Stratofanatic's Emporium

A new book with a self-explanatory title, Aliens in Popular Culture , edited by Michael M. Levy and Farah Mendlesohn, has just been published. Mostly, this consists of a number of encyclopedia entries and a few more in-depth introductory essays on aliens in popular culture. Proud to say that I had my own small contribution -- a brief entry (>1000 words) on the Amnion in Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap sequence. Nice that it came out, though exorbitantly priced at $94.00.

When L egends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy appeared in 1998, edited by Robert Silverberg, I remember seeing it in bookstores, but otherwise didn't pay it much mind. Mostly, the novella by Robert Jordan caught my eye. Well, during my final read of Brandon Sanderson's completion of The Wheel of Time , I was waiting around for my amazon copy of the final book to arrive and decided to give that Jordan novella a shot. So I went down to Bookman's, got it (in 3 volumes for the paperback edition), and breezed through the eleven stories. The quality of these novellas, however, varied so widely that I'm now going to grade them for fun. The only novella I skipped was King's, since I'd like to read The Dark Tower first. Otherwise, here goes: Stephen King: "The Little Sisters of Eluria" ( The Dark Tower ) skipped. Terry Goodkind: "Debt of Bones" ( The Sword of Truth ) Grade: C+  Commentary: Not awful, I suppose, but too slick ...