WITH ‘KRAKEN’ CHINA MIEVILLE SINKS TENTACLES INTO CONTEMPORARY LONDON
Source: io9.com
China Miéville’s long-awaited squid epic, Kraken, hits shelves next month. Like his previous novel, The City & The City, it’s about an urban landscape that forms its own alternate reality. In Kraken, the city of London is haunted by gods.
Though The City & The City was set (sort of) on Earth, Kraken is one of the author’s only novels set in a real place. London, where Miéville has lived for many years, comes alive in this book as a living entity. Its streets are guarded by Londonmancers; its museums protected by angels of memory; and its proletarian class of magicians’ familiars are represented by a union organizer called Wati from the Egyptian land of the dead.
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THE BEST YEAR OF SCIENCE FICTION EVER:1912
Source: io9.com
Today, we look at the year that gave us works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Hugo Gernsback — does 1912 deserve to be crowned the Best Year of Science Fiction Ever?
The Best Year of Science Fiction Ever: 1912From February through July 1912, All-Story Magazine serialized Under the Moons of Mars, an epic pulp adventure loosely inspired by the Mars-is-dying speculations of astronomer Percival Lowell – and perhaps a bit more than inspired by Edwin Lester Arnold’s 1905 Martian romance, Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation. It was Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first attempt at fiction; worried about what his colleagues might think, the pencil-sharpener company manager published it under the pseudonym Norman (Normal) Bean. By 1917, Burroughs’ Tarzan franchise was wildly popular, so the publisher A.C. McClurg reissued his tale about John Carter’s triumphs and tribulations on Barsoom as A Princess of Mars — the single most influential “planetary romance” novel in the genre later dubbed “science fiction.”
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TEN OF THE BEST TOWERS IN LITERATURE
Source: John Mullan, www.guardian.co.uk
Genesis The Old Testament describes the Tower of Babel, symbol of human presumption. In the days when all men still spoke the same language, “they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth”. God punishes them by making them speak different languages.
Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy Amateur astronomer Swithin St Cleeve watches the night sky from the top of a tower owned by unhappily married Viviette Constantine. She gets in the habit of joining him, and as they gaze at the heavens together, blissfully removed from the world, romance blossoms. But this is Hardy, so when they climb down from the tower, things start going awry . . .
“The Tower” by WB Yeats Yeats lived in a 16th-century tower with his family for several years, and wrote a series of tower poems, including this one, a furious meditation upon old age: “I pace upon the battlements and . . . send imagination forth / Under the day’s declining beam, and call / Images and memories / From ruin or from ancient trees, / For I would ask a question of them all.” All Irish history seems beneath his gaze, but decrepitude awaits him.
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A BRIEF HISTORY IN SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE
Source: www.thegalaxyexpress.net
What follows is a very, very brief history of science fiction romance. Think of it as the proverbial quickie, because it’s also doing double duty as a precursor for my next post.
A good subtitle for this piece would be “The Jacqueline Lichtenberg Project” because her extensive experience and input made this overview possible. Most of what I’m presenting is based on either quotes from her online observations or paraphrased information that she provided me via email.
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ROBERT ZELAZNY’S THE CHRONICLES OF AMBER
Source: Rajan Khanna, tor.com
Writing about Michael Moorcock recently made me think of the writing legends that had the most influence on me. These include people as far apart as Oscar Wilde and Fritz Leiber. But no one, perhaps, more so than Roger Zelazny.
I was in college when I discovered Roger Zelazny, reading “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” in a class. I really enjoyed it and thought about reading more from the author. But it wasn’t until a year or so later, when I discovered The Chronicles of Amber, that I really fell in love with his writing.
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Yay, Mervyn Peake’s Gormanghast’s ‘Tower of Flints” gets mentioned in the best towers in literature! I love Mervyn Peake’s work, and his description of that castle and the towers is just delicious. What did you think of today’s book news? What’s your favourite year of science fiction?
Join us in the forum to discuss!
