In my current mission to read Neal Stephenson’s entire oeuvre, I’ve been zigzagging between his earlier and later publications. If … More
Category: Fiction
In black and white
Having dipped into Kim Stanley Robinson’s work at intervals during his career (whether retrospectively as here, or contemporaneously), I’m starting … More
Warts and all
I’m on a long-term project to read all of Michael Moorcock’s classic fantasy-fiction, which comes together under the general rubric … More
No hubris
Having loved Snow Crash a long time ago, and having decided after reading Anathem in 2012 that Neal Stephenson is … More
Read this now
We don’t live in a temporal silo, separated from the past and future by an impermeable barrier. Indeed, when you … More
Entertaining contrivance
What little I’ve read of Neal Stephenson’s work has made me want to read more of it, but I don’t … More
A warm voice in a cold world
When I wrote down my thoughts in response to La Belle Sauvage, which is the first volume of Philip Pullman’s … More
Expert hand-holding
Worldbuilder, storyteller—these are Philip Pullman’s great strengths for me. As a ‘novel-maker’ he’s stuck in a rather old-fashioned, comfortable mode … More
Thresholds
We cross thresholds, we readers. Each book we read is entered through a portal, and marking those portals—projected onto the … More
A game of madness
I’ve never paid particular attention to Nicholas Hawksmoor’s famous London churches, although I am familiar with some of them. I … More
One face in a thousand
In Rhetorics of Fantasy, her important structural taxonomy of fantasy literature, Farah Mendlesohn identifies four key types of fantasy, defined … More
Worlds and authorities
I was spurred by the recent BBC TV adaptation of Northern Lights to re-read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, … More
The magic of the real
My introduction to fantasy fiction was The Lord of the Rings, which I encountered surprisingly early, while visiting a friend … More
Energy and entertainment
My long-interrupted project to read or re-read all of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion books has at last been resumed, after … More