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Showing posts with the label Valente

Five Stories about Climate Change Hitting Europe

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Brighton Pier, for reasons explained below - picture by Jean Housen (Wikimedia Commons) By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Science fiction would not be what it is today if it wouldn't deal with the topic of climate change as a very prominent subject. Many stories address Europe's future as it may be impacted by related processes, and to do a comprehensive review of all those that are relevant in this respect would be... wonderful! For lack of time, and in appreciation of all the collective wisdom out there, however, this brief post only looks to sow some seeds, mention a few works, call attention to the issue, and, basically, invite others to point out further, other works that pertain to our interests here, in the comments... if there are other survivors out there ready to make such comments. (1) One of the first authors who come to mind, historically speaking, is J. G. Ballard (a.k.a. James ...

Review (#8): "Memory of Water," a novel by Emmi Itäranta (2012)

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Underground springwater reservoir beneath Mount Gellért in Budapest, the author's photo (2018) By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Seeing my reviews full of praise for writers like Bo Balder , Anita Moskát or Yuriy Shcherbak you may wonder: Can this guy bite? Does he have the guts to write something really critical for a review? Well, the wondering ends today... This will be a takedown. "Lovely," "lyrical," "beautiful," etc. These are the adjectives I've typically heard from people describing how Finnish author Emmi Itäranta's book is written. They had less to say about its substance. Now, I'm really not hard put to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good story. I like to enjoy literary values independently of plausibility issues. For a recent and good example of when I benefited from this, take Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven , another dystop...