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Will Greatwich

Will Greatwich

Apr
09
Title page of a very old book with a stamped image of a fish coiling around an anchor.

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

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

"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

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

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

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.

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

Death is the Soul-Vulture: Ian Watson’s “Deathhunter”

A psychedelic afterlife fantasy that comes so close to greatness
9 min read
Aug
14
Book cover featuring a fantasy castle, a river of lava and mushroom-shaped mountains

"The Wizards and the Warriors": A Lost Treasure of 80s Fantasy

At first glance, Hugh Cook’s The Wizards and the Warriors (1986) presents a very unpromising prospect. There is the
8 min read
Jul
14
Book cover: a huge horizontal crucifix looms over a longhaired man, the Eucharist in front of him

"Behold the Man": Michael Moorcock's Big Middle Finger to Christianity

a juvenile and mean-spirited novel from one of SFF's greatest authors
9 min read