Reprint: The Waterworks

Tags

Bram Stoker, E.L. Doctorow, Hugo Gernsback, Mary Shelley

On the day I learned of the death of one of my favourite writers, E.L. Doctorow, whom I talk about here, I thought it appropriate to dig out this review of his excellent novel, The Waterworks. The review first appeared in Vector 180, August/September 1994:

Reprint: Death

Tags

Alasdair Gray, Bob Shaw, Bram Stoker, Brian Stableford, Colin Greenland, Dante, Greg Egan, Iain Banks, Ian Watson, Jeff Noon, John Bunyan, Lucius Shepard, Ludwig Wittgenstein, M.R. James, Michael Swanwick, Philip Jose Farmer, Rudy Rucker, Russell Hoban, Sheridan Le Fanu, T.S. Eliot, William Gibson

More and more, as I read science fiction, I have become aware that death is the most consistent theme. You could almost say that science fiction is a literature about death. I wrote this Cognitive Mapping piece back in 1997 (it appeared in Vector 195, September-October 1997), I could write a similar column now just using works published since that date. In fact I could write it several times over, so pervasive is the theme. So this is just one aspect of a very much bigger conversation.