Reviews and Comments

The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.

Casual profundities sweep by almost unnoticed in José Saramago's urgent yet effortless run-on writing style, very ably translated by Margaret Jull Costa. By the time we arrive at the vast nameless city with the protagonist potter and his family, the discovery at the heart of the story is as much a shock to the reader as it is to our characters.

Matthew Hughes has an effortlessly witty writing style that is a pleasure to read as we explore the Commons of his evocative 'noösphere', along with several other inventive concepts, any of which would be substantial enough to write several more books on.

Edifying treatise on the Daoist art (and perhaps necessity) of detaching role from self-identity and vice-versa, as illustrated in the Zhuangzi.

A masterpiece of postcolonial literary sf, rightfully belonging alongside those of Octavia Butler, Ursula le Guin, and the dystopias of fellow Canadian Margaret Atwood, and Hopkinson is as powerful a storyteller as her peers. Seeing through the eyes of Brown Girl's Jamaican and Caribbean characters might be challenging at first for certain readers more accustomed to the voices almost always given precedence in conventional literature, but its story is as fully immersive as a ceremonial drum rhythm. With its Afrofuturistic elements and its initially bleak but ultimately hopeful vision of a city after/beyond local collapse of the nation-state, I would even call Brown Girl in the Ring a foundational classic not just of the still-emerging solarpunk movement, but also of its younger sibling lunarpunk, a darker and more mystical imagining of how such futures may unfold.

An excellent and thorough analysis of what it will take for us to overcome the existential challenges of the climate crisis, including once and for all confronting the reality that we must move past the unsustainable and destructive system of capitalism itself.

A fun collection with a humour and a rollicking pulp style reminiscent of both classic mystery fare and Golden Age science fiction (for better or worse), but most interesting in the stories where Hughes explores the dreamlike Commons of his Jungian noösphere, an inspired concept with worlds of potential.

Very useful guide to non-hierarchical practices applicable beyond the workplace for democratic organizations of all kinds, especially the insights into consent-based decision-making. As late-stage capitalism continues to play out and we seek to progress past stale vertical paradigms, one could even say that this is a glimpse into what any viable future of work and social organization looks like.

Humanity's manifesto for tomorrow, a sober assessment of the threats we face in the coming century and what it will take for us to overcome them.