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BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - FICTION

Fiction Book and Podcast Reviews by Tim Pendry

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Tim Pendry

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Tracking Michael Moorcock Through Part of His Multiverse

The Eternal Champion (1962-1970) Elric of Melnibone (1962-1972) Behold the Man (1969) Gloriana (1978) The War Hound and the World's Pain (Von Bek, #1) (1981) The War Amongst the Angels (Second Ether, #3) (1996) T he Vengeance Of Rome (Between the Wars, #4) (1999) Michael Moorcock is one of the most prolific, influential and often hard-to-categorise fantasy writers in our literary history. As you might expect, his oeuvre can be variable in quality. However, these six examples (of which there could be many others) will give a flavour of his fertile and often anarchic talent. Although he abandoned Britain in the 1990s, there is often still something quintessentially English (in literary terms) about his world view while allowing a free flow of cosmopolitan influences from American fantasy writing and European culture. It is hard to tell when and where Moorcocks's Eternal Champion archetype emerges. That is wholly fitting given the nature of his multiverse. There

Thomas Ligotti and Twenty First Century Nihilism

Nethescurial/The Mystics of Muelenberg from Grimscribe: His Lives and Works (1991) My Work Is Not Yet Done (2002) Teatro Grottesco (2006) The Conspiracy Against The Human Race (2011) This review is essentially about the later Ligotti of the current century. We hope to return to the earlier Ligotti in a later review but we can set the scene with just two stories from his second major collection Grimscribe: His Lives and Works (1991). Nethescurial , for example, appears to be a very obvious homage to Lovecraft almost to the point of pastiche in terms of structure and mood although it is clearly very much a Ligotti production. It is as if Ligotti decided to see how he could take as many Lovecraftian tropes about ancient cultic lore and the dark occult, refine them to their basics and come up with a definitive layered narrative oozing unease rather than outright horror. Ligotti is at his best not in trying to present something visceral, disgusting or terrible but in presenting som

Popular British Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy At The Beginning of the Twenty First Century

A Colder War (2000) The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1) (2004) The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files #2) (2006) Halting State (Halting State #1) (2007) Charles Stross Keeping It Real (Quantum Gravity #1) (2006) Justina Robson The Devil You Know (Felix Castor, #1) (2006) Vicious Circle (Felix Castor #2) (2006) Dead Men's Boots (Felix Castor #3) (2007) God Save The Queen (Graphic Novel: The Sandman Presents #32) (2008) Thicker Than Water (Felix Castor #4) (2009) The Naming of the Beasts (Felix Castor #5) (2009) Mike Carey The Execution Channel (2007) Ken Macleod The Red Men (2008) Matthew De Abaitua The Bastion Prosecutor (Kalahari #2) (2009) A. J Marshall The mid-2000s were quite a good period for British popular fantasy-horror-science fiction genre writing. These books should not be neglected simply because time passes. What is curious is how a sex demon appears in two of them (and elven eroticism in a third) which is either coincidence in the ca

Tim Powers - Time Travel and Lovecraftian Espionage

The Anubis Gates (1983) Declare (2000) Three Days to Never (2006) My first reading of Tim Powers' classic The Anubis Gates was to enjoy a 'suspension of disbelief' romp through a quasi-steam punk literary time travel fantasy with Egyptian mythological themes. A second reading made me understand better why Powers can be frustrating as well as worth reading. The secret to Powers is (as he has articulated in an interview on his working methods) extremely dense plotting in advance of actual writing in which events that happen in one part of a book are flagged up indirectly in others. Everything is supposed to hang together logically and in detail by the end but this can be very demanding on the reader and possibly a little self-indulgent on the part of the author. One does not always have time to work out for oneself whether everything really does hang together but a second reading (with the basic story already loaded into the brain) permits the reader to

Weird Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy Podcasts ... and a Political Satire

The Deep Vault (2016) Life After/The Message (2016) The Blood Drawn Chronicles (2016-2018) The Switchboard (2017) The London Necropolis Railway (2018) The Echo Protocol (2019) Arca-45672 (2019) Confessions from the Nocturne Nebula (2019) The Deep Vault is rollicking dystopian science fiction. A band of youngsters escaping some unknown apocalypse find themselves navigating a bunker that appears to include a government project that breeds monsters and has two squabbling competing computer systems as well as a mad scientist. This is the excuse for some gruesome body horror as well as a move through levels that will be familiar to any games player. It is dark but fun stuff, the darkness alleviated by the mildly comic and satirical treatment of the leading characters. Life After and its sequel The Message adopt a method that is usually tiresome and has become hackneyed already in the fictional podcast space - the dependence of narrative on the detritus of technology (usuall

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Triggers for Interest

Horror12
Fantasy7
Lovecraftian7
Science Fiction7
Stephen King4
American Literature3
Comics3
Dark Fantasy3
Evil3
Fascism3

H. P. Lovecraft3
Literature3
Magick3
Weird Fiction3
American Culture2
British Horror2
Christian Culture2
Conspiracy Thriller2
Cormac McCarthy2
Cosmic Horror2
Crime2
Cthulhu Mythos2
Culture2
Demons2
Dystopian Science Fiction2
Erotic Illustration2
Eroticism2
European Literature2
Existentialism2
First Sci Fi Novels2
French Literature2
Henry Miller2
Imperial Gothic2
Neil Gaiman2
Occult Literature2
Podcasts2
Popular Fiction2
Popular Literature2
Pornography2
Religion2
Sexuality2
Thomas Ligotti2
Thriller2
Vampires2
Young Adult2
Adventure Novel1
African American1
Alan Moore1
Alfred De Musset1
Alfred Hitchcock1
Algernon Blackwood1
American Masculinity1
American Policing1
Anarchism1
Ancient Egypt1
Ancient Rome1
Antal Szerb1
Anthologies1
Antonin Artaud1
Apocalypse1
Artificial Intelligence1
August Derleth1
Batman1
Belief1
Body Horror1
Bram Stoker1
Brian Lumley1
Brian Stableford1
British Empire1
Bryan Talbot1
Buddhism1
Buffy1
Caitlin Kiernan1
Captain Britain1
Charles Stross1
Children's Podcasts1
China Mieville1
Chris Kuzneski1
Clowns1
Cold War1
Cold War Thriller1
Communalism1
Corporatism1
Culture Wars1
DC Comics1
Dan Brown1
Dan Simmons1
Daphne du Maurier1
Decadence1
Deep Green Ecology1
Depression1
Deviance1
Dracula1
Drama1
Dreams1
Dystopian1
Dystopian Horror1
Early Modern Culture1
Eco-Horror1
Edwardian Literature1
Elmore Leonard1
Elric of Melnibone1
Elves1
English Magic1
Erekose1
Espionage1
Eternal Champion1
Fables1
Fairies1
Felix Castor1
First Novels1
Folk Horror1
Franz Kafka1
Frederick Pohl1
Freedom1
Gary Lachman1
Georges Bataille1
Ghosts1
Glamour1
Gothic Literature1
Grant Morrison1
Graphic Novels1
Gwyneth Jones1
Henry Irving1
Heroic Fantasy1
Historical Novel1
Hungarian Literature1
Iain M. Banks1
Ian Brady1
Ian McDonald1
Imagination1
Imperialism1
Ireland1
James Ellroy1
Joss Whedon1
Jung1
Justina Robson1
Ken Macleod1
Kindness1
Laird Barron1
Leonid Andreyev1
Libertarianism1
London1
Los Angeles1
Mammoth Anthologies1
Manga1
Marvel1
Matthew De Abaitua1
Maureen McHugh1
Michael Moorcock1
Middle East1
Mike Carey1
Milton1
Monsters1
Multiverse1
Nazis1
Necroscope1
Nietzsche1
Nihilism1
Noir1
Observing the British1
Paganism1
Paris1
Pessimism1
Peter Haining1
Peter Wessel Zapffe1
Philosophy1
Political Satire1
Politics1
Psychogeography1
Ramsey Campbell. Biography1
Raymond Chandler1
Rick Coste1
Road Trip1
Robert Harris1
Romance1
Russian Literature1
S. T. Joshi1
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Samurai1
Science1
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Steam Punk1
Succubi1
Superman1
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Swords and Sorcery1
Teenage1
The American South1
Theatre1
Tim Powers1
Time Travel1
Tintin1
Tolkien1
Tom Holland1
Transgressive Literature1
Ursula Le Guin1
Valery Briusov1
Vertigo1
Walter Mosley1
Weird Tales1
William Hope Hodgson1
Zinaida Gippius1
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