Tag: Featured
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Waiting for the Sun to Go Down by Jesse Teller
There is a low hum. A bit of a hiss. Like that first few minutes on vinyl before the song starts. You can hear the song churning out low and slow. You are in the dark now. Lying on your floor with those huge headphones on. Around you, the world is still going. You have…
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Literature Changing Perceptions of Africa, Creative Writing Snobs, and more…
Let’s silence the creative writing course snobs (The Guardian) Writing, like anything – from athletics to nuclear physics – depends on a basic degree of talent, which can be cultivated through training. So let’s stop pretending that devoting a year or two to studying writing in the company of others is anything other than a…
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Flashbacks, Sean Penn’s “Novel,” Amazon Sabotaging Erotica Authors…
Sean Penn’s new novel doesn’t deserve a considerate review — or a reader’s time (Chicago Tribune) But this is not a review of “Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff,” because it is not a book that deserves to be taken seriously enough to be reviewed. Speaking from personal experience, it is very difficult to write…
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The Resurgence of Dystopian Literature, Understanding China through Fiction, and more…
Deferred gratification is dead? Tell that to fans of serialised novels (The Guardian) “Binge-watch” was Collins Dictionary’s word of the year in 2015. The popularity of serialised long-form television drama was quickly superseded by networks making entire series available whenever we chose, eliminating that enforced waiting period and losing something of its pleasure in the process.…
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‘Bizarro fiction,’ Writing Memoirs, Dismal Sci-fi, and more…
Bizarro fiction is the next trend in the literary world (Study Breaks) Although bizarro fiction has lurked within the bowels of literature’s murky underground for just over 15 years, the genre has seen recent success with the addition of director Don Coscarelli’s film adaptation of David Wong’s best-selling novel, “John Dies at the End,” to…
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Social Sci-Fi, Literary Fiction, Little Known Book Editors, and more…
Literary fiction conveys the human character (The Guardian) As someone whose tiny, grimy literary novels have attracted the interest of the film industry, the truth is the opposite of what Tim Lott (Why should we subsidise writers who’ve lost the plot?, 2 January) suggests; it’s the screenwriter who needs the literary novelist. Plot is easy to…
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YA Fiction, Eco-Lit, An Algorithm Writing its own Sci-fi…
Why So Many Adults Love Young-Adult Literature (The Atlantic) These books are about coming of age, and we’re still coming of age.“What all these YA novels share is a universal coming of age experience,” Jennifer Loja, president of Penguin Young Readers, wrote to me in an email. The bildungsroman—the original term for a coming-of-age story—dates…
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The Future in Sci-Fi, Asian Anglophone Fiction, and more…
Why is science fiction so afraid of the future? (The Verge) It’s not just Trek, either: over the past 20 years, mainstream science fiction creators have largely handicapped their work by situating their stories within known timelines. Reboots and prequels dominate the day, from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant to a reported live-action Jetsons series (no, really). And when creators tell…
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Sci-Fi in Iraq, NaNoWriMo, Making a Living From Books, and more…
Why serious literary fiction like Ishiguro’s is vital in times like these (The Guardian) Eminent publishers predict a long-term decline for the entire industry, as younger people turn to other forms of entertainment. From a personal perspective, such worries feel well-founded: I organise the books events for the Brighton festival, and it’s been interesting to observe…
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Trans Sci-Fi, Imagining the Internet, and more…
Why Science-Fiction Writers Couldn’t Imagine the Internet (Slate) Quantum mechanics defies common sense—so much so that Einstein never really accepted it. But as experiments today, from entanglement to quantum teleportation, demonstrate, quantum mechanics does describe the universe at fundamental scales. That’s why science fiction—though it can inspire human imagination, as Stephen Hawking said in the…
