Joseph Brooker on Philip K. Dick, A Maze of Death The science fiction writer Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) published novels from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, so A Maze of Death (1970) comes early in the second half of that career. Dick’s fictional universes
Daragh Carville on Michael Hughes, The Countenance Divine To say that The Countenance Divine, the debut novel by Northern Irish writer Michael Hughes, is ambitious would be an understatement. Taking as its point of departure the story of a computer programmer battling both the Millennium Bug
The British Library’s exhibition Shakespeare in Ten Acts is occasioned by the 400th anniversary this year of Shakespeare’s death. I don’t actually find it that intuitive to celebrate the date of someone’s death – will there be special commemorations of Margaret Thatcher in 2063, or
Martin Eve on William Gaddis’s JR I am currently re-reading William Gaddis‘s monstrous 1975 novel, JR. While this is a book that defies easy plot summary, one of the central strands of the text concerns the eponymous eleven-year-old schoolboy, J. R. Vansant, and his adept manipulation
Roger Luckhurst on Basma Abdel Aziz, The Queue Dystopian fiction pours off the presses in such volume that the apocalyptic vision has become codified and oddly routine. It’s the end of the world as we know it and we feel fine. But for all the
What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners. James Joyce, Ulysses Ghostbusters (1984) came from nowhere when I was a boy: a blockbuster whose scenario didn’t seem to resemble anything that
Joseph Brooker on Graham Swift, Mothering Sunday Mothering Sunday (2016) is Graham Swift’s tenth novel, if an 132-page novella counts. This is a kind of historical fiction, centring on one day: Mothering Sunday, March 30th 1924. For the novella’s purposes the significance of the holiday
Prof. Alison Finlay on Cnut Conference, London 2016 As academics meet their overseas counterparts over the summer conference season, wry comments about Europe and its constituent parts, back-stabbing and betrayal among rulers, regime change and political upheaval will have been woven into many a conference
Mark Blacklock on Roly Porter at Corsica Studios Two months ago I saw Roly Porter at Corsica Studios. I first heard Porter’s work when he was recording as one half of Vexd, a duo operating in the noisier, more adrenalized end of the dubstep spectrum,
Joseph Brooker on Stuart David, In the All-Night Café: A memoir of Belle and Sebastian’s formative year. The Glasgow pop group Belle and Sebastian (henceforth B&S) emerged in the mid-1990s. Stuart David was a founder member and the group’s first bass player, but left in 2000.