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Recent Posts
- What’s New for the 26th of July:
- A Kinrowan Estate story: chicken pot pieces
- What’s New for the 19th of July: Charles de Lint’s Ottawa novels with a quote from Drink Down the Moon, Gary’s review of Nordic fiddle music, It’s Michele Walther and Irina Behrendt playing Aaron Copland’s ‘Hoe Down’ from his Rodeo album
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Midsomer Odd Things
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Library and Its Librarian
- What’s New for the Fifth of July: Remembering Jane Yolen; some new Americana and jazz music; Fishing Blues
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: Recursive Loops
- What’s New for June 21: Jennifer Stevenson’s ‘Solstice’
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Turkish Coffee
- What’s New for the 7th of June: Foxes in literature, live Balkan music, comforting jazz, Americana jazz, and wonderfully weird fusion jazz; and John Fogerty live
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Bloodied Kings
- What’s New for the 24th of May: Gary’s Review of Elizabeth Bear’s White Space novels, iain’s review of the Lonely Signal Burns novellas by her, she reading her own story, ‘The Chains That You Refuse’, and I see Gary has some tasty music reviews fir us as well
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Our Greensward
- What’s New for the 10th of May: books reviewed by Jennifer Stevenson, music by Teddy Thompson, Americana music from all over, and some live music from John Fogerty
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Walk
- What’s New for the 26th of April: the nature of Stories; some new and newish SF, plus new world, jazz, folk and Americana music
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Spring Day
- What’s New for the 12th of April: Some new and recent SF; new Americana, Norwegian folk rock and jazz; and thoughts on War For The Oaks
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Unified Theory of Libraries (A Letter to Anna)
- What’s New for the 29th of March: Beer and spirits, in song and text, some new Scandinavian fiddle music and jazz flute music, and more
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Ghostly Librarian
- What’s New for the 15th of March: some DeLint stories for early spring; lots of polskas, Serbian folk rock, progressive jazz, and Nordic music from the archives
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Hedge Witches
- What’s New for the 1st of March: Emma Bull’s War for The Oaks, Rosanne Cash’s ‘Runaway Train’, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, plus new Americana and jazz music
- A Kinrorwan Estate story: Cranachanh
- What’s New for the 15th of February: Some Seanan McGuire fantasy, Alison Bechdel’s latest, Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin; Nordic sounds, old time, Americana and Tex-Mex music
- What’s New for the 1st of February: Kage Baker retrospective; new Americana, Buddhist chants and Finnish songs, new and reissued jazz, and more
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Fireplaces in Kinrowan Hall
- What’s New for the 18th of January: World music and fiction by Amal El-Mohtar
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Bridges and Paths plus a Troll
Tag Archives: speculative fiction
Jodi Taylor’s Doing Time (The Time Police #1)
The invention of time travel led to the Time Wars, which led to the Time Police, who solve problems by ruthless, thorough, application of force. Stop the illegal time travelers, bring home for prosecution any who are unaccountably still alive, … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged detective fiction, speculative fiction, time travel
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R F Kuang’s Babel
R F Kuang’s Babel is an audacious and unrelenting look at colonialism, seen through the lens of an alternate 19th century Britain where translation is the key to magic. Kuang’s novel is as sharp and perceptive as it is well written and … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged babel, Paul Weimer, r f kuang, speculative fiction
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Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140
So I’m going about this backward. I’ve already read and reviewed Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 speculative fiction tome The Ministry for the Future, in which likeable and powerful people grapple with the climate crisis in the near future. Now I’m … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged science fiction, speculative fiction
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Jo Walton’s Half a Crown
In the conclusion to her Small Change trilogy, which began with Farthing and continued with Ha’Penny, Jo Walton returns to a postwar Britain that has negotiated peace with Hitler in exchange for a supposed autonomy. In reality, fascism has infiltrated … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged alternate history, speculative fiction
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Jo Walton’s Ha’Penny
Jo Walton’s 2006 novel Farthing was set in an imagined Britain-as-it-might-have-been, if instead of battling Hitler the British had let him have continental Europe in exchange for leaving them their island of autonomy and freedom. As the story unfolded, though, … Continue reading
William Gibson’s Zero History
Zero History is the third book in William Gibson’s series that began with Pattern Recognition and continued in Spook Country. The best-selling series brought Gibson out of the ghetto of genre fiction into the limelight of more mainstream fiction, which … Continue reading
Neal Stephenson’s Anathem
One of the joys of Anathem is the way it unfolds slowly, bit by bit, with every newly revealed detail exposing another unsuspected layer of complexity beneath. Stephenson’s world-building is on the truly fantastic level in Anathem, but it is … Continue reading
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Tagged science fiction, speculative fiction
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William Gibson’s Spook Country
One of the characters in William Gibson’s new book Spook Country is addicted to a particular kind of tranquilizer. During the book’s course he takes two slightly different versions of it, with different brand names. I was curious about just … Continue reading
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Tagged literary science fiction, speculative fiction
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William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition
Folklore used to be songs, dances and tales told around the fire, in the inns, before the hearth, that connected us with our past. The first mass media, radio and television, put the hearth in an electrical box that we … Continue reading
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Tagged literary science fiction, speculative fiction
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Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon
Wes Unruh wrote this review. Not your average technothriller, Cryptonomicon has nothing to do with the eldritch gods of H. P. Lovecraft. Instead, it is the best treatment of cryptography since Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Gold Bug,” and a hundred … Continue reading
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Tagged science fiction, speculative fiction
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