Apostrophes & Apocalypses: The First Collection From One of the Most Acclaimed SF Writers of the Decade
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.27 (663 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0312861478 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-06-25 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"Gentleman Pervert, Out on a Spree," for example, starts with some speculation about tagging, and the speed with which an information age can make a marginal life worse--Ken is photographed curb-crawling and is then divorced and fired before he even gets home. John Barnes writes hard SF with a heart; his speculations are always grounded in working things out from first principles, but he remembers to think also about how his imaginary situations might feel. The doomed soldier of "Advice to the Civilized" knows that in that regret lies the whole difference between civilization and barbarism. The stories come packaged with some nonfiction--Barnes writes well about building a world and his views on style and criticism; he writes inspirationally about education and his hopes for the future. --Roz Kaveney, . When Barnes writes of the fall of civilization to Christianity and/or barbarism, his rationalism does not rule out empathy for other ways of seeing--and there is a sens
What can I say? John Barnes is simply the best when it comes to hard sci-fi. I stumbled upon his work after reading a short story in the "Drakas!" collection based on the alt-universe created by S.M. Stirling (another fave). I picked up a copy of "Kaleidoscope Century" and was hooked. Barnes is a master of dark humor and has a keen eye on the human condition. The short stories in "A&A" are marvelous, a few laugh out loud funny, all thought provoking (I'll never look at wolves the same way again). The essays are equally good. Barnes is wonderfully controversial, politically incorrect, irreverent, and one of my favorite writers of all time.. Barnes' short stories are even better than his novels Travisji Corcoran I came to John Barnes' writing through his novels, and was very pleasantly suprised to find his short stories. They pack almost as much creativity as is usually found in a 300 page work into a scant 30 pages. The downside to this, of course, is that after being so drawn in to one of his universes, you want to stay with the world and the characters for another 270 pagesOne great thing about this collection are the essays interleaved between the stories. The insight into how Barnes arrives at his plots and universes is a special treat.. An honest author exposing his flaws? I have had very mixed feelings about Barnes' novel-length work. Descriptions of Barnes as the next Heinlein never sold his books to me as I stopped deifying the 'Dean of Science Fiction' long ago; indeed, in my view, Barnes' flaws often replicated Heinlein's stylistic and imaginative shortcomings. He also seemed to have a rather boring way of constructing his worlds whether they were supposed to be shockingly foregrounded or merely backcloth.This collection managed to both surprise me and confirm some of my previous impressions. I found the author's commentaries on his stories engaging and enlightening, though I did not al
Before novels like Mother of Storms, A Million Open Doors, and One for the Morning Glory brought him to the attention of book-buyers, John Barnes was known to science fiction fans for his quirky, powerful short stories, many published in SF magazines in the late 1980s. Most of them have been unavailable for more than a decade. Now the best of them are collected for the first time, along with several new SF stories that appear here for the first time ever.