Nick Mamatas 'Sensation'

Nick Mamtas' latest is a Kurt-Vonnegut-like thrill ride through 21st-century life, with sentient wasps and spiders, a political and social movement not only without leaders but without any central philosophy; and, at the center, a couple's troubled relationship.

Those characters are Julia and Raymond. She leaves him after being bitten by a mutant wasp, which drives her away and, seemingly by accident, to start a movement fighting the oppression of everyday life.

It gets deliciously weird from there. The parasitic wasps use a species of spiders as the incubators for their young, causing them to change their behavior and spin a nest for the young that are also eating them from the insides. This has caused a long-standing cold war between the two species, who have guided human history behind the scenes in their endless battle. This has led to a secondary level of reality where the human (and human looking) agents wage their battles.

Mamatas pokes plenty of fun at the elements of everyday life here, but there's something haunting and beautiful about Raymond's quest to reconnect with his wife and the reality that comes when it does eventually happen.

Mamatas' verisimilitude with the current state of social media helps to drive the book, as the characters naturally interact in their "virtual" environments, spreading the Julia-inspired non-gospel across the world. How well that will play in a decade's time is still to be seen, but as a comment on the now, it's a brilliant, brazen work.

Torchwood: Miracle Day, episodes 1-3

Just a few thoughts now that I'm caught up with the latest, super sexy installment of the Doctor Who spinoff.

The story is finally starting to move a bit, even if it does rely on the "evil drug company" motif. It's not that I object (or disagree), it's just that shadowy, evil big businesses are the second most popular bad guy these days (right after shadowy, evil big government, also present here).

I don't believe the Bill Pullman as "evil killer who turns evangelist" one bit, in part because there's a real fundamental misunderstanding of current American law here. Sex offenders can be kept in prison long after their sentences are up, including a child-killer like the character.

The new characters are still struggling to find their roles, but have some potential in a science-fiction "24" kind of way.

On the upside, John Barrowman and Eve Miles still have great chemistry together (Capt. Jack and Gwen have always been the engines of the show, even more so now that the rest of the originals have been offed) and there are some wonderful, seat-of-their-pants action set pieces that keep it all moving. And they do science! I'm not sure if any of it really makes any sense or not, but it's not just a matter of magic hand waving over the super computer (OK, there is some of that too).

Best of all, Jack is still his old omnisexual self and definitely gay, as his hook up in the third episode proved.

The Hidden Goddess, M.K. Hobson

Newcomer M.K. Hobson continues the story she started in The Native Star here with strong results. Her new novel moves deeper into the unique layers of magic of her reimagined 19th-century America, with plots, counter-plots and even a blood-soaked goddess to keep the action interesting. What really makes the book, however, is the attention paid to our protagonist, Emily, who navigates the equally alien worlds of high-end magic and cultured society.

In the first book, Emily had been forced from her California home when a bit of a highly powerful artifact embedded itself in her hand. Joining her was the wonderfully named Dreadnought Stanton, an exile with (of course) a dark, mysterious past. As it often happens in stories like these, the two fell in love, managed to defeat the bad guys and found themselves in even deeper, hotter water.

The U.S. government has made a deal with the aforementioned blood-soaked goddess, giving her the power to manifest and eventually, destroy the world. Emily and Stanton need to uncover the truth, which lies in both of their pasts. For Emily, that means learning about her birth family and the missing first five years of her life, and for Stanton, it means going back to his own blood-soaked early years.

The magical world is wonderfully developed, ranging from credomancers (who rely on their reputation at large to work their spells) to ones who specialize in violent, blood magic to factions that would like to eliminate any touch of magic in the world.

The plot may drag at points (it depends on how much you like political intrigue and romantic entanglements) but Emily is such an honest, living and breathing character that it becomes easy to be swept up in the action. Best of all, the story comes to a satisfying end here, which doesn't preclude additional volumes, it just means you won't be left hanging while the author moves the plot threads forward in the next book.

Big Finish Doctor Who: Robophobia

While a sequel to the classic Robots of Death sounds like a good day, the actual execution in Nicholas Briggs' new Big Finish audio is severely lacking. Mainly because the mystery here is no mystery.

If you remember the original, a sandminer was terrorized by a ship full of robots that had been reprogrammed to kill. It also introduced the idea of "robophobia," an unconditional fear of their mechanical helpers. That gets expanded somewhat here. This time, the isolated location is a large space freighter ferrying more than 100,000 robots. Crew members start to die and it looks like the robots are to blame.

The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) is on the case in that mysterious, "I know what's happening but I'm not going to tell the characters any of what I know, ha ha" way. There's no companion here, but the handful of characters - especially medtech Liv (Nicola Walker) - serve that role. Part of the problem is that they are so dim. That might have been an interesting approach to the story, but I don't think it's intentional. Instead, their inability to see the solution staring them in the face for most of the story is there to make sure the story stretches out over four episodes.

The key problem is that Briggs' script doesn't take any twists at all. Suspicion falls onto one character early one and never wavers at all. Even that character's dark secret is incredibly easy to guess.

On the upside, the performances are good throughout the cast and it's nice to hear McCoy bouncing off different actors (not that I don't love the regular companions) for once.