Tag: Book review
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Mysterious Island (1961)
A showcase for the sublime talent of stop-motion maestro Ray Harryhausen, this sci-fi fantasy family adventure sensibly swaps the plodding civilisation building of Jules Verne’s source novel for monster action and romance. Faithful to Verne’s novel, the story begins during the US Civil War where we see a handful of men escape the war in […]
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The Mysterious Island (1929)
This epic sci-fi melodrama feature is absolutely terrific fun due in no small part to its gleeful abandoning pretty much all of Jules Verne’s novel on which it’s based. Discarding fidelity for crazed creative ambition, it hits the creative sweet spot between the high-minded social consciousness and outrageous spectacle of Fritz Lang’s German expressionist classic, […]
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The Mysterious Island (1975)
This brisk sixty minute animated adaptation is hand drawn in the style of the famous TinTin cartoon series, and delights in its similar sense of old fashioned derring do. Faithful to Verne in its story, character, US Civil War-era setting and spirit of adventure, it sees am intrepid band of balloon-wrecked castaways and their dog […]
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Ammonite
Nicola Griffith. 1992 This stunning debut sci-fi adventure novel is a celebration of survival and self-acceptance wrapped up in a cracking story where loyalty, respect, friendship and love are forged in a frontier wilderness. Marghe is an anthropologist grieving for her mother and is emotionally and physically at a low ebb. a tribal war Attempting […]
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The Children of Men
P D James. 1992 The human race faces extinction in this remarkable dystopian sci-fi, which stylishly combines a scathing satire of Britain disguised as an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, with a denunciation of the patriarchal society, as well as a being warning against a slide into totalitarianism. Set in the then near-future of 2021, the human […]
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The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin. 1974 A physicist becomes a pawn in interplanetary politics in this philosophical sci-fi novel by a master of the genre. As always with Le Guin’s work this is an adventure of ideas, filled with simmering drama which includes droughts, demonstrations, deaths, a murder, attempted rape and childbirth. starships and space travel […]
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DRAGONFLIGHT
BY ANNE MCCAFFREY, 1968 This brisk and inventive breakout novel is a romantic coming of age medieval sci-fi fantasy, which sees a pair of unrelated orphans who’re each cheated of their birthright, brought together by fate to attempt to save their world from a malevolent cosmic spore. important and influential Originally published as three short […]
Nemo's Fury 