Ekaterina Sedia is a Moscow-born writer, living and working in New Jersey. She has 4 novels to her name (the first one, According to Crow, only as E. Sedia); The Secret History of Moscow is her 3rd one. She has won the World Fantasy Award for Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy which she edited. Her latest anthology, Bewere the Night, is due out in April 2011.
Galina is a misfit; she lives in Moscow and works as a translator when she's not institutionalized. She never fit in, and is considered to be mentally ill by her family and by society at large. But then her sister, her well-adapted and 'normal' counterpart, gives birth to her first child, and then turns into a Jackdaw and flies away... Yakov is a policeman, the grand-child of a British communist who came to Moscow on ideological grounds, and was shortly thereafter picked up by Stalin's henchmen as suspicious foreigner, and dissapeared forever. He witnesses a dog walker turn into a bird and fly away, and is, on the same day, assigned to investigate the spate of recent dissapearances in Moscow, which is how he encounters Galina. Together with Fyodor, a street artist living, literally, in the cracks of society, they follow the trail of the birds, who seem to dissappear into another world by flying through the reflections of doors in windows and puddles. They end up in a world which calls itself Underground.
And now, for a few words about Zodiac, Neal Stephenson's 2nd novel, which I enjoyed enormously. It might no be his most sophisticated writing, but is definitely up there with the most entertaining books I’ve read. Belongs on top of your reading pile!
Sangamon Taylor (ST to his friends) is an activist with GEE, the Group of Environmental Extremists, in their Boston office. He is a wizard with a Zodiac (a u-shaped semi rigid inflatable dinghy, usually with a serious outboard motor, for those not familiar with such matters), and a self-professed professional pain in the arse. Especially to big Chemical Industry Corporations. His territory is the labyrinth that is Boston Harbour, a preferred dumping ground (either directly, or through the sewer overflow system) for said Chemical Industry Corporations. He’s got a background in chemistry (ie knows his stuff), and a very practical and humorous handle on the topic: When I got back, bacon was smoldering on the range, filling the house with gas-phase polycyclic aromatics – my favourite carcinogenic by a long shot.
Since settling into orbit around the Red Planet on March 10, 2006, MRO has transmitted more data to Earth -- 131 trillion bits and more than 70,000 images so far -- than all other interplanetary missions combined.
After the orbiter finished all its initial science objectives in the first two years, NASA extended its lifetime twice. The extra time let MRO watch Mars change over two-and-a-half Martian years, giving a new picture of a shifting, dynamic planet.
Justina Robson is an English SF author, and one of the rising stars of the genre, with now 9 Novels and 1 non-fiction book to her name. And whilst some of her books are considered to be 'Hard' SF (I would dispute this, but let's not bicker about definitions here) the one at hand falls squarely in what is coming to be termed 'Science Fantasy' – more on the what and why below. Keeping in Real is the first book in the Quantum Gravity series, which is running to 5 books as this is written.
The book kicks off with a prequel titled 'Common Knowledge' – you've gotta love honesty: here's the information dump you need to make some sense of what's to come. Nothing wrong with that... The common knowledge is that in 2015 (the story itself plays in 2021) there was a Quantum Explosion (no, me neither) in a Superconducting Supercollider, tearing a hole into the fabric of Spacetime, and irreversibly altering the fabric of the Universe. Where there was only one universe before, there are now 6 parallel and connected realities/universes, all with a full history extending way beyond the event which, apparently, split them into existence. Ours is known as Otopia, the other ones are Zoomenon (Elementals, inimical to human life), Alfheim (Elves, borders closely controlled, diplomatic relations), Demonia (Demons, borders open, scientific co-operation), Thanatopia, the crossing into which requires the death of the traveller and is thus limited to trained Necromancers, and finally we have Faery (as it says on the tin). And so it comes to be that we have a future world, with advanced technology, but also with magic, Elves, Faeries, Elementals, Dragons... it's a rather disconcerting mix at times.
Here's another previously published review (on the now-defunct Diversebooks reviews site) - this time for Snow Crash, a Cyberpunk classic by Neal Stephenson, apparently “the Neuromancer for the 90s” as it was billed (curse the marketeers), with a slightly far-fetched plot, but since when did this stop a good SF story? Great book, compulsive reading, a classic, if you can (still) abide yesteryear’s ‘latest thing’, ie Cyberpunk.
Hiro Protagonist (the name is either pure genius, or an unconditional capitulation to the classic question what shall I call my Hero/Protagonist?) is a Freelance Hacker, part-time Pizza Delivery boy for the Mafia, the world’s best sword fighter, and currently at lose ends and broke. Y.T. (as in yours truly) is a 15 years old girl, working as Skateboard Kourier, using a magnetic harpoon to surf in fast moving traffic, and make her deliveries to her customers in the Burbaclaves; to you and me that's parts of independent states, spread across the land like patchwork, connected by Motorways. Together they form a partnership that supplies data/information to the CIC, the Central Intelligence Corporation; a follow-up organization to the Library of Congress, holding huge amounts of all kind of data in a glorious variety of types of media.
Over at the 50 Watts site they have published a collection of Japanese SF Art under the title of Space Teriyaki - a mixed bag, some of it marvellous, some slightyly old-school, or weird, or simply creepy.
Nice collection, and a site to check occasionally, I think.