Poems Li Po, Tu Fu, Arthur Cooper (translator) Of all the arts, poetry is the one most tied to specific languages. This is why you will hear French speakers claiming that there is no such thing as English poetry -- English poetry is a different art from French poetry, so it's easy for a connoisseur of French poetry to dismiss English poetry. This question is especially pressing when a native English speaker (me) wants to read the poetry of two famous Chinese poets,  Li Po  and  Tu Fu , who flourished in eighth-century China. (Don't be confused if you see their names written differently.  Li Po , for instance, is also called  Li Bai  and  Li Bo .) Chinese is a very different language from English, far more so than English is from French, and because Chinese is a living language, we can be confident that the Chinese of  Li Po  and  Tu Fu  was rather different from modern Chinese. If you have ever struggled to understand  Geoffrey...

The Infernals John Connolly I am sorry to say that I was a little disappointed by the second installment of  John Connolly 's  Samuel Johnson  series,  The Infernals . I got into the series by reading the short story  The Monks of Appalling Dreadfulness , which was delightful. The first novel,  The Gates , was equally delightful, at greater length. The Infernals  is less delightful. It spends too much time wandering around, not getting anywhere. In fact, it reminded me of one of the most tedious novels of all time (IMHO),  John Bunyan 's  The Pilgrim's Progress . In  The Pilgrim's Progress  the hero, Christian, wanders through a landscape peopled by personified abstractions, trying to find his way to Heaven. In a similar way, Samuel and Nurd and Mr. Merryweather’s Elves wander around Hell having difficulties with various personfications of evil.  Connolly 's Hell doesn't make a lot of sense. Fair enough -- Hell is not SUIPPOSED...

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi Shannon Chakraborty I of course have not read every science fiction novel published in 2023. However, I have read every 2024 Best Novel Hugo finalist*, and this is the one that would get my vote. In fact, this was the last one I read, and until I started it I was in despair, thinking that there was not a novel among the finalists that really deserved a Hugo award. But this one does. Shannon Chakraborty 's  The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi  is that very rare thing: a work of exacting scholarship, and simultaneously an exciting and readable novel. In her acknowledgements  Chakraborty  writes I began writing The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi in March 2020, and if there is any book that took a village to complete, it would be this one. Balancing a pandemic, virtual elementary schooling, and a manuscript that required depths of research beyond anything I could have originally envisioned is an experience I hope never to repeat, and one I ...

Winter Lost Patricia Briggs Winter Lost  is the 14th novel in  Patricia Briggs 's  Mercy Thompson  urban fantasy series.  Mercy Thompson  is the series that introduced me to urban fantasy and is still my all-time favorite urban fantasy series. This one didn't quite feel to me like a typical  Mercy Thompson  novel. The  Mercy Thompson  novels are, as a whole, very political -- not that they are about real-world politics, but in the sense that they involve the political machinations and palace intrigues of groups of supernatural creatures, the most important being fae, werewolf packs, and vampire seethes. Mercy, with her werewolf husband Adam Hauptman has, over the course of the the previous 13 novels, become the leader of an alliance of fae, werewolves, and vampires that seeks to ensure security in her local community. These political threads are present in  Winter Lost , but really only in the form of unresolved conflicts from previ...

How to raise a Kraken in your bathtub P. Djèlí Clark One Man's Treasure Sarah Pinsker. In this issue of Uncanny Magazine I read only two stories: "How to raise a Kraken in your bathtub". by  P. Djèlí Clark  and "One Man's Treasure" by  Sarah Pinsker . These are 2024 Hugo finalists: "Kraken" for Best Short Story and "Treasure" for Best Novelette. They were just OK, not great, and neither would receive my vote for the award. (My votes would be "The Sound of Children Screaming" by  Rachael K. Jones  for Short Story and "On the Fox Roads" by  Nghi Vo  for novelette.) "Kraken" was a disappointment. From the title alone you will guess at the subject and plot of the story. This didn't bother me, because sometimes the best stories in speculative fiction are those that start out obvious, but then break. Well, "Kraken" doesn't break. It was pretty much exactly the story I imagined when I read the titl...

The Sound of Children Screaming Rachel K. Jones I read and am reviewing only the  Rachael K. Jones  story "The Sound of Children Screaming". It is a finalist for the 2024 Best Short story Hugo Award, and it is, in my opinion, by far the best of the finalists (except possibly "Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times", which I have not yet managed to read). You will already have figured out from the title of the story and of the magazine that this is not a happy fun story. You will learn within the first few paragraphs that it is a political story, concerned with that stubbornly insoluble problem that only the USA has. Within the first few paragraphs you will find these sentences "Everyone has a right to a gun. Nothing can take that away from you. What you lack is a right to the lives of your children." If you are what we in the USA cryptically call a Second Amendment supporter, you're not going to like the politics of this story, and you will probably f...

Better Living Through Algorithms Naomi Kritzer In this issue of Clarkesworld I am reviewing only the 2024 Best Short Story Hugo finalist "Better Living Through Algorithms", by  Naomi Kritzer . This is barely science fiction, in the sense that an optimist could easily imagine this story happening right now, in the very world we are living in. Most people probably would not, however, because we are conditioned to always imagine Thinking Machines as A Bad Thing -- you know, Frankenstein's monster and HAL 9000 and the Terminator and about a million other stories. I find that trope tiresome and irritating, so I love an original take on how AI could go right. This is, it turns out, a fairly small scale "going right", but not the less interesting for that. It's a good story. It would not get my vote for the award (that would be "The Sound of Children Screaming", by  Rachael K. Jones ), but this is a good story and I would not feel robbed if it won. Amazon...

The Mausoleum's Children Aliette de Bodard In this issue of Uncanny I read and am reviewing only "The Mausoleum's Children" by  Aliette de Bodard . It is a finalist for the 2024 Best Short Story Hugo Award. It's a good story, and although it wouldn't receive my vote (IMO  Rachael K. Jones 's "The Sound of Children Screaming" is a better story), I would not feel robbed if "The Mausoleum's Children" won. The  Wild Hunt  is an element of the folklore of northern Europe (mostly) that has found its way into a lot of modern fantasy. The story is vague and Protean enough that it takes different forms in the hands of different authors.  De Bodard 's take on it is fresh and exciting. (I must confess, however, that  de Bodard  doesn't specifically reference the Wild Hunt, so that connection may exist only in my imagination.) Like many versions of the Wild Hunt, this is a dark story in which children are made to suffer, so know that go...

Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition Gu Shi, Emily Jin (translator) In this issue of Clarkeworld I read only the story "Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition", by  Gu Shi , translated from the Chinese by  Emily Jin . It is a finalist for the 2024 Best Novelette Hugo Award. It's a confusing and difficult-to-follow future historical pseudodocumentary, concerned mostly with the consequences of widely available cold sleep. There's also a mother-daughter story tacked on -- it transpires that the author of the first edition, one Xiao Miao, was the daughter of the author of the introduction to the second edition. It was kind of hard work to read and to believe, and I never enjoyed it. The translation felt a little awkward to me. I do not read Chinese, so I can't compare the English version to the original. However, we have sentences like these, The results indicated that Xiao Miao has advanced stage lung cancer. She was only twenty years old. That intrus...

The Saint of Bright Doors Vajra Chandrasekera I picked up  Vajra Chandrasekera 's  The Saint of Bright Doors  because it's a finalist for the 2024 Best Novel Hugo award. Over and over as I worked through this year's Hugo finalists, I have found myself asking, "Why is this a Hugo finalist?" Not this time.  The Saint of Bright Doors  is exactly the kind of highly original and creative work I expect to get nominated for awards. At the same time, I found myself thinking as I approached the end, "Thank God I will soon be finished!" It is creative, but it's very hard to read. I have a good deal of tolerance for literature that makes me work (see, e.g.,  here ), but I need to be compensated for my trouble. In a novel I need the usual accoutrements of good fiction: engaging characters and a plot that keeps me wanting to know what happens next. In my headline I already hinted at the problem with  The Saint of Bright Doors  -- it doesn't have a plot. OK, t...

High Wizardry Diane Duane In the previous two novels of  Diane Duane 's  Young Wizards  series we got to know the titular young wizards, Nita and Kit. Nita's specialty is living things and Kit's is inanimate objects such as stone and earth (which, it turns out, in the hands of a wizard such as Kit are not really inanimate at all). It was also broadly hinted that Nita's prodigy kid sister Dairine would become a wizard in the next novel. Dairine's expertise, it turns out, is computers. This was a very forward-looking idea in 1990, when personal computers were just becoming a thing. (I started a new job in 1990 and had an IBM PC XT running Windoze 2 at work.) In her acknowledgments  Duane  makes it clear that she was a leading-edge computer warrior. This is a pretty exciting story. Dairine is a VERY young wizard, indeed, eleven years old, and since younger wizards are more powerful, she is a very powerful wizard. She is also, we quickly learn, extremely bright, but...

The Circle Game Margaret Atwood This new Anansi Press anniversary edition of  Margaret Atwood 's  The Circle Game  begins with an introduction by  Suzanne Buffam .  Buffam  spends much of her introduction telling you what a great poem "This is a Photograph of me" is. After spoiling the big reveal of that poem, she goes on to make a few general remarks about  Atwood  and poetry in general. Here's a bit of advice to readers: read "This is a Photograph of me" first -- it's the first poem in the book -- then go back and read  Buffam 's introduction, and finally proceed to the rest of the poems. "This is a Photograph of me" is indeed a great poem, the best in the book, in my opinion, and worth the time I took to read the book. But aside from that, I found  The Circle Game  an extremely bleak experience. If  Atwood  has ever experienced joy, you would not figure it out from this collection. The pronouns in many of the poems are ...

Yearbook Seth Rogen Seth Rogen 's  Yearbook  is an autobiographical account of events in  Rogen 's life so far that he thinks are interesting to talk about. He's mostly but not entirely right.  Rogen  is a Jew who grew up near Vancouver, British Columbia. He began doing stand-up comedy at the age of thirteen (really!) and from there became an actor, and rather successful movie producer and director. I mostly enjoyed the audiobook. The parts about his family and growing up Jewish were the best. His accounts of encounters and interactions with famous actors and musicians were a bit tedious to me -- it's just not something I'm into. The parts about getting high were something like half the book and became quite tedious.  Rogen  is aware enough of the repetitive nature of these parts to get defensive about it. The audiobook is mostly narrated by  Rogen  himself, but dialog was performed by a full cast. The closing credits list the performers -- t...

The Gates John Connolly Around the time of the Big Bang, 13 billion years ago, evil came into existence along with everything else.  John Connolly 's  The Gates  begins with an account of the Big Bang. In fact, chapter I, entitled "In Which the Universe Forms, Which Seems Like a Very Good Place to Start", is a brief description of the Big Bang. It is evident that  Connolly  has taken pains to be scientifically accurate here and at other relevant points. In fact, in his acknowledgements he writes Dr. Colm Stephens, administrator of the School of Physics at Trinity College, Dublin, very generously agreed to read this manuscript, and offered advice and clarification. In the interests of fiction I was forced to ignore some of it, and for that I apologize deeply. In fact, I have read purported nonfiction books by card-carrying physicists that were less scientifically accurate. That said, let's admit that the creation of Evil in the Big Bang is not something physicist...

The Cinnamon Peeler: Select Poems Michael Ondaatje I have recently read a lot of poetry by classic poets such as  Sappho ,  Li Po ,  Tu Fu ,  John Keats , and  Robert Browning . To read poets like these, you can get your hands on carefully annotated versions by editors who explain all the obscure references in the poems. Reading  Michael Ondaatje 's  The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems  made me realize that I've been underappreciating that luxury. There's a good deal in  tCP:SP  that remains mysterious to me. For instance the second poem, "Early Morning, Kingston to Ganaoque", ends with these two lines Somewhere in those fields, they are shaping new kinds of women My reaction to that was "Huh? What does that have to do with the previous 15 lines?" I still don't know. They come out of nowhere. Ondaatje  was born in Sri Lanka (although at the time of his birth it may have been known as Ceylon). His first eleven years he grew up in Sri...

Selected Poems Robert Browning, Daniel Karlin (editor) There are treasures to be found in  Robert Browning 's poetry but don't expect them to be laid out for you like the candies at the grocery store cash register.  Browning  is famously obscure. In his introduction to  Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) by Browning Robert   Daniel Karlin  tells this story Tennyson said that there were only two lines in [Browning's Sordello] that he understood, the first – ‘Who will, may hear Sordello’s story told’ – and the last – ‘Who would, has heard Sordello’s story told’ – and that both were lies, which is unkind, but still pretty funny. This  Penguin Classics edition  is a well-put-together book, as Penguin Classics always are in my experience. After a brief (3 pages) introduction, we dive right into the poems, in publication order, with the exception of the final poem, which serves as a kind of epitaph. There are notes after the poems themselves, which are a...