24Jan 2021 in Reviews
BooksThe elephant in the room (in this room there's only me and the elephant) is The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. I read the final four volumes (it's 13,000 pages long, over 10 volumes) in 2021 and without sounding too melodramatic it put a real dint into…
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15May The Case for Having a Did-Not-Finish Pile
Fiction is an indulgence. An entertainment. We read fiction, for fun. That's not to say we don't get anything out of it beyond cheap thrills, far from it. We get a better understanding of the human condition, culture, every aspect of the world. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking…
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08Jan Reviews for January 2020
BooksThe GoodDecember never bore much good fruit for me. Perhaps the best was The State of the Art, by Iain M. Banks. Odd Attachment is a truly funny short story, and Descendant is quite moving. Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold was middling, an excellent start to a novel or trilogy, but not…
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15Feb The Ten Greatest Science Fiction Films
What defines a top-ten list of films? Contribution to film-making? The breaking of boundaries? Exploring new territory? Responding to or driving the cultural milieu? Sheer entertainment? Usually, it’s a combination of all those things. With science fiction though, there’s another element: achieving the sublime. That’s not to say that all…
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26Sep Reviews for September
It's been a good while since we offered any reviews. We did write a post a couple of weeks back but the browser died and I lost the post.TV and Film.I'm not usually one to believe the hype, but Bodyguard on the BBC was a good few hours of fun.…
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31Jan Reviews for January 2018
I haven't written a reviews post for a good few months, so let me start 2018 as I mean to continue it. Books first.I'll take a brief look at three of the books I've read in 2018 so far. I've read a few others, but nothing either great or poor,…
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05Nov A Review of The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley from the Tartarus Press
The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley first really came to my attention in a bookshop a couple of years ago where I saw it under the John Murray imprint. Knowing it had been published by the eminent Tartarus Press I picked it up to see what the story was. Sure…
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16Jun Reviews for June 2017
Let's start with books. I've read a few since the last review post. The one that stands out the most is Lloyd Arthur Eshbach's Over My Shoulder, a recollection of a few decades worth of science fiction publishing. I won't cover it here as it's a valuable resource and I…
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16Feb Reviews for January
Here are our media reviews for January, a mixed bunch and some good stuff!Books. I've read quite a few these last few weeks, mostly audiobooks. The best of the lot was Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, the first in the Southern Reach trilogy. All three books were published within a few months of…
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01Dec Reviews for November
Let's start with books this time. I've read a few this month, but two are worthy of a mention. The first is Psycho by Robert Bloch. Having always been a big Hitchcock fan, I was pretty sure I'd put the book down after a few pages, finding the art of…
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