Literary Sampling and Remixing: Sterling & Gibson’s The Difference Engine

I’ve intended to get around to The Difference Engine for years on end, but never started in on it in earnest until this year, for reasons I can’t explain, really. I’ve had a copy all these years, but never quite gotten around to it. Anyway, I picked up an audiobook edition of the novel using one of my Audible credits, since I’ve been listening to audiobooks a fair bit while walking, or doing chores around the house, and I’m enjoying it immensely. I remember reading an interview with the authors in Science Fiction Studies many years ago, and being very curious about the method they …

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Swords Against Death by Fritz Leiber

Swords Against Death is the second of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar books, featuring the archetypal characters of Fafhrd  the barbarian and The Grey Mouser the rogue. The book includes stories spanning from 1940 to 1970… which I imagine, if you’re reading the book attentively and know this, would leave you watching for signs of change and development in the author’s writing style. As for me, it wasn’t really apparent to me, as I read the stories, that they were written across such a long span of years. That isn’t to say there weren’t shifts in tone and style, or that there …

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You’d Watch This Movie, Right? (Or Read This Comic?)

My wife was trying to figure out what to do with a weirdly-shaped canvas she’s planning to paint, and some riffing led to the ultimate pulp B-movie idea… well, for a certain audience, anyway. I’m thinking it’d be one of those neo-exploitation flicks, like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have resurrected. The image on the painting–a movie poster–features the following: Giordano Bruno, in a torn monk’s habit (with giant rippling muscles visible beneath), stetson, boots & spurs, poised with two sixguns in his hands and a cigar in his mouth, a grim look of determination on his face. Marie Curie, …

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Mission Child by Maureen McHugh, and Thoughts About Stretching the Limits of the Genre

I’ve loved Maureen McHugh’s writing since first contact. That was, like for many people, her debut novel China Mountain Zhang, a book I stumbled upon in the Chapters in downtown Montréal, I think sometime in 1999 or so… a couple of years before I left for Korea, where (back in the old days) I had to make do with reading whatever I happened to find. It was because Maureen was teaching a week at Clarion West in 2006 that I decided to take the plunge and go; it was because of China Mountain Zhang that I realized the kinds of stories that …

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Heathern and Terraplane, by Jack Womack

I’ve just read Jack Womack’s second and third novels (both of books set in his “Dryco” series) back-to-back. Longtime readers will note that I lauded the first novel in the series (in terms of series timeline) with lavish praise back in 2012. I also read the Womack’s first novel, Ambient, and it made a strong impression on me at the time, but that was years and years ago, and I’m due for a reread since I’m apparently trying to read all the Dryco books this year. (Actually, when I read Ambient, I wanted nothing more than to read everything else …

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