An anthology of authentic and realistic hard science fiction
Due 2012
I’ve been a fan of Evans’ novels since reviewing his Aztec Century for Vector, the critical journal of the BSFA, back in 1993. His fiction is a literate, very British sort of sf, which doesn’t rely on flashy spectacle but on in-depth studies of their protagonists and their worlds. Omega, published in 2008 by PS [...]
Filed under: book review, books you must read, british, christopher evans, science fiction | 3 Comments »
2012 is the centenary of Lawrence Durrell’s birth and there are apparently a number of things happening to celebrate it, including a conference in June. In bloody London, of course. But never mind. Lawrence Durrell is my favourite writer – see here and here – and on a purely sentence-by-sentence level I believe there has [...]
Filed under: durrell centenary, lawrence durrell | 8 Comments »
It would have been nice if I could have made a New Year’s resolution to buy no books in 2012. But that was clearly impossible as there were a number of 2012 releases I wanted. I’ll just have to try and limit my purchases instead. Sadly, I’ve not been entirely successful in that regard – [...]
Filed under: book haul, my fiction | Tagged: alastair reynolds, albert camus, anthony burgess, carson mccullers, chan koonchung, chirs beckett, colin greenland, dh lawrence, fr leavis, george orwell, jacques tardi, jg ballard, jp donleavy, karel capek, lawrence durrell, magda szabó, maureen f mchugh, olaf stapledon, paul mcauley, sally miller gearhart, scott carpenter, sebastian faulks, terry grimwood | 2 Comments »
I bunged Miklós Jancsó’s Red Psalm (1972) onto an order of Christmas presents at the beginning of December, though I can’t for the life of me remember why. I’d seen Janscó’s The Red And The White before – in June 2010, and wrote then that it was “definitely worth seeing” – but what possessed me [...]
Filed under: film review, films you must see, miklós jancsó | Leave a Comment »
There are comic novels and there are novels of wit. Some novels evince humour by describing ridiculous characters in ridiculous situations; others prefer to amuse through their use of language. Paul Scott’s The Bender (1963) is a novel of wit and its characters, while amusingly drawn, are not comic caricatures. There is also much in [...]
Filed under: book review, books you must read, paul scott | Leave a Comment »
To be honest, I had not really expected to enjoy City of Pearl by Karen Traviss. From what I’d heard about the novel, it seemed the sort of science fiction I don’t especially like. And Traviss is known as an especially mercenary writer. No matter how talented she may be, such an attitude is unlikely [...]
Filed under: 2011 reading challenge, book review, science fiction, women in sf | Leave a Comment »
To all the people who read Liz Bourke’s review on Strange Horizons of Michael J Sullivan’s Theft Of Swords, and didn’t like the review because: a) historians should not review epic fantasy b) “intellectuals” should not review epic fantasy c) women should not review epic fantasy d) a negative review will upset the author e) [...]
Filed under: reviews, writing | 2 Comments »
First, see this review of Michael J Sullivan’s Theft Of Swords on Strange Horizons. See its long comment thread. This post is not aimed at Liz Bourke, who has written an excellent review of what is plainly a bad book. This post is for some of the commenters on that thread, who clearly don’t understand [...]
Filed under: reviews, writing | 5 Comments »
A new meme. Cool. This one is the Nobel Prize for Literature winners meme. I took this list from Larry’s OF Blog of the Fallen. You know the rules: bold if you’ve read anything by the author, italicize if it’s on the TBR. 2011 Tomas Tranströmer 2010 Mario Vargas Llosa 2009 Herta Müller 2008 Jean-Marie [...]
Filed under: book list, meme | 2 Comments »
I think it was Orson Scott Card who wrote in an essay in Asimov’s back in the 1990s that any future of consequence would be American. That assertion was debatable then – if not offensively arrogant – but the world has changed a great deal in the past twenty years, making’s Card’s boast even less [...]
Filed under: science fiction, world-building, writing | 11 Comments »
