ROCK & ROLL MET FRIEDA VINDEVOGEL – J.M.H. Berckmans (1991)

Next post will be about my reread of the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov.

In the meantime, a post in Dutch, again about cult writer Jean-Marie Berckmans, who died in 2008 – after a lifelong struggle with a bipolar disorder, anxiety and addiction. I met him a few times in 2006, and also read his final book back then. After I found another book of his on a flea market in 2016, I started collecting his oeuvre. I’m slowly working my way through it.

This review is about his 4th book, “Rock & Roll with Frieda Vindevogel”. Frieda Vindevogel was a pseudonym for his psychiatrist.

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Voor een introductie in J.M.H. Berckmans: onderaan vind je links.

 

De achterflap van Rock & Roll met Frieda Vindevogel verraadt dat dit een compagnon is van Café De Raaf nog steeds gesloten, Berckmans’ vorige boek: beide hebben dezelfde foto en dezelfde lay-out. De biografie van Chris Ceustermans bevestigt ook dat de meeste verhalen in dit werk al geschreven waren toen Café De Raaf in 1990 werd gepubliceerd. Dat boek was dan weer verwant met Vergeet niet wat de zevenslaper zei, zijn tweede debuut. Ik schreef al in mijn recensie van Café De Raaf dat je Berckmans’ werk misschien wel in 3 periodes zou kunnen opdelen, en dat wordt voorlopig door mijn lectuur van Vindevogel bevestigd.

Frieda Vindevogel is een pseudoniem voor Frieda Matthys, een psychiater die Berckmans een tijd heeft behandeld. Prof. Dr. Matthys is gespecialiseerd in verslavingen en nog steeds actief. Meer biografische achtergrond vind je in die twee vorige recensies, hier zal ik inzoomen op wat Vindevogel te bieden heeft.

A MOUNTAIN TO THE NORTH, A LAKE TO THE SOUTH, PATHS TO THE WEST, A RIVER TO THE EAST – László Krasznahorkai (2003, transl. 2022)

This blog focuses mainly on speculative fiction, and as such this short novel with a very long title is not out of place: one could approach this as a sensitive mythopoetic tale, about a grandson of a prince, living outside of space and time, wandering the grounds of a monastry in Kyoto, searching for an elusive, possibly perfect, garden.

One could also approach it as high literature of the most oppressive sort, like Marcel Theroux did in The Guardian: “It’s not beyond me to imagine that there are readers who want to surrender to the strangeness of his prose, the long, self-cancelling sentences and the obsessive descriptions. My view is that 100 years after Ulysses and The Waste Land, his writing is a belated tribute act to modernism that perpetuates its worst traits: obscurity, self-referentiality, lazy pessimism and lack of empathy with the lives of non-academic readers.”

Having an academic background myself, I guess I’m biased. I acknowledge that A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East is not for everybody – what book is? – but Theroux’s remark is terribly misguided: does he ask of Colleen Hoover if she has empathy with her academic readers? So instead of lazy shots as intellectuals, he might have just acknowledged Krasznahorkai’s 2003 title simply didn’t click with him, because, indeed, he failed to connect with the prose and the themes. There is no shame in that. Shaming its writer however, is not very empathic.

But enough with the negative vibes: I think Északról hegy, Délről tó, Nyugatról hegyek, Keletről folyó is an absolute masterpiece. 5 stars! 6 stars even! I’m not an expert on translation nor Hungarian, but it seems more than remarkable that Ottilie Mulzet managed to translate such peculiar prose from an non-Indo-European language and still conveys something of László Krasznahorkai’s flow and poetry.

This is a book to surrender too, and then be rewarded with a certain ecstasy and wonder about the terrifying miracle and baffling mystery that is all that exists. The nature of reality and the reality of nature is often pondered in literature and art, its infinite mystery even celebrated, but when push comes to shove, its profound and utter incomprehensible strangeness is generally ignored. Not so by Krasznahorkai: it seems the very heart of his writing. A 2022 interview in Rekto:Verso confirms this: “I try to express something that I cannot. The highest art can build a bridge, but only until it reaches the border of the hidden reality – you cannot move beyond that. I try to reach that border through beauty. That is not the only way, but it is my way.”

When Theroux goes on in his review, writing that this book doesn’t seem interested in “the relationships, love, toil, conflicts, needs and interactions of ordinary people” he misses the point, as the lives of people are embedded in the miracle that Krasznahorkai tries to come to grips with. To me, A Mountain to the North showcased nothing but sensitivity for what it means to be alive, even if it also expresses the sentiment that a demand such as Theroux’s – to put the human in the center – is a form of self-absorbed navel gazing.

THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT – Kim Stanley Robinson (2002)

One has to admire Kim Stanley Robinson for the breadth of his work. He has published 19 novels, 2 works of non-fiction, 8 short story collections and 4 novellas. If you just look at the novels, you see a wide variety of angles. Still, his topics remain steadfast: the evolutionary & ecological nature of humans, what human societies could amount to  – progressive, utopian thinking – and how science and technology ties into that.

The Years of Rice and Salt is no dystopian near-future story, nor an account of prehistorical homo sapiens, nor a clifi thriller, nor an hard SF tale of terraforming or interstellar travel. It’s what’s called an alternative history.

As a starting point Robinson lets the black death wipe out 99% of the European population, instead of – current best estimate – 65%. What follows is, in 652 pages and 10 chapters, a history of seven centuries “on an alternate Earth in which Islam and Buddhism are the dominant religions. (…) the New World is discovered by the Chinese Navy, and the Renaissance is played out as a conflict between a Middle Eastern Islam and Chinese Buddhism.” (Kirkus)

Robinson basically wrote 10 novellas that are entangled because they each figure the same three characters, each time reincarnated – as “orphaned Indian girl, Sufi mystic, African eunuch, Sultan’s wife, Chinese admiral, dourly brilliant alchemist, feminist poet, village midwife, glassblower, theologian, etc.”

The Kirkus review is on point in that it names the book at times a bit “ponderous” and “overlong”, and also Laura Miller expresses some of that sentiment in her 2002 review for Salon. But it would be foolish to discard the book just because of that: The Years of Rice and Salt is a tour-de-force.

LAPVONA – Ottessa Moshfegh (2022)

Ottessa Moshfegh is well known for My Year of Rest and Relaxation – the book that topped most year-end lists in 2018. That book dealt with depression and solitude in contemporary New York, and this new one is quite a jump from that. Appealing to genre readers and literary fans alike, Lapvona has a few very small fantasy elements, and is set in a fictional fiefdom somewhere in medieval Europe.

One of the protagonists is Marek, a 13-year old disfigured boy who is abused by his father yet retains a strong faith amid the hardship of a shepherd’s life. To say much more would spoil the fun – although some readers might not think this book fun: Moshfegh incorporates scenes that boarder body horror, depictions of rape, humiliation and cannibalism. Lisa Allardice in The Guardian said it like this: “Her work takes dirty realism and makes it filthier.” Even though such filth might evoke some level of disgust, there is a clear playfulness and humor in the book too.

Not that is not serious stuff, or mere gore for the sake of gore. Let’s quote Publishers Weekly again:

Moshfegh’s picture of medieval cruelty includes unsparing accounts of torture, rape, cannibalism, and witchcraft, and as Marek grapples with the pervasive brutality and whether remaining pure of heart is worth the trouble—or is even possible—the narrative tosses readers through a series of dizzying reversals. Throughout, Moshfegh brings her trademark fascination with the grotesque to depictions of the pandemic, inequality, and governmental corruption, making them feel both uncanny and all too familiar.

Yes – this is fictional, even fantastic, but I have seldom come across a book that is so sharp and insightful about today’s world & our shared reality. Let’s dig a little deeper.

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE – Shirley Jackson (1962)

Harold Bloom – the literary guru that claimed literature and politics should have nothing to do with each other – challenged the idea that Shirley Jackson’s work should be included in the Western canon. Nevertheless, in 2001 he edited a volume of Jackson’s short stories. There he wrote that “Her art of narration [stays] on the surface, and could not depict individual identities. Even ‘The Lottery’ wounds you once, and once only.”

Bloom is dead, and in 20 years time his work likely will only be read by a few academics. I think there’s a fair chance Shirley Jackson will still be read widely 50 years from now.

I’m not trying to dis academia, but Bloom’s tale is stark warning for us meta-writers to not confuse talking taste with pontificating. I have not read The Lottery – I will – but based on We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I’d say that Bloom’s claim about Jackson’s “art of narration” is a bit off.

The Western canon seems a bit of an outdated concept, or, at least, it is outdated as an apolitical idea: the reasons why something becomes a “classic” surely ain’t devoid of politcs. Either way, there is no doubt about the fact that Shirley Jackson belongs at least in the canon of speculative fiction – that peculiar subset of literature.

It turns out that We Have Always Lived in the Castle doesn’t contain any speculative or supernatural elements, yet it evokes an uncanny atmosphere that will delight many readers looking for Otherness. However strange it may be, Jackson manages to stay close to the human experience, and as a result she has written a book that will keep on resonating with generations to come.

BEWILDERMENT – Richard Powers (2021)

Every intelligent, well-informed human that trusts the global scientific community and that recently became a parent undoubtedly will have had the same question staring him or her in the face: why did I knowingly bring a child into this world, a planet on the brink of catastrophic climate change, during the onset of the 6th mass extinction?

Richard Powers, 64, having no children, also felt the need to write a book related to that 21st century existential parental question. On the back cover it is posed like this: “At the heart of Bewilderment lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperilled planet?”

I will end this review with my own answer to these questions – being a father of two toddlers. Before that, there are 3000 words about Powers’ attempt – ultimately a failed and defeatist answer, in a novel that doesn’t really know what it wants to be. I’ll try to judge the book by the ambition that Powers’ expressed himself in various interviews.

But first, the question of genre: Bewilderment should appeal to most science fiction fans, at least on paper.

The father-protagonist is Theo Byrne, an astrobiologist who theorizes about life on exoplanets. Aside some talk about his actual research models, spread throughout the 278-page novel are about 25 short chapters that speculate about possible alien worlds.

The book is set in a slightly alternate today – not in a near-future, as I have seen claimed elsewhere. The novel’s story takes about one year, and Earth’s population is said to be 7.66 billion, so that would be somewhere in 2018. It’s basically our own time, but there are a few alternate events concerning a thinly veiled president Trump, and some existing technology that is used in a bit of a different manner as today. There are only three instances of such technological futurism, two of which are just details and perfectly possible already. The third however is central to the story, and while the technology does also already exist today – decoded neurofeedback (DecNef) – its described effects are totally speculative, even within the boundaries of the story itself, and as such it gives Bewilderment also a sparse magical-realist vibe.

Aside from the speculative content – I’d say this is slipstream rather than full blown sci-fi – Powers also incorporates references to science fiction, most importantly to the 1959 classic Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Theo Byrne is vocally proud of his collection of 2,000 science fiction books, Stapledon‘s Star Maker was “the bible of my youth”, and also the Fermi paradox is one of Bewilderment‘s themes – yet another staple of science fiction.

What’s not to like, fandom?

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS – Kurt Vonnegut (1973)

Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a pivotal book in Vonnegut’s career as an author. It’s his 7th novel, and the one published after his masterwork Slaughterhouse-Five. Published when he was 53, it took him years to write, with a lengthy pause due to chronic depression. In a way, it is his farewell to fiction, intending to abandon the fictional form and the novel as ways to change the world or get to the truth. He returned to novels quickly however, publishing seven more.

I think the book was difficult to write because Slaughterhouse-Five was so good, and Vonnegut knew it would be hard to top. Despite the long gestation period, he wasn’t happy with the result and “gave it a C grade on a report card of his published work.” The critics were critical too, yet it remains one of his best known works – maybe in the wake of SH5‘s success?

Every artist has to deal with repetition, and Vonnegut tried to tackle it in this book by trying out two new things, but it are not much more than formal attempts, hardly changing the tone and the voice of his writing. The result is that Breakfast of Champions never rises above being generic Vonnegut. A quick dissection after the jump.

IN DEFENSE OF NEGATIVE REVIEWS

Following an exchange of thoughts on a worst reads of 2020 post on Re-enchantment Of The World, I’ve decided to write a bit about writing negative reviews, and the abundance of positive reviews one encounters.

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I’m sure some of the more critical readers of this blog are at times baffled by all the positive reviews they see for – let’s be frank here – generic, uninspired produce. That is very noticeable on Goodreads, where new titles often harvest +4 scores quickly, and also in the blogosphere negative reviews are fairly rare.

That most books published today are generic needs no proof. Still, let me refer you to this brilliant piece on Speculiction, that looks at book titles of Fantasy published around 2018. The proliferation of accessible word-processing, cheap laptop computers and ever better and cheaper printing methods have flooded the market.

Everybody with a creative inclination and enough spare time can write a book nowadays. Our culture seems to laud free expression and believing in your own, unique self, and that seems to trick lots of people into thinking they are artists too. The dedication of Herbert and Tolkien to write their big books by hand or on a typewriter simply isn’t necessary anymore today. Editing has never been more easy.

But while Joseph Beuys claimed that Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler in the 60ies, his beef was with the fact that not everybody could study at an art academy in Germany at the time. So rather than a call for everybody to start writing books, Beuys’ ostensibly democratic dictum should rather be read as a call to learn how to write books first.

Pulp and generic writing have always existed, but whereas the pulp around 1960 was published in short books of about 140 pages, today it seems growth is an inescapable law for books too – new titles averaging 450 pages instead, often as a part of a series. While they have a cultural veneer, big publishers are in the sales business first and foremost: selling more volume = more profit.

I could add e-readers, self-publishing and free blogging as factors, but the gist is clear: the speculative fiction reader is overwhelmed by new titles this day and age.

This phenomenon isn’t restricted to speculative fiction, by the way. I have followed the metal scene actively since the early 90ies, and also in metal there is an exponential proliferation of bands, albums, releases. For fringe genres like black or death metal there were only a handful of labels, and one could more or less keep up with everything released if one was so inclined and had the money or enough tapes to trade. But with success comes a bandwagon, and somewhere between 1995 and 2000 things mushroomed.

Similar causes are easily pointed at here as well, and technology is a big part of it: everybody can make a very decent home studio with just a laptop and one mic. Top notch recording & mixing software like Audacity and Bandcamp are free. Designing a decent album cover similarly isn’t that hard anymore as it was in the early days of MS Paint or xeroxed fanzines. On top of all that, Bandcamp and others have solved the problem of distribution. 

That leaves marketing as the sole problem – both for the aspiring metal band, as the big publisher of speculative fiction. And as technology, the internet and free time steadily become more available in developing countries too, the pool of creative humans becomes bigger and bigger with each passing day. 

Enter negative reviews.

DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD – Olga Tokarczuk (2009)

This book came to my attention a year ago, when Polish author Olga Tokarczuk won the 2018 Nobel Prize for literature – which was awarded in 2019, simultaneously with that of Peter Handke. One of four books of Tokarczuk available in English, the translation of Antonia Lloyd-Jones was published in 2018.

I was instantly intrigued by its title – I guess I still am a teenage metalhead first and foremost, and it’s hard to think of another title that captures the awe and worldview expressed in extreme metal more than this partial quote of English Romantic poet William Blake. His Proverbs from Hell – from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell – start with these lines:

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

I’ll tell you a bit more on the excess & the wisdom in the novel after the jump.

This also struck me as a cousin of The Door by Hungarian author Magda Szabó – an absolute masterpiece that also deals with an eccentric old female protagonist that’s something of a housekeeper, and similarly has a vibe that gently flirts with fairy tales & the mythic. The Door is one of my favorite books ever, so I had to check out this one too.

While Szabó’s book is superior, I had a great time reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

HUMAN TREES – Matthew Revert (2017)

Melbourne’s Matthew Revert probably doesn’t ring a bell for most regular visitors of this blog – Human Trees is not exactly sci-fi. Yet he has made quite a name for himself within a small circle of experimental music lovers, with releases on seminal labels like Graham Lambkin’s Kye, and Jon Abbey’s Erstwhile Records. Known on a larger scale is his graphic design, Revert being “perhaps the most influential and sought-after graphic designer in indie publishing” as noted by Gabino Iglesias in his glowing review of this novel.

Human Trees is Revert’s fifth book. It might be of interest to some speculative fiction fans, as some of those like their fiction weird and a bit surreal. This has a good dose of that – it is mainly set in the waiting rooms of a hospital where clocks and other timekeeping devices don’t function. I have seen other reviewers casually throw around names like David Lynch, Kafka and Beckett, so if those references trigger you: please read on.

REVIEW INDEX BY AUTHOR

Click here for an index of my non-fiction or art book reviews only, and here for an index of my longer fiction reviews of a more scholarly & philosophical nature. My reviews in Dutch are here.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

Joe Abercrombie

• The Blade Itself (2007)
• Before They Are Hanged (2008)

Daniel Abraham

• A Shadow In Summer (2006)
• A Betrayal In Winter (2007)
• An Autumn War (2008)
• The Price Of Spring (2009)
• The Dragon’s Path (2011)

David Adger

• Language Unlimited (2019)

Saladin Ahmed

• Throne Of The Crescent Moon (2012)

Brian W. Aldiss

• Non-Stop (1958)  (also published as Starship)

Poul Anderson

• Tau Zero (1970)

Isaac Asimov

• Foundation trilogy (1951-’53)
• Caves Of Steel (1954)
• The End Of Eternity (1955)
• The Gods Themselves (1972)
• Prelude To Foundation (1988)
• Forward The Foundation (1993)

Margaret Atwood

• The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

B

Paolo Bacigalupi

• The Windup Girl (2009)
• The Water Knife (2015)

R. Scott Bakker

• The Darkness That Comes Before (2003)
• The Warrior Prophet (2005)

J.G. Ballard

• The Drowned World (1962)
• The Four-Dimensional Nightmare (1963)
• The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)

Josiah Bancroft

• Senlin Ascends (2013, 2017)

Iain M. Banks

• Inversions (1998)
• The Algebraist (2004)
• Transition (2009)
• Surface Detail (2011)

Stephen Baxter

• The Medusa Chronicles (2016)  (with Alastair Reynolds)

Elizabeth Bear

• Range Of Ghosts (2012)
• Shattered Pillars (2013)
• Steles Of The Sky (2014)

Greg Bear

• Eon (1985)

Bradley P. Beaulieu

• Twelve Kings In Sharakhai (2015)

Ned Beauman

• Venomous Lumpsucker (2022)

Adam Becker

• What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics (2018)
  

Robert Jackson Bennett

• City of Stairs (2014)

Jean-Marie Henri Berckmans

• Geschiedenis van de Revolutie – Brief aan een meisje uit Hoboken (1977 / 1994)
• Vergeet niet wat de zevenslaper zei (1989)
• Rock & Roll met Frieda Vindevogel (1991)
• Café De Raaf nog steeds gesloten (1990)
• Taxi Naar De Boerhaavestraat (1995)
• Slecht nieuws voor Doctor Paf de Pierennaaier, Pandemonium in de Grauwzone (1998)

Alfred Bester

• The Demolished Man (1953)
• The Stars My Destination (1956)  (also published as Tiger! Tiger!)

Jonathan Bikker & Gregor J.M. Weber

• Rembrandt: The Late Works (2014)

Michael Bishop

• A Funeral For The Eyes Of Fire (1980)  (also published as Eyes Of Fire)

Louis Paul Boon

• De Voorstad Groeit (1943)
• Menuet (1955)

Thomas Boraud

• How The Brain Makes Decisions (2020)

Ray Bradbury

• Fahrenheit 451 (1954)

John Brunner

• Stand On Zanzibar (1968)

Allen Buchanan

• The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory (2018) (with Russell Powell)

Octavia E. Butler

• Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995)

C

Chris Ceustermans

• Schrijven in de Grauwzone: J.M.H. Berckmans, de biografie (2018)

Ted Chiang

• Exhalation (2008)
• Stories Of Your Life And Others (2010)

Noam Chomsky

• What Kind Of Creatures Are We? (2016)

Arthur C. Clarke

• Childhood’s End (1953)
• Rendezvous With Rama (1973)

Susanna Clarke

• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2004)
• The Ladies Of Grace Adieu And Other Stories (2006)
• Piranesi (2020)

D.G. Compton

• Farewell, Earth’s Bliss (1966)

Glen Cook

• The Black Company (1984)

C.S.E. Cooney

• The Bone Swans Of Amandale (2015)
• Bone Swans: stories (2015)
• Desdemona And The Deep (2019)

James S.A. Corey

• Leviathan Wakes (2011)

Blake Crouch

• Dark Matter (2016)
• Recursion (2019)

D

Kenneth L. Davis

• The Emotional Foundations Of Personality: A Neurobiological And Evolutionary Approach (2018) (with Jaak Panksepp)

Aliette de Bodard

• The House Of Shattered Wings (2015)

Samuel L. Delany

• Babel-17 (1966)

Don DeLillo

• White Noise (1985)
• Zero K (2016)

Philip K. Dick

• Ubik (1969)
• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
• Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (1975)
• A Scanner Darkly (1977)

Seth Dickinson

• The Traitor Baru Cormorant (2015)

Nico Dockx

• Nico Dockx Talks With Dennis Tyfus – I Know This Sounds Quite Ridiculous, But I Just Follow The Line (2018)  (with Dennis Tyfus)

E

Greg Egan

• Quarantine (1992)
• Schild’s Ladder (2002)
• Incandescence (2008)
• Zendegi (2010)
• Perihelion Summer (2019)
• Dispersion (2020)

Steven Erikson

• Gardens Of The Moon (1999)
• Deadhouse Gates (2000)

Andreas Eschbach

• The Hair-Carpet Weavers (1995)  (also published as The Carpet Makers)

F

Jeffrey Ford

• The Physiognomy (1997)

G

Neil Gaiman

• American Gods (2001)

Nicole Galland

• The Rise And Fall Of D.O.D.O. (2017)  (with Neal Stephenson)

Martin Gayford

• Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy (2021)  (with David Hockney)

Lisa-Ann Gershwin

• Jellyfish: A Natural History (2016)

William Gibson

• Neuromancer (1984)
• Burning Chrome And Other Stories (1986)
• Virtual Light (1993)
• Pattern Recognition (2003)

Carolyn Ives Gilman

• Dark Orbit (2015)

Simona Ginsburg

• The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness (2019)  (with Eva Jablonka)

Michael Govan & Christine Y. Kim

• James Turrell: A Retrospective (2013)

H

Joe Haldeman

• The Forever War (1974)

Peter F. Hamilton

• The Reality Dysfunction (1996)

Wayne G. Hammond

• The Lord Of The Rings: A Reader’s Companion (2005)  (with Christina Scull)

Helene Hanff

• 84, Charing Cross Road (1970)

M. John Harrison

• Light (2002)
• Nova Swing (2006)
• Empty Space: A Haunting (2012)
• You Should Come With Me Now (2017)
• The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again (2020)

Marlen Haushofer

• The Wall (1963, transl. 1990)

Robert A. Heinlein

• Starship Troopers (1959)
• The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (1966)

Ernest Hemingway

• The Old Man And The Sea (1952)

Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

• Hunters Of Dune (2006)
• Sandworms Of Dune (2007)

Frank Herbert

• Dune (1965)
• Destination: Void (1965)
• The Santaroga Barrier (1968)
• Dune Messiah (1969)
• Whipping Star (1970)
• Soul Catcher (1972)
• Children Of Dune (1976)
• The Dosadi Experiment (1977)
• God Emperor Of Dune (1981)
• Heretics Of Dune (1984)
• Chapterhouse: Dune (1985)

Werner Herzog

• Of Walking In Ice, Munich – Paris 11/23 to 12/14, 1974 (1978)

Cecelia Holland

• Dragon Heart (2015)

Hans Werner Holzwarth

• Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Art of Storytelling (2020)
• David Hockney. A Chronology. (2020)  (with Lutz Eitel)

Leen Huet

• Pieter Bruegel: De Biografie (2016)

Dave Hutchinson

• Europe in Autumn (2014)
• Europe at Midnight (2015)
• Europe in Winter (2016)
• Acadie (2017)

I

Kazuo Ishiguro

• The Buried Giant (2015)

Emmi Itäranta

• Memory Of Water (2012, transl. 2014)

J

Eva Jablonka

• The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness (2019)  (with Simona Gingsburg)

Shirley Jackson

• The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

Nora K. Jemisin

• The Fifth Season (2015)

Alejandro Jodorowsky

• The Incal (1981-1988) (with Mœbius)

K

Anna Kavan

• Ice (1967)

Guy Gavriel Kay

• The Summer Tree (1984)
• The Wandering Fire (1986)
• The Darkest Road (1986)
• The Lions of Al-Rassan (1995)

Lásló Krasznahorkai

• A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East (2003, translated 2022)

L

David F. Lancy

• The Anthropology Of Childhood (2014)

Susanne Lange

• Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work (2005)

Ann Leckie

• Ancillary Justice (2013)
• Ancillary Sword (2014)
• Ancillary Mercy (2015)
• Provenance (2017)

Yoon Ha Lee

• Ninefox Gambit (2016)
• Raven Stratagem (2017)

Ursula K. Le Guin

• A Wizard Of Earthsea (1968)
• The Left Hand Of Darkness (1969)
• The Tombs Of Atuan (1971)
• The Lathe Of Heaven (1971)
• The Farthest Shore (1973)
• The Dispossessed (1974)
• Tehanu (1990)

Stanisław Lem

• Solaris (1961)
• Fiasco (1986)

Cixin Liu

• The Three-Body Problem (2007)
• The Dark Forest (2008)
• Death’s End (2010)
• The Wandering Earth (2013)

Ken Liu

• The Grace Of Kings (2015)
• The Paper Menagerie And Other Stories (2016)

Christopher Lloyd

• Picasso And The Art Of Drawing (2018)

M

Helen Macdonald

• H Is For Hawk (2014)

Hilary Mantel

• Wolf Hall (2009)
• Bring Up The Bodies (2012)

Volker Manuth

• Rembrandt. The Self-Portraits (2019)  (with Marieke de Winkel)

Barry N. Malzberg

• Beyond Apollo (1972)

Arkady Martine

• A Memory Called Empire (2019)

Cormac McCarthy

• Blood Meridian, Or The Evening Redness In The West (1985)

Ian McDonald

• River Of Gods (2004)
• Brasyl (2007)
• Luna: New Moon (2015)
• Luna: Wolf Moon (2017)

Richard McGuire

• Here (2014)

Patricia Anne McKillip

• The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (1974)

Mike Meginnis

• Drowning Practice (2022)

Christof Metzger

• Albrecht Dürer (2019)

Rainer Metzger

• Vincent Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings (1989) (edited by Ingo F. Walther)

Walter M. Miller Jr.

• A Canticle For Leibowitz (1959)

China Miéville

• The City & The City (2009)
• Embassytown (2011)

David Mitchell

• Black Swan Green (2006)
• The Bone Clocks (2014)

Naomi Mitchison

• Memoirs Of A Spacewoman (1962)

Richard K. Morgan

• Altered Carbon (2002)

Ottessa Moshfegh

• Lapvona (2022)

Museum Frieder Burda

• James Turrell: Extraordinary Ideas – Realized (2018)

N

Vladimir Nabokov

• Pale Fire (1962)

Linda Nagata

• Pacific Storm (2020)

Sylvain Neuvel

• Sleeping Giants (2016)

Larry Niven

• Ringworld (1970)

Naomi Novik

• Uprooted (2015)

O

Nnedi Okorafor

• The Book Of Phoenix (2015)

Brian Olewnick

• Keith Rowe: The Room Extended (2018)

George Orwell

• Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)

P

Ada Palmer

• Too Like the Lightning (2016)
• Seven Surrenders (2017)
• The Will to Battle (2017)
• Perhaps the Stars (2021)

Dexter Palmer

• Version Control (2016)
• Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen (2019)

Jaak Panksepp

• The Emotional Foundations Of Personality: A Neurobiological And Evolutionary Approach (2018) (with Kenneth L. Davis)

Frederik Pohl

• Gateway (1977)

Russell Powell  (as of 2021 known as Rachell Powell)

• The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory (2018) (with Allen Buchanan)
• Contingency And Convergence : Toward A Cosmic Biology Of Body And Mind (2020)  (The Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology)

Richard Powers

• Bewilderment (2021)

Christopher Priest

• The Inverted World (1974)
• An Infinite Summer (1979)

R

R. Eric Reuss

• Spirit Island (2017)

Matthew Revert

• Human Trees (2017)

Alastair Reynolds

• Redemption Ark (2002)
• Absolution Gap (2003)
• Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003)
• Century Rain (2004)
• Pushing Ice (2005)
• House Of Suns (2008)
• Terminal World (2010)
• Slow Bullets (2015)
• The Medusa Chronicles (2016)  (with Stephen Baxter)

Adam Roberts

• The Thing Itself (2015)  (scroll to the bottom of the Egan review)

Kim Stanley Robinson

• The Wild Shore (1984)
• Icehenge (1984)
• The Memory Of Whiteness (1985)
• The Gold Coast (1988)
• A Short, Sharp Shock (1990)
• Pacific Edge (1990)
• The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
• 2312 (2012)
• Shaman (2013)
• Aurora (2015)
• Green Earth (2015)  (the revised Science In The Capital trilogy (2004, 2005, 2007))
• New York 2140 (2017)
• The Ministry For The Future (2020)
• The High Sierra: A Love Story (2022)

Alex Rosenberg

• Darwinian Reductionism, Or, How To Stop Worrying And Love Molecular Biology (2006)
• How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories (2018)

Jeff L. Rosenheim

• Bernd and Hilla Becher (2022)

Patrick Rothfuss

• The Slow Regard Of Silent Things (2014)

Joanna Russ

• We Who Are About To… (1975)

S

Brandon Sanderson

• The Way Of Kings (2010)
• Words Of Radiance (2014)

Carter Scholz

• Radiance (2002)
• Gypsy – Plus… (2015)

Christina Scull

• The Lord Of The Rings: A Reader’s Companion (2005)  (with Wayne G. Hammond)

Manfred Sellink

• Breugel In Detail (2014)

Robert Silverberg

• Hawksbill Station (1968)
• The Man In The Maze (1969)
• Dying Inside (1972)

Clifford D. Simak

• Way Station (1963)

Dan Simmons

• The Fall Of Hyperion (1990)

Jan Six

• Rembrandt’s Portrait Of A Young Gentleman (2018)

Jan Spitzer

• How Molecular Forces and Rotating Planets Create Life: The Emergence and Evolution of Prokaryotic Cells (2021)

W. Olaf Stapledon

• Last And First Men: A Story Of The Near And Far Future (1930)
• Sirius (1944)

Neal Stephenson

• The Diamond Age (1995)
• Quicksilver (2003)
• Seveneves (2015)
• The Rise And Fall Of D.O.D.O. (2017)  (with Nicole Galland)
• Fall or, Dodge in Hell (2019)
• Termination Shock (2021)

Arkady & Boris Strugatsky

• Roadside Picnic (1972)

Theodore Sturgeon

• More Than Human (1953)

Izumi Suzuki

• Terminal Boredom (2021)

Larry W. Swanson (ed.)

• The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (2017)

Magda Szabó

• The Door (1987)

T

Adrian Tchaikovsky

• Children of Time (2015)

Walter Tevis

• The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963)

Lavie Tidhar

• Central Station (2016)

Felix Timmermans

• Boerenpsalm (1935)

Olga Tokarczuk

• Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead (2009)

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

• The Lord Of The Rings (1955)

Michael Tomasello

• Becoming Human: A Theory Of Ontogeny (2019)
• The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans (2022)

Dennis Tyfus

• Nico Dockx Talks With Dennis Tyfus – I Know This Sounds Quite Ridiculous, But I Just Follow The Line (2018)  (with Nico Dockx)

V

Jeff VanderMeer

• Annihilation (2014)

Pierre L. Van den Berghe

• The Ethnic Phenomenon (1981)

Ernst van de Wetering

• Rembrandt: The Painter Thinking (2016)

Brian K. Vaughan

• Saga: Book One (2014)  (with Fiona Staples)

Denis Villeneuve

• Dune: Part One (2021)  (movie review)

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

• The Sirens Of Titan (1959)
• Cat’s Cradle (1963)
• Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
• Breakfast Of Champions (1973)
• Armageddon In Retrospect (2008)

W

Peter Watts

• Blindsight (2006)
• The Freeze-Frame Revolution (2018)

Andy Weir

• The Martian (2011)

H.G. Wells

• The Time Machine (1895)

Peter Williams

• Jellyfish (2020)

Don Winslow

• The Power of the Dog (2005)

Gene Wolfe

• The Fifth Head Of Cerberus (1972)
• The Book Of The New Sun (1980-1983)
• Nightside The Long Sun (1993)
• Lake Of The Long Sun (1994)
• Caldé Of The Long sun (1995)
• The Knight (2004)

John Wyndham

• The Day Of The Triffids (1951)

Z

Roger Zelazny

• This Immortal (1966) (also published as …And Call Me Conrad)
• Lord Of Light (1967)
• The Second Chronicles Of Amber (1985-91)