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 Topic: Speculative FictionThe new items published under this topic are as follows.
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 This is the sequel to the excellent Alternate Reality Ain’t What It Used To Be by the same zany author. Stand by to be entertained by out-of-the-left-field hits on the news as you’ve never heard it before.
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 A glimpse into an original and unique humorous take on what is happening in society, especially technology-driven. It might be fiction but a tingle up my back finds it is so real.
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 End of the Century is a fun mix of fantasy and science fiction. The apparent villain, one Huntsman, provides much of the tension in the novel and appears to be the well-known fantasy figure.
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 These are sci-fi stories, of course, but a number of them have the characteristics of other genres too. The title story, for example, is a classic detective yarn. An alien delegation goes to a convent, a neutral place, in order to negotiate peace with Earth (we are at war).
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 Reader interest is captured during those first lines, and is held to the last paragraph. I have enjoyed Manchee’s writing from the day I received my first Stan Turner Mystery to review. His leading actors continue to be gallant, even as his rogues continue to be blatantly wicked.
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 Her common-sense, Victorian morality and sense of propriety are in continual conflict with the yearning she feels for the attractive, charismatic, highly intelligent European Wagner whom she also admires because of their common love of Literature, Music, Science and his modern ideas about the place of a woman in society.
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 China does a terrifically moving job of making the two detectives distrust then come to admire each other, in their own way. Brilliant. Generally, an author has his work cut out to describe one unique city so that the reader believes they are there, but here two cities are created in the same spot. Excellent and original.
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 The kindly Taylor rarely uses any scientific rigour such as multiple repeat experiments in controlled situations, checking equipment calibration, and ruthless cross-examination of witnesses. Nevertheless, I fell into liking his manner of accepting accounts of people who had been scared witless: he put them at their ease and gave them credence where I would have asked for tests for hallucinogens and illusory tricks.
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 Night and the City is a fine novel, which covers the same psychic terrain as Jim Thompson, David Goodis and Patrick Hamilton. It is another spiffing tale of the lost and the fallen and the damned.
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 There are precursors to his mature work to be found here: ‘Library of Horror’, for example, dating from April 1954, portrays an occult realm, a more elaborate version of which was staked out in Dr. Strange. Clearly, also, many comics are gems in their own right, with most stories employing the device of having a twist left until the last page, sometimes even the last panel.
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