I’ve finally gotten around to reading some of A.E. van Vogt’s longer works, specifically, the future fix-up, Empire of the Atom, and the serialized follow-up novel, The Wizard of Linn. This also happens to be the first time AE has covered its Canadian namesake. The full review is here.
Monthly Archives: May 2016
Animal Tales, All Grown Up
I’m very fond of animal tales. Sometimes you can tell a story featuring non-human characters that just wouldn’t work with regular people. Check out my full essay at AESciFi.
Book Review: The Ballad of Danny Wolfe
The Ballad of Danny Wolfe is very much a Prairie story, and understanding Wolfe, IP, and Indigenous street gangs in general means understanding the West, particular Manitoba and Saskatchewan: our small towns, life on “the Rez”, the history of colonialism and residential schools, modern racial tensions, and the unique way these cultural strands all play out in Winnipeg’s core, IP’s birthplace.
Read my full review at the Winnipeg Free Press.
Catching Up On Fiction Reviews
Here are five from this past year, all at the Free Press:
Catching Up On Non-Fiction Book Reviews
Here are two of the reviews I’ve done at the Winnipeg Free Press this past year:
Book Review: The Affinities
Wilson imagines how a series of neurological, psychological and physiological tests might determine a sort of modern-day Zodiac, sorting humankind into “affinities” based on their deepest truest selves. Early on, he makes the point that the families we’re born into might be arbitrary, but he does suggest that being loved because you’re part of the same affinity with someone rather than because of a shared genetic lineage comes with its own problems.
Read the full review at AE.
Utopian Science Fiction
I forgot to post about this short essay that ran on AE last spring. I take a tour of alternate societies from Jo Walton’s version of Plato’s Republic, Robert J. Sawyer’s Neanderthal society in a parallel universe, and the Big Three on human society in the next few centuries, millennia, or even eons.