’s in a space-band called “Contraband” which consists of several identical twins and a cherub. Marco turns out to be extremely annoying, and the group have some adventures in and around the Plenty, a space station built by one alien race and captured by another. A...
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June 17
Brasyl
An explorer in the 1700’s. A contemporary reality t.v. producer bent on National soccer revenge. Quantum technology adapted for the future black market. Three stories in one book.
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June 15
June 15 - Emphyrio - Jack Vance - The story of a solitary childhood on the planet Halma, son of a wooden screen maker. The original artistic pieces are exported all over the galaxy, and the society’s strictest rules are against duplication of any kind. The misfit father does not fit into this world strictly ruled by elite Lords, and it is eventually discovered that he is duplicating ancient...
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June 14
I’m out of spacejunk for now, so I’ll make this one up.
Wild Ova - E.I. Rolf - A mild-mannered librarian finds a large atomic egg in the basement of the archive. She touches it and, to her delight, gains the power to communicate with animals. Adorable friendships ensue, until she discovers that some of the animal groups were the organizers of some of the worst genocides of the past...
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June 13
A Case of Conscience - James Blish - 4 scientists make contact on the planet Lithia, which is rich in —you guessed it—lithium. The planet is also inhabited by a peaceful race of 12 foot high reptilian kangaroos—stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The team must decide whether or not earth can benefit from contact with this species, or whether the planet will be mined...
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June 12
Dr. Bloodmoney - Philip K. Dick - Do you even need a synopsis with a title as good as that one? Okay, the possibly paranoid Dr. Bloodmoney thinks that they’re out to get him. He also thinks that he can cause nuclear destruction just by willing it. The plot also follows a legless and armless Thalidomide victim, a man stuck in orbit who sends daily inspirational radio messages, a woman...
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June 11
The Centauri Device - M. John Harrison - John Truck is a bum. He rides around the galaxy in his spaceship just bein’ free, until he encounters the Centauri Device, presumably an Alien weapon. John becomes of interest to the ruling factions because of his special connection to the device. They are the Israeli World Government, The United Arab Socialist Republics, The Interstellar...
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June 9
The Complete Roderick - John Sladek - Roderick is an evolving robot who has trouble being accepted anywhere. He faces racism and abuse by his neighbors and teachers (yeah, they send him to Catholic school). Roderick asks too many hard questions! ROOODerIIIIck!
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June 8
Nova - Samuel R. Delany - Captain Lorq van Ray is in search of a more economical source of energy so that he can overthrow the economy run by his archrivals, the Red family. In order to do so, Lorq must head directly into the heart of a dying star…will he capture your heart in the course of this space opera?
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June 7
Blood Music - Greg Bear - A scientist is working on his own crazy project on company time and dime. They fire him and order him to destroy his research, but he smuggles it out of the lab by injecting himself with it.. The super smart cellular organisms continue to evolve inside of him, improving his physical abilities and eventually taking him over. His fellow scientists realize this, and also...
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June 6
A Fall of Moondust Arthur C. Clarke. A sightseeing moon vessel becomes trapped. The crewpeople try to save the stranded vessel, putting it in more peril and fighting against the moon’s natural propensity to suck…
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June 4
The Shrinking Man - Richard Matheson - Scott Carey is exposed to radiation, and begins to shrink. He is stuck in a basement, fighting off a spider and thinking of all of his regrets. While he was shrinking he became meaner and meaner, pushing away his family’s attempts for help, and he grows meaner still, shrinking and shrinking…
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June 3
The Child Garden - Geoff Ryman - It is the future, and the cure for cancer has the nasty side effect of aging the population rapidly. In order to grow children up as fast as possible, knowledge is transmitted to them through viruses. One girl is immune to these viruses, and must learn everything the old-fashioned way, including how to love a creature called Rolfa. The ruling group want to use...
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June 2
The Dancers at the End of Time - Michael Moorcock - The last humans alive on earth are godlike, thanks to the technology of their ancestors which enables them to have anything they want instantly.They lack morals or a concept of good and evil. They mine the past for whimsical things and people to entertain themselves, and find themselves visited by many time travelers. Whoever has the most...