Representing

This third and final part of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science In The Capital series maintains the very consistent tone established … More

A shotgun blast of flawed brilliance

Seveneves is Neal Stephenson in his pomp. This book combines all his most splendid qualities as a writer: his febrile … More

Necessary questions

Fifty Degrees Below takes over more or less exactly where Forty Signs Of Rain leaves off, but it shifts focus … More

Deniable plausibility

I’ve been on a mission recently to catch up with the output of two of my favourite writers, Kim Stanley … More

Action stations

Kim Stanley Robinson keeps coming back to what might be described as ‘environmental fiction’, and ecological themes are never far … More

A world of experience

I’m not too sure why it’s taken me so long to get around to reading Hilary Mantel’s novels about the … More

An orrery of thought

Having finished reading Neal Stephenson’s epic historical trilogy The Baroque Cycle it’s quite hard, on reflection, to recall everything that’s … More

Hardy perennials

Kim Stanley Robinson is known for not writing stories about soldiers, or other stereotypically heroic figures—which in our deeply fucked-up … More

Central admixture

Having recently read and written about Quicksilver, the book which precedes The Confusion in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle trilogy, there’s … More

Light touch, heavy themes

I inhabit a timeline in which the definitive version of Michael Moorcock’s huge fantasy sequence is The Tale of The … More

Everything happens only once

My exploration of Kim Stanley Robinson’s oeuvre is proceeding in a kind of pincer movement, reading books alternately from either … More

A work of play

This Neal Stephenson dude likes to go large. Enormous books, with vast casts of characters, containing epic and sprawling storylines … More

Indulging in the immediate future

In Red Moon Kim Stanley Robinson turns his attention to the Earth’s satellite in much the same way that he … More

Mystery abides

First-person narratives often use the grammatical device of the first-person pronoun to solicit the reader’s close identification with the narrator, … More