If we use the finalists for the Best Graphic Story Hugo as a proxy for broader recognition, then SFFH readers over the past eight years have absolutely been casting a wide net and looking at a tremendous, a truly impressive and inspiring range of comics and graphic novels, holding them up as award-worthy works that need and deserve to be read. And that very much includes this year’s finalists.
I think Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance justifies its size and then some.
And for the genre reader, this is a chonky, valuable book for showing that the past is a different country…and yet the people in it are awfully human. One can get a real appreciation for authors like Jo Graham and Guy Gavriel Kay by reading the full-on history that Palmer provides here…
There is a strong layer of familiarity underlying it all, particularly in its vaguely Medieval European setting and fairy story folklore inspirations. But Starling takes these basic ingredients or flavors and cooks them into something unexpected and astounding.
The synopsis for Sarah Maria Griffin’s Eat the Ones You Love would understandably invoke thoughts of Little Shop of Horrors for most people. I also kept thinking about Sue Burke’s Semiosis trilogy, not in terms of the plot, but in the sentient plant character and point-of-view perspective.
About Signale – Ein Weltraumabenteuer (1970): In the middle of the 21th century, a spaceship loses its bearings, and the commander of another space crew, seemingly on a routine check flight, decides to investigate. The first and most ambitious of two epic space operas that prolific East German genre director Gottfried Kolditz (1922-1982) made for the state-run DEFA film studios, SIGNALS was DEFA’s cheeky attempt to outdo Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY behind the Iron Curtain. The film used many of the same tricks: expansive, visually stunning shots of the cosmos … gorgeous Futurist space-design with ergonomic chairs, IBM lookalike computers, Mod mini-dresses and “STAR TREK” space uniforms … even a copycat free-floating in tunnel sequence with a wild electronic Perry-Kingsley type score. Featuring breathtaking 70mm cinematography, recently restored in 6K from the original camera negative by the University of Massachusetts Amherst / DEFA Film Library for its first-ever world Blu-ray release by Deaf Crocodile. The Blu-ray is available via Deaf Crocodile along with Koldtiz’s Im Straub der Sterne (In the Dust of the Stars). Note: The film was adapted from Carlos Radsch’s Asteroidenjäger (1961)!
I liked how grounded this book felt. The details of train service, survivors trying to recover after the wreck, the squabbling among various factions of train passengers, the differences between types of magic — all of these felt thoughtfully explored.
