Expect Me Tomorrow by Christopher Priest
(Gollancz, 2022)
Reviewed by Nick Hubble
As reported on his blog, Christopher Priest wrote Expect Me Tomorrow, his seventeenth novel, over the course of the 2020 pandemic period, submitting the manuscript at the end of October at more-or-less the same time as his previous novel, The Evidence, was published. It has therefore taken nearly two years to come out in English, although a French edition, Rendez-vous demain, has already been published in April of this year. In the meantime, Priest has written another ‘new book’, which is due out next year. It’s not clear, but I presume this will also be a novel; at which point Priest will have published seven novels and a substantial collection of short stories since 2011. In other words, he has produced a major body of internationally respected work in the twenty-first century proper (understood as beginning after the financial crash of 2008) that deserves to be considered highly significant in terms of both artistic creation and (admittedly sometimes oblique) social commentary. In Expect Me Tomorrow, decades of writerly craft are honed to produce not the great British novel, but a deadpan, darkly comic anti-novel charting the attenuated social life of the island we live on against the backdrop of radical climate change across a period of nearly 200 years.
Continue reading…
Review from BSFA Review 19 - Download your copy here.
An Earnest Blackness by Eugen Bacon
(Anti-Oedipus Press, 2022)
Reviewed by Phil Nicholls
An Earnest Blackness is the debut collection of 12 non-fiction essays by Eugen Bacon, published by Anti-Oedipus Press, 2022. Her previous work includes three novels, all nominated for BSFA awards. Bacon is a multi-prize-winning author and her creative work has appeared in many magazines.
The opening lines of the first essay set the tone for much of the collection: “Decades after the ground-breaking work of authors such Toni Morrison, Samuel Delaney, and Octavia Butler, black speculative fiction is more visible and thriving than ever.” The heart of this collection is an overview of black speculative fiction, Afrofuturism, AfroSF and even slipstream writing, styles where “We can contemplate different, better futures.” Bacon offers good explorations of these labels across several essays but concedes that “There are problems with definitions.”
Review from BSFA Review 18 - Download your copy here.
The Rise Of The Cyberzines by Mike Ashley
(Liverpool University Press, 2022)
Reviewed by Martin Petto
The Rise Of The Cyberzines marks the culmination of a monumental project. When Mike Ashley started this project, The Time Machines: The Story of the Science Fiction Pulp Magazines from the Beginning to 1950 (2001) was intended to be the first of three volumes. Transformations: 1950 to 1970 (2005) and Gateways to Forever: 1970 to 1980 (2007) duly followed. But so too—after a gap—did Science Fiction Rebels: 1981 to 1990 (2016). And now a final mammoth book covering 1991 to 2020: “This is my final volume covering English-language magazines, in a series over twenty years in the making. A companion volume, No Limits, will explore the development of non-English sf magazines. Beyond that, I pass the baton on to anyone who wishes to continue the story through future decades.”
The result is a book—simultaneously a history of the state of the industry and a review of the state of the field—that is essential yet frustrating. Covering a larger span than any of the previous volumes as well as more fundamental industry upheavals is just too large a task for a single book, particularly one with its genesis in a different task.
Men written and directed by Alex Garland
(A24, 2022)
Reviewed by Josh Pearce
Men is Alex Garland’s third film as director, following two well-regarded science fiction forays (Annihilation and Ex Machina), and he has also written several other SF gems (28 Days Later…, Sunshine, and Dredd). Men, however, is decidedly fantasy. (Garland himself calls it “folk horror.”)
It stars Jessie Buckley as Harper, a recent widow renting a large country house for a couple of weeks as a place to recover from her tragedy. The owner of the house is Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), who gives off enough creepy vibes that when he asks Harper if she plays the piano, she lies and says, “No.” Anything to avoid prolonging being in the same room as him.
Horizon Zero Dawn: Liberation by Anne Toole and Ben Maccaw Art by Elmer Damaso
(Titan Comics, 2022)
Reviewed by John Dodd
(Minor spoilers for the video game Horizon Zero Dawn.)
Novels based on video games fall into two different categories for me, the ones that give us something that we were utterly unaware of, and those that tell a story that expands on something we already knew.
I love the lore of games, particularly in video games where the temptation must surely be to paper over the cracks in the lore with more action and hope that no one notices. The more that time goes on, the more that games designers realise that many are just like me, they want the story, they want all the things that go with it, they want to know everything.
Azimut by Wilfred Lupano Art by Jean-Baptiste Andreae
There was a tale of the time snatcher, who had power over all things, and both gave and took time as it suited them to do. Thought by many to be a legend, a story to frighten children, still the dominion of time holds sway over everyone, and many seek to find a way to escape that inevitability.
It begins with La Perue, out at sea for two years, finding himself upon the beaches of the new world that he has sought for so long, only to find that someone has taken away the ability of the world to navigate without him knowing, and he is instead on the very shores that he departed so long ago, to the amusement of many and the multitude of humiliation that he must endure.
Elric Volume 3: The White Wolf by Julien Blondel and Jean-Luc Cano Art by Julian Telo and Robin Recht
Reviewed by David Lascelles
This graphic novel adaptation of one of Michael Moorcock’s more famous creations, Elric of Melnibone, is certainly a nostalgia trip for someone who, like me, was brought up in the 80s as a lover of all things fantasy and SF. Back then, Elric was a property that was very different to the fantasy offerings of the time. Amidst a lot of Tolkienesque fantasy that swamped the genre at the time, it certainly stood out. From my point of view as a rather sickly teen, I personally loved the idea of a hero who had a debilitating condition that could be managed by magic—albeit a dark and corrupting, soul stealing magic.
So, it was with a certain amount of anticipation that I entered into reading this graphic offering.
Blade Runner: Origins Vol 2: Scrap by K. Perkins, Mellow Brown, Mike Johnson Art by Fernando Dagnino
I’ll go on record as saying that I love all things to do with Bladerunner, from the original films (in all its many forms), to the book and its sequels, to the film sequel and all the lore and mythos that has been built up over time.
This was something I hadn’t yet encountered and that was a very refreshing thing to encounter.
Cal Moreaux (the significance of the name is not lost on me), is a man who has been brought in by the LAPD to assist on a case involving problems with the Nexus 4 model replicants. It quickly becomes apparent that there are issues with the 4’s malfunctioning, with the first one that they encounter going into a recursive loop till their programming comes to the conclusion that it needs to, albeit that no one knows what the conclusion should be.
The Last Legacy by Adrienne Young
(Titan Books, 2022)
Reviewed by Anne F. Wilson
The story starts with our heroine, Bryn Roth, arriving by ship to the Bastian city docks. After the death of her parents fourteen years ago, Bryn has been brought up abroad by her great aunt who has taught her to be ladylike. Now Bryn is eighteen she has been summoned home by her controlling Uncle Henrik to meet the rest of her family, and find her place in it.
The Roth family business is jewellery, or rather, fake gemstones. They also indulge in piracy. They occupy an unfashionable house in a downmarket district. The household is disproportionately male, including, apart from one self-effacing aunt and a female housekeeper, Bryn’s male cousins, her uncles, and a number of craftsmen. Henrik’s ambitions involve using Bryn, who is ladylike and marriageable, to help him join the merchants’ guild, and take a step up the socio-economic ladder.
Chasing Whispers by Eugen Bacon
(Raw Dogs Screaming, 2022)
This collection of 13 Afro-irrealist short stories by Eugen Bacon, an African Australian writer, is published by Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2022. The book includes a short introduction by American novelist and critic D. Harlan Wilson, who sets these stories in context within the current state of black speculative fiction.
A book of short fiction, even one from a single author, is even harder to categorise than a novel. Bacon includes only limited genre elements in many of these stories, but the overall effect is a magical re-imagining of modern life. Chasing Whispers fits neatly within the wider definition of magical realism, if the term can genuinely be applied beyond the work of South American writers.
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