Ray Bradbury is perhaps the greatest living master of science fiction, with hundreds of short stories in print; his novels, including Something Wicked This Way Comes and Fahrenheit 451 are taught in classrooms around the world. In this interview, the creater of The Martian Chronicles talks about his hopes for manned NASA missions, his reasons for writing, and his work with Ray Harryhausen, Katherine Hepburn, and John Huston.
Fishing is a pleasant thing - at the Little Akron in particular, where the river is delightful and the fish plentiful. The stories of a man who lost his finger to an improbable fish leave it, perhaps, a little less enticing - but certainly aren't enough to stop his son from trying his hand at it when he returns to old Center Run. But a simple day of fishing dissolves into strange happenings - a prehistoric beast in the Little Akron's water only a prologue to a wild town filled with revelers, where the price of entry is not so clearly defined as visitors might wish...
Headlamps by A.S. Morgan (fantasy)
Vauxhall has condescended to allow wingless 12-year-old Lilly Mikasa into its ranks - a fact which Lilly is daily reminded of at school, teased as she is by her fellow classmates. The symbols of the school follow her everywhere, its white wings and golden scales, her inadequacy plainly written in its image - a fact clearly lost on her parents, who are lost in their own ecstatic congratulations to their daughter for gaining entrance to such an institution. Seething with anger and frustration, stuck in a society where she is hopelessly embedded in the lower caste, Lilly begins to lash out.
Posiedon Blessed by E. Catherine Tobler (myth)
Dictys searches daily for his little trophies - clams on the seashore for him and his wife. His life is quiet, simple, even laughable in the eyes of his brother, the king of their small island. Still, a good life, and a calm one - until Dictys finds a casket on the shore, stinking of filth and laden with a woman wrapped around her tiny child: Danaë, child of Acrisius, King of Argos. With the weight of the Gods on Danaë and her child, and with Dictys' own brother turning lecherous eyes on the rescued mother, Dictys searches for peace in a sea of turmoil.
New imprint Juno Books is already making waves with its genre-straddling erotica. In Saskia Walker's The Strangeling, a standard fantasy world is fleshed out with detailed descriptions of sex magic - and a thoroughly delectable villain.
Your Beaten Heart by Mathilde Madden
On a shelf full of heavily fictionalized erotic memoirs, Stephen Elliott's My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up is something different - a mostly true story that claims to be fiction, and a book by a male submissive that neither glorifies nor flinches from the darker side of masochism.
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Upon joining RE as a staff reviewer, Mathilde Madden had one request: let her introduce herself to the readers. Being generally accomodating people (and delighted to read almost anything she writes), we said "sure - just say something nice about us, and don't try to convince anyone to join a cult." We're not so sure she managed the second one; her passion for books is kind of infectious.
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