TDW: Over the course of 2011/2012 I discovered, devoured and obsessed about China Miéville’s writing. The problem is that now I think I may have moved on and his latest collection of short stories, Three Moments of an Explosion, fell flat. Not totally flat, but lacking the raging fire of intensity I know and love. There are […]
TDW: Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest book is called Aurora. I have read it and enjoyed it, and recommend it all my fellow lovers of hard science fiction. Published by Orbit, the hardcover version is 480 pages long, its ISBN is 9780316098106 and its dimensions are 6.2 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches. It currently has 55 Amazon reviews for […]
TDW: There’s a lot of talk about artificial intelligence at the moment. First it was Elon Musk and Bill Gates. Then it was some researchers disagreeing with them. Then there are the bloggers talking about the researchers not being talked about. Nick Bostrom released his book Superintelligence recently, and the web is abuzz. So the release of […]
TDW: This review is a double-whammy. The reason for this is that I believe in what I call the ‘serendipity of reading’. That is, that everything we read is linked in a multitude of ways. This is of course the case when you look at the history of literature and how earlier works inform the […]
TDW: Mad Max: Fury Road is a lot of things. I could write about the feminist undertones and theme of literally smashing the patriarchy. I could talk about the extravagant set pieces and action scenes that make up the majority of the movie. I could even write about the colour tones and use of effects, […]
TDW: As you should know, our first book is Livid, an English translation of an Italian SF novel. That was why I was particularly excited to read The Three-Body Problem, an English translation of a massively popular Chinese SF trilogy. And then when the author says … I wrote about the worst of all possible […]
TDW: We’ve all read it, and if you’re an author, you’ve probably written it too. Exposition, or more to the point, obvious and intrusive ‘info-dumps’. It was repeated throughout during my Creative Writing degree that exposition was to be stamped out. The great and infallible mantra of ‘show, don’t tell’ was pounded into our impressionable […]
TDW: The Martian by Andy Weir is one of those crazy self-publishing success stories. It started as a serial on the author’s website, before fans prompted him to put it up on Amazon, which he did for the low, low price of 0.99c. Soon it got picked up for a print deal and is currently in […]
TDW: Blindsight by Peter Watts, er, blindsided me. I picked it up through Storybundle and had heard only good things. However, I wasn’t prepared for how enthralling it would be. Watts is a scientist (marine biologist I believe) by trade, but is now an established science fiction author. His first series takes readers under water, but for […]
TDW: Dystopias are everywhere. The Hunger Games and Divergent, as well as countless other gloomy books and films, reflect our fascination with totalitarian and fascist regimes where the general populace are nothing more than pawns of the privileged. The is a reflection of the times as inequality rises, environmental degradation continues unabated, and the surveillance state closes […]