Books

(courtesy Simon and Schuster Australia) In the very depths of the COVID pandemic, when by rights I should have been wallowing in warm and fuzzy everything, I developed, along with a great many other people I believe, on obsession with apocalyptic tales. If that seems like the most counter intuitive Continue Reading

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) It never ceases to amaze this reviewer that you can pick up a novella, a slim volume of storytelling that thought it might not have the physical heft or presence of its bigger novel counterparts, and that it can pack an almighty storytelling punch that stands Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Watching the stop-start march of fascism across the globe in recent years, and the resistance of many people to its horrific progress, people who have noted history and are well aware of the sage lessons it teaches, has been unnerving and alarming but also somewhat removed for Continue Reading

(courtesy Pan macmillan Australia) The books of Adrian Tchaikovsky are a supreme delight in a thousand different, incalculably satisfying ways. He excels at next level characterisation, immersively clever storylines and dialogue that sings and crackles as needed; what knits all of these vibrantly readable elements together is a feat of Continue Reading

(courtesy Graywolf Press) The end of the world, it will not surprise those of you who are studiously paying attract to the current deleterious drift of our planet into, variously depending on the news of the story, into climate change catastrophe, AI annihilation and fascistic governance, is very much on Continue Reading

When I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel a good chunk of years ago, two things stood out for me in a novel full of clever and emotionally resonant storytelling. First, that the author possessed a brilliant capacity for imaginative world-building, for predicting what might lie just over Continue Reading

(courtesy Text Publishing) One of the things that makes or breaks a sci-fi novel is how well an author establishes a sense of evocatively definitive time and place; half-do it and you find it hard to imagine the world they create as anything real or tangible, potentially hobbling the ability Continue Reading

(courtesy Allen & Unwin – Australia) One of the reasons this reviewer loves science fiction is because at its heart, it is devoted to exploring, thinking through and celebrating big ideas; woven into its storytelling DNA is an impelling need to peek behind the curtain, to wonder why things are Continue Reading