Recent Posts

• Three Eagerly Awaited Novels

  My Chronicle column has been posted at SFGate.com and will appear in tomorrow’s print edition. It covers three books by writers whose work I always look forward to. I wasn’t familiar with Jo Walton’s fiction before I started hearing the buzz around “Farthing,” but her trilogy about a fascist Britain is one of the best [...]

• Stephenson, Stoppard and Scalzi, with a Side of Collins

  I contributed two reviews to the San Francisco Chronicle this week. On Friday, I finally got around to covering Neal Stephenson’s “Anathem.” That 900-page book was an uphill battle, let me tell you, and I considered giving up more than once. But I soldiered on and found inspiration once it hit me that Stephenson is [...]

• Three First Novels

  Time again for my Sunday San Francisco Chronicle column. In the latest installment, I cover three books by new writers: “Pandemonium” by Daryl Gregory, Andrew Davidson’s “The Gargoyle” and “The Gone-Away World” by Nick Harkaway. Gregory’s book seemed the most successful of the bunch. Great concept, solid execution. I especially appreciated the alternate-world Phil Dick [...]

• Oscar Villalon Lights Out for the Territories

  San Francisco Chronicle books editor (and champion thumb-wrestler) Oscar Villalon is taking a buyout from the company, and his last day in the office will be tomorrow. I won’t be there to wish him bon voyage in person, but I at least want to note his departure here. I’ve worked with Oscar for 10 years, [...]

• Graphics Violence

  I don’t buy many comics anymore, but I’ll be on the lookout next year for Darwyn Cooke’s adaptations of the early Parker novels by Richard Stark, a.k.a. Donald Westlake. Cooke, creator of the acclaimed DC mini-series “The New Frontier” says, “It is my hope to keep every word of Westlake/Stark’s dialogue intact, making minor changes [...]

• In Case You Don’t Want to Die in a Gutter

  Nick Mamatas, former Clarkesworld Magazine editor and author of “Move Under Ground,” rubs some people the wrong way with his candid opinions, mainly because he never suffers fools gladly. But he often dispenses really worthwhile advice on his livejournal page, and today’s entry, “This Is How You Freelance,” is a keeper. His system boils down [...]

• Not Actually Dead

  I haven’t been in the mood to blog for quite a while. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been writing. In July, I contributed to the Barnes & Noble Review for the first time, with a spotlight review of “Saturn’s Children” by Charles Stross. I’m a big fan of Stross, so I wanted to [...]

• Cody’s No More

  I was sad to learn via Boing Boing today that, after limping along for the past three years, Cody’s Bookstore has finally closed forever. Gone is the great, original store on Telegraph Avenue; gone is the trendy satellite store on Fourth Street; gone is the misbegotten San Francisco store; gone is the last-ditch, hanging-on-by-our-fingernails store [...]

• O’Connell, VanderMeers and Abel et al

  Wow, the bulldog edition of The Chronicle arrives even earlier these days. My latest science fiction column, not slated to run in print until Sunday, is already available in the online edition at SFGate.com. I wouldn’t even have known had I not seen Matt Staggs’ list of links over at Ectstatic Days. It’s odd working [...]