1,503 words

For years now, readers have been urging me to review Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), which adapts Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel of the same name. I have resisted, because although A Clockwork Orange is often hailed as a classic, I thought it was dumb, distasteful, and highly overrated, so I didn’t want to watch it again. But I had first watched it decades ago. (more…)

5,336 words

Colin Jordan
Merrie England 2,000
Sandycroft Publications: 1993

In earlier times, there was much speculative fiction about conditions around the turn of the millennium. (We’re still waiting for those hovercars, dammit. . .) Other literature focuses more on changes in society than imaginative technology. (more…)

Frank Herbert

4,241 words

Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) is one of the masterpieces of science fiction, far eclipsing its five sequels in readership and reputation. But I wish to argue that the third and fourth Dune books, Children of Dune (1976) and God Emperor of Dune (1981), are equally audacious works of the imagination. [1] Both volumes tend to be underrated, partly due to the long shadow of Dune, partly because the sheer scope of Herbert’s vision boggles the mind, (more…)

5,995 words

Having earned thirty-nine Game of the Year awards when it was released in November 2004, Valve’s Half-Life 2 is one of the most celebrated video games of all time. As of February 2011 it had sold twelve million copies worldwide. It’s a first-person shooter game set in a dystopian future where a technologically advanced alien empire known as “the Combine” has conquered Earth. With its Eastern European setting ruled by a tyrannical alien police state, it’s notable for its anti-Communist and anti-imperialist themes and imagery.

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3,147 words

Brazil is a 1985 genre-defining science fiction film from acclaimed director and writer Terry Gilliam. It has won numerous awards and is regarded as a cult classic and one of the best science fiction films ever made. (more…)

2,599 words

Czech translation here

Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie Blade Runner is a science fiction classic and surely the director’s finest work. Blade Runner excels on all levels. It is a highly imaginative vision of the future realized with a stunning visual style. The script is intelligent, even poetic. The cast is uniformly strong, with a number of powerful performances, particularly Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. The gripping action sequences are acrobatic, balletic, and brutal. But the key to the film’s unsettling emotional power is its deep mythic subtext. (more…)

2,640 words

English original here

Film Ridleyho Scotta z roku 1982 Blade Runner se řadí mezi klasická díla sci-fi žánru a představuje vrchol tvorby slavného britského režiséra. Blade Runner vyniká ve všech ohledech. Jedná se o velice nápaditou vizi budoucnosti, uskutečněnou v dechberoucím vizuálním provedení. Herci předvádí solidní výkony, někteří pak až výjimečné – především Rutger Hauer jako Roy Batty. Napínavé akční scény jsou akrobatické, baletní a brutální. Klíč k pochopení znepokojivé emocionální působivosti díla však spočívá v jeho hlubokém mytickém podtextu. (more…)

3,708 words

English original here

Ray Bradbury, spisovatel nejlépe známý díky románůmMarťanská kronika, 451 stupňů Fahrenheita, a autor stovek dalších povídek, zemřel 5. června 2012 ve věku 91 let. S jeho osobou ztrácí Amerika nejen jednoho ze svých nejlepších spisovatelů, ale také jednoho z našich posledních skutečných spisovatelů.

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Fortunato Depero, Skyscrapers and Tunnels (Gratticieli e tunnel), 1930

2,770 words

Editor’s Note:

This text continues the transcript by V. S. of Jonathan Bowden’s interview at the Union Jack Club in London on Saturday, November 21, 2009, after his lecture/performance on Punch and Judy. The title is editorial. 

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1,050 words

Vladislav Todorov
Zift: Socialist Noir
Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2010

Imagine being shut off from your country and, after some time, cast back in, only to find it unrecognizable. It has become a huge gray void, another world where everything is turned upside down. A new state. A new government with enhanced power to squash individual resolve and reason. The irrational is rational. Purpose is collectively driven. There is no choice. It’s the Revolution. (more…)

3,443 words

Michel Houellebecq
The Elementary Particles
Translated from the French by Frank Wynne
New York: Knopf, 2000

“I get my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.”[1]

“The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. . . . And human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as the unfettered movements of the elementary particles.” — Michel Houellebecq, (more…)

1,575 words

Jeff Frankas
De-World
Amazon Kindle, $2.99

“The world today is nothing more than a world built on lies, illusions, and false narratives. The so-called masters of governance and economics feed the masses events based off their own narratives seeking to have them believe whatever it is they want them to believe.”[1]

De-World is Jeff Frankas’s first novel, (more…)

2,593 words

Czech translation here

Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie Blade Runner is a science fiction classic and surely the director’s finest work. Blade Runner excels on all levels. It is a highly imaginative vision of the future realized with a stunning visual style. The script is intelligent, even poetic. The cast is uniformly strong, with a number of powerful performances, particularly Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. The gripping action sequences are acrobatic, balletic, and brutal. But the key to the film’s unsettling emotional power is its deep mythic subtext. (more…)

80:21 / 80 words

Greg Johnson and John Morgan join Richard Spencer to discuss Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner, and in particular its disturbing depiction of an overpopulated, inhuman, and multicultural future as well as the questions the film raises about human identity and dignity.  (more…)

1,155 words

Christopher Priest
Fugue for a Darkening Island
London: Gollancz, 2011

Christopher Priest is a British sci-fi writer best known for The Prestige, a 1995 novel successfully filmed in 2006 by Batman re-inventors Jonathan and Christopher Nolan. Fugue, his second novel, was originally published in 1972, and re-issued in 2011 by Gollancz.[1]  (more…)

4,335 words

Czech translation here

Ray Bradbury, the writer best known for his novels The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, as well as a hundreds of short stories, passed away on Tuesday, June 5 at the age of 91. With him we have lost not only one of America’s greatest writers, but also one of our last genuine writers.

However, I don’t use either of these words – genuine or writer – lightly. (more…)

4,648 words

Whatever happened to the Age of Anxiety? In the post-war years, intellectuals left and right were constantly telling us — left and right — that we were living in an age of breakdown and decay. (more…)