Lifted, by Mandy Hager
Above everything else, this is a terrific story and very well told. It’s a bit of a parable and classic Mandy Hager which means as well as a damn good story, believable characters, heroes to root for and deep thinking, you get (but it wouldn’t work without all the rest), the Hager ethic, written from the heart with the belief that stories can change lives. Lifted really is next level.
Continue reading “Lifted, by Mandy Hager”Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson has gone into the future for us, and things are as we all, surely, anticipate. The world is burning and flooding and we are wiping species from the planet with aplomb. We have soiled the bed. Civilisation, basically, has fucked itself. This is not so much a catastrophe story (though it certainly begins that way), but a genuine and extraordinary exploration at what we might do afterwards to save what is left before the apocalypse.
I can see why Barack Obama called it his book of the year for 2020. Maybe if it had been published before he left office he might have kick-started a better response, instead of kicking the can up the road so future current numpties could blow it up. In Ministry for the Future the disaster of climate change somehow doesn’t (as we’re praying) miraculously come right by itself but escalates at an alarming rate. Who’d have thought? The UN sets up a ‘Ministry For the Future’, a body protecting the rights of future citizens from known harms committed by their ancestors. That’s us. The après moi le déluge generation. What a brilliant scenario.
Continue reading “Ministry for the Future”The Chthonic Cycle, by Una Cruickshank
First a huge congratulations for the presentation of this book and it’s glorious fold out covers, featuring Sasha Francis’s artistic impression of its themes. It sums them up, natural forces, re-birth, jewels, fossils, water, all strewn together across the page, interconnected and tantalising. Most of the stuff pictured I don’t recognise and nor would I if it were under my feet – how many of us have walked past a lump of ambergris in the sand or sat on a rock hiding a small fortune of ammonites? This book is full of things you may have missed.
Continue reading “The Chthonic Cycle – book review”
