Category Archives: review

Review: The Thousand Year Beach by Tobi Hirotaka

translated by Matt Treyvaud original publication (in Japanese): 2002 first English edition: 2018, Haikasoru 352 pages grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library **spoilers** “What does it mean to remember? What is a memory?” (79). Thus opens Chapter 3 of Tobi Hirotaka’s sf-horror novel The Thousand Year Beach (skillfully translated

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Review: Crystal Silence by Fujisaki Shingo

translated by Kathleen Taji original publication (in Japanese): 1999 first English edition: 2012, Kurodahan Press 344 pages grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library Crystal Silence is one of the many excellent works of Japanese sf in translation published by the now-sadly-shuttered Kurodahan Press. Sprawling, technically detailed, and ambitious, Fujisaki

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Review: Kallocain by Karin Boye

translated by Gustav Lannestock original publication (in Swedish): 1940 first English edition: 1966, the University of Wisconsin Press 220 pages grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library Kallocain is often grouped with Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1920, tr. 1924), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), and George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) because

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Review: Diving Board by Tomás Downey

translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses first English edition: 2025, Invisible Publishing 192 pages grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library Some of the nineteen stories in Tomás Downey’s collection Diving Board are difficult to read–violence happens without warning and is described with a deadpan tone that’s downright disturbing.

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Review: Blood for the Undying Throne by Sung-il Kim

(The Bleeding Empire #2) translated by Anton Hur original publication (in Korean): ? first English edition: 2025, Tor 384 pages grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library Blood for the Undying Throne, the second in Sung-il Kim’s Bleeding Empire series, continues the story of provincial struggle against imperial domination. As

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Review: Eye of the Monkey by Krisztina Tóth

translated by Ottilie Mulzet original publication (in Hungarian): 2022 first English edition: 2025, Seven Stories Press 304 pages grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library Eye of the Monkey, Hungarian author Krisztina Tóth’s first novel to be translated into English, could have been one of the best works of SFT

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Review: Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin

*spoilers* Good and Evil and Other Stories is Samanta Schweblin’s fifth book in English, after Fever Dream (2017), Mouthful of Birds (2019), Little Eyes (2020), and Seven Empty Houses (2022), all translated by Megan McDowell. Schweblin’s signature style provokes a sense of dread and disorientation in the reader, with characters who find it difficult to

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