H. G. Wells wrote the screen adaptation of his future history, The Shape of Things to Come, to give a dramatic setting to his sweeping vision of a world first devastated by war then resurrected by a corps of brilliant engineers. The result was Things to Come, a 1936 film produced by Alexander Korda and […]
The Wall by Gautam Bhatia, Book One of The Chronicles of Sumer
Gautam Bhatia’s The Wall is an intricate and compelling cross between fantasy and fable that strikes at something deep within human nature, a yearning to break through the barriers that hem us in. In the world of The Wall, the barrier is a literal one, vast, black, blocking out every sign of a world beyond. […]
9 Unforgettable SFF Standalone Novels I Read in 2020
I was surprised in looking over all the books I’ve read this year that the great majority of them belonged to series, but several were unforgettable SFF standalone novels. These were not all published in 2020 – in fact most are older, some quite a bit older, but they were new to me in this […]
Border City: Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station
Lavie Tidhar creates a border city, a liminal place in Central Station that captures in great human depth a future world of interwoven nationalities, identities, destinies and lives. The city around Central Station, a vast spaceport in what was once called Israel or Palestine between the Arab and Jewish areas is one of many blended […]
City in Time: Tade Thompson’s Rosewater Redemption
Tade Thompson begins Rosewater Redemption, the concluding volume of his Wormwood trilogy, with a kind of fugue, an almost musical prelude in which the major characters re-enter the story, each changed by what has gone before. We see Rosewater in all its multiplicity, through the eyes of each character, as a city in time, experienced […]
Fantasy City: The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz’ The Street of Crocodiles (1934), translated by Celina Cieniewska for a 1989 edition, is one of those completely original works that defies categorization. I guess I would call it fantastika. It’s a linked collection of stories about a boy’s view of his Polish hometown filtered through the adult mind of an amazing writer. […]
