Author Archives: jananson

A Critical Mass to Escape Dystopia

Posted on May 20, 2017

Do you ever feel oppressed by the relentless coercion to spend ever more of your time online, staring at the screen, jumping through the hoops imposed by organisations of every kind? Do you detect the synergy between this and the … Continue reading →

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Archaeopteryx – by Lorna Smithers

Posted on May 17, 2017

Originally posted on Signposts in the Mist:
Archaeopteryx, I call to you kindly through layers of stone. Geological time is not the history of the victors. No! It does not lie or exploit. I pass through time as I pass…

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Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels

Posted on May 4, 2017

My first encounter with Greg Bear’s fiction was the superb Moving Mars, at a time when I was reading everything I could find about the planet Mars. Queen of Angels, though set mainly on Earth, is considered to be part … Continue reading →

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Forty Signs of Rain

Posted on April 27, 2017

Having tackled the environmental politics of Mars and Antarctica, Kim Stanley Robinson took on the challenge of global warming. Forty Signs of Rain is the first instalment of a trilogy and should not be judged as a stand-alone novel. Most of it … Continue reading →

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The Light of Eden

Posted on April 21, 2017

Do you remember, if you’re old enough, the beautiful painted illustrations on the covers of fantasy and science fantasy novels in the 1980s? Each would depict a scene capturing both a moment in the story and the essence of the … Continue reading →

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Utopia without Fascism

Posted on March 27, 2017

The 1000-page bulk of Austin Tappan Wright’s Islandia had sat intimidatingly on the shelf since I acquired it. Only in the period of forced leisure after an operation did I get round to reading it. Long hours in bed gave … Continue reading →

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A Prehistoric Giant African Weasel

Posted on March 22, 2017

When I was a boy I got interested in the mammals of the world – including a particular affection for the Mustelidae, or weasel family. I guess that’s why it struck a chord when I found out about a large … Continue reading →

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