Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué November is German Literature Month apparently - see the hosting site : https://beautyisasleepingcat.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/announcing-german-literature-month-v/ so I thought I might read (re-read as it happens) one of my favourite classical German works. Despite the rather French-sounding name, Fouqué was German and wrote his 1810/11 novella in that language. English readers …
Category: Science fiction and fantasy
Nine Good Reasons
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov Forget the film! Whatever its merits or demerits, the movie starring Will Smith has almost no connection at all with the short story collection having the same title. Three of Asimov's characters - Susan Calvin, the robopsychologist, Robertson, the head of US Robots, and Lanning, one of its directors, do …
The Origins of Modern Fantasy
The Blazing World of Margaret Cavendish 'At last the rain came, and upon a sudden all their houses appeared of a flaming Fire; and the more Water there was poured on them, the more did they flame and burn;' I was doing some research into the history of fantasy literature when I came across a …
The Gods Themselves
by Isaac Asimov 'The plutonium/tungsten can make its cycle endlessly back and forth between Universe and para- Universe, yielding energy first in one and then in another . . . Both sides can gain energy from what is, in effect, an inter-Universe Electron Pump.' This piece of pseudo science is how the jumped-up radiochemist-cum-physicist Hallam …
Nightmares and Zombies
This is my third post on the black magic novels of Dennis Wheatley. Strange Conflict was Wheatley's second de Richleau story of the occult, following The Devil Rides Out after six years. Written and set during World War II, it has a preposterous plot which involves the Nazis in black magic and has de Richleau …
The Satanist
by Dennis Wheatley This is my second post on the recently-reissued novels of Dennis Wheatley. For me, The Satanist is by a margin Wheatley's best black magic story. As well as being an edge-of-the-seat adventure, it utilises a theme that has always had a fascination for me - the sometimes uncanny relationship between identical twins. …
The Devil Rides Out . . . Again
In 2013, Bloomsbury Publishers announced that they intended to reissue the novels of Dennis Wheatley as e-books. As an avid reader of Wheatley's stories - many years ago! - I was excited at the prospect of their being on the market again, and indeed at possibly seeing some of them again in print. Out …
Now you see him, now you don't!
The Invisible Man by HG Wells 'His goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the penthouse of his hat came with a disagreeable suddenness out of the darkness ...' I drew this novella - number 13 on my list of classics - in the Classics Club Spin #8 from November, to be read and reviewed …
The Man in the High Castle
Philip K Dick's Hugo Award-winning science fiction novel is a novel without a hero or villain. Instead, the various characters mill around somewhat aimlessly, doing meaningless jobs (or none at all), consulting the I Ching and reading yet another novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Several are not what they seem or claim to be. …
Sex and Politics in Winter
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K le Guin Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness is surely one of the best sci-fi novels ever written. I read it first in the seventies and now, about four decades later, it comes across as inventive and fresh as on that first reading. "Consider:" writes …
Magda Green Books 