Ilona's World

Transfer (2010) is an exciting, romantic and thought-provoking German sci-fi drama , directed by Damir Lukacevic . The story reminds you of Freejack at the beginning, but it is different in many ways. In this story, t he mysterious Menzana Corporation offers the possibility for old rich people to transfer their personalities into the bodies of young and beautiful Africans who need the money to support their families and who accept that they can only use their own bodies for four hours each night . A German couple in their 70s, Anna and Hermann , have doubts about the procedure at first, but after Anna becomes terminally ill, they end up taking this path. The young Africans whose bodies they get, Apolain and Sarah, both accept their fate at the beginning, but the first pregnancy gradually changes the situation and both couples want the baby for themselves. In addition to this, Anna starts to suffer from the feeling of guilt for ruining these young people's lives. The acting is gr...

Title: The White Death and Other Ghastly Ghost Stories Author: Debbie Kuhn Genre(s) / Subgenre(s):  speculative fiction / dark fantasy, horror Copyright: October 17, 2012 Formats: electronic: Kindle edition Rating: 10 URL: at Amazon Those who like good horror fiction should certainly become familiar with Debbie Kuhn 's work, even though she writes in several genres. The White Death is a collection which includes ten dark tales and it is definitely worth reading. Whether they are humans or ghosts, the main characters are all motivated by basic human fears and desires , and this makes it very easy for the reader to care about them. No matter how scary the story is, you will want to know what is going to happen to them. The ghosts are not always the evil, vengeful ghosts of the typical B movies either. Some just want company, others warn you of imminent danger, and one simply just stays until she can finish her memoirs that she writes using other people's bodies. Al...

Title: Seriously...I'm Kidding Author:  Ellen Degeneres Category: Humor Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (Hachette Book Group) Copyright: June 2011 Formats: paperback, hardcover, electronic, audio Rating: 7 Seriously...I'm Kidding is the latest book by the much loved stand-up comedian and talk show host, Ellen Degeneres. This book is a collection of random thoughts and ideas and it includes stories both from everyday life and from the life of a celebrity. There are a lot of really quotable lines in it about success, beauty, marriage, manners , politiness, and some even about gift-giving. The author also keeps giving advice to the readers on all these issues. It seems she has become both a great comedian and a fine motivational speaker. However, at places I felt that the text was far too simplistic for my liking . I suppose this is because the book was written for a talk show audience. English-learners might find this a great advantage. This book is reco...

Title: Slights Author: Kaaron Warren Genre / Subgenre: Horror/ psychological Publisher: Angry Robot Copyright: July 1, 2009 Formats: paperback , electronic (Kindle Edition) Rating: 9 Slights is a very strong debut novel by Australian writer, Kaaron Warren . It is a creepy, highly distubing and excellent horror novel which was awarded the Ditmar Award and the Shadows Award for Best Fiction. The main character, a young girl called Stevie, has a near-death experience, and when she comes back she remembers that she was in a dark room full of people. Everyone she ever pissed off was there and these people were torturing her. Later her main goal becomes finding out if this is really the place where everyone must go one day. The girl who had a troubled childhood gradually becomes obsessed with death, becomes suicidal, then starts to kill others in order to find the answers . The book is a very well-written piece, it really manages to draw the reader in , but it is too gloomy, too depre...

The Best Planet in the World appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of the magazine. Illumen is a print magazine of speculative poetry, published biannually by Sam's Dot Publishing . It contains poetry, illustrations, articles and reviews. The featured poet for this issue is Marge Simon and the cover art is by Joshua Gage. You can order a copy via the publisher's bookstore .

Yesterday, I visited the International Book Festival at Millenearis in Budapest. The festival is big enough to be held in several huge buildings, and in the park in front of them. Nowadays, it is quite commonplace to say that 'people have given up on reading completely'. There might be times when you even start to believe this, but this is obviously an over-generalization. I saw huge crowds at Millenearis wanting to buy books, and people who were queueing to get signatures from the authors who were present. So there is still hope. I also saw some ebook readers on sale and there were also a few publishers who started selling the electronic versions of some their books. This is a huge development here. I guess we will see much more of this later. Not much of the contemporary genre writing gets published in Hungarian, but there are now also some big developments on this field, too. Even those who only read books in their mother-tongue can now buy some new and intriguing specu...

Blind Faith (2007) is a dsytopian novel and it is also dealing with a great variety of issues that are of interest to today’s reader. The book was written by the brilliant comedy writer and stand up comedian, Ben Elton, who is also the author of The Thin Blue Line and Black Adder . In this didactic but very well-written book he is sharing his views with us on consumer society, trends in the media, in the world of community websites etc , while also telling a great story set in a near future England. Elton has always been a very good observer of the typical, the suprising, and the alaming and presented his observations in a funny and thought-provoking way. Blind Faith is definitly one of his most serious works. In this book, he describes a world where it is compulsory to share all details of your life online, even the smallest and the most intimate details have to be shown on photos and videos. Citizens of this state live their lives in front of webcams and are obliged to show...

My poem, The Fairy's Granddaughter has appeared in the special fantasy issue of Tales of The Talisman magazine (Volume 7, Issue 3). I am very proud of this one. It is great to see something that I wrote in a magazine with such an awesome cover and which has contributors such as Carol Hightshoe, Simon Bleaken, F. T. McKinstry, Jim Chandler and  David C. Kopaska-Merkel and is edited by David Lee Summers. You can get a copy of it at Amazon . Product details:     Paperback: 100 pages     Publisher: Hadrosaur Productions (January 31, 2012)     Language: English     ISBN-10: 1885093616,  ISBN-13: 978-1885093615     Price:     $8.00

  Title: Casting Shadows Author: J. Kelley Anderson Genre(s) / Subgenre(s):  Fantasy/ Urban Fantasy Publisher: World Castle Publishing (January 31, 2012) Formats: paperback (232 pages) or electronic (Kindle Edition) I’ve always liked stories that are a bit different from the average. Casting Shadows by J. Kelley Anderson is definitely a book that tells a story like that. At the beginning, the main character Edward performs a magic ritual in a cemetery to summon an undead servant. He only does this because he is under a spell and a demon is trying to influence his deeds. However, the new servant, Vincent  will not be the merciless evil being that one could expect. He will be more like a friend, who always has Edward’s best interests at heart, but he also has his own will and his own views about things. He does his best to protect him from himself and from the evil forces that are at work in the ususally quiet little town of Hurst, Ohio.  A very powerful ...

Timecrimes ( Los cronocrímene s, 2007) is a quite original Spanish sci-fi movie by Nacho Vigalondo. At the beginning of the movie, the main character Hector, who has just moved to the countryside with his wife, notices, via using his binoculars, a woman getting naked somewhere nearby. As soon as his wife leaves the house, he goes for a walk, looking for the naked beauty. However, a man with bandages on his head attacks him and chases him through the woods. Hector takes refuge at a nearby science lab, and he unwillingly becomes the subject of a time-travel experiment. Apart from a few less logical scenes, this is quite an exciting movie, which has aquired international success.   There is going to be an American remake of Timecrimes, in all probability by David Cronenberg. The multiple award winnning movie was written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, whose latest  sci-fi movie, Extraterrestrial (Extraterrestre, 2011), is about a couple witnessing an alien invasion. I w...

In 2011: - I restarted my English blog, - blogging in Hungarian, - reading & reviewing, - more SF poems published (One in Aoife's Kiss and one in SOTN.) - started tweeting, - got some more poems accepted, - wrote a short story,  - and got a lot of story ideas for later use. Plans for 2012: More writing and more reviewing. Improving my German. Hopefully, some travelling, too. There are going to be much more blog posts here about books, movies, etc. As for my writing, I have much more story ideas now, than ever before.