‘If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales’ [attributed to Albert Einstein] We live in a universe of wonders and possibilities. The ancients looked up into the night sky and saw bright lights formed into the shapes of …
Tag: science fiction
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 …
To Boldly Go (3)
Sci-fi finds new inspiration and a new audience The film collaboration between Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick in 1968 was a landmark in the history of science fiction cinema. 2001, A Space Odyssey did indeed go boldly into new sci-fi territory. Yet, though it won an Academy Award for special visual effects and BAFTAs …
We are not alone … yet!
"How would you feel if a Martian vomited stale liquor on the White House floor?" Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a novel that should be read at least twice. Read it first as the quaint, inventive work of fantasy that it is. The Red Planet of Bradbury's imagination is peopled with small, light brown, …
To Boldly Go (2)
Asimov and the Golden Age of Science Fiction The mid 20th century ushered in a golden age for science fiction writing and space opera. Drawing from new scientific discoveries and aided by advances in cinematography, the settings for the stories became more exotic and more colourful. Science fiction began to lose its pulp image. Now …
To Boldly Go
The Magic of Space Opera - when Science Fiction came of age Seventy years have passed since Isaac Asimov penned the first of his Foundation stories. Tens of thousands of years in the future, humanity has colonised far beyond the Solar System and has established a galaxy-wide empire, dependant for trade and communications on faster-than-light …
Bookheathen Scribblings 