Class Warfare: Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Literary Fiction
The line drawn between so-called literary fiction and genre fiction has always irked me. As I embarked upon a re-read of the first two volumes of Lev Grossman’s frustrating Magicians…
The line drawn between so-called literary fiction and genre fiction has always irked me. As I embarked upon a re-read of the first two volumes of Lev Grossman’s frustrating Magicians…
Everyone has a favorite bookstore—whether it’s a big chain or the corner independent. It’s the place where we discover new books, maybe even wait in line for hours for the…
“Thrown out of the best universities, excommunicated from all the most popular religions and many of the obscure ones, fresh from his recent engagement in Hell, we present Johannes Cabal,…
The Good Shabti is a story that spans thousands of years. In ancient Egypt, Pharaoh Mentuhotep is on his deathbed; in the present, a team of scientists are setting out…
For October, I asked our members to find a great Halloween read. We voted to read Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I’m really looking forward to spending…
I love a good creepy story. I don’t run across them nearly as often as I’d like since all too often “creepy” gets mistaken for gross-outs and the unexpected bucket…
Tim Powers may be familiar to many as the author of the novel On Stranger Tides (on which a Pirates of the Caribbean movie was based), but to me he’s…
Our world is collapsing, the planet choked with pollution and strangled by economic hardship. A government agency with dubious intent, known as the Ward, is collecting political dissenters and rebels,…
It’s obviously blasphemy to criticise Tolkien, even indirectly, but for me his work is more important in historico-cultural terms than modern literary terms. Before you send me a load of…
The zombie apocalypse is already here. Popular culture is overrun with the brainless, flesh-eating revenants. Shambling through the streets of cities throughout the fictional world, terrorizing the countryside from Georgia…
So after reading through Annihilation, I immediately looked up when Authority was coming out in order to present myself at my favorite bookstore and acquire it as soon as it…
For June, our members voted to read King Rat by China Miéville. Something is stirring in London’s dark, stamping out its territory in brickdust and blood. Something has murdered Saul…