Terry Pratchett's novel Only You Can Save Mankind is a charming and fine young adult novel about a kid who discovers that the Space Invaders he chases onscreen are a distant fleet who are being massacred by his hand. Like all Pratchett, it is funny as anything, and like all of Pratchett's YA novels, it's eminently suitable for grownups as well. — Read the rest
I've just finished Terry Pratchett's latest (and finest!) Discworld book, "Going Postal," which concerns itself with the re-opening of the Ankh-Morpork post office as a competitive check against the sempahore tower monopoly. Pratchett's hilarious Discworld novels are parables about issues of modern day, and work on multiple levels: as comedic novels, as stories and as political commentary, and Going Postal is no exception. — Read the rest
Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad trilogy (Truckers, Diggers, Wings) is being adapted for CGI-based film by the director of Shrek! Pratchett gets a million bucks for the rights, but, more importantly, he gets an assload of exposure in the USA, where no one appears to have heard of him, despite the fact that 10% of all books sold in the UK are written by him. — Read the rest
Terry Pratchett interview (delightful!) on the WELL. Link Discuss
Volume One of Man-Eaters, Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk's scathing, hilarious, brilliant comic about girls who turn into man-eating werepanthers when they get their periods, is the best comic I read in 2019, and Volume Two, just published by Image comics, continues the brilliance with a set of design-fiction-y fake ads and other collateral that straddle the line between a serious piece of science fictional world-building and Switfian satire.
I was already a Terry Pratchett fan and a Neil Gaiman fan in 1990, when their comedic novel Good Omens showed up in the bookstore I worked at, and I dibsed it, took it home over the weekend, read it in huge gulps, and wrote an enthusiastic review on a 3×5 card that I tacked to the bookshelf next to it on the new release rack at the front of the store; I hand-sold hundreds of copies, and have read it dozens of times since.
Since 1946, the Clown Egg Register has collected blown eggshells that clowns hand-paint with their distinctive makeup, in order to claim that particular makeup as belonging to them; by custom, clowns do not copy each others' faces.
I have been reading Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels since I was a pre-teen and singing their praises on Boing Boing since 2006, and with the occasion of the publication of Vallista, the fifteenth and nearly final volume in the series, I want to spend some time explaining to you why goddamnit you should really consider reading 15 books, get caught up, and finish this sucker with me, because if there was any justice in this world, the Vlad books would have a following to shame The Dark Tower at its peak.
The readership of Locus magazine have chosen their favorite fantasy and science fiction works of 2015, and the winners make for a very exciting summer reading list indeed!
I can only hope they whistled the same jaunty tunes as their Ghanian counterparts while sorting the mail in Chaplainesque ballet.
Custom furniture maker Craig Thibodeau created this showpiece "Automaton Table" to illustrate all the different ways that he can hide secret compartments in the pieces he builds.
Welcome to Night Vale is the spookiest, funniest podcast on the net and now it's a book that manages the near impossible: balancing precisely on the single-molecule-thick line separating weird humor and real pathos.
When the wonderful science fiction writer Ellen Klages (previously) tells a fantastic tale about a shuttered library where seven eternal librarians tend the shelves, it doesn't come out reminiscent of Borges's library, nor Pratchett's — rather, like all of Klages's work, it becomes a story about human affection and destiny.
Press Start to Play is an anthology of video-game-related science fiction, edited by John Joseph Adams and Daniel "Robopocalypse" Wilson, with stories by some of Boing Boing's favorite SF writers: Ernie Ready Player One Cline, Charlie Jane Anders, Rhianna Pratchett, Catherynne Deathless" Valente, Hugh "Wool" Howey, Austin "Crooked" Grossman, and…me! — Read the rest
Just got a good ole look at these things at Burbank's spectacular Halloween Town; they're poseable, have a nice, grippy matte foam-rubber finish, and are so swell that I may just go back for the whole set!
Monstrous Regiment, a book about gender, war, identity, strategy and tactics, can be enjoyed without reading any of the other marvellous books in the Discworld series.
A compendium of some of my most popular novel reviews from the past year, from 'My Real Children' to 'Raising Steam.'
Here's a 2008 video of NYC's legendary Union Square potato-peeler salesman, Manchester-born Joe Ades, the Gentleman Peeler, whose patter was as smooth as the carrot slices he produced with his sharp little gadgets. He died in 2009, the day after he was notified that he had attained American citizenship. — Read the rest
Locus Magazine has published its annual Recommended Reading list, which is my favorite annual guide to the best that science fiction and fantasy have to offer. The 2013 roundup includes several of the books I've reviewed here this year, including Paolo Bacigalupi's Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Charlie Stross's Neptune's Brood, Lauren Beukes's The Shining Girls, Richard Kadrey's Dead Set, Terry Pratchett's Raising Steam, Ian Tregillis's Necessary Evil, Holly Black's The Coldest Girl in Coldtown and Nathan Ballingrud's North American Lake Monsters. — Read the rest
China's former chief economist has excoriated the nation's banking system, which charges high fees and maintains a greedy-large gap between its deposit interest and lending interest rates.
Such a business provides no value, and is merely parasitic on the people: "With this kind of operational model, banks will continue making money even if all the bank presidents go home to sleep and you replaced them by putting a small dog in their seats." — Read the rest
