Arisia 2020 was upbeat, considering the difficulties they had during the year. And the fan-driven aspect of Arisia seemed to be more tangible this year, with many freebies and flyers of interest For
The new biography of Joanna Russ by Gwyneth Jones is a marvel. Published in the Modern Masters of Science Fiction Series from the University of Illinois Press, this book provides a timely and thorou
For those wondering about the booming science fiction scene in the People’s Republic of China, you might be curious to know some background information about the Science and Fantasy Growth Foundation
Carlo Jacono cover painting from Urania, #235 (1960). src Arielle Saiber joins Diamond Bay Radio for an interview on Italian Science Fiction and Italian fandom. This interview was inspired by Saiber
Although the original publication date of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is listed as 1886, apparently it was actually published in an edition of 3000 copies in December of 1885. The booksell
“Verne collecting authentic information from the best sources about the underwater world” from L’Algerie Pittoresque, 15 Jun 1884. src Jules Verne is too well known, so that if you allow me to prais
Join us for a podcast with Francesco Verso. His novel Livido won the Best Italian Science Fiction Award in 2014. Now the book is being released in English as Nexhuman by Apex Books. go to the PODCAS
أحمد خالد توفيق (Ahmed Khaled Towfik) The prolific author, Ahmed Khaled Towfik, passed away from a heart attack on April 2nd, 2018. Although I had encountered his books occasionally in passing, I
The opening of Jack Womack’s Going Going Gone, injects us into an unpredictable world that wobbles between an alternate hipster-scene of New York City in the 1960s and the seemingly hallucinatory ramblings of a drug-addled protagonist, Walter Bullitt. The story begins in a Washington, D.C. hotel room, where the first person jive talk kicks in: “Soon as I spiked I turned my eyes inside. Setting old snakehead on cruise control always pleases, no matter how quick the trip.” Sprinkled through almost every sentence are hokey metaphors. The phone doesn’t ring, “those jingle bells“ do. And on the other end of the line is a Federal agent of some kind, who is so square that he can’t understand a word of the hipster-narrator. But the narrator is more like one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers than a secret agent, and he himself was so startled by the phone that he almost made for the john to “drown his bagged cat.” To flush his pot down the toilet, get it?
Just finished China Miéville’s _The City and the City_, a very satisfying, even inspiring, book, rich with metaphor and symbolism. It is like a film noir, set in a mythical Eastern European city — I’m convinced it is partly based on Prague — where populations living in mutually incompatible paradlgms “unsee“ each other. The beauty of this idea is that, (quite beyond the metaphor,) it could be almost any *real* city; with populations that are utterly invisible to one another. Old and young, rich and poor, leftist and fascist, black and white: there are, in fact, far too many axes of unseeing in our everyday lives…