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