Matthew Hunter

In case you are ever hit by the supernatural version of a meteor strike out of a blue sky and magically bound to a succubus and an angel, there are a number of steps that really should be followed as soon as practically possible:

• Have a lot of sex with the succubus. Duh.
• Convince the angel to join in.
• Move out of your mom’s basement

That last step can get tricky when a werewolf wants to mate with you – as forcefully as required, two witches are worried they are getting left out of the fun, heaven is threatening to demote your angel, and the vampires have an all-points-bulletin out on your ass.

*The Edge of Tomorrow is a Tom Cruise military sci-fi vehicle, and it’s a bundle of contradictions that actually work out to a pretty good movie. Let me start by hitting you with what is obvious from the trailer: alien invasion, near-future powered armor. Those aspects are mostly handled well. The power armor is much more realistic than, say, Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor; it’s basically strength-enhancing and load-carrying with some token “armor” and a few mounted weapons. Cruise even gets a chance to lampshade the fact that he isn’t wearing a helmet. (The real reason is that he is getting paid millions for his face to be visible, of course). The aliens are alien aliens and not very comprehensible to humanity.

Knights Magi, the fourth book in the Spellmonger series, focuses on the adventures of Tyndal and Rondal as they grow into their roles as Knights Magi. At over 600 pages, there’s a lot of material to cover, but the content is perhaps best described as an adolescent romp. It’s not serious enough to qualify as a coming-of-age tale (though probably the author intended it as such), nor explicit enough to qualify as soft porn. As the main characters are themselves adolescents in that awkward phase of life, it is perhaps not surprising that (in addition to the usual magic, intrigue, and goblins) the nature of femininity and how to obtain access to a woman’s virtue without being tied down by it occupies a major part of the book.

Good Intentions is somewhere between male adolescent wish-fulfillment, soft-core erotica, paranormal romance, and urban fantasy. The plot revolves around a pretty ordinary guy, still living in his mom’s basement, who decides to sneak into the local graveyard to get a few atmospheric pictures. He’s hoping to use the pictures to impress a pair of cute goth chicks in his photography course, lacking the gumption to simply approach them without a prop.

Why are ebooks from traditional publishers priced so high?

That’s the question. Though the situation has improved a bit since this was written around 2011, there’s still a large price gap between traditionally published ebooks and independent authors. And it’s not because the independent authors suck. (Some do, sure, but that’s not why there’s a price difference).

If you watch the prices over time, the independents usually have lower prices, often just a dollar or two. Traditional published books tend to hover around $10-$15 when first released, and may get down to $5-$7 eventually, but rarely go below that. And readers often complain about those perceived high prices, reasoning that there’s no physical book, no additional cost per copy beyond a bit of electricity to send it to the buyer (which isn’t even paid by the publisher), so why isn’t it free? Or at least a minimal cost, like the independents?

Over at the Mad Genius Club, Amanda finds a publisher talking about ebooks as a “service” and charging more for them than printed books because they are convenient for the reader. Both sides have valid points, but the discussion hook is Amanda’s conclusion:

But to say an e-book should cost considerably more than a print book because it is more convenient is ludicrous. It is especially so when the publisher refuses to admit that a reader buys the book instead of just licensing the right to read the book. As for Luby, well, he needs to quit drinking the kool-aid and realize that the reading public isn’t quite as naive or foolish as he seems to think it is. As for the publishers and bean counters still doing their song and dance of joy over what he had to say, they need to adapt t changing times and demands or be left behind. As the song says, the times, they are a-changing.

If an allusion to Tolkien is the most common way to praise a new fantasy author, “Heinleinesque” has got to be the science fiction equivalent. The description certainly applies to Peter Maxwell’s Ride the Rising Tide, which contains equal doses of space, adventure, and 60’s science fiction nostalgia. It has a space navy, a plucky young protagonist eager to rise through the ranks on the strength of exceptional abilities and a sense of destiny explained only by the invisible hand of the author shaping the plot. You’ll only be jolted out of the futuristic scenario by the occasional references to hypno-study courses and the undefeatable prowess of a skilled black belt in karate.

Gravity, with Sandra Bullock in the lead role and George Clooney supporting, is an excellent movie for fans of science fiction, but as SF author Rosemary Kirstein points out (and beware spoilers behind that link), it is more science fact than science fiction. Though the events are fictional, the technology underpinning them is not. We have multiple space stations in orbit. We have people who work in space on a regular basis, if not continually. We have taken science fiction, and made it real. We have Star Trek communicators, Star Trek tricorders. We are working on self-driving cars and invisibility cloaks. We’re doing all that with science, and this movie sticks reasonably close to what we know about science.

Brandon Sanderson’s excursion into young adult literature, Steelheart (The Reckoners) explores the world of superheroes and supervillains… or more accurately, explores a world where there is a surfeit of supervillains and absolutely no superheroes whatsoever. The world is based roughly on our own present, but with variations ranging from the surreal (supervillains ruling various cities as dictators) to the bizarre (transforming entire cities into steel, with super-moles digging vast tunnels for people to live and work within).

The latest book in SM Stirling’s Change series, The Given Sacrifice concludes the war against the Church Universal and Triumphant with a certain sense of anticlimax. While none of the events quite surprised me, I was left with a sense – quite familiar to me from other recent books in this series – that the author had overstretched his ability to maintain dramatic tension and that the events that have occupied the past three or four books in this series would have been better served to all take place within a single book. Compressing the narrative, if not necessarily the time scale, would make it easier for the reader to preserve the sense of risk and danger that has been rather lacking since Rudi retrieved the Sword of the Lady.