Presenting the fact and fiction of tomorrow since 2001
Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer
Tachyon Publications, November 2009; 330pp; US$14.95 RRP – ISBN13: 9781892391902
There are dozens – possibly even hundreds – of books out there that purport to tell you how to be a writer. Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: Booklife, by Jeff VanderMeer”
Readers may remember Canadian writer Basnett from his Substars trilogy (Density, the second volume of which, was nominated for the De Granville Prize). Sparklers is a fat stand-alone volume in the same mode, which is to say it is a fast-paced galactic space opera with an ingenious central premise and occasional moments of poetry. Basnett is quickly becoming a writer worth noticing. Continue reading “Book review: Michael Basnett – Sparklers”
“Great title”, said a friend when I emailed him to say I’d received this book to review; “what’s it about? No, don’t tell me, let me guess—”
I bet this book is arguing that the problem with utopia has been too large a concern with the other feller, too much ‘you’ and not enough ‘me’. I’d wager it’s written by an ex-hippy, somebody now wearing a silk suit and driving an open-top BMW, who’s come to see that self-love is the road to a harmonious society. I’ll go so far as to imagine a sentence from this book: ‘how can we love others if we don’t first love ourselves, and love must be the basis of any utopia. Am I right?
I mention this because, like my friend, I assumed from the title that this book would be a 21st-century revisioning of hippy idealism through the ‘ethical selfishness’ of the late twentieth-century: but, like my friend, I could not have been more wrong. Continue reading “Book review: Kramer Wand – me:topia”
This is a novel with an interesting conceit, written by a newcomer to SF (although according to Hodgkin’s own author bio, he has published a number of mainstream novels). The book takes the form of a biography, complete with preface, scholarly apparatus, timeline and everything else. The subject of the story is a fictional Science Fiction author, the Denis Bayle of the title, but the point of the book is less to tell a life story (Hodgkin doesn’t give Bayle that interesting a life).
Continue reading “Book review: Thomas Hodgkin – Denis Bayle: a Life”
Armada of Zion is a book calculated to divide opinion sharply amongst its readership. However well written, however compelling a storyline, however vivid the characters, this is a novel leaves an uncomfortable aftertaste for many readers. But perhaps that’s all to the good. Better a book to hate passionately or a book to love passionately than a book that is bland. Continue reading “Book review: Abraham Silberschlag – Armada of Zion”
