#1383: The Man Who Died Seven Times (1995) by Yasuhiko Nishizawa [trans. Jesse Kirkwood 2025]


For as long as he can remember, 16 year-old Hisataro Oba has found himself randomly, several times a month, caught in a time loop he dubs The Trap: waking up on the same day nine times in a row, with only the events of the final day of the loop becoming the canon version of the day for everyone else in existence. Having realised this, and in part as a coping mechanism, he has been able to exploit The Trap — cheat on a test, win a bet, etc. — but now things are different. Because now a murder has been committed and he would like, if possible, to avert it in the ninth and final version so that it does not become the reality for everyone else.

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#1379: No Police Like Holmes – Baker Street Irregulars: The Game is Afoot [ss] (2018) ed. Michael A. Ventrella & Jonathan Maberry

I stumbled over the Baker Street Irregulars: The Game is Afoot [ss] (2018) collection, in which thirteen authors offer wildly varying alternative versions of Sherlock Holmes, when searching for more criminous tales by Jonathan Maberry, one of the highlights of the C. Auguste Dupin-extending collection Beyond Rue Morgue [ss] (2013).

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#1340: Little Fictions – ‘The Eyes Have It’ (1964) by Randall Garrett

Perhaps two decades a go, I read some, but not all, of the Lord Darcy series of stories by Randall Garrett, in which detection is augmented with magic. And I’ve been telling people they’re good ever since. So for Tuesdays this, and another as-yet-undetermined future, month let’s take this Fantasy Masterworks volume of the complete stories — 10 shorts, and the novel Too Many Magicians (1967) — and see how they stand up.

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#1220: “About ghosts in particular he was a blatant and contemptuous sceptic.” – Wicked Spirits [ss] (2024) ed. Tony Medawar

Let’s take a moment to reflect on what Tony Medawar has done in recent years for GAD fans, with Wicked Spirits (2024) being the eighth collection of lost, forgotten, and so-rare-they-doubt-their-own-existence stories by GAD luminaries Medawar has edited under the …from the Library label. Whether we get any more after this or not, and I sincerely hope we do, it’s a wonderful body of work, and only the tip of an iceberg of effort he has been putting in for decades now.

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