In their new examination of the SF and fantasy genres, Jo Walton and Ada Palmer provide an overly optimistic analysis of the field
The audience for this book is likely confined to hardcore SF and fantasy readers and practitioners.
In her combined memoir and manifesto, Amanda Jones retails her experience being attacked online after standing up for the right to read
While her impassioned tone is absolutely understandable, it occasionally results in a lapse of her professed decorum.
Sanctimonious certainty and bipartisan bullshit: Ray Robertson addresses the cleavages that separate us in The Right to Be Wrong
The biggest intellectual culprits in our current sociopolitical culture, Robertson suggests, are surety and self-righteousness.
Black lives, white rage: Two new books re-examine the Bernie Goetz subway vigilante case
Both Thompson and Williams attempt to draw direct connections between the societal cleavages the Goetz case brought into stark relief and the current polarization of political sentiment in the U.S.
Ottawa’s Mark Bourrie recognized as a recipient of the Governor General’s History Award
Administered by Canada's National History Society, the awards, which were established in 1996, are given out in five categories.
Oh, Canada: Former CBC head Richard Stursberg critiques our current literary climate in a new long essay
Stursberg diagnoses a number of maladies causing our current situation, some more persuasive than others.
Clinging to the flotsam: James Sallis examines the classic era of paperback noir fiction
This is one of the things Sallis insists on: the idea that commercial fiction can contain insights every bit as profound as those in more high-minded literary novels.
21st century kitsch: Cultural critic W. David Marx examines the state of our art in his book Blank Space
Marx argues that the 21st century has been typified not by artistic innovation or renovation, but by a capitalistic retrenchment.
Sixteen books that helped put 2025 in perspective
What our literary output offers is not a vision of perfectibility but an attempt to reckon with our world in all its contradiction, ambiguity, and fractiousness.
“A life of constant displacement”: Maggie Helwig compels readers to empathize with an unhoused community in her hear searing book Encampment
Helwig displays an almost preternatural empathy and a willingness to meet people where they are.