Category: Uncategorized

Ursula K. Le Guin: Our Lodestar

A while ago, I wrote an obituary on Le Guin for Overland magazine, which is available here.   Here’s the article:   ‘The King was pregnant.’ So wrote Ursula K Le Guin in her 1969 classic The Left Hand of Darkness – one of the greatest of science fiction novels. The populace of Gethen were androgynous. During […]

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Greene’s ‘The Quiet American’

There must be two major caveats to giving Greene’s novels a 5-star rating. First, the way the characters come to symbolise their countries can’t help but be a little strained. Second, the book is drenched in a kind of soft orientalism, which plays out mostly in the character of Phuong, so distand and unfathomable, so […]

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Alan Moore’s Providence Act 3

Moore recuperates the problems of the earlier issues in this final, clever, Act. The problems in the earlier issues were narrative ones — and it’s pretty instructive, from a writing point of vier. The journalist Black’s desire to write a history of New England occult culture lacks stakes. That is, there’s nothing compelling — either […]

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The Stars Askew Giveaway

Goodreads Book Giveaway The Stars Askew by Rjurik Davidson Giveaway ends February 15, 2017. See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter Giveaway

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Polansky’s ‘A City Dreaming’

Daniel Polansky lives in New York, though I think he’s originally from Maryland, which gives him the advantage of being both an insider and an outsider in the Big Apple. This liminal position is one of the things that tends to make original art — think of the Irish writers in London and Paris — […]

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Locked Out In Sydney

Locked out in Sydney, A poem I’m locked out, in Sydney. Sitting on the street. Waiting for someone with a key. It feels like a metaphor, Except I’m really actually locked out, In sydney. Like really, without a key. Keep your silly metaphors to yourself. When you’re locked out, You’re not calling for Yeats to […]

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The Holographic Deer

In my dream last night, I was given the job of searching for a missing man, who had disappeared. Slowly the people who were aiding me in the search began to change into strange stepford wives-ey folk, blank and creepy, and I ended up fleeing through a forest with them pursuing me. When I arrived […]

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Newtown Review of Books has reviewed The Stars Askew.

Newtown Review of Books has reviewed The Stars Askew: The Stars Askew continues Australian fantasy author Rjurik Davidson’s dark tale of revolution, treachery and personal sacrifice begun in his debut novel Unwrapped Sky. Again, this story is set in the richly imagined city of Caeli Amur where magical beasts, grinding totalitarianism, revolutionary fervour and warped thaumaturgists blend together to […]

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Chicago Review of Books Recommends The Stars Askew

One of the top 10 books to read in July: “Forget the flippant summer beach read. Ring in the dog days with these 10 science fiction, fantasy, and speculative novels picked as July’s best by the Chicago Review of Books. From dark, masterfully constructed plots to stories that probe the human condition, the following books […]

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The Stars Askew Review – from Pop Mythology

I have been waiting with anticipation for the follow-up to Rjurik Davidson’s strikingly original debut, Unwrapped Sky (2014), and The Stars Askew does not disappoint. The “young master of the New Weird” fleshes out his wonderfully bizarre world, a world that blends familiar elements of history and mythology in unique ways. Read the review here.

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