Reademption Literature

The Southern Reach T rilogy has been a polarizing reading experience for me; mostly because of the meandering second installment Authority . That being the case, I don't think I could give this entire series a perfect grade in spite of all the overwhelmingly positive reviews it got from a lot of critics and even veteran authors like Stephen King himself. There are, however, amazing aspects to the first and third novels that I really found myself deeply immersed in, and these deserve due credit for this review. The one thing that stopped it from becoming one of of my top favorite sci-fi novels (next to Frank Herbret's DUNE,  Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep , and Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End ) is most probably because of its experimental nature that was unevenly delivered and executed on paper.  An off-beat favorite sci-fi books of mine that was not a classic like the ones aforementioned is Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days. ...

This was a polarizing installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy, and for very valid reasons. I heard such praises about this trilogy for a while, and I was very happy buying the complete series in one swoop last year. When I finally decided to start reading, I was incredibly intrigued by the atmosphere and premise of it especially with the first book Annihilation  which definitely gave me some Lost- esque vibes. That being said, this next book Authority  was nothing like its predecessor. There is a disparity between their length, content, tone, and overall approach to the narrative.  Annihilation  introduced us to a first-person perspective from the character of a biologist whose name was purposefully withheld. She was a member of the four-women twelfth expedition sent to the pristine wilderness of mystery known only as Area X. That first book focused on her insights about the inexplicable events happening in that remote location, as well as memories and rec...

"Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answers long enough." Any bibliophile knows that there are certain books that often call to us; books that, once picked up, would be incredibly difficult to put down. And long after the spell of its story has been broken, the link can never be severed completely. It would haunt the reader even after that first page has been turned. There are several books that have had the same effect on me, and most of them have been science fiction stories, if not all. I've read at least 12 sci-fi books since 2014, and they have stayed with me, tucked away in the deep recesses of subconscious, both darkening my soul a little as they set me free as well. When I encountered copies of this trilogy, I was mesmerized of the covers, and had great hopes for the promising story within, seeing that it's critically-acclaimed. I curtailed these expectations, however, when I saw a few of users I follow in Goodreads, and whose rev...

My favorite speculative fiction of all time is Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days  which I read back in 2012, while the very first science fiction I read was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World . I read these books only a few months apart and I was forever changed because of them and this change has definitely got me interested to venture on acquiring and experiencing more of what the science fiction genre has to offer as much as I could. Eleven more sci-fi books later, I remained insatiable, more so after finishing this one. The very first thing that struck me while in the middle of consuming this novel by Walter Tevis is that it was unmistakably a majestic blend of both the dystopic landscapes featured in Huxley's book, and written in the same nostalgic manner of aching, melancholic sensibility and spiritual contemplation very much alive in Cunningham's work. With that, I couldn't help but find myself deeply embedded in the pores of this haunting tale of Mockingbi...

I've had the longest fascination about war and the military lifestyle whether in historical books or works of fiction in general. There's just something deeply stirring about men and women giving up their lives in service of country or a government system even when that kind of loyalty demands death, destruction and bitter endings. I have great respect and admiration for this kind of people even if those things are mixed with pity and sadness as well. My enjoyment for reading, watching and learning about wars throughout histories is a double-edged one; on one hand, it does break my heart to know about such fragile and empty lives being sacrificed as people in such compromising positions have to face the sharpest consequences. On the other, I often view the bloodshed and deaths during war-times (fictional or not) to be the most thrilling and exciting stories ever told. To have literature grant me access and safe passage inside the heads of the people who were part of it, and...

This .GIF image perfectly captures the range of distinct reactions that Philip K. Dick's Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said got out of me in the expanse of reading it in the last four days. There was bafflement--then disbelief--then mild disgust--and, finally, karmic relief. Don't get me wrong, it's not a badly written book. Of course fucking not, it's PHILIP K. DICK! His outstanding Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep will forever destroy me in this world and in another parallel existence because asdfghjklmalfunctionerror10101... Anyway, that being said, something along the way went wrong as I peruse through the two hundred and four pages of this novel; I can't really pinpoint exactly where, but all I know is that I couldn't help but alternate between confusion and rage as I went on. Originally, around eighty pages or so, I was going to rate it with four stars because, right from the get-go, I was just enjoying the brisk, no-nonesense yet highly engross...

Enter the following data: META (search for definition) SCIENCE FICTION (search for definition) TIME TRAVEL (search for definition) Computing... Trajectory locked. To find the only way to exit a time loop, please refer to Appendix A of this manual ( How To Live Safely Inside a Science Fictional Universe ) +++ When it happens, this is what happens: By reading Charles Yu's incomparably original work of fiction, I'm realizing, have realized and will have realized that I've lived and I am still living inside a box that travels backwards in time when I'm supposed to propel myself forward into the unknown future of my own makings. We are all time machines , he claims, but most people's machines are broken that they get stuck or get looped or get trapped. Our greatest anxiety is the box we live inside of--everyone's personal TARDIS, if you may--and it's something we use to evade the present, re-create the past, and deal with the future. ...

DUNE intimidates me.  I don't think I could ever recall a time that I became almost terrified to review a book and share my most intimate thoughts about reading it until now. I confess that I don't know anything about Dune until three years ago when I made the active decision to explore what the science fiction genre has to offer. I researched a lot of online lists regarding the most critically-acclaimed books and Dune was the one that keeps appearing all the time so I know that it must mean something so I ventured into buying it one afternoon in August last year when my laptop's battery charger quit on me suddenly, so I was offline for the rest of the day. And my world in that moment has never been the same since I started reading it. Everything about doing so was unplanned and it couldn't have been more perfect. Just seventy-four pages in and I knew I was reading something special already. The magnificence of the novel is often subtle yet clear-cut in a...