Next SFF Author: Rosemary Edghill

Previous SFF Author: C.M. Eddy_Jr

Series: Edge

In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.

Riddley Walker: On the Edge

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

[At The Edge of the Universe, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

Language is dependent on the society that uses it. We weave into our idiom words and phrases that explain our history and our present. Similes and metaphors embed themselves so deeply into our sentences that we don’t even notice them. Some are slang: we didn’t get the memo,

Sorry Please Thank You: Stories by Charles Yu

Sorry Please Thank You: Stories by Charles Yu

[At The Edge of the Universe, we review books that may not be classified SFF but that incorporate elements of speculative fiction. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

It is rare that I find myself blown away by a collection of short stories. Unless it is a “selected” anthology, where an editor can sort through a long career of writing and winnow out the mediocre and simply bad (even then there’ll most likely be at least a few I don’t care for),

I, Lucifer: On the Edge

I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan

“… (Hasn’t it bothered you, this part of the story, my being there, I mean? What was I doing there? ‘Presume not the ways of God to scan,’ you’re been told in umpteen variations, ‘the proper study of Mankind is Man.’ Maybe so, but, what, excuse me, was the Devil doing in Eden?)”

In Glen Duncan’s bitter, darkly comic novel I, Lucifer, a gifted son struggles to win the attention of his emotionally absent father.

The Master and Margarita: An absolute feast of a book

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

While mid-20th century Russian propaganda wizards were twisting words to hide the truth, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a response that proved fantasy could be used to reveal wisdom rather than confuse it.

An absolute feast of a book, The Master and Margarita serves up a delicious variety of characters and scenarios — naked witches, talking cats, and a devil’s ball — as a less-than-subtle riposte to communist cant. In the process, Bulgakov simultaneously subverts the doctrine of his day, declaring the universal power of the written word to have a staying power government ideology can never achieve.

The Thorn and the Blossom: On the Edge

The Thorn and The Blossom by Theodora Goss

In our Edge of the Universe column, we review books that may not be classified SFF but that incorporate elements of speculative fiction. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.

Evelyn and Brendan are both students at Oxford when they meet in the tiny Cornish town of Clews, where Evelyn is taking a much-needed break and Brendan is working in his father’s bookstore.

The Snow Child: Had me from the first page

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

The Snow Child (2012) had me from the first page, specifically these two sentences:

She had imagined that in the Alaska wilderness silence would be peaceful, like snow falling at night, air filled with promise but no sound,

The Night Country: Far more than a ghost story

The Night Country by Stewart O’Nan

In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.

To call The Night Country a ghost story or horror story does a disservice to both the author and the work. It’s like calling The Odyssey a ghost story because Odysseus speaks to the shades.

Mr. g: A Novel About the Creation

Mr. g: A Novel About the Creation by Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman is a physicist and a writer who often merges the scientific and the artistic in his work, both fiction and non-fiction. His newest novella, Mr. g: A Novel About the Creation,

The Glister: A literary horror novel

The Glister by John Burnside

Reading The Glister by John Burnside was like opening a perfectly crafted wooden box and finding inside a set of components, nested into cognac-colored velvet. Some components were made of finely worked gold and brass; some were polished wood; some were ethereal blown glass; some were made of jewels and bone. Usually, components like these fit together to form a whole: a telescope, a kaleidoscope or a theodolite. Try as I would, though, I could not get the components of The Glister to merge into one coherent whole.

IQ84: Rich and very dense

IQ84 by Haruki Murakami

In Tokyo, in 1984, a young woman in a taxi on her way to an important appointment is stuck in gridlock on an elevated highway. After getting some cryptic advice from her cab driver, she walks across several lanes of stopped traffic and makes a perilous climb down a safety access stairway to the surface streets, where she can catch a train to her destination. When she reaches those streets, she is in a different world.

Or is she?

Haruki Murakami’s 900-page IQ84 is the story of a woman,

Next SFF Author: Rosemary Edghill

Previous SFF Author: C.M. Eddy_Jr

We have reviewed 8494 fantasy, science fiction, and horror books, audiobooks, magazines, comics, and films.

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