Jeff Vandermeer’s work is often connected with the New Weird. This genre is difficult to define, but it typically refers to works that rely on a plot and setting that blend a disproportional amount of the unfamiliar with the familiar. Even though the Southern Reach Trilogy is grounded in the real world (taking place on the gulf […]
Book Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
August 16, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Haruki Murakami is not known as a genre writer, but his dabbling in the fantastika shares many of the common tropes found in modern fantasy. His novels feature gateways to other worlds, ghosts, monsters, and ordinary characters that embark on their own form of the hero’s quests. When his previous novel, 1Q84, was released in the US, […]
Book Review: HALF A KING by Joe Abercrombie
July 14, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law trilogy came at the cusp of when fantasy was going through a change. The eighties and nineties fantasy market was dominated with Tolkienesque fantasy. Authors like Terry Brooks, David Eddings, and Robert Jordan brought us hefty series of unlikely heroes saving the world against seemingly unstoppable evils with a clear delineation between good and evil. […]
Book Review: AUTHORITY by Jeff Vandermeer
June 30, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Jeff Vandermeer is back with book 2 of the Southern Reach Trilogy, Authority. In Annihilation (review here), Vandermeer introduces us to a team of nameless scientists who investigate an inhabited Gulf coast region called Area X. What follows is a psychological thriller as the scientists begin to lose their grips on reality. The key to understanding the […]
Book Review: A DARKLING SEA by James Cambias
April 4, 2014 by Leave a Comment
There are many reasons to enjoy science fiction. If hard science fiction is your thing, read how Kim Stanley Robinson extrapolates our current technology to posit a utopian future. Or if you prefer social science fiction, pick up a novel by Ursula K. LeGuin and see how she integrates anthropology into fictional worlds as if […]
Book Review: ANNIHILATION by Jeff Vandermeer
March 10, 2014 by 4 Comments
There are times when I begin to grow tired of science fiction. This happens when I pick up a string of novels that feature the same overused tropes with formulaic characters in a familiar, yet modified setting. But when you have an author like Jeff VanderMeer, you know at a minimum you are in for […]
Interview with Adam Christopher, Author of HANG WIRE
February 3, 2014 by Leave a Comment
ADAM CHRISTOPHER is a novelist and comic writer. In 2010, as an editor, Christopher won a Sir Julius Vogel award, New Zealand’s highest science fiction honour. His debut novel, Empire State, was SciFiNow’s Book of the Year and a Financial Times Book of the Year for 2012. In 2013, he was nominated for the Sir Julius Vogel award for Best New Talent, with […]
Book Review: HANG WIRE by Adam Christopher
February 3, 2014 by Leave a Comment
In Hang Wire by Adam Christopher, Bay area blogger, Ted Hall, is celebrating his thirty-seventh birthday with friends at a Chinese restaurant when his fortune cookie explodes. What seems like a minor head injury later turns into a series of sleep-walking episodes, leaving Ted with no memory of what he’s been doing in the middle […]
