3 reviews found

That spoiler warning is live, people. I am not joking around here. I am going to talk about the twist that, though fairly early in the book, is unmentioned or unhinted at in any of the cover copy or introduction. Because Darwinia is a far deeper rabbithole than its simple alternative-history wrapper promises. I understand why it got the Hugo nomination (and also why it didn’t win). With Darwinia, Robert Charles Wilson has…

In my review of Tomorrow: Science Fiction and the Future, I briefly touched on the parallels between the Cold War era apprehension over thermonuclear war and our current generation’s dance with global warming. We are acutely aware of our mortality, as a species, and the science fiction of these eras reflects that. Yet while some of the evidence of global warming has hit the front page—and been met with all the attendant scepticism and…

Set in the 2170s, Julian Comstock depicts a fallen America. Hit hard by Peak Oil and global climate change refugees, America has re-imagined itself as an officially Christian nation. With technology and social norms on par with the nineteenth century—which the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth extols as the perfect template for contemporary American society—this is a profoundly different society from our own, but it strikes a chord because it may not be far…