James Nicoll Reviews

1990’s Elegy for Angels and Dogs /The Graveyard Heart was the twenty-fourth Tor SF Double. Originally published in 1964, The Graveyard Heart is by Roger Zelazny. Originally published in 1990, Elegy for Angels and Dogs is by Walter Jon Williams. Both stories take place in Zelazny’s Party Set milieu.

Humanity boasts a small, extremely chic, elite caste, one that is extensively covered by journalists and generally admired. Many are those who aspire (in most cases, futilely) to join the Party Set. Thanks to the invention of the cold-bunk, the Party Set can perform their role for centuries.

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Alan E. Nourse’s 1961 Tiger by the Tail and Other Science Fiction Stories is a collection of science fiction stories.

My copy of this collection is a curious artifact.

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Kelsea Yu’s 2025 Bound Feet is a stand-alone horror novella.

Jodi Wu and her best friend Sarah are determined to conduct a ceremony on the grounds of Portland’s Chinese Garden and Ghost Museum. Having suffered tragedies on three successive Ghost Day celebrations, the Chinese Garden and Ghost Museum prudently chose not to observe a fourth Ghost Day. This leaves Jodi and Sarah no choice but to break in.

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Jack Womack’s 1993 Random Acts of Senseless Violence is a near-future coming-of-age science fiction novel. Random Acts is either the first (by internal chronology) or the fifth (by publication date) novel in Womack’s DryCo sequence. Publication order defined the context in which readers first encountered this, so I will use that.

Twelve-year-old Lola ​“Booz” Hart, her younger sister Cheryl ​“Boob,” and their parents live in upper middle-class bliss in New York. True, Lola’s father’s scriptwriting job is either feast or famine, but her mother is an academic. Prosperity, if rather variable, is assured, so long as the United States does not collapse.

The current civil unrest? The current economic downturn? Passing inconveniences. Soon, normalcy will be restored.

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2020’s Kowloon Generic Romance, Volume Two is the second tankōbon for Jun Mayuzuki’s science fiction manga series, titled Kūron Jenerikku Romansu in the original Japanese. Kowloon Generic Romance has been serialized in Shueisha’s seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Jump since November 2019. Amanda Haley’s English translation was published in 2022.

Kowloon Walled City¹ realtor Reiko Kujirai makes two unexpected discoveries regarding her abrasive but goodlooking co-worker Hajime Kudou. The first is that Reiko is very inconveniently infatuated with Kudou. The second is that she is too late: Kudou is spoken for.

More discoveries follow.

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2010’s Blackout and All Clear are parts one and two of Connie Willis’ Oxford Time Travel duology, one that won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award and the Locus Award.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that academics in possession of a time machine must be in want of an appropriately risky moment in history to research. Having exhausted the dramatic potential of the Black Death, Oxford’s hard-working time travelling historians turn their eyes on World War Two.

What could possibly go wrong?¹

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1980’s Frostflower and Thorn is the first novel in Phyllis Ann Karr’s Frostflower and Thorn series of secondary-universe fantasy novels.

Warrior Thorn does not allow the lack of effective birth control to interfere with her active sex life. Having gotten herself knocked up by one of her many assignations, Thorn needs an affordable — ideally competent as well — abortionist.

Frostflower is no abortionist. She can, however, offer Thorn a solution. Frostflower is a sorceron.

Warning: rape, also gender-neutral terminology.

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Karuna Riazi’s 2025 Sabrena Swept Away is a stand-alone juvenile fantasy novel.

When the reader first meets protagonist Sabrena, she is in the process of breaking into a house… FOR GREAT JUSTICE! Or rather, a wellness check.

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1992’s Geodesic Dreams: The Best Short Fiction of Gardner Dozois is a collection of Gardner Dozois’ best short fiction. As far as I can, Dozois himself made the selections. Due to the linear nature of time, the collection omits works written after 1992; if you’re looking for Dozois works from after 1992, this is a poor place to start¹.

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Mariko Koike’s 1986 The Graveyard Apartment is a stand-alone suspense novel. Translation is by Deborah Boliver Boehm.

Real estate in boom-era Japan is eye-wateringly expensive. Thus, a 900 square foot apartment at a mere ¥35,000,000¹, half the going rate for such a palatial abode, is too good for Misao and Teppei Kano to turn down.

Why such a reasonable price? Location, location, location.

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