Octavia Butler (a Seattleite!) should be required reading, and this book is a prime example as to why. This novel follows teenage Lauren, a visionary leader dedicated to seeking freedom and safety despite the fear, violence, and complacency of those around her. You will be in awe of her at every turn. Butler transcends the …
We have a new Christopher Paolini book. Now, Paolini, as you may recall, wrote a book about dragons once up a time, and it turned out that more than a few folks wanted to know what happened next. Paolini showed up for a few more books, and became somewhat of a wild success story (given …
Le Guin can do more with a novella than most people can do with a full-length book. She writes with complexity about justice, cruelty, home, and grief just as deftly as she moves between science fiction, fantasy, and realism, and each of these stories is populated by characters so real you can almost feel their …
by Amy Wang | The Oregonian/OregonLive In times of upheaval, readers naturally turn to books to make sense of what’s happening. With protesters now marching through Portland regularly under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement, we asked several local Black writers if they’d be willing to recommend books that address racial issues. Here …
Otaku by Chris Kluwe will have to be compared to Ernie Cline’s Ready Player One because they have a lot in common. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a dystopian world that’s gone to hell and it would really suck if there wasn’t some kind of global virtual reality game for people to get …
Ready to flatten the curve, everyone? Sure, Netflix is great, but after telling the damnable thing that YES, I’M STILL WATCHING “THE OFFICE” for the 47th time, it may be time to turn to books. If you’ve a bit of schadenfreude in you, or if you’d like to remind yourself that it could always be …
Ted Chiang, the author of Exhalation, a collection of short fiction that won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and was named a New York Times Best Book of 2019, responded to questions from members of the 2020 PNBA Awards committee. Exhalation is your second heralded collection. What draws you to the short story form? I …
Charles Soule is back with Anyone. Soule wrote an interesting near future SF novel called The Oracle Year a while back, and he’s tackling the near future again with Anyone. This time around, the premise is human consciousness can be transported between bodies. Naturally, this becomes both thrilling and terrifying (when you start to extrapolate some of the effects …
The Polish science fiction writing genius, gave us a short story par excellence with The Seventh Voyage. It’s one of many adventures of his indefatigable comedic protagonist Ijon Tichy. In this instance the innocent Ijon is merely cruising in his space ship when he gets caught in a time loop. As a result, past and …
To this reader, two of the scariest book and life scenarios are that of cybersecurity and cyberterrorism. Richard Sandford in his novel The Soul Snatchers has achieved both scenarios. The time is the near future. The locales include the San Juan Islands in Washington State, Seattle, Portland (Oregon) and the Bay Area of California. The …
