Posted in Book Reviews, Other Book Reviews, tagged JGB, J. G. Ballard, Miracles of Life on March 27, 2008 | No Comments »
Miracles of Life is J. G. Ballard’s recently published autobiography. I did not expect JGB to write an autobiography, and possibly he himself did not either, but the news that he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer changed his mind. I was very eager to read this book, and I am somewhat disappointed to say [...]
Posted in Book Reviews on March 26, 2008 | No Comments »
I went on a bit of a book jaunt yesterday and picked up a few things. Therefore I will be taking a break from writing more PKD reviews for a while. These are the books I bought.
Miracles of Life - JG Ballard - his autobiography
Voices from Chernobyl - about the survivors
Cannibals of the Fine Light [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged Philip K. Dick, PKD on March 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Not everyone likes PKD’s mainstream novels, almost all of which remained unpublished in his lifetime. They are often criticised for being bleak, dull or meaningless. There are plenty of people who say that they love PKD’s SF, but hate his mainstream works.
I am not one of those people.
I have been, and remain, fascinated by [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged Philip K. Dick, PKD, voices from the street on March 22, 2008 | No Comments »
This book represents an impossibility: a new novel from a man who died in 1982. But here it is, Voices from the Street, a novel PKD wrote in 1952-3, when he was around twenty five years old. This is not the earliest surviving PKD manuscript; that honour goes to Gather Yourselves Together, which must surely [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged Now Wait for Last Year, Philip K. Dick, PKD on March 19, 2008 | No Comments »
I like to think of Now Wait for Last Year as the quintessential PKD novel. Not many people would regard this as an ‘essential PKD novel’ and yet most PKD fans regard this as a ‘good’ book. I like to think of the book as being at the top of the second rank of PKD [...]
Posted in The Kingdom of Four Rivers, tagged TAG Hungerford Award, The Kingdom of Four Rivers on March 16, 2008 | No Comments »
Here is the map my wife Georgie drew for The Kingdom of Four Rivers. I am a little ambivalent about having a map for my novel, as it probably makes KoFR seem more like a fantasy novel, which it certainly isn’t. However, I liked the map Georgie drew so I decided to include it. [...]
Posted in The Kingdom of Four Rivers, tagged The Kingdom of Four Rivers on March 8, 2008 | No Comments »
Well, here it is: my prologue in all its edited glory. I read somewhere recently that you should read your manuscript aloud to yourself to in order to improve the flow of writing. I knew this already, but I thought that I didn’t need to go through this process on The Kingdom of Four Rivers. [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged PKD, The Owl in Daylight on March 8, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Reading this book - which is basically a transcript of a long interview with Philip K. Dick - is like catching up with an old friend. These interviews, which were recorded by Gwen Lee, have the distinction of being the last interviews in Philip K. Dick’s life. That’s this book’s first claim to fame. The [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged Philip K. Dick, PKD, valis on March 1, 2008 | No Comments »
I fell out of love with VALIS by degrees. When I first read it in 1999, at the age of eighteen, I was entranced. I distinctly recall starting to read it late in the evening and continuing almost until dawn. But over the years, on subsequent readings, I have grown increasingly uneasy with the [...]
