The Galaxy And The Ground Within by Becky Chambers
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2021)
Reviewed by Stuart Carter
Embarrassingly for me, it’s taken over 40 years, and the wisdom of Becky Chambers, to question why carrying a gun—or piloting a spaceship with them—is so normal in science fiction.
Continue reading…
Review from BSFA Review 14 - Download your copy here.
Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
(Penguin Random House, 2020)
Reviewed by Kate Onyett
Welcome to an overcrowded, polluted, highly iniquitous Earth of the future where humanity plugs into a virtual reality called OASIS to be educated, socialise, trade, escape and explore, limited only by their imaginations. In Cline’s first OASIS novel, Wade, poor and unremarkable, undertook an epic gaming quest across multiple virtual worlds. He and his friends won, Willy Wonka-style, the corporation that created and maintained OASIS.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
(Del Rey, 2021)
Reviewed by Ben Jeapes
Andy Weir’s first two novels, The Martian and Artemis, established a distinct style: a loner who resolves their way out of one big crisis and a series of lesser ones armed with nothing but science and a sense of humour. His third novel starts almost in self-parody but goes on to have the most moving, redemptive and emotionally satisfying ending so far.
The Society of Time: The Original Trilogy and Other Stories by John Brunner
(British Library, 2020)
Reviewed by Nick Hubble
This is an entry in the British Library’s somewhat eclectic series of ‘Science Fiction Classics’. The book contains five novellas: ‘The Analysts’ (1961) and ‘Father of Lies’ (1962), both originally published in Science Fantasy; and the three ‘Society of Time’ novellas, ‘Spoil of Yesterday’, ‘The Word Not Writien’ and ‘The Fullness of Time’, first published in 1962 in successive issues of Science Fiction Adventures. The back-cover blurb is slightly misleading in that although it correctly states that the trilogy was abridged when first collected as Times Without Number in 1962, it does not mention that the cuts were restored in the expanded 1969 edition. Mike Ashley discusses this in his introduction, but it should be more clearly labelled on the cover.
Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki
(Verso, 2021)
Verso are best known for publishing fairly weighty tomes of left-wing politics, history and theory, but in September 2019 they launched Verso Fiction: ‘a new series of uncompromisingly intelligent and beautiful books with an international focus.’ Terminal Boredom ticks all these boxes but more importantly it has an authentic edgy feel to it that is a welcome reminder of the days when spikiness and attitude were not just marketing categories but a genuine challenge to post-war consumerist complacency. While this period feel is not surprising given that the seven short stories collected here were first published in the 1970s and 1980s, it is a shock that it has taken over 35 years to translate the work of Izumi Suzuki (1949-1986) into English. I suspect that any Anglosphere publishers who might have contemplated it found the complete lack of sentiment too bleak. The overall themes are suggested by the title of the recent review of this edition in the New York Times: ‘Where Every Coupling Depends on Lies, and Men Are Aliens’. However, such themes are now commercially attractive and, more fundamentally, the context of reception has changed now. For example, while themes revolving around androgyny were countercultural in the 1970s and 1980s, the existence of nonbinary genders is now widely accepted within society and I suspect that this is the context in which Suzuki would be understood today.
The Road to Woop Woop and Other Stories by Eugen Bacon
(Meercat Press, 2021)
Reviewed by Ivy Roberts
Eugen Bacon’s The Road to Woop Woop and Other Stories invites readers into an eclectic world of Gods, demons, shape shifters, bounty hunters, and spirits. This loosely connected web of tales weaves together themes of death, memory, and relationships. Beneath stories of ancient beasts and heroes lie profoundly modern problems: how to deal with breakup, struggles to overcome trauma, surviving the death of a loved one… Bacon’s fantasies blend effortlessly with modern day contexts ala American Gods.
The Wall by Gautam Bhatia
(HarperCollins, 2020)
Reviewed by Dan Hartland
If Gautam Bhatia’s debut novel has a governing geometry, it is circular. This adjective is often used pejoratively by reviewers, and so it’s worth foregrounding the unusual annularity of The Wall before proceeding any further into—or rather, around—it.
Alison Scott, one of the Guests of Honour from this year's mini-convention, co-hosted with the Science Fiction Foundation.
Here are some of the links Alison mentioned:
Café Moose - you need to be my pal, on FB, Discord, or so on - if this sounds like something you want to do then get in touch
Buy my badges: https://stowshirts.etsy.com
and t-shirts: https://fannish-clothing-emporium.creator-spring.com/
London First Thursday meetings - https://news.ansible.uk/london.html
Octothorpe - https://octothorpe.podbean.com (or your favourite browser)
GUFF - https://taff.org.uk/guff.html
Punctuation - https://punctuationcon.uk
Alison doing a barbershop quartet: https://youtu.be/YT7Ga_zGiXQ
Alison singing a barbershop quartet in the style of William Shatner: https://youtu.be/yyWn4OvOasM
DisCon III has a virtual membership - https://discon3.org
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