Science Fiction
Robert A. Heinlein: the ‘giant of SF’ was sexist, racist — and certainly no stylist
Like someone who has bought a first computer, then reads the manual from front to back but never actually gets…
David Cairns explains how we learned to love Berlioz
According to his friend and fellow-composer Ernest Reyer, the last words Berlioz spoke on his deathbed were: ‘They are finally…
The Book of Joan: part apocalyptic tale, part erotic poem
Does J.G. Ballard’s ‘disquieting equation’, ‘sex x technology = the future’, still hold? Not in Lidia Yuknavitch’s novel, which imagines…
Brilliant essayists, dark and fair
Read cover to cover, a book of essays gives you the person behind it: their voice, the trend of their…
No pain, no gain
It is an unexpected pleasure when fiction has a soundtrack to accompany the work of reviewing. H(A)PPY is ‘best enjoyed…
Don DeLillo foresees the imminent death of death
Cults, the desert, natural disasters. Artists, bankers, terrorists. Cash machines, food packaging, secret installations. Mediaspeak and scientific jargon. Crowds and…
All washed up: Birmingham after the apocalypse
The dystopian novel in which a Ballardian deluge or viral illness transforms planet Earth has become something of a sub-genre,…
‘I was facing truths I didn’t particularly want to look at’: Michael Moorcock interview
By the kind of uncanny coincidence that would tickle his psychogeographically minded friends Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd, Michael Moorcock’s…
God, aliens and a novel with a mission
They say never work with children and animals. They could just as well say don’t write about aliens and God.…
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood - review
The two opening volumes of Margaret Atwood’s trilogy have sold over a million copies. One of them managed to be…
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