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Strange Horizons Review of Allen Stroud’s Anti-State

Allen Stroud Articles Dystopias Novels Science Fiction Space Opera

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(Cover Artist: Nick Wells) There's a review I wrote of Allen Stroud's novel Anti-State that is up today in the most recent edition of Stran…

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Popular Posts

Myst: The Book of Ti'ana by Rand Miller with David Wingrove

(Cover Artist: The Leonheardt Group) Rand Miller and David Wingrove's 1996 novel Myst: The Book of Ti'ana was a strange story to read, because while there was a lot about this book which I enjoyed, I also finished it fairly sure that the most interesting story the novel has to offer is not the one which the authors have succeeded in writing. Taking the form of a prequel to the prior installment in the Myst Trilogy (1995's Myst: The Book of Atrus ), The Book of Ti'ana is set many decades before the start of that earlier work. Following a woman named Anna who stumbles across the thriving subterranean civilization of D'ni, The Book of Ti'ana details how Anna befriends a citizen of this insular society named Aitrus. This is a character whose name, it should be noted, closely mirrors that of the protagonist of the earlier book except for a slight difference in spelling, and who is explicitly indicated here to be an entirely different person. It's through Ait...

Myst: The Book of Atrus by Rand and Robyn Miller with David Wingrove

(Cover Artist: The Leonheardt Group) Some books end up succeeding not necessarily by the skill with which they were written, but instead the dedication and enthusiasm which the authors devote towards their work. Myst: The Book of Atrus is this sort of novel. While this is a story that often struggles with some awkward writing and occasionally stilted dialogue, there's nevertheless a genuinely original narrative at the core of this book that animates much of the resulting material. Written by sibling game designers Rand and Robyn Miller (along with the help of professional novelist David Wingrove), The Book of Atrus opens by introducing its title character, Atrus--a young boy living in the desert with his solitary grandmother, Anna. Set some 40-30 years before the events of the first installment in the video game series upon which this story is based (1993's Myst ), Atrus grows up in the shadow of a dormant volcano in an unnamed desert, and is raised on tales of th...

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

(Cover Artist: Kaitlin Kall ) One of the most unusual things about Hank Green's 2018 novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is that the book is not a comedy. At its core, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a very straight-faced, high-concept science fiction story charting humanity's first-contact with an alien intelligence, and the social and political upheaval this event brings. As a result, as is often the case with other stories in this genre, the driving element of Green's plot is a very carefully imagined examination of how the contemporary world might react to the arrival of something that by its basic nature requires we rethink our place in the universe. However, what Green understands about this material is that first-contact stories thrive not by their realism, but by their absurdity. As a genre, alien first-contact narratives derive much of their tension from how they depict an otherwise realistic world reacting to the arrival of something that defies all conventi...

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