The Ministry for the Future

Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future was published in 2020 and is well-reviewed and has no doubt sold very well, so there is no call for a further review, which is fortunate as I do not know how to review books and so do not do so. All I can do, with absolute […]

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Testostero

The opening of the first paragraph of Testostero by David Foster may be the most Australian thing* I have ever read, and it is not even set here: The most astounding feature of Venice to Noel Horniman, who at age forty is seeing it for the first time, is not the architecture – which seems […]

Horror as optimism

I knew what books she liked … – gloomy horror stories, Gothic novels with crumpled covers featuring a drawing of a Bat. Perverted monks, severed hands that murder people, coffins flushed out of graveyards by floods. Evidently reading this sort of thing confirmed her in the conviction that we are not living in the worst […]

Mr Waters is not wrong

My idea of rich is that you can buy every book you ever want without looking at the price and you’re never around assholes. That’s the two things to really fight for in life.” John Waters Except that I agree with Anthony Burgess that the preferred spelling is ‘arse’.

KABOOM man

Well, that was a lot of fun. With that title – “The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man”, and my love of his Fractured Europe series, I was always going to read this novel of Dave Hutchinson‘s. However, I am never early to the party, and I see that it has been out in the […]

The Father

Anthony Hopkins won the Oscar for his performance, so you don’t need me to tell you that his performance is brilliant, nor that The Father is a … film. What adjectives to include? Strong. Very, very good. Cast, writing, direction, every technical aspect, very, very good. Harrowing. Unsentimental. Heart breaking – in the best sense, […]

Contributor Interview: David Stevens

Originally posted on ProleSCARYet:
What’s your favorite anti-capitalist book or film?John Carpenter’s?They Live, and the radio play?Hercules Fountopoulos and Socrates Dassaklis in the Great Teenage Proletariat Revolution?(especially the theme song – would you like me to hum a few bars?). What radicalized you? How did you first become critical of capitalism?Radicalised? Moi? Self-criticism properly engaged…

Partisan

Partisan is a 2015 film directed by Ariel Kleiman, that appears not terribly well regarded and given the box-office, not seen by many, and so if I have a thought about it, it hardly matters. For those who love horror and Weird, it has much going for it. Importantly, it is confident: bold and solid, […]

Australian mouse plague

You may have seen the news about (or you may be living through) a rodent plague happening now. My children understand my wife’s murophobia when these events occur – she experienced one of these while growing up in rural NSW. Rodent plague = need for rodent poisoning = danger for rodent predators. This is a […]