Category: Science Fiction and Fantasy

Back from Barcelona. Because it is such a wonderful, civilized city, I came back with a huge amount of swag, purchased in a feeding frenzy in Gigamesh. Gigamesh is a great SF/Fantasy/Comics/RPG store located near Arc L’Triomph (around the corner from a Games Workshop, and a block from a tiny branch outlet that just sells magic cards & T-Shirts).

Here’s an inventory of what I got:

• Books:
     
  • Declare, Tim Powers – Powers rules.

     

  • The Prestige, Christopher Priest – A Novel about Victorian stage magicians by a writer I never read but who has been around (and getting good reviews) for ages.

     

  • The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Lord Dunsany – I loved his short stories in the other Fantasy Masterworks title, Time and the Gods.
  • Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees – Another Fantasy Masterworks title, about which Michael Swanwick said some very good things.

     

  • The first Fafhard and the Gray Mouser collection from the Fantasy Masterworks series (by Fritz Leiber). I read the first book in Hebrew translation and liked it.

     

  • Appleseed, John Clute – my favorite SF reviewer writes a book. His obsession with terminology pops up again right in the author’s preface.

     

  • The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, John Clute (ed.) – my favorite SF reviewer writes (with lots of help from some friends) an encyclopedia, inventing terms left and right to describe those recurring tropes of the genre for which he feels no proper words exist. Massive book, designed to be a companion to the seminal Nichols and Clute SF Encyclopedia.

     

  • Stations of the Tide, Michael Swanwick – I read this serialized in Asimov’s SF magazine, and I really wanted to have it in book form so I could thrust it into the hands of passers-by and tell them “Read this!”
  • The Ends of The Earth, Lucius Shepard – his 2nd short story collection (I think). I read Green Eyes and Life During Wartime. Also saw (but didn’t buy) his following collection, Barnacle Bill the Spacer.
  • Brightness Reef, Infinity’s Shore and Heaven’s Reach, all by David Brin – the “second” Uplift trilogy, which I haven’t read although I really liked his previous books in this setting. I was intimidated by the page count, I guess, and the prospect of buying 2000 pages or so of a trilogy without reading it. But I indulged myself completely this time. I hope Predido Street Station cures my fear of big books.
• Roleplaying Games
  • Fulminata, the alternate reality Roman rpg.
  • Fifth Wave, a sourcebook for TransHuman Space.
  • Thunder Rebels, a sourcebook for Hero Wars.
  • And… Nobilis, the RPG from Hogshead games.
• Comics
  • 3 Transmetropolitan collections (the first ones).
  • Planetary/The Authority crossover. Flipping through it, I felt I haden’t read it, but I now have a sinking feeling that I have. And I guess it’s forgettable enough for me not to remember that. :-(.
  • The Pro, a one shot written by Gareth Ennis about a prostitute with superpowers.