Tag: Science Fiction

Michael Dirda on John Carter and Edgar Rice Burroughs

Over at BN Review:

In 1911 Edgar Rice Burroughs, having failed at everything else, decided to write a novel. He was then in his mid-thirties, married with two children, barely supporting his family as the agent for a pencil-sharpener business. In earlier years he’d served in the Seventh Cavalry, worked as a rancher and gold miner, started an advertising agency, sold light bulbs and candy and uplifting books door-to-door, and not really made a go of anything.

As a thirty-something who’s barely supporting a family after a string of not-successes, Burroughs sounds like my kind of guy.

A very graphic Graphic Princess of Mars

The Disney version of Burrough’s classic too tame for you? Check out James Killian Spratt’s graphic novel version, with all of the graphic nudity and violence you could hope for. Currently free online, and to be published at some future point.

(h/t io9.com)

The half-life of zombies

Over at SF Signal, a post on the post-post-apocalypse by author David Moody:

We’re taught from early days that all stories must have a beginning, a middle and an end. Take my genre of choice – post-apocalyptic fiction. You have the beginning – the event – then the middle as our cast of characters inevitably have to fight to survive in what’s left of their world, but what about the end?…

I get frustrated by the lack of development in much zombie fiction…There’s a blatantly obvious issue which usually gets totally overlooked, and that’s that the zombies are rotting. They might be a deadly threat today and tomorrow, but what about in six months time?

Post-apocalyptic giant John Christopher passes away

Christopher Priest writes a brief obituary in the Guardian. Christopher (real name Samuel Youd) was one of the three giants of the excellent British school of post-apocalyptic fiction in the 50’s in 60’s, the others being John Wyndham and J.G. Ballard. Christopher, with his brutal The Death of Grass was somewhat of a transitional figure between the “cosier” Wyndham and Ballard’s dark novels.

h/t to io9.

Blueprints of the Afterlife in the NY Times

About a quarter of the way through the book I’m finding this to be a great mix of Snow Crash-type characters in a world that would give Philip Dick a run for his money, with hints of Oryx and Crake and Against the Day. My intent is not deny Boudinot’s originality – it’s to get you to read the book.

At the NY Times: All Sorts of Strange Stuff Happens When You Destroy the World: Ryan Boudinot’s Novel ‘Blueprints of the Afterlife’, by JOHN SCHWARTZ

This novel is, in a word, freaky. Woo-jin, the dishwasher, finds a young woman’s body. It is taken away by the police, and he finds it again. But the first body is still in the morgue. Continue reading “Blueprints of the Afterlife in the NY Times”