More Posts By Peter
Review: The Minority Report – Philip K. Dick
The Minority Report is Philip K Dick’s 1956 short story on which the probably more widely known Hollywood film is based. It tells the story of John Anderton, the aging chief of Precrime, a police agency that prevents crimes on the basis of predictions of the future, whose life is turned upside down when it is predicted that he himself will commit a murder in the next week. Believing he is being framed, he prepares to flee, but there are other forces at work…
Review: Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a fireman. His task? Responding to alarms by pulling up to houses and hosing them in kerosine before setting them ablaze if they contain any – highly illegal – books. But Montag harbours doubts. Why must all books be destroyed? Has society not changed for the worse since the rise of anti-intellectualism?
Review: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus – Mary Shelley
Victor Frankenstein discovers a formula for imbuing inanimate objects with life. He builds a man, but is so repulsed by his creation that he flees in horror – and leaves the creature to fend for himself. Rejected by his maker and by society at large, Frankenstein’s creation returns to his creator to demand his pound of flesh.
Review: The Grace of Kings – Ken Liu
Kuni Garu is a charming bandit that cheats and finesses his way into a leadership position in the rebellion against the Emperor. Mata Zyndu is a stern aristocrat and scion of a noble family that was wronged by the regime. At first, they find themselves brothers, fighting for a new order in the place of the old one. But when that battle is one, their visions for a brave new world turn out not to be compatible.
Review: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories – Ken Liu
What happens when a recording becomes too life-like? What happens when you can go back to actually review history, but only once? What happens when Chinese immigrants come to the States during the Gold Rush? What happens when algorithms start deciding our every choice in life? The fifteen stories in this collection focus on the role of immigrants and intermingling of cultures, especially the integration of Asians in Western society, as well as the impact of technology on our daily lives.
Review: Vigilance – Robert Jackson Bennett
In a not-too-distant future, the United States has ceded global hegemony to China. The young and bright emigrate and leave behind a society governed by fear, prejudice and gun violence. In this degenerate America, mass shootings have become an excellent marketing opportunity for advertisers.
Review: The Years of Rice and Salt – Kim Stanley Robinson
When the Black Death hits Europe, it isn’t just devastating, it flat out depopulates the continent. The world moves on. Without Europe, who will ‘discover’ the Americas and develop modern science? Who will repopulate empty Europe? Will humanity make the same mistakes it did under European hegemony? Nobody knows, but Kim Stanley Robinson is speculating and he is taking us with him.
Review: Rose/House – Arkady Martine
Rose/House is an AI, a smart home governed by an artificial intelligence. When its designer died, he left specific instructions that only one particular person be allowed to visit Rose/House, up to 7 days a year. But when the local police precinct receives a mandatory duty of care call from Rose/House informing them of a dead body on the premises, that one person allowed to visit is half the world away. This raises two questions: who is the murderer, and who is the victim?
Review: The Tusks of Extinction – Ray Nayler
In the near future, the de-extinction of the woolly mammoth has been successful. Groups of the great beasts now roam the tundra. Not only must they learn to survive in the wild without the generational experience of the ancient herds, but they are also threatened by the hunters and tusk poachers that led to the extinction of their cousins, the elephants. The Tusks of Extinction follows a hunter, a poacher and a mammoth and their interconnected story on the tundra.
Review: Yellowface – R.F. Kuang
June Hayworth is a struggling author. Her Asian-American friend Athena Liu, on the other hand, is a critically acclaimed and commercially successful industry darling. One day, Athena dies in a freak incident while hanging out with June at Athena’s apartment. June takes a manuscript on Chinese labourers in the First World War from Athena’s apartment and publishes it under a pseudonym suggesting Asian descent. Over time, the lies she built up around the manuscript start to completely control June’s life.
Review: Kindred – Octavia E. Butler
Dana is whisked from 1976 Los Angeles to 1815 Maryland, where she saves a little boy from drowning before returning to her own time. But before she has much time to process what happened, it happens again. As a black woman, Dana must learn to survive on a plantation alongside the other enslaved black persons there, while she develops a special relationship with the boy she saves over and over.
Review: Alien Clay – Adrian Tchaikovsky
Prof. Arton Daghdev, expert in alien biology, is exiled to a labour camp on the distant world of Kiln for his crimes against the scientific orthodoxy of the Mandate. His exile is as much a punishment as it is an opportunity: to actually study the complex and utterly alien ecosystem of Kiln up close is a dream come true. But the science is hampered by the confines set by the Mandate on the truths that may be discovered – and the life expectancy of a labourer in the camp on Kiln is terrifyingly low…