Friday, December 26, 2025
Book Review: This World Is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
Book Review: Stories From The Motel Sick edited by Michael Allen Rose
Stories From The Motel Sick edited by Michael Allen Rose (Full review on the way)
388 pages, Paperback
Published November 26, 2025, by Roshambo Publishing
From the back cover... "Stories From The Motel Sick is a genre-bending anthology featuring new stories from authors of horror, bizarro fiction, sci-fi, erotica, noir, and so much more. Each story takes place at the Motel Sick, a strange, metaphysical motel on the edge of a highway leading to nowhere in particular. Inside, you'll find criminals and lovers, aliens, clones, loads of bones, tiny people, time travel, legacies of death, the virtuous and the vicious, grappling for money, power, fame, escape... everything and anything can be found somewhere inside the shifting interior of the Motel Sick."
4 of the last 5 collections I have read were anthologies in which I had a story in. One of the things about this one is that I was so excited to read, despite having had an e-pub of it for months, I did wait to I could hold the paperback in my hands.
Motel Sick was masterminded by editor Michael Allen Rose, having recently done a similar anthology, Fragile, a collection of stories that all started with the same story prompt. As one of the author I can tell you how this started. MAR wrote a group of writers and invited us to submit stories based on this concept.
A crazy bizarro motel, and we each got a chance to write about one of the rooms. We got a description of the outside, that it was next to an Arby’s, and in my case, I was told that my room, room 12, happened to be next to the room of unrelenting screams. I don’t know if other authors, were told by Michael which room or got a similar message about the rooms next to theirs. My story ended up being a time-travel story about a screenwriter.
This is a widely diverse set of stories, considering that everyone started with the same prompt, but that is what creative types do. The story that made me laugh the most should not be a surprise, as that was Jeff Strand’s piece. Cythina Pelayo had one that effectively icked me out. Every story offered something; I was never bored or skipped. Ending with John Skipp. Come on…how perfect.
Editor Michael Allen Rose paced the stories well, added flourishes like a room service menu, giving this book a great one-of-a-kind feel. This book is an argument for indie publishing. Amazing concept. You must have it!
*****
Featuring...
Matt Dinniman
Brian Pinkerton
John Baltisberger
Christine Morgan
Jim Marcus
Christopher Hawkins
John Chambers
Cynthia Pelayo
David Agranoff
John Wayne Comunale
David Scott Hay
Garrett Cook
Jason Rizos
Jeff Strand
Bridget D. Brave
John Bruni
Elizabeth Broadbent
John Skipp
and
Shane McKenzie
Book Review: Sqinks by Rudy Rucker
Sqinks by Rudy Rucker
256 pages, Paperback
Published November 15, 2025 by Transreal Books
Full Review coming!
Book Review: Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
Book Review: 100 Greatest Horror Books Edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman
100 Greatest Horror Books Edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman
366 pages, Paperback
Published May, 1998 by Running Press
First published January 1, 1988
Literary awards: Bram Stoker Award for Best Non-Fiction (1989)
Very short review here, on the live PKD Hang we had bizarro/horror writer Garrett Cook on to talk about Philip K. Dick. Garrett talked about how he discovered PKD and many other authors from reading this book. Starting in centuries past, with Clive Barker talking about Faust From 1592 to modern novels. This is an amazing resource to highlight the range of great horror books that have been scaring us for centuries.
For me, it was incredible to get this survey, so I have some base knowledge of works I may not have actually read. Certain Essays stand out. Peter Straub on The Shining, Stephen King on the Haunting of Hill, and of course TAD Williams writing about PKD’s Three Stigmata is a huge part of why I ordered it.
Anyone who is interested in the history of the horror genre must have read this book.
Sunday, December 21, 2025
Book Review: Worlds Built to Fall Apart: Versions of Philip K. Dick by David Lapoujade, Erik Beranek (Translator)
This is the English translation edition of the French release L’Altération des mondes. Versions de Philip K. Dick by David Lapoujade
Yet another David to add to the third Variety of PKD scholars. This book had just been released before the last PKD fest. At the festival, I heard several people talking about this recently translated book, as being one of the best non-fiction texts on the philosophical ideas of Philip K. Dick. It generated a lot of buzz at the fest, and I wrote it off at first, assuming that it would be a massively expensive academic textbook. While I finally looked it up, there was a reasonable paperback I was excited to get into it.
I personally read this in two sittings, which included a flight to San Francisco, and a BART ride from SFO to the SF public library to appear on a panel about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
As prolific a writer as Philip K. Dick was, I think he would have been astonished to learn just how many books about him and his writing exist. There are genres even in Philip K. Dick studies, Biographies, Timelines, Religious studies, and deep dives into the philosophy by philosophers trying to parse his ideas is also another.
Being that this is translated, I wonder how much is jumbled around, but the translation by Erick Berannek is very good. Lapoujade’s survey of the PKD canon is extensive, and unlike Rossi’s The Twisted Worlds of Philip K. Dick, it doesn’t mess around. It makes the points it needs to quickly and effectively. Not repeating itself, never overdoing the examples. I like Rossi's book very much, but I love that this is shorter and more to the point.
The book is divided into 11 chapters that address a wide range of philosophical ideas and themes that recur throughout the PKD oeuvre. There is excellent stuff to be found throughout, but the three chapters that stand out are Chapter 5, Entropy and Regression, 7, Artificial Worlds, 8, The Digital Human.
Chapter 5 is important, and any conversation about entropy will of course talk about UBIK and Androids, but one thing is for sure, DL uses his PKD, and he can provide multiple examples, quote relevant letters and essays without bogging the text down. This chapter also has some great comments on David Lynch and how his camera creates a Dickian second world, and the very New Wave way JG Ballard’s The Crystal World comments on similar themes.
DL devoted some effective time to PKD and his character's use of drugs. “There are no soft drugs in Dick.” The connection between mind-altering drugs, and the secondary reality of Three Stigmata was one of my favorite topics in this book’s treatment.
Of course, no discussion of PKD is complete without talking about the role of Empathy in the themes of his many classics “Empathy, on the other hand, which Dick sometimes lumps together with sympathy or compassion, is what allows one to circulate between worlds. Despite the profound difference between worlds…”
The chapter on the digital human is, of course, one that requires intense due diligence. I just did a paper at a conference on the topic, and I, of course, found myself wanting to update that talk.
While this review is short, it should not diminish how important it is. I think this is a must-read for serious Dickheads and for non-Dick SF scholars to understand why we dig the guy so much, and I certainly will be quoting this in articles and podcasts for years to come.
Thursday, December 18, 2025
Book Review: The Martian Trilogy: John P. Moore, Amazing Stories, Black Science Fiction, and The Illustrated Feature Section
The Martian Trilogy: John P. Moore, Amazing Stories, Black Science Fiction, and The Illustrated Feature Section
The Martian Trilogy will be ranked in my top books of the year, but in the retro reads, and that is despite it being a “new” release. It is 90 years since the core of it was written. In a circulation that outdid Amazing Stories or any of the pulps of the day, John P. Moore’s Amazing Stories - Shot into Space, re-titled “The Martian Trilogy” here to avoid confusion, is a landmark achievement in science fiction studies and African American studies recovery work.
This story might as well have been the ark of the covenant lost deep in a warehouse when it was uncovered. This is more of a book review than a novella review at its core. Written in 1930, and taking place on September 8th, 2030, John P. Moore’s story shows its age often, but what it represents is more important than the details of the story itself.
The serial began on October 4th in Richmond Planet Newspaper but eventually appeared in a hand called "Illustrated Feature Section,” which was essentially a regular anthology of black fiction that was distributed to 185,000 readers over 34 black-owned newspapers in various cities. So here is this landmark of black imagination, and it was essentially lost. The submission guidelines were clear. “Stories must be full of human interest. Short, simple words. No attempt to parade erudition to the bewilderment of the reader. No colloquialisms such as "nigger," "darkey," "coon," etc. Plenty of dialogue and language that is realistic.
We will not accept any stories that are depressing, saddening, or gloomy. Our people have enough troubles without reading about any. We want them to be interested, cheered, buoyed up; comforted, gladdened, and made to laugh.”
The story is about a man, a doctor in 2030 Baltimore, who is suddenly shot to Mars and finds another world, and goes on an adventure. He finds a black culture on Mars, fall in love with a Princess and plenty of other strange things. The story is mostly impressive because it was first, and when it was written. Writing this stuf in 1930…I grade on a curve.
The story is interesting, a fascinating time capsule of black speculative thought in 1930, but the story is very short by modern standards. This is not what makes the book essential, or why it NEEDS to be supported.
The book has contributions by the researchers who recovered the work, and plenty of stars in black genre fiction. There are excellent essays by Brooks E. Hefner, the author of Black Pulps, Edward Austin Hall, Co-editor of Mothership; Sharee Renee Thomas, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; and Hoosier author Maurice Broddus. Each of these is worth the whole book.
It is about the history, the culture, and the knowledge of this forgotten tale. It is about the academics who found it, who brought it back to life, and what it says about the research still to be done, recovering lost science fiction. The bios, articles, and essays are probably half or more of the book, and they are worth the cost and time invested. This is as important a work released this year in science fiction as it gets.
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