This novel cues us to distrust metaphor.

Slough House is better than Joe Country. That’s it. That’s the review......OK. A little bit mo...

The reason I read The Iliad for the first time is simple: Emily Wilson.Contrary to the crap yo...

I have finally busted my Anita Brook—nup, not going to finish that sentence.I am no longer an ...

Earth 7, Deb Olin Unferth (Graywolf, 978-1-64453-940-0, $27.00, 248pp, hc) June 2026. If, in Keely Jobe's The Endling, the natural world is still figuring out how best to adapt to climate change, then that battle is well and truly lost in Deb Olin Unferth's Earth 7. What remains of our planet (the bit we see) is a vast expanse of sand, a sky full of sulfur and diamonds scattering the …Read More

YouTube video by Chris Kohler

It’s become an annual tradition to read the Slow Horses novel that the upcoming season is adap...

The Endling, Keely Jobe (Scribe Australia 978-1-76138-178-2, $A35.00, 272pp, tp) March 2026. (Scribe US, 978-1-96499-233-4, $18.00, 272pp, tp) June 2026. Keely Jobe's The Endling started life as part of a creative doctoral thesis at the University of Tasmania, inspired by Amazon Acres, a lesbian separatist project established in 1973 and located in New South Wales. In writing both the novel and its accompanying exegesis, Jobe was drawing on her lived …Read More

If not for the “controversy”, I’m not convinced I would have realised that M is Natalie Portma...

“How shit were the other Booker nominees in 1975 for Heat and Dust to win the prize?” is somet...

I wasn’t planning on reading London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (PRK*). While I’m typicall...

Later is Stephen King’s third Hard Case novel. It’s the one I liked the least, but the margin ...

Because I failed history*, I wasn’t aware that Ireland was neutral** during the Second World W...

James Patrick Kelly’s concept album, The Book of Bots, collects twelve stories and two essays,...

In a little more than a day, the winners of this year's Hugo awards will be announced in Los Angeles . I've toned down my discussion of the...

Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep, Paul Tremblay (Morrow 978-0-06339-846-7, $30.00, 336pp, hc) June 2026. Last month, I reviewed Monster Capital, an excellent new anthology from Comma Press that uses genre to shed light on the monstrousness of capitalism. In his introduction to the book, Ra Page argues that despite Marx and the cultural critic Mark Fisher framing capitalism as a sorcerer (Marx) and a zombie (Fisher), speculative fiction rarely …Read More

No 700-word review can do justice to Flann O’Brien’s modernist, metafictional, madcap masterpi...

It’s incredible that M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything was longlisted for the Booker.* ...

Dead Weight, Hildur Knútsdóttir, tr. Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Nightfire, 978-1-25032-929-5, $24.95, 160pp, hc) January 2026. Hildur Knútsdóttir's grisly novella Dead Weight elegantly translated from Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal (their second collaboration, following the 2024 release of The Night Guest), is not as overtly critical of capitalism as the other books I've discussed. But like those novels, the title – helped along by a suggestive cover centred on a …Read More

I finished Douglas Stuart’s John of John just as it was announced that it had been longlisted ...

If this is your thing… you’re gonna love it

Maxilist magic realism.

It’s not an unfunny version of Groundhog Day!

Nolan should adapt this next.

Monster Capital, Ra Page & David Sue, eds. (Comma Press, 978-1-91097-446-9, £11.99, 240pp, tp) March 2026. Monster Capital: Tales of Capitalist Unease, the fourth anthology from Comma Press’s “…

Sorry Simon.

The longlist for the Booker Prize 2026 has been announced, featuring two previous winners and three debut novelists

Not your typical blood-suckers.

The Franchise, Thomas Elrod (Tor 978-1-25040-658-3, $28.99, 368pp, hc) May 2026. Thomas Elrod's The Franchise begins in October 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wendell Highsman, editor of World Science Fiction and Fantasy, is kvetching about the end of the world when Jean-Danton Souard walks into his office. He is carrying a box holding a 2,163-page manuscript about a kingdom called The Malicarn , where magic has …Read More

Last week, we learned of the very sad news of the passing of Justin Richards. Justin is best known to Doctor Who fans as a novel writer, book editor, script writer and script editor with Big Finish, b

Ancient cycads!

Buzzzy buzzzy buzzzy book!

Look. It’s fine.

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