Tag Archive: Science fiction


MARGARET ATWOOD – THE PERILS OF PERFECTION

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Music, Politics — 2 Comments
November 29, 2011

Margaret Atwood’s article ‘The Road To Ustopia’ published in The Guardian is an excellent piece explaining how she sees the differences between science fiction, speculative fiction and fantasy.

Plenty of insights into her writing which makes me want to read more of her work. She also has thesewise words to say about striving to improve the world we live in on planet Earth:

“Of course we should try to make things better, insofar as it lies within our power. But we should probably not try to make things perfect, especially not ourselves, for that path leads to mass graves”.

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LIFE IN ZOO CITY

Filed under: Books, Fiction — Leave a comment
October 30, 2011

ZOO CITY by Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot, 2010).

This novel won the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award for the best work of Science Fiction published in Britain. Joey HiFi also won the best cover art award at the British Science Fiction Association Awards.  Lauren Beukes is a white South African author who was a freelance journalist for ten years.

Like so much of recent Sci-Fi, Beukes doesn’t need to invent a futuristic setting – the noughties have enough strangeness, tension and technology to fuel any half way decent story. So, when she writes of the fascination with the trappings of fame where “even vague proximity to celebrity turns people into attention whores, especially teenagers”, it is clear that this is our present day world.

Although Beukes lives in Cape Town, the fictional events take place in Johannesburg  which is portrayed as “cheap knock-off” city where drugs.poverty and criminality are a way of life. The Zoo City of the title is a kind of quarantine camp in that it is a heavily policed claustrophobic urban zone. Criminals are forced to carry animals as what the central character, Zinzi December, describes as  “the physical manifestation of our sin”. This establishes an artificial and visible divide between the ‘good’ citizens and the transgressors and is akin to the idea of having somewhere wearing a placard detailing what crime they have committed. Continue reading →

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OUT OF THIS WORLD

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Music — Leave a comment
July 31, 2011

The current British Library‘s free ‘Out Of This World‘ exhibition (on until 25th September 2011) is a fine example of making the most of relatively modest resources.

Its subtitle is ‘Science Fiction but not as you know it‘ and it aims to explore the genre through literature, film, illustration and sound.

It is curated by Andy Sawyer of Liverpool University. Aside from a replica of Doctor Who’s Tardis (you can’t go inside) there are few fancy props.

It is essentially an exhibition built around a display of books which potentially sounds very dull but this has been intelligently supplemented by snappy info stands and funky extras.  There are clips of silent sci-fi movies, videos of writers saying why sci-fi fiction rocks plus headphone stands with playlists of music inspired by Sci-Fi and space travel (from Joe Meek’s Telstar to Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots).

There’s also a chance to converse with a computer (Elizabeth the Spacebot) and a cute design your own digital alien.

It’s not that big an exhibition and at one point my wife asked me “Is there anything on the other side?”. “That’s the question Sci-Fi writers have been asking for decades”, I replied.

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