![Rage and Revenge in Aboriginal Australia’s First Fantasy Novel](/content/images/size/w750/2024/03/header.jpg)
Latest
May
31
![book covers of "Rogomelec" and "The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington"](/content/images/size/w750/2024/05/header.jpg)
Two Books by Surrealist Women
Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington, and the ocean of literature
6 min read
Apr
30
![dinosaurs and humans marching beneath a huge wooden crucifix with a pocketwatch hanging off it.](/content/images/size/w750/2024/04/header.jpg)
Discovering the True Nature of Time with Brian Aldiss’ “Cryptozoic!”
time travel, psychedelia and Freud
7 min read
Apr
09
![Title page of a very old book with a stamped image of a fish coiling around an anchor.](/content/images/size/w750/2024/04/cover-image.png-1.jpg)
Phantasmion: The First Fantasy Novel
Love and grief at the dawn of fantasy literature
7 min read
Mar
25
![Cover depicting an Aboriginal figure reaching from the sky to a white silhouette or shadow on a desert landscape](/content/images/size/w750/2024/03/header.jpg)
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
![book cover depicting a stone bust of a human head surrounded by animal heads](/content/images/size/w750/2024/02/front-cover.jpg)
"The Zen Gun" (1983)
cosmic decadence and unionised robots
6 min read
Feb
15
![book cover depicting a woman in a silvery bikini, standing before a spaceship and a reddish alien sky](/content/images/size/w750/2024/02/front-cover-1.jpg)
Linguistic Superpowers: Samuel R. Delany's "Babel-17"
the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis jacked up on steroids
5 min read
Jan
29
![an old map of the North Sea depicting both real and fictional islands](/content/images/size/w750/2024/01/carta-marina-large.jpg)
The First Secondary World
independent fictional worlds were invented more recently than the steam train
13 min read
Nov
29
![A woman in a red silk blouse looks uncertainly at a man in a fur cloak, riding a green alien horse](/content/images/size/w750/2023/11/quantum-rose-header.jpg)
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
Nov
04
![A man in medieval clothes clutches a bloody blade. Behind him is a pile of skulls and an emerald serpent.](/content/images/size/w750/2023/11/nifft-cover.jpg)
Go Directly To Hell: Michael Shea’s “Nifft the Lean”
A face-melting feast
8 min read
Sep
18
![Lurid 70s sci-fi painting, woman in alien landscape with tentacle emerging from her chest](/content/images/size/w750/2023/09/deathhunter-cover.jpg)
Death is the Soul-Vulture: Ian Watson’s “Deathhunter”
A psychedelic afterlife fantasy that comes so close to greatness
9 min read