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What if? To me, those two words are one of the keys to good science fiction. The writer looks at a current state of affairs in politics, society or science (or all three), asks “What if?” and their imagination creates the foundation for a story. It certainly seems like that’s the method Ted Kosmatka used [...]            Tim March 28th, 2013 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, sci-fi | Category: Book Reviews | Leave a comment |  Print This Post |  Email This PostAlmost of necessity, dystopian literature has its roots in concerns of the times in which it is written. It is an author envisioning a potential future in which something already existing or on the horizon heads in a bad direction. What author Jane Rogers recognizes in her award-winning The Testament of Jessie Lamb is the [...] Tim August 17th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, dystopian literature, fiction, Review Copy, sci-fi | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostShifting political tides are frequent and cyclical enough that they’ve earned their own label — pendulum politics. One party and its policies are in. The pendulum swings and another party and its policies dominate. Rarely, though, does the pendulum swing as much as the scenario in which Ken MacLeod plots Night Sessions, the winner of [...] Tim April 17th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, Review Copy, sci-fi | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostAlthough the seeds were planted earlier, dystopian literature has flourished in 20th century nutrients — the rise of fascism, ideological conflicts, global industrialization, and seemingly limitless advances in technology. Pessimism isn’t a prerequisite to realize there is a potentially detrimental synergy in the coalescence of these changes. It undoubtedly provides plenty of opportunity to envision [...] Tim June 22nd, 2011 | Tags: Book Reviews, dystopian literature, fiction, Review Copy, sci-fi | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostYou’re likely to get an odd look when someone asks what you’re reading and you tell them it’s the “new” Jules Verne novel. After all, Verne died 106 years ago and all of his work has been published. Yet therein is a tale itself. The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz is a novel Verne hoped would [...] Tim April 27th, 2011 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Jules Verne, Review Copy, sci-fi, world literature | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostDystopian literature stems from no particular geographic boundaries. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell were British, Margaret Atwood is Canadian, Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut were American. Thus, while Ana María Shua sets Death as a Side Effect in her native Argentina, the conditions that beset that future society are perhaps universally possible. Survival is [...] Tim November 22nd, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, sci-fi, world literature | Category: Book Reviews | One comment - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostBook publicity frequently is an exercise in the art (or artifice) of puffery. So, when a book is described as a “genre-busting” work, I tend to approach it with a bit of caution. Generally, though that term is a fair description of The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, Patrick Somerville’s collection of short stories. Some [...] Tim November 12th, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, sci-fi, short stories | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostOkay, I’ve read THE novel of the summer. I’m still trying to figure out why it’s THE novel. Justin Cronin’s The Passage has plenty of hype. But when you get right down to it, it’s really an over long post-apocalyptic SF novel. (Although for some reason the local library stuck a “Mystery” tag on the [...] Tim June 14th, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, sci-fi | Category: Book Reviews | One comment - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostIt was an era more than half our population knows only through history. It was an era in which the United States went from being the only nation possessing nuclear weapons to facing the reality that the “Godless Commies” also had them. It was an era in which the Cold War blossomed, together with fear [...] Tim November 3rd, 2009 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, sci-fi | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostThe Secret History of Science Fiction, a new anthology aimed at questioning the existence of genre boundaries, could be a victim of the very issue it seeks to address. It uses the term “science fiction” in the title. The anthology proceeds from an interesting premise. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow was nominated for the 1973 Nebula [...] Tim October 5th, 2009 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, sci-fi | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This Post |
      
 The views expressed here are mine and mine alone. I do not speak for my law partners, our associates, staff and clients or my family and friends. Not only should any opinions here not be attributed to them, chances are they probably don't agree with me.
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