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Neuromancer
William Gibson’s 1984 debut novel, Neuromancer, stands as the defining cornerstone of the cyberpunk subgenre. Published before the advent of the World Wide Web, the novel offered a radically prescient, neon-drenched vision of a future that reshaped science fiction and popular culture. I first read Neuromancer when I was in high school in the 1980s…
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Wild Dark Shore
Wild Dark Shore is a subantarctic novel, that sounds weird but it is, written by Australian author Charlotte McConaghy. Set on Shearwater Island—a remote, storm-swept isle modeled after Australia’s Macquarie Island, my thoughts went immediately to Tristan da Cunha—the narrative takes place in an ecologically threatened environment home to a critical global seed vault. Rising sea…
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The Whisper on the Night Wind
This was a proper Canadian wilderness adventure tale, with a historical mystery thrown in like extra curds on poutine. The Whisper on the Night Wind by our very own Canadian explorer and author Adam Shoalts investigates a century-old mystery in the remote interior of Labrador. The narrative centers on the historical accounts from the early…
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Dinner Along the Amazon
This was alright. Not great, not terrible, just alright. Dinner Along the Amazon is a compact collection of short stories that shows Findley at his most empathic and I guess, literary. I say that because it feels like he’s trying to be literary, rather than it happening organically. Like if you’ve ever got your suit…
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Winesburg, Ohio
Winesburg, Ohio is a slim, deceptively simple volume full of interlinked short stories that together form an incisive portrait of early 20th century small-town American life. First published in 1919, Sherwood Anderson’s book uses a fragmented, vignette-driven structure. Meaning each one stands alone but when compiled you see how they connect up. The influence on…
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The Penelopiad
Overview Overview Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005) is a compact, slyly subversive retelling of Homer’s Odyssey that re-centers the narrative on Penelope and the twelve maidservants who are hanged at the end of the original epic. Written as a faux-memoir from Penelope’s vantage in the Underworld, punctuated by a persistent, shape-shifting chorus made up of…
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That Old Ace in the Hole
Overview That Old Ace in the Hole (2002) is Annie Proulx’s panoramic, character-driven novel set in the Texas–Oklahoma Panhandle. It follows Bob Dollar, a guileless land scout employed by a corporate hog‑farming conglomerate, as he embeds himself in the fictional town of Woolybucket. Proulx makes the landscape and its people the book’s central subjects: the…
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John Willie, The Story of John A.S. Coutts
Overview What a remarkable book. I’ve read several other books by Perez Seves which were excellent, and this was no exception, in fact I feel this was his best work to date. As long-time readers of this blog will know I am very interested in the history of fetish art, and the artist in this…
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
A rare DNF for the Neilos Reading Machine. Made it to page 92 and tapped out, just couldn’t keep my eyes open. This is a good book, and I feel it is worthy of a review despite my not being able to get through it. Bill Bryson is a bestselling travel author who, back in…
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Analog Science Fiction and Fact Sept/Oct 2024
From an editorial review: The September/October 2024 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact delivers a robust balance of rigorous, hard sci-fi worldbuilding, procedural mysteries, and thoughtful examinations of near-future sociology. Edited by Trevor Quachri, this double issue continues the magazine’s long-standing tradition of grounding speculative concepts in plausible scientific realities while expanding its narrative boundaries. Could…
In His Own Words