Mr. Burke's Reading List

Along with being on the Daily Science Fiction mailing list, I get weekly emails from Flash Fiction Magazine because I've submitted there. (Unlike DSF, I haven't been published there.) I'd forgotten that it published daily because of those weekly digests I got. As always, if someone found this blog through a random search, I kept this log to remember some details of the things I've read (and to track my reading). It's not so much for reviews, but if I state an opinion, whatever. Summary: Literary - 7, Fantasy - 1, Science Fiction - 4, Humor - 0, Unclassified/Experimental/Out There - 0 (I'd otherwise classify as fantasy) Week One January 1, 2022: "Metamorphosis" By Evelyn Pearl Malina. I'm copying down this first paragraph: In her black sequined off-the-shoulder taffeta dress, with a black and red ruffled lace asymmetrical hem, Allison’s grandmother Francesca looks ready to flamenco dance right out of the pain...

I thought about doing this last year, but never started. I've been on the Daily Science Fiction mailing list for a couple of years now. I don't always read them that day, and usually never read more than three or four stories. But at about 1000 words per story, a month of stories is about 20,000 words (plus "Author's Notes"), which is novella length. Not quite a short novel. I should read more of what they publish if I want a better chance of selling them a second story. Summary: Fantasy - 9, Science Fiction - 7, Humor - 1, Unclassified/Experimental/Out There - 1 (I'd otherwise classify as fantasy) Week One January 3, 2022: "Werewolf" by U. M. Celovska. Every full moon, a wolf becomes a man, and helps it to hunt other wolves. Then it becomes a wolf which helps the pack avoid the traps. I liked it. January 4, 2022: "The Devil You Don't Know" by Dave Hendrickson. A devil (not The Devil) comes to the narra...

ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, January 1972 This January issue of Analog has Ben Bova listed as Editor, and he has a Science article as well. Poul Anderson has a guest editorial. For anyone finding these reviews, my purpose is two-fold: enjoying some "classic" sci-fi, and looking for stories that I think could be adapted for TV broadcast since so much of what shows up on anthology shows is rough to awful. Additional Note: I do NOT work in television. I just watch it. In this issue: The Editorial: "The Asking of Questions". Poul takes about mutations stopping when we stop using things so there's no longer any natural selection, mentioning the appendix no longer being used for anything, and the fact that humans, unlike many mammals, cannot produce their own Vitamin C, but they don't need to because of all the plants around. Technology can affect evolution as certain things are no longer necessary. This moves along...

Super City Cops #1: Avenging Amethyst , Keith R. A. DeCandido (2016) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) This was another bonus Kickerstarter Edition, but the book is from 2016. It's a short novel of roughly 100 pages, but it was a quick read. The first thing I was curious about was if the "Avenging" in the title was an adjective or a verb, but it's a little of both, I think. (And an allusion to The Avengers, perhaps?) It takes place in Super City, a city with a lot of costumed heroes and villains running around, and quite a few names get dropped. But it's the story of the regular cops who deal with them, so it deconstructs the hero mythos a little. The story jumps around between a pair of cops, a pair of detectives, and a cop who's been sidelined because of an accident and works in the evidence room bec...

Galaxy PLUS 50: Galaxy Magazine, January-February 1972 Starting Something New! I'll admit that this expansion was spurred by the idea of proposing a column to Tor.com. I figured that just reading one magazine (Analog) wouldn't be enough. I checked, and there were four science fiction/fantasy magazines of note published in 1972: Analog, Galaxy, Amazing, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Of those four, Galaxy and Amazing were published bi-monthly, so I'd only have 3 per month to read. Unfortuantely, neither Amazing nor F&SF are available online. I have to search for a source for these. Should I propose a column to Tor.com, and should they agree to it, I would consider purchasing them online, since the reviews would pay for them. In the meantime, I've added Galaxy to the mix. Overall, I appreciated the hard science stories but I thought the two novelettes dragged on too long. The serial, on the other hand, while not exactly speeding...

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) I've particpated in a bunch of Kickstarters over the past few years. As a result, I wind up with not only a bunch of books to read, but bonus stories and gaming pdfs as nice little extras. These get sorted into folders on my hard drive. So I decided to knock off a few of them while I'm between books. Since my last foray in reading short stories was a A Bushel of eSpec Stories , and before that a Peck of eSpec , this one is a "bushel and a peck", mostly because there isn't a bigger unit to use. Actually, I've been selecting them mostly by file size, starting with the shortest, so there will likely be fewer entries by the time I post it. Once again, this batch should all be from eSpec Books bonuses and stretch goals, unless something else sneaks in. I sorted the directory by s...

Foe , Iain Reid (2017) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) First book of the year (and sort of the last one of last year). This was a runner-up book for the book club. The blurb was interesting so I borrowed the ebook from the libary. It's billed as a psychological suspense thriller and horror, but it wasn't really horror, except for the paranoid feeling of the main character. This was like one of those hour-long episodes of The Twilight Zone or possibly The Outer Limits . You're given an odd proposition and everything flows out of that. In this case, a man named Junior in some dystopian future has been selected by a company named OuterMore as a possible candidate to go to the Installation for training to be sent to a space station orbiting the Earth. It had to be random, based on people's interests expressed online ...

In an attempt to expand my reading of 1972 science-fiction literature, here are some reference links for easy access: Amazing Stories (6 issues): http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?137315 Also: http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/AS.htm Analog (12): http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?136722 Galaxy (6): http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?619829 The Mag of F & SF (12): http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?136799 -- 1970s IS available! Also: for up to 1959 -- http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/FSF.htm Also: Change BOTH Month numbers for each new issue! https://ia601604.us.archive.org/1/items/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v042n01_1972-01" IF (6): http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?136799 Also: for up to 1959 -- http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/IF.htm

My 2021 End-of-the-Year Review Calendar year 2021 has finally left us, and during that time I left 66 entries on my blog, which is basically record for me. In 2009, I had 86 posts, but many of those were reprinting old reviews I'd written in a tiny notebook that I kept for the same reason. That's not to say that I didn't have any "old posts" this past year, but I didn't have as many. So what could be found in those 66 entries? A lot of different stuff, different genres, and various lengths. I tried not to stuff a bunch of 100-200 page books in at the end of the year. Fiction First, of those, only 23 were novels, long or short. Three were Christmas stories, which may be short for "novels" but longer than the other Christmas material I read. Ten of these books were from joining a book club. (Shame on me, it should've been 11, I skipped one month, and I wasn't part of the group at the beginning of the year.) A quick r...