Latest
Oct
14
The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (1987)
teenage fantasy protagonist but make him act like an actual teenage boy
7 min read
Aug
02
Paradise and Hell: “The Gardens of Delight” by Ian Watson
with some thoughts on the value of modesty in fiction
6 min read
May
31
Two Books by Surrealist Women
Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington, and the ocean of literature
6 min read
Apr
30
Discovering the True Nature of Time with Brian Aldiss’ “Cryptozoic!”
time travel, psychedelia and Freud
7 min read
Apr
09
Phantasmion: The First Fantasy Novel
Love and grief at the dawn of fantasy literature
7 min read
Mar
25
Rage and Revenge in Aboriginal Australia’s First Fantasy Novel
"The Kadaitcha Sung" asks whether the crimes of colonisation can ever be set right
11 min read
Mar
10
"The Zen Gun" (1983)
cosmic decadence and unionised robots
6 min read
Feb
15
Linguistic Superpowers: Samuel R. Delany's "Babel-17"
the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis jacked up on steroids
5 min read
Jan
29
The First Secondary World
independent fictional worlds were invented more recently than the steam train
13 min read
Nov
29
Love and Hate in Superposition: "The Quantum Rose" by Catherine Asaro
The sci-fi romance novel that's also an in-depth allegory for quantum physics
7 min read