Raritania

When we recount the history of science fiction, it is common to point to some early figure as its founder--for instance, Mary Shelley, Jules...

Are books too long these days? I will say up front that many of the novels that have most impressed, most affected, most influenced me wer...

I haven't done an overview of the summer box office in quite a while, in part because it has become so damned repetitive, in its commerc...

For me one of the most memorable aspects of Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel (reviewed here ) is his discussion of the proneness of cri...

Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel was, as discussed here, a study of eighteenth century literature. Still, that outstanding piece of literar...

Recently reading Ian Watt's classic of literary criticism, The Rise of the Novel , one of the book's more compelling aspects seemed ...

As Anthony Trollope's great satire of late Victorian society opens, we are looking at Lady Carbury, who is in the midst of preparing for...

Anthony Trollope's classic The Way We Live Now is his classic satire of late Victorian society, which bears more resemblance to our own...

WARNING: MILD SPOILERS I have remarked previously that by the '80s techno-thrillers centered on Britain had become a rarity . Still, t...

WARNING: MILD SPOILERS A nuclear submarine equipped with a revolutionary stealth technology becomes the prize in a contest between the Sov...

For me one of the weaker elements of Craig Thomas' Sea Leopard was the character of the scientist Quin. A very large part of the novel ...

John Hackett's The Third World War: August 1985 (1978) was followed up four years later by The Third World War: The Untold Story , upda...

Decades before the action film subordinated filmic structure and pacing to thrills (the "thirty-nine bumps" that became standard f...

Shane Black, who has spoken of his love for yesteryear's pulp and paperback hero many a time (rather more seriously than most Hollywood...

If I really got started discussing or even listing the characters who have been influenced by Lester Dent's classic protagonist Doc Sava...