Full Details
Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge: August Review Poll is Open
For August we had 9 WoGF reviews posted in the blog and it’s time for you to pick your top 3. As always, there are 3 prizes awarded each month. We’ll keep the poll open until the end of the month so you’ll have time to read all the reviews.
- To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis – Rae McCausland (ParallelWorlds)
- The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes – Nadine Gemeinböck (Linguana)
- Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor – Rob Weber (valashain)
- Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal – Steff S. (MMOGC)
- Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler – Thom Denholm (Thomcat)
- Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear – Pat Doherty (Patremagne)
- In War Times by Kathleen Ann Goonan – Barry F. (bazhsw)
- Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht – Lynn Williams (lynnsbooks)
- Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht – Allie McCarn (Allie)
Thanks to all our reviewers last month. If you didn’t make the August list, don’t give up – there are still more chances! Please help us spread the word about the review poll and encourage your friends to come over and vote. A lot of effort goes into these great reviews each month so show some love for our reviewers and vote!
General Stats After 8 Months:
Time Remaining: 111 days
Participants: 365!
Books Read: 890
Books Reviewed: 477
WoGF Review: Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht
Guest Blogger, Allie McCarn (Allie), reviews science fiction and fantasy books on her blog Tethyan Books. She has contributed many great book reviews to WWEnd including several Grand Master reviews featured in our blog. Allie has just kicked off a new blog series for WWEnd called New Voices where she’ll be reviewing the debut novels of relatively new authors in the field.
Editor’s Note: This review counts for August.
Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht
Published: Night Shade Books 2011
Series: Book 1 of the Fey and the Fallen
The Book:
“Liam is a child born out of wedlock, whose mother never spoke of his biological father’s identity. Even aside from the mysteries of his parentage, he has plenty to deal with as a boy growing up in Northern Ireland during the period of The Troubles. As he grows into a man, he senses something strange deep inside himself—something dark and dangerous.
What he doesn’t know is that his father is one of the fey, and that his people are locked in a long war that is raging in Ireland alongside the religious and political strife. The enemies of the fey are also the enemies of a secret branch of the Catholic Church, but that does not necessarily make them allies. Liam’s life and loved ones are endangered by both the natural and the supernatural turmoil that fills his world.” ~Allie
Of Blood and Honey, which is up for the Campbell Best New Writer award this year, is my 6th review of the WoGF challenge at World’s Without End (I missed a month. I’ll catch up!). It’s Stina Leicht’s debut novel, an urban fantasy that takes on the difficult setting of 1970s Northern Ireland.
NASA and Commercial Spaceflight: September 2013 Update
LADEE Fires Thrusters Artist’s Concept – NASA Ames / Dana Berry
Moon enthusiasts should have an occasion to celebrate in September. As of this writing, NASA has scheduled the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) scheduled to launch on Friday, Sept. 6 at 10:27 p.m. CDT. LADEE is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the Moon’s surface, and environmental influences on lunar dust. This will be first rocket launch of a NASA science mission from the NASA-Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. Also, LADEE (pronounced “laddie”) will be the first payload launched aboard the five-stage Minotaur V rocket, developed by Orbital Sciences.
LADEE’s Minotaur V Rocket
NASA EDGE/Franklin Fitzgerald
Commercial Spaceflight enthusiasts should also have an occasion to celebrate this month. As of this writing, Orbital Sciences has also scheduled the test launch of its Antares rocket and the new Cygnus capsule, also from NASA-Wallops, but this time to the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, Sept. 17 at 10:16 a.m. CDT. This will be Orbital’s second test launch of Antares, the first launch of Cygnus, and the first time that Cygnus will berth with (be attached to) ISS. For this test launch, Cygnus will deliver up to 4,400 lbs. of payload (food, clothing, experiments, and equipment) to ISS. Upon the successful completion of this test launch, Orbital will be the second Commercial Spaceflight company to have launched to ISS. Then in 2014, Orbital will begin its NASA Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract for eight launches, scheduled to deliver a total of 44,000 lbs. of payload to ISS. The first successful Commercial Spaceflight company, SpaceX, has already begun launches under its NASA CRS contract, and SpaceX has its third (SpX-3) of twelve contracted launches scheduled for Dec. 9.
Additionally, advancements continue with the development of the NASA Space Launch System (SLS), the rockets that will take astronauts beyond the Moon, to Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), and to Mars. In August, NASA created a rocket engine injector using “selective laser melting” (a type of 3-D printing). That rocket engine injector will channel and mix propellants during a rocket launch. This 3-D printed injector has only two parts, whereas 115 parts have been required to create such an injector by traditional means. After fabrication, the injector was installed in a rocket engine, then test fired at 6,000 degrees F at 1,400 psia pressure, and it performed flawlessly. This 3-D printing technology has the potential for significant time and cost savings required for the development of the complex rocket engine parts designed for the heavy-lift NASA SLS rockets.
Cygnus Service Module
Wishing much continued success to NASA and Commercial Spaceflight companies – especially Orbital Sciences – in September 2013 and beyond. If these or any other rocket launches are not being covered by the cable news stations, try NASA-TV and/or http://www.nasa.gov/.
Who says that NASA hasn’t done anything since they retired the Space Shuttles?
Ken Ruffin is the chapter president of the National Space Society (NSS) of North Texas, which supports Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, and space science and space development, throughout the Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW) metro area and beyond. Additionally, Ken has been a Trekkie since 1974.
For more information in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, go to http://www.nssofnt.org/, and consider attending a NSSNT chapter meeting!
I’ll buy that for a dollar! Robocop Official Trailer
Finally a trailer for Robocop! The story looks quite a bit different from the original which I’m OK with so long as the key elements are there. The look and the voice are spot on and we get the “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.” and rapid fire machine gun pistol action we all want. I think it’s interesting that he knows who he is in this one and has to deal with his family directly. Lots of good material to work with there. And just look at that cast! Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, Michael Keaton and Gary Oldman? Stellar. Also I see that Miguel Ferrer is back! He was such a colossal dick in the original. I hope it’s more than just a cameo.
I’m pretty excited to see this one now. So what do you think?
WoGF Review: Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht
For Lynn Williams (lynnsbooks) books are much more than a hobby or a pastime they’re really an obsession. If she’s not reading a book, she’s talking about books on her blog, Lynn’s Book Blog, or deciding which books to buy next. Lynn reads all sorts of books, sometimes straying into YA, but her first love is fantasy. Recently she started to cross into science fiction thanks to the suggestions of some very excellent bloggers.
Editor’s note: We’re playing catch up here on WWEnd after WorldCon last weekend. This review counts for August.
Just finished reading Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht. I read this book as part of my Worlds Without End Women of Genre Fiction reading challenge. I’m posting my review now because this is my August book and if I don’t get on with it – well, it will be my September book instead! But, to be honest I think I would have liked a little more time to reflect on this particular novel and I will confess that it took me awhile to complete and I did put it down for a time. That being said I’m glad I finished. This is very well written and certainly captures a certain sort of mood.
Of Blood and Honey is a book set in Ireland in the 1970s during the ‘Troubles’. The story focuses on Liam who comes from a less than conventional parentage with a very mysterious father. He seems to go from one traumatic experience to the next. At the same time the story has a parallel story of conflict between fallen angels and the fey.
The aspects of the story that I thought were really good were the scene settings. This was a grim time and it certainly comes across here. The Troubles were not frivolous, a lot of people lost their lives and many families were affected and the melancholy within the book is a suitable reflection of this. It’s not a subject to be treated lightly.
WoGF Review: In War Times by Kathleen Ann Goonan
In his youth, Barry F. (bazhsw), really enjoyed reading science fiction and fantasy, and then stopped for the best part of twenty years. In 2012 Barry made a committment to “read more science fiction” and decided the Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge would be his launchpad.
Editor’s Note: We’re playing catch up here on WWEnd after WorldCon last weekend. This review counts for August.
Sam Dance is a soldier in the US military just prior to the United States entry into the theatre of war in World War II. He is seem as someone with particular talents and early on in his career is extracted from his duties and placed into classes of physics, chemistry and other scientific matter.
During this time he is seduced by his enigmatic lecturer from Eastern Europe, Handtz who places into his custody a device which she hopes he will use. It’s quickly clear that the device is something highly prized by the US, Communist Russia and Nazi Germany. It’s a device that has potential for great good and also would be disastrous for humanity in the ‘wrong hands’ – which seems to be everyone apart from Dance.
The device is capable of combining the consciousness and biology of DNA to create parallel and alternative timelines that mesh at a nexus and carry on in alternate directions. An analogy is made throughout the book of jazz musicians who individually do their own thing in a piece of music whilst still playing the same underlying structure, coming together in the same place where necessary and then departing. The analogy is made a little too often for my liking as it seems every fifty pages or so we are introduced to the idea.
2013 Hugo Awards Announced (Live Blog)!
We are live at the 2013 Hugo Award ceremony, where the committee are reporting a solid ballot turnout. The Grand Ballroom here in the Rivercenter at San Antonio is so full, even nominees are being forced to <gasp> sit next to someone! We’re live blogging the results, so refresh this post to get fresher and fresher results…that is, unless you decide to watch Breaking Bad and then get your results in one fell swoop, later. I know I was torn between those options, and I’m at the con!
Better yet, watch the ceremony on U-Stream.
8:22: The Big Heart Award, presented by the impressive superfan David Kyle, went to Tom Veal, who promptly pointed out that he had been given the wrong plaque. This, of course, proves Tom’s worthiness. Congrats to him, and thanks for all the hard work!
8:33: A rarely given Chairman’s Special Award was presented by astronaut Katie Coleman is describing her time in space. She’s here to announce the rarely given special committee award, which went to Stanley Schmidt for his work on Analog Magazine. Money quote: “He kept the science in sci-fi”
8:40: The Seiun Awards, established in 1970, is the Japanese Hugo. It literally means “nebula”. The award for best translated short story went to Paolo Bacigalupi, for “Pocketful of Dharma”. The best translated novel award went to John Sclazi‘s The Android’s Dream (it was his second Seiun Award).
8:46: The Hugo ceremony’s tradition of listing fans, authors, publishers and artists who are no longer with us is unfortunately long.
8:54: “I think the Campbell Award doth protest too much,” says MC Paul Cornell, about how everyone points out that the Campbell is not a Hugo. I usually find myself pointing out that it is not the same as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
8:58: The winner of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer goes to Mur Lafferty, who graciously pointed out that past Campbell nominees (such as George RR Martin and Lauren Beukes) went on to careers just as illustrious as the winners.
9:03: The Hugo trophy base has been unveiled:
Vincent Villafranca, the base designer, is on stage to explain the concept. I love this base. I think it might be my favorite. “It depicts an astronaut and some aliens sitting around reading some books ” They are hand-cast in bronze.
9:10: “We now come…to the Hugo Awards themselves.”
9:12: The Best Fan Artist Award goes to Galen Dara.
9:15: The Best Fan Writer Award goes to Tansy Rayner Roberts, who was unavailable ot accept in person.
9:19: The Best Fancast Award goes to SF Squeecast, xurprising precisely nobody. Seanan McGuire: “I attended my first Worldcon when I was fourteen,” and “this is an in-your-face for all those people I went to high school with.”
9:23: SF Squeecast has officially withdrawn themselves from consideration of future awards.
9:26: The Award for Best Fanzine goes to SF Signal. Congrats, guys! “I’m totally tweeting this.” They, too are recusing themselves from future awards in this category.
9:32: “There’s a reason why semiprozine sounds like Semiprozine sounds like something you’d ask your doctor for”
9:34: The award for Best Semiprozine goes to Clarkesworld.
9:40: The winner for Best Professional Artist is John Picacio. His response? “Well, hello, Texas.” He ended his speech with with a political statement about the status of women in Texas. I assume he means HB2.
9:48: The Best Editor, Long Form Award goes to Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
9:50: The Best Editor, Short Form Award goes to Stanley Schmidt, who is having an extraordinarily good night. “Copy and paste the acknowledgements from previous speech.”
9:53: “We now come to The Best Doctor — I mean, Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.”
9:55: We now get to see all of the nominated clips, which, of course, is a Whofest.
9:59: And the winner is Game of Thrones, ending the Whovian monopoly! Also, has George R. R. Martin lost weight?
10:04: Paul Cornell just confessed that he voted for Hugo last year, so that Hugo could win a Hugo, thus creating a singularity.
10:10: The winner for Best Presentation, Long Form, is The Avengers. Stephen H. Silver is accepting for Joss Whedon.
10:11: Oh, boy, Silverberg is hitting the stage. That means you won’t be hearing new news for a few minutes, now…
10:17: This year’s stall tactic consisted of Silverberg reading a transcript of the first schtick he did in 1965. Brilliant.
10:20: The Best Graphic Story Award goes to Saga, Volume One, written by Brian K. Vaughn, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics).
10:24: The Best Related Work Award goes to Writing Excuses Season Seven, Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler and Jordan Sanderson. “You’re out of excuses. Now, go write.”
10:27: “Kij [Johnson], you and George R. R. Martin should really make some television together. It’d solve the population crisis.”
10:28: The Best Short Story Award goes to “Mono no Aware”, by Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)
10:31: The award for Best Novelette goes to “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”, by Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris). She stood behind the podium for a while, expecting to wake up in her bed at any moment.
10:36: The Best Novella Award goes to Brandon Sanderson, for The Emperor’s Soul (Tachyon Publications).
10:42: And Best Novel goes to….John Scalzi, for Redshirts! Congrats to him, and to all of the folks at Tor.
10:45: “I’m at the convention of misfit toys.” – Scalzi
10:46: On the heft of the trophy: “It’s very heavy, but also light on my heart.” – Scalzi
