The Pastel City (1971) is the first story by M. John Harrison in his Viriconium fantasy sequence. This short novel drew me in immediately with its luminous prose and its ability to depict a world in ruins and a world of hope with just a few brilliant visual strokes. Though it begins with a prologue […]
Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North – A Review
Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North is both an exciting story of spies and traitors in a post-apocalyptic Europe and a powerful study of trauma and belief. It is, above all, the story of Ven Marzouki, who survived a traumatic childhood when he witnessed the great burning of the old civilization and the […]
The Dystopian Lawyer Series by Christopher Brown
Christopher Brown’s two-book set (Rule of Capture and Failed State) about his hapless yet strangely effective dystopian lawyer, Donnie Kimoe, may come too close to our dystopian present for comfort, but they also shine with ideas about a better way to envision the future. As he put it in a recent essay in Literary Hub: […]
Becky Chambers’ Space Community as the Good Society
Becky Chambers takes a real chance in Record of a Spaceborn Few. She sets aside conventional adventure plots to create a convincing human society in space that is actually hopeful. Hopeful, but not easy. From the outset of this novel, third in the Wayfarer series, we are reminded of how fragile life can be on […]
