Welcome back to Blasphemous Geometries – science fiction criticism that goes where sex ed. teachers fear to tread.
This month Jonathan McCalmont looks at the entanglement of science fiction with Young Adult literature, and wonders whether YA is the latest victim of science fiction’s aggressive expansionist tendencies. Continue reading A virus with space-shoes – SF, YA and all that
Mac’s back – and he’s been having some dark dreams. Are science fictional dystopias an inevitable side-effect of our current species-wide existential issues? Continue reading Dreams of the Future
Sven Johnson returns to Futurismic for another instalment of Future Imperfect.
Cyberpunk literature mirrored its era by speaking of the the fetishism of hardware; Sven takes a look at the state of play today, where what were once tools are now toys, and where complex design modeling software is available at the click of a mouse to anyone who wants it … as part of a video game. Continue reading Toys of the Trade
Wednesday 30th April sees the presentation ceremony for this year’s Arthur C Clarke Award for the best science fiction novel published in 2007. Never short on controversy, this year’s shortlist has generated plenty of discussion and debate – no less for the novels that are missing from it than for those that are present.
It’s Futurismic‘s great privilege to feature this round-up review of the Clarke Award shortlist by noted science fiction novelist, critic and academic Adam Roberts. So settle down with a good big cup of coffee, let Professor Roberts walk you through the shortlist … and then place your bets on the winner in the comments!
The Shortlist:
There’s been a deal of pother about this year’s Clarke shortlist, more even than this often-controversial event usually generates. Surprise at the omission of a number of highly regarded titles – we might mention, say, McDonald’s Brasyl and Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union – fuelled bloggish mutterings about hidden agendas, panderings to Evil Mainstream Lit and a desire to generate Turner Award-style notoriety rather than simply to choose last year’s best SF novel.
The muttering boiled down to a sense that the Clarke judges were liable to corrupt the nation’s youth and ought all to drink hemlock without ado. The question, though. is a simple one: do these six titles constitute a list of the best sf novels published in the UK last year? Continue reading The Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist 2008 – a Round-up Review
Welcome to Blasphemous Geometries, a cross-media criticism column where Jonathan McCalmont pokes the foetid corpse of genre to see what oozes out.
In his introductory column, Jonathan examines new ways in which retailers might decide what to place in our paths next time we’re shopping around for some sf-nal entertainment. Continue reading The Future of Book Recommendations