Newly out in paperback, Robin Sloan’s love letter to both print and digital media, which began life as a 6,000-word ebook, ultimately fails to live up to its promise. Mr Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore starts strongly enough, with Clay Jannon, a jobless everyman, taking a job in the titular San Francisco-based establishment and discovering strange goings-on […]
The cover of Retrovirus is great, I admit. The promise of violence, a Strong Female Lead, an enigmatic plain white background – it’s full of promise. Then you turn to the back cover, and are promised de-frosted neanderthals. You can’t lose, right? Yes. Yes, you can. This review is full of spoilers, because I read […]
“We always write in order to remember the truth. When we invent, it is only in order to remember the truth more exactly.” (Luis Fernando Verissimo) I’ve often mistakenly attributed the above quote to Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, possibly because it’s written in a book (Borges and the Eternal Orangutans) which pays tribute to […]
Christopher Nolan wasn’t the only artist to successfully re-imagine Gotham’s Dark Knight over the course of the last decade…. The publication of the final issue of Batman Incorporated in July 2013 brought an end to Grant Morrison’s seven-year run on Batman, an epic and multifaceted arc during which the writer reinvigorated classic characters and made […]
Neptune’s Brood is the latest space opera from Charles Stross, but as Stross’s work to date includes Lovecraftian spy thrillers, scheming corporate time-travel and internet-based detective fiction it’s safe to assume there’s a crossover at work here, too. This time the competing strand is… banking and fraud. I know, I know, you’re filling up with […]
Published in 1985, Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game has been hailed as a modern classic of science-fiction writing, a reputation originally cemented by its winning both the Nebula and Hugo awards in 1985 and 1986 respectively. The book has never been out of print, and such is its reputation even beyond genre circles that […]