Category: Fiction

The Further Adventures of The Joker — Anthology

By 5t4n5

The Further Adventures of The Joker -- AnthologyAll copyright 1990.

Belly Laugh, or the Joker’s Trick of Treat — Joe R. Lansdale
“Definitive Therapy” — F. Paul Wilson
On a Beautiful Summer’s Day, He Was — Robert R. McCammon
The Man Who Laughs — Stuart M. Kaminsky
Someone Like You — S. Tepper
Help! I am a Prisoner — Joey Cavalieri
Bone — Will Murray
Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard — Edward Bryant and Dan Simmons
Double Dribble — George Alec Effinger
The Joker’s War — Robert Sheckley
The Joker is Mild — Edward D. Hoch
Happy Birthday — Mark L. Van Name and Jack McDevitt
Masks — Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Best of All — Marco Palmieri
The Joker’s Christmas — Karen Haber
On the Wire — Andrew Heifer
The Fifty-Third Card — Henry Slesar
Museum Piece — Mike Resnick
Balloons — Edward Wellen
Jangletown — Elizabeth Hand and Paul Witcover

#sheristepper #dansimmons

Lily, the Immortal — Kylie Lee Baker

By 5t4n5

Lily, the Immortal -- Kylie Lee BakerA rather good, thought provoking story concerning internet celebrities and what may happen to them after they die.

Imagine if some big corporation somehow obtained the rights to the social media channel, used all those hundreds of hours of footage to produce a deep fake, and then continued to use that celebrity for their own marketing purposes in whatever way they chose.   And what about the loved ones left behind?

Best of all, you can read it for free over at Uncanny Magazine.   There’s a podcast version but it doesn’t really work as the lesbian narrator of the story is being read by a man.   It’s like getting a white cis-gender heterosexual to play a black transgender lesbian in a film.

Kylie’s Page

#kylieleebaker

Everlasting — Alastair Reynolds

By 5t4n5

Everlasting -- Alastair ReynoldsYou’ll find this in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories.

This is one of those “many-worlds interpretation” stories.   To be honest, i place this sort of nonsense firmly in the same box as flat earth twaddle and god grovelling.

I take from this story that Alastair also thinks “many-worlds interpretation” is a load of nonsense as well and if you truly believe in it then get a gun and keep playing Russian roulette, because obviously one of you keeps surviving so you can’t really die.

Alastair’s Page

#scifi #alastairreynolds

The Paladin of Golota — P. Djèlí Clark

By 5t4n5

The Paladin of Golota -- P. Djèlí ClarkOnce again, Djèlí writes the perfect short story, this one about zealots going to the battle fields of Golota to kill and die for their respective gods.

On the floor dying, is Zahrea, one of the zealots, and waiting to pick her body clean of valuables is Teffe, a picker, one of the local orphans who survive by combing the fields after each battle for anything worth selling.   Teffe doesn’t believe in gods but while he waits for Zahrea to die he has no choice but to listen to everything she has to say about that.

Super good.

This is available in the periodical, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly — Issue 37.

Next up on Djèlí’s timeline, from 2019, is The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington

P. Djèlí Clark’s Page

#fantasy #pdjeliclark

The Real Story — Alastair Reynolds

By 5t4n5

The Real Story -- Alastair ReynoldsIt’s the real story about the first person to land on Mars.

A reporter gets a message from Mars that she believes can only have come from the person that were first to land there, the person who has been missing ever since.   So off she goes to meet them to get the story of the decade.

Super good writing with a really well done take on Dissociative Identity Disorder, and a wonderful base jumping experience that’s not to be missed out on.

After Fresco, which i felt was well below par for Alastair, this was definitely back to his usual high standards of sci-fi.

If ya wanna read you’ll find this in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories.

Next up in Alastair’s bibliography is Century Rain from 2004: his very first super length novel.

Alastair’s Page

#scifi #alastairreynolds

The Angel of Khan el-Khalili — P. Djèlí Clark

By 5t4n5

The Angel of Khan el-Khalili -- P. Djèlí ClarkThe second story from the Dead Djinn Universe, which i only just got hold of with it having been quite some time since i finished the other three books (silly me thought it was a trilogy).   But not to worry, while it would have been better to have read it before The Haunting of Tram Car 015, it was very much worth reading still and doesn’t detract from anything i’ve already read in this series.

Once again, all the super good writing we’ve come to enjoy from Djèlí, my only question would be is will there be any more Cairo books?   I do so hope so, this is a fantastic world Djèlí has created that begs to be explored a lot more.   And i totally recommend this whole series for everyone, even if you’re not already into steampunk flavoured fantasy with a North African twist you soon will be.

This is available in the anthologies, Clockwork Cairo and Swift the Chase, and also can be read for free over at Tor.com.

P. Djèlí Clark’s Page

#steampunk #fantasy #pdjeliclark