Perhaps no other book has influenced my thinking about freedom of expression and the power of art as much as The Merro Tree. Yet when I tell people that, I get blank stares.  It’s positively criminal that this book isn’t up there with Fahrenheit 451.  Then again, Fahrenheit 451 is the kind of book that you …

People complain that they’re sick of vampires, that they’re overdone or just done, and I can understand that. There have been a lot of (ahem) pale imitations of Stoker and Rice, far more than good and original vampire fiction. But I’ll never really get tired of vampires, the same way I’ll never get tired of dragons …

Full disclosure: I am a librarian. (Among other things.) Librarian stereotypes are largely mild, often going so far as a severe, buttoned-up woman who shushes people and no further. But of course, then we have the Sexy Librarian, most notable for nearly breaking up Troy and Abed that one time… …and the eager naïf, perhaps …

One of the most common ways to build a fantasy setting is to base it on some certain aspect of the real world and then make as many–or as few–tweaks as possible. For a long time, all we got were variations on medieval England.  Then, slowly, other times and cultures began to trickle in. We’re …

Starting in the 17th century and continuing to this day, a debate has raged over who, exactly, is the father of calculus. Owing to favorable historical circumstances, or maybe to strange providence, Newton and Leibniz were both working their way toward it, sniping at each other along the way. One way or another, calculus was …

To be an Archivist in Wasp’s world is a far more coveted position than in our own. For starters, those who don’t make it are killed. And those who do gain possession of the only items known to ward and capture ghosts. They also gain the grudging tribute of a town barely scraping by, ensuring …

Once again, we’re in rebellious territory with Snow Like Ashes, the story of a band of refugees set on reclaiming their homeland at any cost. The escaped citizens of Winter, a magical kingdom forever frozen in that single season, lost everything to the evil denizens of Spring. To fight back, they need to reunite the …

Let’s just get this out of the way first: in Red Queen, a young woman is dragged from obscurity, thrust into a deadly competition, and then embroiled in a revolution. Comparisons to The Hunger Games are inevitable and warranted. Fortunately, Red Queen riffs but doesn’t replicate. It has its own world and its own rules, which in this dystopia …

So the world ended. As apocalypses go, it wasn’t the worst: there were no zombie pandemics or nuclear holocausts. Most people even survived it. Unfortunately, a decade later, they’re still surviving, not really thriving. It’s not the standard dystopian dictatorship that’s really keeping them down, and it’s not the weird new stars in the sky …

We’ve reached the penultimate issue of Star Trek / Planet of the Apes: The Primate Directive, with the final issue hitting stores today. Kirk and Taylor have decided to work together, the Klingons are pushing the apes toward war, and Scotty may have accidentally spilled the beans on how time travel works. It’s a madhouse! …