After the Deluge by Chris Carlsson

Carlsson’s book is set in the futuristic San Francisco. The “deluge” submerged much of the city below sea level, which reframed the built and wild environment, accordingly. Eventually, a worldwide disease-based “die-off” and revolution followed. What survived of San Francisco was a land and culture of simple prosperity, an eco-city, per se. [...]

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Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

I, along with most of the (heterosexual) fantasy-reading females in the world, have a ginormous crush on China Miéville. He’s hot, has a nice British accent, and writes brilliant fiction. His writing is often embraced by leftist radicals (he’s a Marxist and member of the Socialist Workers Party), and steam punks, because of how he [...]

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Stranger in a Strange Land

I recently re-read (well, listened to) the 1961 science fiction classic, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. I read this while I was a teenager, but yeah, that was 20 years ago.
The main premise of the book is that there is a human man, Valentine Michael Smith (“Mike”), who ends up on Mars [...]

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The Time Traveler’s Wife

I bought The Time Traveler’s Wife as a fun, summer read. It’s been wildly popular, on all of the mainstream bestseller lists and is now a Hollywood film.
The book is the story of the intermingled lives of Henry and Clare – Henry involuntarily travels through time, mostly to the past. It is told chronologically according [...]

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Fledgling by Octavia Butler

It is a bit overwhelming, but unavoidable, to consider that this is Octavia Butler’s final novel. She died the year following the release of Fledgling. She was a one-of-a kind author with a broad and adamant fan base, with good reason. All of her novels, including Fledgling, artfully weave creative plots with [...]

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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz or, “The Fukú is Gonna Git You”

I’ll tell you the truth, straight-up:
Hypatia Belicia Cabral de Leon — “Beli” for short — haunted me in a dream. It was this crazy impactful noir-reality anxiety dream. I was in another place, a feverish island that was not called the USA, where I was a tourist. I took a wrong turn, and soon enough [...]

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A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

On New Year’s Eve, four very different people journey to the top of a famous suicide jumping spot. Each of their lives is overshadowed by lost promise, emotional isolation and few coping skills. None of them have a path ahead that looks any good and they join together, not admitting that they are there to [...]

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