Astral Weeks Archive: Past reviews

In the graphic novel “Revolver,” Matt Kindt gives us an unlikely duo on the run in an apocalyptic America.

The anthology “The Secret History of Science Fiction” contains many gems - including an early story by novelist Don DeLillo.

Laura Kasischke’s ‘In a Perfect World’ presents an end-of-the-world scenario that is apocalyptic in every way -- and also full of surprises.

Stories soar to imaginative heights and into unexpected dimensions in ‘Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy, Volume 3.’

Lise Haines’ ‘Girl in the Arena’ follows an engaging teen narrator in a world where mass entertainment centers on deadly gladiator battles.

How RPGs -- role-playing games -- have much in common with fiction, as the stories of ‘Gamer Fantastic’ attest.

Bloomsbury Group’s new Ex Libris line features Wolf Mankowitz’s wondrous ‘A Kid for Two Farthings.’

1Comfortably over a thousand pages, “The Complete Stories of J.G.

In his consideration of two volumes of American horror stories, our columnist finds that quotes take on a life of their own.

Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ continues with another author -- and can’t quite measure up to the original.

Charlie Huston’s ‘My Dead Body’ takes readers into a murky world of vampish thugs beneath the city.

Victor LaValle’s “Big Machine” evokes the grotesque horrors found in Stephen King, T.E.D. Klein and Shirley Jackson, but with a style all his own.

Paul Pope’s ‘100%’ takes us to the year 2038, where technology provides an even more degraded form of entertainment.

Some notes on Laurie Sheck’s ‘A Monster’s Notes.’

Paul Di Filippo’s short novel “Cosmocopia” is just part of a package featuring a jigsaw puzzle and other articles reminiscent of the vivid, multi-colored heyday of pulp adventure stories.

Christopher Miller’s ‘The Cardboard Universe’ imagines a sci-fi writer who parallels the ‘Scanner Darkly’ author in many ways -- including having a legion of obsessed fans.

The trailblazing work of science fiction writer Miles J. Breuer is worth reading in a new collection -- if you can stand the cover.

Benjamin Parzybok’s novel presents three slackers on a strange quest to find a home for a piece of furniture

‘The Serial Garden’ presents stories of the Armitage family that will win over young readers -- and adult ones too.

Where fans of books-within-books go

In Part 2 of this consideration of stories about stories, these storytellers create enchanting, endless loops

Howard Waldrop’s fictions are dense with references to world literature -- but is it necessary to know them all to enjoy his stories?

In ‘Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me’ and ‘Master of Reality,’ classic rock groups take their listeners to fantastic places

The first posthumously published work by Clarke, co-written with a fellow legend, looks at sexuality, aliens and a long-ago mathematical formula.

A new biography of Charles Fort and a collection of his writings show why Theodore Dreiser raved about him.

Published in New Zealand in 1881, “The Great Romance” combines space exploration with a vision of a futuristic utopia.

In Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother,” a young hacker is caught in an Orwellian situation -- and decides to fight back.

A satisfying quest novel by Ekaterina Sedia leads to an alternate world and has the feel of a good Dungeons & Dragons campaign (plus Nabokov overtones.)

By Ed Park As temperatures climb this summer, an armchair visit to hell can help put even the most inhospitable forecasts in perspective.

By Ed Park Though 20 years have passed between the publication of the start and finish of John Crowley’s tetralogy “Aegypt” -- time enough, in publishing terms, for the oeuvre to take on the luster of the “Corpus Hermeticum” whose implications it relates -- only about a year has elapsed in the world of the book.

By Ed Park Repetition is never a good thing.

In Catherynne M. Valente’s imaginary realms, stories splinter and reflect, causing the sweetest sensation of vertigo for the reader

In Jay Lake’s novel “Mainspring” (Tor: 320 pp., $24.95), the Lord’s Prayer gets a strange edit: Our Father who art in Heaven Craftsman be thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy plan be done On Earth as it is in Heaven Forgive us this day our errors As we forgive those who err against us Lead us not into imperfection And deliver us from chaos For thine is the power, and the precision For ever and ever, amen.

By Ed Park * To take a page from last month’s column: We learn from John Crowley’s “Endless Things,” the final book of his “Aegypt” cycle, that “Coleridge had written . . . that ‘the common end of all narrative, nay of all poems, is to convert a series into a whole: to make those events which in a real or imagined History move on in a strait Line, assume to our Understandings a Circular motion -- the snake with its Tail in its Mouth.”

I admired [Robert Louis] Stevenson; I did more than that.

Joe Haldeman’s novels demonstrate that “forever” is a very flexible term when a time machine is involved

In ‘Zoe’s Tale,’ John Scalzi returns to his ‘Old Man’s War’ series from the viewpoint of a wise-cracking teen