Shagduk

Shagduk

This book from Pilum press, doesn't really neatly slot into any categories. It's set in the 1970's, a world I dimly remember from my childhood, in a Texas I have even fainter memories of. Nevertheless it captures something that I have glimpsed the afterimages of, and grew up in the fading echoes. It is real and grounded and almost utterly matter-of-fact, not written at all like your "standard" sci-if or fantasy book, especially of the last couple decades, yet it is magical. It pulls this off wit…

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The Wells of Ur

The Wells of Ur

Cities come, cities go, yet the city remains. Pilum is now working on getting it's fourth book published, Shagduk by JB Jackson, over at Kickstarter [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deredordica/shagduk-de-re-dordica-book-one-a-novel-by-jb-jackson] . This, fresh off of successfully republishing Sky Hernstrom's Thune's Vision with the addition of a new Mortu and Kyrus story. I've mentioned their first collection, The Penultimate Men, in passing, but today I'd like to cover their second b…

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Style inNeon

Style inNeon

Alexandru Constantin recently put up two posts I'd like to tie together. The first was a review of "Neon Harvest" by Jon Mollison [https://barbarianbookclub.com/2020/03/23/book-review-neon-harvest-by-jon-mollison/] . > Neon Harvest does something different, something cool. It’s not a true sci-fi nor a true cyberpunk. Jon takes the technological baseline of the early 80’s and stagnates it. It’s a pre-digital cyber-thriller. The heroes still use pay-phones, newspapers are still on paper, and cas…

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How Deep The Rabbit Hole Goes

How Deep The Rabbit Hole Goes

Several recent posts deal with the effort to tear down the family, the borders between adults and children (part of a hatred of boundaries [https://thelastredoubt.com/no-boundaries/] I'd already noted..), and the story of Moira Greyland. First - I came across from this piece by Paul Lucas, “Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law” [https://paullucaswriter.wordpress.com/2018/12/19/do-what-thou-wilt-shall-be-the-whole-of-the-law/] . It's actually the second part of a series. It opens with…

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The Mercenary

The Mercenary

Recently they mentioned Pournelle's The Mercenary over at the Castalia House blog [http://www.castaliahouse.com/the-mercenary/]. In the summer between middle and high schools, shortly after moving to a new school system yet again due to the usual military brat lifestyle, I hit up the new library and found a beat up book in the spinner of those they were trying to sell off to make room with a muscular semi-futuristic soldier holding a rifle against an orange background. I was already familiar w…

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