Three more reviews have just gone up on the Vector website, this time from issue 246.
Mark Morris’ Nowhere Near An Angel reviewed by Martin Lewis:
There’s another problem, though not one with the book itself. PS Publishing has a remit covering sf, fantasy, horror and crime/suspense; Vector does not. Nowhere Near An Angel is a dark thriller in the vein of Iain Banks’ Complicity. In his introduction to the book Stephen Gallagher says “This book isn’t, by any obvious definition, a horror novel, but I’d be willing to contend that it’s the kind of novel only a born horror writer could have produced.” That’s debateable but it is certainly true that no definition used by the BSFA would encompass it. Still if a book like A Thread Of Grace by Mary Doria Russell can get reviewed in these pages then there is definitely room for Nowhere Near An Angel.
Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Eighteenth Annual Collection reviewed by me, Geneva Melzack:
The classification of these stories as being fantasy and/or horror could be seen as a narrowness of scope, an attempt to wall fantasy and horror up into the genre ghetto. But again, the diversity of the markets these stories have been taken from belies this argument. Datlow, Link and Grant haven’t just looked at fiction published under the banner of fantasy and horror; they’ve also included stories originally published in mainstream or young adult markets. Indeed, publishing stories such as Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘Guts’ — originally published as mainstream fiction — in a fantasy and horror collection actually adds an extra layer to the story, which provides a new method for appreciating it.
Keith Brooke’s Genetopia reviewed by Ben Jeapes:
Genetopia is set in a low-tech world of genetic engineering gone bonkers, and it is convincing precisely because it’s so low tech. The simplest effects available to the people of this world are way in advance of anything we can do now, but they are still very hit and miss. You expose people to changing vectors, maybe pray a little, and see what happens.
Author Keith Brooke will be interviewed by Molly Brown at the BSFA meeting next Wednesday 28th June.
More reviews and features to come when international issue 247 comes out.
vector-bsfa.com 