I’ve been podcasted! Many thanks to Steve Aryan for having me on the ever awesome Crash Landing over at Geek Syndicate. Steve and I talked about the five novels I’d want to have with me if I was stranded on an alien planet. Some of the books I chose are SFnal, some are magical, oneContinue reading “Crash Landing with five of my favourite novels”
Category Archives: Literary
Adam Nevill and Hari Kunzru meet the Process Church Uptown
Noted 60s cultists the Process Church of the Final Judgement seem to be popping up all over the place just now. I’ve just zipped through Adam Nevill’s horror novel ‘Last Days’ and Hari Kunzru’s literary novel ‘Gods Without Men’. The Process Church are a more-or-less buried presence in both books. And yesterday I found outContinue reading “Adam Nevill and Hari Kunzru meet the Process Church Uptown”
Reviewing ‘The City and The City’
Well, I’ve just finished China Miéville’s superb new book, ‘The City and The City’. It’s utterly gripping, a noir-ish police procedural with an Eastern European feel that both builds on, reacts against and moves beyond the concerns and achievements of his previous novels. So you’ve probably worked out that I’d recommend it to anyone whoContinue reading “Reviewing ‘The City and The City’”
Why Fantasy isn’t crap, and SF isn’t better
Hal Duncan has been posting very interestingly about sub-divides in genre lately; in particular, that (and other, related conversations) have made me think about the divide between Fantasy and Science Fiction, which has led me to articles / books which seem to position Fantasy writing as being innately conservative, and Science Fiction as being innatelyContinue reading “Why Fantasy isn’t crap, and SF isn’t better”
Spontaneously effusing
Well, a lovely weekend in Paris – visiting friends, hanging out in the 6e, and once again failing to get to the Sainte Chapelle, one of the finest pieces of Late Gothic architecture in Europe. Hey ho, one day I’ll get there, tho’ I’ll be cursing Dan Brown as I do so. He mentions itContinue reading “Spontaneously effusing”
Becoming Norma Desmond
Out and about on Wednesday night (at an event run by the estimable Poet in the City, which everyone should know about – they do fantastic poetry events round the City of London), and, as it does in pubs, the conversation turned to fantasy and sf. As it also does when you’re around people-whose-genre-is-literary, someoneContinue reading “Becoming Norma Desmond”
(Un)Real city
Just been reading over yesterday’s post about Zola, and I realised that there’s an unstated assumption about the actual process of writing underlying it. I don’t think that any writer pulls something from nothing. Rather, I think that the act of writing is an act of interpretation. Details of the world are pulled into fictionContinue reading “(Un)Real city”
A mirror and a window both
In ‘S/Z’, his wonderful, word by word dissection of a Balzac short story, Barthes notes that ‘in the text, only the reader speaks.’ There’s a fascinating point about the process of reading to be drawn out of that. When we read a book, he’s saying, we read it in our voice, hearing the words inContinue reading “A mirror and a window both”
The diamond cutter
Much reading and writing over the last few weeks, and in amongst it all I’ve been particularly enjoying (and enthusing about) R.F. Langley’s ‘Journals’. He’s a poet, a (far more bucolic and less intense) disciple of Jeremy Prynne’s, bending language in strange and interesting new ways. What’s valuable about his journals is the precision ofContinue reading “The diamond cutter”
Flesh eggs, scarlet tracings
Bringing Iain Sinclair’s book of poems, ‘Buried at Sea’, into work this morning made me think about the impact his selected poems ‘Flesh Eggs and Scalp Metal’, and his novel ‘White Chappell Scarlet Tracings’, made on me when I first read them. I was at a very conservative boarding school in Dorset; every so oftenContinue reading “Flesh eggs, scarlet tracings”