I agree.
I was curious, so I read it at lunch. It would fit better in an I, Robot collection. This should have been rejected by the editors.
I was curious, so I read it at lunch. It would fit better in an I, Robot collection. This should have been rejected by the editors.
That reminds me, I really need to read her Captain Phasma book one of these days, it's been in my Google Play Books account for ages.
It’s the last night of September and I don’t think I’ll be finishing any books tonight. So, here’s my September reading:
Finished “The Crisis Companion: From Flash of Two Worlds to Infinite Earths and Beyond” by Kevin Miller (TwoMorrows, 2026).
Read two Star Trek comics collected editions recently released by IDW:
“Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming” by Susan Bridges, Tilly Bridges, Angel Hernandez, and Charlie Kirchoff (IDW, 2026; reprints “Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming” #1-5 (September 2025 to February 2026))
“Star Trek: The Last Starship Volume 1” by Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzang, and Adrian Bonilla) (IDW, 2026; reprints “Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming” #1-6 (September 2025 to March 2026))
Also got to halfway or more into the following books which will count towards next month once I finish them: Becattini Alberto’s “Disney Comics: The Whole Story” (2024), “Kingdom of the Wicked” by Kerri Maniscalco (2020), and a reread of “Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia” (1994).
Updated GoodReads 2026 Reading Challenge total: 33 of 75 books read (44%).
— David Young
Finished “The Crisis Companion: From Flash of Two Worlds to Infinite Earths and Beyond” by Kevin Miller (TwoMorrows, 2026).
Read two Star Trek comics collected editions recently released by IDW:
“Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming” by Susan Bridges, Tilly Bridges, Angel Hernandez, and Charlie Kirchoff (IDW, 2026; reprints “Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming” #1-5 (September 2025 to February 2026))
“Star Trek: The Last Starship Volume 1” by Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzang, and Adrian Bonilla) (IDW, 2026; reprints “Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming” #1-6 (September 2025 to March 2026))
Also got to halfway or more into the following books which will count towards next month once I finish them: Becattini Alberto’s “Disney Comics: The Whole Story” (2024), “Kingdom of the Wicked” by Kerri Maniscalco (2020), and a reread of “Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia” (1994).
Updated GoodReads 2026 Reading Challenge total: 33 of 75 books read (44%).
— David Young
Even though I've already started on it, my Poe collection read-through is technically my October project, so I put it on temporary hold until Thursday. Spent most of yesterday and today on the bus going to and from various appointments, so I used the time to finish off a book I've owned for a couple of years but never got around to reading: Simon R. Green's Beyond the Blue Moon. After I finished it, I still had time on the trip home to start its follow-up, Once in a Blue Moon. Beyond the Blue Moon's going to be my last book of the month, though.
I wish you hadn't agreed with me. And I wish I didn't agree so completely with your suggestion of where it should have been anthologized. Because I'm still completely puzzled by what it's doing here.
Moving on to "Heart's Desire," by Robert Shearman (and I'd like to remark that the page headings in this book are extremely well done, using a convention that is as good as the one I adopted from the old Stratemeyer children's novels).
This is the story of a newly-minted widower who is despondent and withdrawn with grief. And he has a haunting/hallucination/divine visitation/recurring dream that manifests itself in the imagery of Dorothy's journey to the Emerald City.
J. Kelly Harper's scathing customer review on Amazon declared, "I opened to a random page, and two characters were having sex." The last page of this story may have been that random page, but I will note that (as with the sex scenes and the narrow escape from date-rape in my own novel-in-progress) literally everything is left to the reader's imagination. If this "J. Kelly Harper" found this offensive, then he(?) definitely should avoid David Gerrold's When HARLIE Was One.
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Let alone The Man Who Folded Himself.
Never read it. I just looked it up on Wikipedia. O........k.
I will note that for close to three decades, a framed quote from HARLIE has hung in my office:
I will note that for close to three decades, a framed quote from HARLIE has hung in my office:
It's the only story that I have read in that collection. And it came off as more of a Asimov robot ripoff than Wizard of OZ fanfic. Basically, it boiled down the AI having "laws" that made the situation at the end happen. It was an okay story that did give off some YA vibes.
I also finished King in Yellow. Now, talk about a book of short stories with genres all over the place. It had some good yarns, but I'm not sure I would recommend. For stuff like this, I'm enjoying Arthur Machen more.
And I have two more chapters for The Great God Pan, which I do recommend. It's an interesting read.
Okay, I haven't read this yet, since it was just announced today, but, boy, did I not see this coming. We're getting a new comic book:
ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE NIGHT STALKER.
Yes, we're talking Bud and Lou . . . and Carl Kolchak? (And, yes, I'm am absolutely going to pick this up when it comes out.)
ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE NIGHT STALKER.
Yes, we're talking Bud and Lou . . . and Carl Kolchak? (And, yes, I'm am absolutely going to pick this up when it comes out.)
No Star Trek crossover? The possibilities are endless.
But who's on first?
As Barbara Hambly amply demonstrated some 41 years ago.
"Seven of Nine what?"
"That's the girl's name."
"She has nine names?"
"No, one name. Seven of Nine. Out of nine, she's number seven."
"Nine what?"
"Drones."
"So what if she drones? Who's listening to her talk when she looks like that?"
"That's the girl's name."
"She has nine names?"
"No, one name. Seven of Nine. Out of nine, she's number seven."
"Nine what?"
"Drones."
"So what if she drones? Who's listening to her talk when she looks like that?"
Third base!!!
Latest read: Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice. It's early winter in a small, isolated Anishinaabe rez in northern Ontario when the Internet goes out. And TV, cell phones, and landlines. And then the electricity. People assume it's temporary until a couple of young guys make their way back home from the small town where they were going to college and tell them that everything's gone to hell down south. Some of the people are used to hunting and some are old enough to remember life before they had reliable electricity, never mind Internet, so initially they don't worry too much about how they'll survive. The road south is buried under too much snow for anyone to go find out more about what's happening. But then strangers start to show up, making their way north by snowmobile.
As post-apocalyptic stories go, this one's pretty quiet and very tightly focused on a few people in a small community. It's not Mad Max or The Walking Dead or anything like that. The characters never find out exactly what happened to the world, so neither does the reader. There's a lot about rez life and Anishinaabe culture and language, but not in an overly didactic way. It's a good read. It turns out there's a sequel set several years later, so I'll give that a shot at some point.
As post-apocalyptic stories go, this one's pretty quiet and very tightly focused on a few people in a small community. It's not Mad Max or The Walking Dead or anything like that. The characters never find out exactly what happened to the world, so neither does the reader. There's a lot about rez life and Anishinaabe culture and language, but not in an overly didactic way. It's a good read. It turns out there's a sequel set several years later, so I'll give that a shot at some point.
He probably didn't want to do a more overtly Ozzy story because he'd *just* done that in his short story contribution to a completely different Oz anthology, which came out a few months earlier.
Two more stories from Land of Oz
"The Other Foot," by Stark Holborn, definitely shows a knowledge of not only the Baum Canon, but of subsequent Oz works as well.
There is a tiny subgenre of pulp fiction that combines fantasy, horror, science fiction, and noir. Charles Burns wrote a whole book of it: Hard-Boiled Defective Stories. "The Other Foot" is a hard-boiled defective story. Jack Buskin is a foul-mouthed private detective (this may be the other story that "J. Kelly Harper" objected to in his review). He's also a boot, animated with the Powder of Life. And he is investigating the death of Dr. Nikidik. Not a very nice story (as ADF once said of his own "The Emoman"). It turns the morality of the Baum Canon inside out. And it's served with several scoops of "eye-scream."
"Silver & Gold," by Christina Henry, reshuffles several characters from the first book into a bizarre tale of petty thieves working as sideshow performers. Also "not a very nice story," and served with its own scoop of "eye-scream."
"The Other Foot," by Stark Holborn, definitely shows a knowledge of not only the Baum Canon, but of subsequent Oz works as well.
There is a tiny subgenre of pulp fiction that combines fantasy, horror, science fiction, and noir. Charles Burns wrote a whole book of it: Hard-Boiled Defective Stories. "The Other Foot" is a hard-boiled defective story. Jack Buskin is a foul-mouthed private detective (this may be the other story that "J. Kelly Harper" objected to in his review). He's also a boot, animated with the Powder of Life. And he is investigating the death of Dr. Nikidik. Not a very nice story (as ADF once said of his own "The Emoman"). It turns the morality of the Baum Canon inside out. And it's served with several scoops of "eye-scream."
"Silver & Gold," by Christina Henry, reshuffles several characters from the first book into a bizarre tale of petty thieves working as sideshow performers. Also "not a very nice story," and served with its own scoop of "eye-scream."
Let us know your favorite stories in this anthology.
I won't be visiting it again until next month as I'm reading for Victober this month.
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