A necessity for those wishing to broaden their understanding of science fiction as a genre...or just those looking for some...
A comprehensive, chronological journey through a century of seminal science fiction, compiled by the editorial team of the VanderMeers (Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology, 2015, etc.).
This ambitious collection is united around no less humble a theme than the very nature of science fiction—a question endlessly debated by genre aficionados. In their introduction, the VanderMeers define SF as that which “lives in the future”; they trace the history of the form from its early roots in contes philosophiques to the pulps; followed by the golden age, new wave, humanist, feminist, cyberpunk, and postmodernist traditions...and non-Western SF too. Feeling dizzy yet? But if the task of trying to chart such a broad sea seems prohibitive, the anthology does its best through the inclusion of a massive 105 short stories. Legendary authors are present, of course—Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Dick—but the strength of the collection lies in the light it shines into lesser-known corners of science fiction's past and present: stories translated into English (Sever Gansovsky's “Day of Wrath” is worth special mention, as is Jean-Claude Dunyach's surreal “Paranamanco”), many for the first time, as well as stories by women (Carol Emshwiller's excellent “Pelt,” C.J. Cherryh's moving “Pots”) and authors of color (Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler are predictable names, but did you know W.E.B. Du Bois wrote science fiction? Misha Nogha, Ted Chiang, and Manjula Padmanabhan also feature, to name just a few). Teachers wishing for a survey text of SF could hardly do better than this exhaustive volume. The stories defy neat classification beyond being science fiction, resulting in a reading experience as diverse as its author list.
A necessity for those wishing to broaden their understanding of science fiction as a genre...or just those looking for some darn good stories.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-91009-2
Page Count: 1216
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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