Literature

I don’t know if the geeky things I choose to read online on a regular basis just aren’t diverse enough (a strong possibility, given my recent analysis of my 2015 reading list), or if something has happed to cause a number of folks to write about the same or similar issues at more or less the same time, but regardless, people seem to be talking about or around the concept of “hardness” in science fiction. I’m going to throw some links at you, and then we can talk about them. Charlie Stross recently hosted a fascinating discussion on science fiction shibboleths on his blog (along with a similar one about Fantasy shibboleths, which is not relevant to us today, but worth taking a look at in its own right), Charlie Jane Anders put up a great piece about how to integrate character development into your action-oriented story (which is extremely… Continue Reading →

I’ve been meaning to write about this book for quite a while, but if I had the time to be writing about books I’d still be doing it for money. So: my apologies for the delay, and for how short this is going to be. Simply stated, The Stone Boatmen was the best thing I read in 2014. There’s a blurb on the back of the book by Ursula K. Le Guin comparing it to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, which is pretty accurate. Tolmie’s debut novel isn’t nearly so slow, and it’s far more optimistic in tone, but it shares with Peake’s masterpiece a meditative preoccupation with time, with its variable pace and the thrill or stagnation that can accompany that variability. The Stone Boatmen is about the reconnection of three societies who have lost touch with each other, their collective past, and even the true nature of their own cultures.… Continue Reading →