Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“There is beauty in my truth, and I have so much to share.”

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 by Edited by Rebecca Roanhorse

by Leave a Comment

I look forward to this collection every year and so it was a treat to see it pop up in the bookstore recently. The selections are always varied and interesting, and John Joseph Adams should get special kudos for all the preparatory work he does before he chooses the best 80 stories and hands them over to the guest editor to choose 20 for publication. In contrast to the 70s SF/F anthologies I’ve been slogging my way through this year in the hopes that there […]

Give PKD a Pass and Read Some Octavia Butler, Save Yourself!!

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick

by Leave a Comment

Honestly a disappointing and often infuriating read. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale is Volume Five of Philip K Dick’s collected short stories, covering 25 stories from the mid-60s to early 80s, and is also the title of the most famous story in the collection. I had read this before maybe seven years ago and have been carrying it around since. As part of my effort to weed out my fiction shelves, I figured I would re-read it and see if it was a […]

“Now, turn down the lights, flip the page, take my hand, and start the dance…”

Turn Down the Lights by Edited by Richard Chizmar

by Leave a Comment

I continue my efforts to read through the books that have been sitting on my shelves for years. Turn Down the Lights is a collection of short horror and thriller/suspense/crime stories from the long-running magazine Cemetery Dance. Chizmar started the magazine in college and also runs a small press that publishes a variety of genre novels. I got this due to the fact that Stephen King and Chizmar have a long-standing relationship, and the first story in this collection is by King. Then it sat […]

Infused with humanity

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

by Leave a Comment

CBR 14 BINGO: Star, because it takes place mostly in space BINGO: Gaslight, Scandal, Star, Monster, Bodies My experience with Ray Bradbury up to this point has been limited to Fahrenheit 451, which is a top-notch novel–at least, I remember it being so when I read it, oh, thirty years ago. Having picked up The Martian Chronicles, I’m ashamed that I’ve neglected Bradbury for so long. A science fiction writer with broad appeal, Bradbury infuses every story, even those about Martians, with humanity. The Martian […]

Bland Stories, Hack Work, Bad Opinions — 60s Sci-Fi Strikes Again

Shards of Space by Robert Sheckley

by Leave a Comment

I know there is good 60s SF out there, but the good thing about working through my backlog of old SF I’ve been lugging around is the relief that I can throw this out and never read it again. Shards of Space is a short story collection by Robert Sheckley with some bad stories, some hack work, two decent stories, and a bunch of terrible opinions about eugenics and women. I should probably only give it one star, but there are two okay stories in […]

A Visit With An Old Friend You’ve Outgrown a Little

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

by Leave a Comment

CBR14Bingo: Bodies (dead bodies, aliens inhabiting human bodies, people going from cyberspace into a body for the first time, etc.) I was obsessed with Neil Gaiman’s work from high school through college and then burned out and haven’t read anything by him in probably 10 years, so when I saw this in the bookstore I initially didn’t think I was going to get it. But when I picked it up and started reading the first story, I remembered that I liked that one, and it […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo