Authority is the second book in the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. After the strange, horrifying events that took place in Area X during the twelfth expedition there, John ”Control” Rodriguez is sent to Southern Reach to get some answers about what really happened. Unfortunately, he finds that people are not so obliging when it comes to providing them, and nothing is as it seems. It is much, much worse. In what feels like a nightmare, he tries to find out the truth about […]
Divided we fall
I’ve owned the Southern Reach trilogy for ages. I don’t even remember how I found out about it, if it was a fellow Cannonballer who recommended it or if I read about it on a friend’s Facebook page or something else entirely. I lent it to my dad before I had read it, and, because he lives in another country, it took about a year before I got it back. So when I finally started reading it, I had forgotten what it was about. I’m […]
The Black Mirror vibes are strong with this one
”Stories of your life and others” by Ted Chiang is a collection of fictional short stories about such diverse topics as the tower of Babylon, superintelligence, and automata. It also includes the story that the movie ”Arrival” was based on, so add ”aliens” to this list of topics. Considering how wide the thematic spectrum of the book is, it comes as no surprise that the language and tone varies. Some of the stories are so horrifyingly dystopian that they could be easily turned into […]
We’re all flawed
It’s impossible to write a review of Harper Lee’s ”Go set a watchman” without comparing it to her masterpiece ”To kill a mockingbird”. My comparison is short: The former not even close to the latter. ”To kill a mockingbird” is a classic for a reason. That’s not to say that ”Go set a watchman” is a bad book; it has many redeeming features. But more on that later. Jean Louise (aka Scout) Finch, one of the central characters of TKAM, is now an adult. She […]
Emilio Sandoz is a Jesuit priest. He has just arrived back to Earth after having been on a journey to another planet to make contact with aliens. He is a broken man. The things he has been through have left him shaken to his core, and they have shaken his faith in God. We find out these things gradually. The story is told backwards in that it starts with the return of Sandoz to Earth. Only later, as Sandoz himself starts to come to terms […]
Carl Sagan is known for making astronomy and the mysteries of the universe accessible to the public, through his lectures, television shows and books. His novel ”Contact” was made into a popular film, one that I loved with all my heart despite its flaws. So saying negative things about his collection of essays ”Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium” is a little like swearing in church: you should only really do it under your breath so no […]
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