“The translator Ken Liu has done more than anyone to bridge the gap between Chinese science fiction and American readers.” —New York Times
Category Archives: Novels
Tai Shani’s Feminist Science Fiction Novel Draws on Spoken Word Performance
“Since 2014, artist Tai Shani, a nominee for the 2019 Turner Prize, has constructed hallucinatory environments inhabited by feminine characters adapted from myth, history, and science fiction. This multipart project—encompassing sculpture, graphic images, installations, film, and performance—has taken several forms, one of them culminating in her first book, Our Fatal Magic. Each of the volume’s twelve chapters is an elliptical, phantasmagoric monologue delivered by one of Shani’s figures: a medieval mystic, a cube of flesh embodying the fairy-tale Bluebeard’s multiple murdered wives, even an AI program named after Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory. Several of Shani’s projects have been presented under the rubric “Dark Continent” (or “DC”), a reference to Freud’s infamous description of female sexual psychology—a characterization shaped by the colonial geographic imagination. The setting of Our Fatal Magic is the land of Semiramis, named for the legendary Assyrian queen. Though she does not make an appearance in any of the chapters of Shani’s book, Semiramis is the cornerstone in Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies, a fifteenth-century allegory about the contributions of women to human society, which treats its heroines as the structural elements of a new city. The opening Note of Our Fatal Magic refers to the compilation’s source project, “DC: Semiramis,” as an “expanded adaptation” of de Pizan’s book.” –-Artnews
Karl Schroeder’s “Stealing Worlds”: visionary science fiction of a way through the climate and inequality crises
The science-fiction literature that shaped the mind of Jimi Hendrix
Quakers in space
As someone who went to a Quaker high school, I am delighted to see a novel about Quakers in space!
“Leaving a dilapidated Earth behind, Quakers across the globe pool funds and resources as they select colonists to send to a newly discovered planet to start life anew in this “miraculous fusion of…science fiction with unsparing realism and keen psychology” (Ursula K. Le Guin).”
Is Climate Fiction a Subset of Science Fiction—or Something Else Entirely?
Is Climate Fiction a Subset of Science Fiction—or Something Else Entirely? A new novel imagines what life in Bangkok would be like if nearly half the city were underwater—which some experts say is a real possibility. “Cli-fi” (Thailand) https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/climate-fiction-subset-science-fiction-or-something-else-entirely
Waste Tide is a chilling sci-fi novel about class war and trash in near-future China
Waste Tide is a chilling sci-fi novel about class war and trash in near-future China And the people the world’s economy leaves behind https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/25/18626394/waste-tide-chen-qiufan-chinese-scifi-science-fiction-class-war-book-review
Order Upon a Burning Throne, ISBN: 1328916286 | HMH
Order Upon a Burning Throne, ISBN: 1328916286 | HMH Buy Upon a Burning Throne, ISBN: 1328916286 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Shop now. … the first book in a ground-breaking, epic fantasy series inspired by the ancient Indian classic, The Mahabharata. https://www.amazon.com/Upon-Burning-Throne-Ashok-Banker/dp/1328916286/
Pioneer of Bengali science fiction Adrish Bardhan no more
Pioneer of Bengali science fiction Adrish Bardhan no more Kolkata: Adrish Bardhan, science fiction writer, translator and editor died at the age of 87 at the Nilratana Sarkar Medical College and Hospital on Monday night.He was suffering from age-related… http://www.millenniumpost.in/kolkata/pioneer-of-bengali-science-fiction-adrish-bardhan-no-more-354130
Science Fiction’s Preoccupation With Privacy
Science Fiction’s Preoccupation With Privacy. Two ambitious new novels build techno-futures in which surveillance offers disturbing new threats. Argentine and Zambian writers. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/04/surveillance-science-fiction-colonializing-force/587863/