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: 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 ...

Title: Cinderella's Secret Diary (Book 1: Lost) Author: Ron Vitale Genre(s) / Subgenre(s): speculative fiction / dark fantasy/ YA Copyright: August, 2011 Formats: ebook (Kindle Edition), Paperback Ron Vitale's novel about Cinderella is a young adult gothic version of the well-known fairy-tale. At the beginning of the story the main character is a typical naive young girl , to such an extent that she is also a bit irritating at times, but soon she has to learn a bit more about life. Her marriage with the prince is not a very good one, and the queen is a frightening mother-in-law. The kingdom, which turns out to be England during the Napoleonic wars, is in great danger. Cinderella has lessons to learn about people, politics and love, while dark forces are also at work. As she gradually becomes a stronger, more mature and a much more independent woman , the story is also becoming darker and darker. This is a novel about growing up, and also about magic, adventures, wi...

I have recently spent some time exploring the archives of Lightspeed Magazine, which is an excellent magazine of speculative fiction and it also includes podcasted stories. I decided to share my best of list with you . (URLs added. All of this is free content.). Check these out if you still haven't. These short stories will give you a very nice outlook on contemporary speculative-fiction literature. The selection is completely arbitrary and only reflects my personal taste. I only selected stories that give the reader something different form the classic (hard) sci-fi themes, as I like my sci-fi new and fresh. These are the best 15 stories that I have found at the Lightspeed website : - Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor by Grady Hendrix A hilarious story about the sci-fi clichés about landing on alien planets and also about the extiction of humanity. It is worth listening to the audio (12:46 minutes), th...

Smaller Than Most is a short collection of flash fiction, with some very bizarre and surreal sci-fi and fantasy stories by a very talented author, Kristine Ong Muslim .  You can download the ebook from the Smashwords website .

Sleep Dealer is a fascinating sci-fi movie from Mexico by Alex Rivera. This is a film about a young man from a tiny village , who after the death of his father, goes to a big city to look for a job, with high hopes, and gets introduced to the a high-tech hell of the city dwellers . This is a world he always wished to know more about, but it's one, where with the use of advanced technologies, man is used to the extremes, man is humiliated and his only value is in making profit for the company . The basic idea makes you think about the movie Surrogates, but it is somehow more realistic a nd gives you a much better picture of what uses the technologies that are described in cyberpunk novels could really have. It is not about an insanely comfortable lifestyle which allows you to do everything virtually by connecting to some network with some bodily implants. Since this is a Mexican movie, it is focusing more on the new ways of exploitation. It is about poor Mexicans doing all th...

Title: Transformation Author: Rab Swannock Fulton Genre(s) / Subgenre(s): speculative fiction / a love/ghost story Here is what I wrote when I first reviewed Rab Fulton's book, Transformation, back in 2006 . "When I started to read Transformation , I only knew that it's a ghost story. I did not know what to expect, as there are so many types of ghost stories. Later, I realized this story is very different from those I've read before. The main character is a young man called Donnacha who moves to Galway after leaving school, and starts to work as a dishwasher. Transformation by Scottish writer Rab Swannock Fulton is the story of a young man's coming of age, getting to know love and perfection then gradually realizing his life is turning into a nightmare. The story is set in today's Ireland, which is still not entirely different from the Ireland of the legends, the one with beautiful landscapes, and where one can bump into a ghost any time ...

I've been plannig to write this for quite some time, but have always forgot it somehow. (It will have to be followed by this year's best reads soon…) So here is my best of list:  - Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveller’s Wife A tale of time travel which is also a romance novel, a sort of Wuthering Heights for today's reader. - Philip K. Dick: Blade Runner One of the best sci-fi novels I have ever read. It's a shame that so many SF fans who love the movie are too lazy to read the book. I'm trying to advertise it to my friends. - Susanna Clarke: The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories A collection of fantasy short stories about fairies in Jane Austen's England, with some strong female characters. - Elizabeth Moon: The Speed of Dark This is a very intriguing sci-fi novel which is asking questions about the human mind and our concept of intelligence, about tolerance, illness and the meaning of the self. (It is definitely not for those of you who would...

Kazohina by Sandor Szathmari is a classic Hungarian dystopia. It is a bit similar to Huxley's Brave New World , but it was written two years earlier. Szathmari was mixing SF with satire and the main character is Gulliver who discovers a world that is very stange, sometimes quite mad, but also stangely similar to ours. You can read the novel online, in English at kevius.com.(You can also find an article about it in English in Wikipedia .)

Issue 37 of Aoife's Kiss is a double issue and the absolutely awesome cover features Sandy DeLuca 's "Lonely Night."  This is a quarterly magazine of fantasy, science fiction, horror , sword & sorcery, and slipstream, which publishes short stories, poems, illustrations, articles, and reviews. Generally, some very intriguing stuff. The list of contributors includes: Greer Woodward: In Search Of Flight Robert J. Sawyer: Star Light, Star Bright Tyree Campbell: Starlet Shelly Li: The Architect Of Apathy J Alan Erwine: R-Complex Tim McDaniel: A Little Green D. Moonfire: Best Of Enemies Kimberly Richardson: Violin DoA Worrell: The Fermi Paradox Ramon Rozas III: Night Of The Sevens Edward Cox: Ideal Village Dawn Marshallsay: Sleep-Less Highs Susan E. Curnow: A Gift Horse Gale Merrick: The Jeweled Necklace Of Ishtar Keith P. Graham: Carnival Of Blood Edward W. Robinson: In The Veins Of Arawn Sam Kepfield: Azaleas Barbara A. Barnett: The Deepeni...

AROG is the sequel to the hilarious Turkish sci-fi comedy, GORA (2004) which achieved international success, and not quite without a reason. The first movie includes scenes parodising a great number of Hollywood movies, and the main character is a brave Turkish carpet salesman who saves the world and the attractive princess. (After being kidnapped and taken to a prison ship by some aliens, one of whom impersonated Prince Charles...) In AROG (2008), the villains return, and send the hero back in time in order to get rid of him, as their leader still wants to get close to the princess, and all this leads to a lot of advetures in prehistoric Earth. Whereas GORA is a must-see, the second movie is just funny. Nevertheless, it is still recommended. Links: GORA (Trailer , Wiki , Imdb .) AROG (Trailer , Wiki , Imdb .)