SCIENCE FICTION ALEX GOOD
The Kaiju Preservation Society
John Scalzi, Tor, $35.99,
264 pages
When one of the frothiest SF writers going decides to write a selfdescribed “pop song” of a novel that’s only “meant to be light and catchy” it’s hard not to hum along. “The Kaiju Preservation Society” is nothing more than an amusementpark ride, but if you’re looking for that kind of a diversion then grab your popcorn and climb aboard. The fairground in this case is Jurassic Park. A dimensional doorway has opened between Earth and a parallel Earth where the apex predators are nuclear-powered kaiju (the Japanese name for giant monsters like Godzilla).
Imaginary Friends
Arlene F. Marks, Brain Lag, $21.99, 235 pages
It’s always a treat to open a debut collection of short stories from an author who has been publishing them for years. That’s the case again here with “Imaginary Friends,” where the contents are a mix of old and new, and range from fantasy to horror to science fiction, and from quick sketches to a novella about pioneers on another planet. Underlying all of it is Marks’s fascination with storytelling itself. Without becoming overly meta she presents characters who feel aware in different ways of the genre they find themselves performing in, conscious of being a part of stories that they both shape and are shaped by. The results take us on diversions into new territory, but with some familiar characters as our guides.
Defining genres and literary periods can be tricky. As an example, in this new series from MIT Press, Joshua Glenn looks to brand the science fiction written between 1900 and 1935 as the Radium Age, which he sees as an interregnum between the scientific romances of the 19th century and the golden age of the American SF pulps that took off in the1930s. Whatever you think of the Radium Age as a label, this first volume is a great launch, containing a good mix of stories from some big names (E.M. Forster, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, W.E.B. Du Bois) and a few that should be better known (Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, William Hope Hodgson and Neil R. Jones).
The Sisters Sputnik
It’s hard to know where to begin describing a book like “The Sisters Sputnik.” The titular heroines are comic-book characters whose real lives are stranger than that of the comics they inspire. The original Sputnik Girl is Debbie Reynolds Biondi, who is one of those people who have come unstuck in time. The way this works is that beginning with the Trinity atomic test in New Mexico in 1945, a different alternate universe has been formed every time there’s been a nuclear explosion in what’s known as Earth Standard Time. Summarizing the plot is impossible. There are many crazy adventures, and underlying it all is a message about the power of stories to mould reality in a variety of eccentric directions.