Book, Line and Thinker

“This anthology collects a selection of short speculative fiction from China that I've translated over the years into one volume . ”   Chinese literature is rich and powerful, but it's always been tricky to access. English translations are rare, and they're hard to get hold of. That's why  Ken Liu should be celebrated.  For English-speakers, t his anthology offers one of the first ever windows into Chinese science fiction. It enriches the speculative landscape of the English-speaking world, by introducing thirteen Chinese visions of the future.  Interestingly, all of these stories touch upon familiar issues. Censorship, overpopulation, space exploration, aliens, robotics, virtual reality... it soon becomes clear that Chinese- and English-speaking writers both see similar futures for our species. These shared visions offer a powerful message: they undermine the idea of 'Otherness', of 'East and West', or 'Them and Us'. Ultimately, we

“You hear, on the slight breeze, the tunt tunt, tunt tunt  before you see the boat . ”   'Cove' is about a man, on a kayak, who is struck by lightning. Throughout the book, Jones doesn't waste a single word. It's a masterclass in language, and demonstrates the beauty of efficient prose. Many writers are addicted to complication. Some people think that a complex sentence is the pinnacle of language, and fasten clauses together into fleshy masses of polysyllabic words. As readers, we're encouraged to marvel at ornamental prose. 'Simple' is seen as a pejorative term. However, 'Cove' offers an alternative. Jones has a distinctive voice. He always uses sparse and desolate language, and never uses five words when a single one will do. To begin with, this style feels shallow, as though something is missing. But that feeling goes away. The further you get into the book, the more enthralled you feel by its mounting depths. As though wading into t

“M r. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. ”   This fabled fable has already been subject to countless reviews. But it can't hurt to write another one, can it? This allegorical novella was first published in 1945, and describes a group of animals which take over a farm in the name of Animalism. However, things soon take a turn for the worse. Napoleon, one of the pigs, assumes a dictatorship over the other animals. The entire story is an allegory of the Russian Revolution, and Napoleon himself plays the part of Joseph Stalin. Obviously, there's a lot to say about the historical context of this book. Orwell was very clear in his intentions, and openly explained that Animal Farm was a commentary about Soviet Russia. He left no room for doubt on this matter. In fact, he initially found it difficult to publish the book, because some people feared that it would damage the diplomatic relation

“It goes by many names: 'The Crisis,' 'The Dark Years,' 'The Walking Plague,' as well as newer and more 'hip' titles such as 'World War Z' and 'Z War One.'”   The zombie genre is amazing. 'Shaun of the Dead' is hilarious, 'The Walking Dead' is one of the best shows on TV, and 'The Last of Us' is the closest you can get to a movie within a video game. However, all of these examples leave a lot of  unanswered   questions about the worlds which they try to create. That’s not their fault! But by following a single group or a single person in a single area of the world, we're inevitably left with a restricted perspective of the overall conflict. We never find out how the rest of the world is coping with the outbreak. 'Pandemic' and 'global' are words which we take for granted, but we never get to see the true scale of the disease.  However, in 'World War Z', there is no such pro

“I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped. I already knew something was going to happen; the Factory told me.”   'The Wasp Factory' takes the reader on a slow and horrifying journey through the mind of a child psychopath. Frank is just sixteen years old, but has already killed his younger brother Paul, his friend Blyth, and his little cousin Esmerelda. We're told this from the outset of the novel, but we don't know  how or why he killed them   - this suspense is what will pull you into the book. In fact, at times 'The Wasp Factory' does just feel like a long series of hooks and reveals, in an attempt to pull us deeper and deeper into the mystery. Frank constantly alludes to names and events, 'the Factory' or 'the reason why my brother went mad', but doesn't expand on them until later in the book. It's a very basic literary technique, and can occasionally feel like an easy p

“On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.”   'I am Legend' follows Robert Neville, the last man on Earth - he's the sole survivor of a global disease which has turned all other humans into monsters. This may sound like a cliched premise, because the zombie genre is now widely represented, but in 1954 this was groundbreaking writing. It popularised the concept of an apocalyptic pandemic, and was hugely influential in the development of dystopian fiction. It has rightly been included in Orion's list of Science Fiction Masterworks, and fuses sci-fi with horror to devastating effect.  In many ways, 'I am Legend' remains superior to the majority of its successors in the field. Most writers in this genre have used zombies as their premise, but Matheson's disease turns its victims into vampires instead. These monsters display many of the same symptoms as vampi