Subscribe

science fiction

Feb
18
Cover art depicting an alien playing cards with four hands.

Purest Hazard

The Grand Wheel (1977), Barrington J. Bayley
5 min read
Feb
06
grainy monochrome photograph of mysterious talismanic sculptures

the mystic syllables yop, yeep, and yoop

reviewing every Clark Ashton Smith story, part 3
4 min read
Jan
22
Book cover depicting three women in togas, all bearing knives, apparently mirror images of each other.

The Adventures of "The Adventures of Alyx"

This was in Ourdh, where all things are possible
7 min read
Jan
08
Grainy monochrome photo of an eerie, melancholy stone head

Among the Worst Ways to Die...

Reading every Clark Ashton Smith story, part 2
5 min read
Dec
09
Grainy photograph of an eerie stone sculpture sitting among leaf litter on the ground

Dark Flowers of the Pulp Age

reviewing every Clark Ashton Smith story, part 1
7 min read
Aug
02
book cover depicting a silver needle-shaped spaceship on a verdant alien landscape

Paradise and Hell: “The Gardens of Delight” by Ian Watson

with some thoughts on the value of modesty in fiction
6 min read
Apr
30
dinosaurs and humans marching beneath a huge wooden crucifix with a pocketwatch hanging off it.

Discovering the True Nature of Time with Brian Aldiss’ “Cryptozoic!”

time travel, psychedelia and Freud
7 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