Tag: Dystopia

Fiction

Reflection: The Invasion (The Grey Land Book 2) by Peadar O’Guilin

LJ Maher

Irish mythology has fascinated me since I was a little girl. The stories of sliding between parallel worlds, of the human and the Sidhe, of Tir Na n’Og, seemed both familiar and strange. I felt like I missed something by not being able to speak Gaeilge (or Cymric for that matter). My family name is Irish, but my family moved to Australia five or six generations ago, I think we traced it to about the time of the famine. I am one of the invaders.

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Fiction

Reflections on VOX by Christina Dalcher

LJ Maher

I came across VOX while I was walking through the bookshop at one of the many campuses on which I teach. I had been talking with friends/colleagues/research collective about the aesthetics of paratexts (ie: pretty book covers) and we had recently been discussion the push towards the black/white/red tricolour in feminist dystopias. So this was perhaps one of the least subtle incarnations of that aesthetic I’ve seen recently. And, unsurprisingly, there is nothing about this book that is subtle. Continue reading “Reflections on VOX by Christina Dalcher” →

Fiction

Reflection: We Who Are About To… by Joanna Russ

LJ Maher

TW: mention of socially mandated reproduction/rape.

I was wandering thorugh The Book Grocer when I came across this volume. Having loved The Female Man, And Chaos Died, and How To Supress Women’s Writing, I was delighted to come across the novella, We Who Are About To…. I was fresh from the Ethics/Utopias/Dystopias conference (I think that event might shape a bit of my reading this year) and I’m always here for a bright, kitsch cover.

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