Archive for November, 2007
Conceptual Breakthrough
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007Not my book, this one: but a book written by Simon King and James Holden. I only wrote the afterword here; the meat of this work is two fascinating, detailed and original examples of science fiction criticism by King and Holden. Star, by James Holden Dr. Holden wants to show how the protagonists in SF [...]
The Guardian reviews the Palgrave History of SF
Saturday, November 10th, 2007P D Smith, in today's Saturday Guardian review: According to Margaret Atwood, science fiction is a pulp genre about "intelligent squids in space". Which is strange because, as Adam Roberts says, her best three novels are part of the SF genre. Oryx and Crake (2003) is "an unembarrassed entry into a dazzlingly realised dystopian imaginary [...]
Korean Jameson
Friday, November 9th, 2007Nice cover, no? It's for the Korean edition of this book, my introduction to the thought of Fredric Jameson. And what a splendid edition it is, including inside a wealth of illustrations (something the original never had), including pictures of things I don't even discuss: photos of Al Pacino and Gillian Anderson, for instance. All for [...]
November
Monday, November 5th, 2007An unusually tough and tiring first half of term has left me fairly worn out. Still, I've been trying to push on in the writing of a new novel. Since this is set in the Soviet Union I had given it the working title Yellow Blue Tibia, something I chose on the understanding (which I derived from Nabokov, no less) that [...]
