Late May, after the long rains. The ground had borrowed moisture from the clouds; now the sky claimed its debt in endless hot, dry days. For the children, it was a relief. After weeks of bored confinement they were at last allowed to wander from the household, beyond the gardens and the outer walls, into the wild.
It was there that they came upon the death machine.
(Source: approachingpavonis.blogspot.com)
17th January 2012
Notes: 7
Reynolds’s near-future is so brilliantly extrapolated, with original ideas fizzing off every page, that the reader is left awestruck at what further wonders await in the following volumes. Excellent.
The Guardian Books Podcast: “Science Fiction Now and Tomorrow”
Played 0 times.In this week’s new year books podcast, we look to the future. Science fiction has never been bigger, and publishers are falling over themselves to sign the next Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman. We talk to some of the genre’s biggest names about the state of SF in 2012, and where they think the genre is heading.
Lauren Beukes, author of hard-boiled SF thriller Zoo City, tells us about winning the 2011 Arthur C Clarke award and about South African science fiction. We talk to Michael Moorcock, who helped define science fiction back in the 1960s with his ground-breaking literary magazine New Worlds. And we also hear from hard SF author Alastair Reynolds and speculative fiction author Jeff Noon about their new projects, how they feel about being classed within the same genre, and writing on Twitter.
At least one key scene in Reynolds’s Blue Remembered Earth virtually cries out for a pulp Wesso illustration, with a caption something like ‘‘Trapped on a runaway spaceship, traveling faster than any human being ever had!’’ Before we even get to that, we’ve encountered buried secrets on a remote part of the moon, terrifying encounters with monster machines on Mars, and daredevil efforts to sneak aboard an abandoned space station that may harbor still more secrets. And yet Reynolds casts all this in the context of elements that are decidedly more New Space Opera-ish, with morally ambiguous heroes and villains, political and economic struggles, and a post-Westernized version of the 22nd century, which seems oddly optimistic in comparison with his other grim futures.
