A health services researcher and educator from Sydney, Australia. I like imaginative fiction and a smattering of non-fiction, and I have a genuinely shameful number of unread books in my to-read pile. I'm also on Mastodon.
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Translated by Yisroel Markov
I've only just started this but the premise alone is great. From Wikipedia:
"a critique of totalitarianism, or of Tolkien's anti-modern racial and environmental vision coupled with the destruction of technology, which itself could be called totalitarian."
The Mimicking of Known Successes presents a cozy Holmesian murder mystery and sapphic romance, set …
McKinsey & Company is the most prestigious consulting company in the world, earning billions of …
Too depressing to finish, frankly!
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …
I've been looking forward to this!
Re-reading this for the first time since 1989. Fifty pages in and it's blowing my hair back. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky had amazing writing chops.
Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In …
Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In …
The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is “one …
McKinsey & Company is the most prestigious consulting company in the world, earning billions of …
Liam brought this one to my attention, so I had to tackle it straight away.
I read this one relatively quickly while on holiday. There's something special about McAuley's pacing. He draws together characters and events with such narrative force that I usually find myself compelled to finish his books in a way few other authors manage.
The narrative in this book works on slightly different timescales, varyingly millennia, lifespans, and years. It's difficult to expand on that without spoilers, but it works. The world of the "people" in the book (again, hard to explain without spoilers) is beautifully realised and their world and worldviews are compelling and, oddly, relaxing.
I also like that some mysteries remain unresolved in his works. The Jackaroo, Mother in this book, etc. In a way that adds an odd sense of verisimilitude for such imaginative works. Very few things in our lives are fully explained.
It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; …
What a charming book. Discursive, meditative, philosophical - but not as boring as that sounds!
This is the second time I've read this book. Some compelling ideas about the kind of social formation that might be possible, and some depressing thoughts that extractive, exploitative forms might triumph. Several characters and scenes have stuck with me.
