This month CM Lowry is talking to Graphic Designer and RPG Creator Marco Serrano about The Long Rain by Ray Bradbury in ‘This Book I Read...’
Topics covered include:
Kansas being scientifically flatter than a pancake!
The Long Rain is a short story by
Ray Bradbury, which is a sci-fi psychological thriller. It's only 12 pages long and takes the reader on a real jaunt in that short space of time.
Marco reads a quote from the story for us which illustrates how relentless Bradbury's writing is in the story- an intensity that illustrates the persistent rain on Venus and how it gradually drives the inhabitants crazy.
CM asks Marco what his favourite thing is about the story
The psychological aspects of the story are really interesting - observing all hope being stripped away from a platoon of soldiers who are trying desperately to find shelter and one by one loosing all hope and succumbing to the rain and the madness and death it brings.
CM asks Marco to share some of the most haunting aspects of the story
The band of soldiers has 4 members to start with - they are trying to find the Sundome, a safe place. They walk in circles and return to their ship to find two of their members already dead. The deaths and descriptions of these men going insane are really deeply sad.
CM asks Marco if there is anything problematic with The Long Rain
Marco doesn't, as he tried …
This month CM Lowry is talking to author Dan Sumption about Viriconium by M John Harrison in ‘This Book I Read...’
Topics covered include:
Viriconium is actually a collection of books, now published as a single volume, of which 'Viriconium Nights' is Dan's favourite. These stories tell tales of the city of Viriconium, loosely based on the historic Roman town of the same name, which represents in some ways every human settlement that has ever existed
Dan reads a quote for us that gives us a good sense of the quasi-alternative reality and semi-mythical feel of the world that M John Harrison is creating.
A common theme through Harrisons stories is the doomed search for escapism - a drive to find some fantastical alternate reality while missing the beauty of the world around us.
Dan shares his favourite thing about the book - That no matter how often you re-read these stories they are never the same twice - the don't sit still - you'll always find some new nuance that you've not noticed before. Dan isn't keen on re-reading but has always been drawn back to reading these over the course of his whole adult life. Harrisons inclusion of lots of British folklore is always something that Dan really enjoys.
Dan shares some issues he has with the book - They are quite bleak and hero quests tend to end up in the characters just giving up. There are also very few strong female characters.
Chris asks …
This month CM Lowry is talking to author James Flanagan about Extremophile by Ian Green in ‘This Book I Read...’
Topics covered include:
Extremophile is a bio-punk speculative sci-fi story written by Scottish author
Ian Green, who also wrote The Gauntlet fantasy series. Extremophile is billed as a breakneck biohacking thriller set in climate-collapse London.
James's discusses his love, and also hatred, of
Extremophile!
Extremophile is, at times, hard sci-fi as it deep dives into genetics and epi-genetics and is written by a genetic scientist. That said it is balanced by lots of action and even an energetic punk gig in the middle of the book.
James shares his favourite thing about
Extremophile
The characters - they leap of the page really well - and the way that the complexity of their lives weave together the main story.
SPOILER ALERT - James shares some specifics from the book for a couple of minutes that you might want to skip if you're planning to read the book
James also shares some things about the book that he doesn't like
The idea of writing without quotation marks for dialogue - in Cormac McCarthy style. This made it incredibly difficult for James to understand whether he was reading narrative or dialogue and who was saying what.
There are lots of different characters, with their specific points of view, and switching between those different perspectives across the course of the book can be quite difficult and also slow down the …
This month CM Lowry is talking to author Beatriz Seelaender about The Razor's Edge by W.S. Maugham in ‘This Book I Read...’
Topics covered include:
Beatriz shares the reasons why she loves this book:
It's very humorous
It follows the story of a group of people over the years surrounding Maugham as the central character.
The meta-fictional paradox - Maugham discloses that this isn't really a novel as it's based on real people he knows and true stories he has experienced.
Beatriz shares a quote with us from Maugham's introduction in which he explains the peculiar methodology he employed in writing this novel.
Beatriz then shares with us some of the things about this book that really grabbed her:
The meta-fictional aspect of the writing - He isn't just an observer but actively involved in the dialogue
The humour - Maugham writes about the characters appealing to fictional people created by themselves or says things like 'she look at them all is if they were characters in a novel'. Maugham's writing is very fanciful.
It lives on the Razor's edge between fiction and autobiography which is fascinating and begs the question 'what are the properties of fictionality'
CM Lowry asks the question 'how we do know this is a novel and not a biography' and they discuss the fact that Maugham's life was very public and there has never been any real evidence that the people these characters are based on every really existed. Therefore it's most likely …
This month CM Lowry is talking to author Cécile Cristofari, about The Accursed Kings book series by Maurice Druon in ‘This Book I Read...’
Topics covered include:
The Accursed Kings is series of Historical Fiction books about the Capetian Kings in France. These books are based on the legend that this dynasty were cursed by the Grand Master of the Knights Templar while King Philip the Fair burned him at the stake.
Cécile & CM have a fun chat about opposing views on the role and importance of France and England in European History
Cécile reads a quote for us, which she has translated herself from the French language copy of
Le Roi de fer (The King of Iron), book one of the series, which was first published in 1955. It gives us a wonderful example of how incredibly vivid Druon's writing is.
Cécile shares her favourite thing about the book - that even though it was written about the middle ages, it was filtered through the history of the time - Druon used this historical narrative to encourage the French people of the 50's as they were busy trying to rebuild their country and society after the 2nd World War. The book has layers - it is both about French history and the Monarchy, and also about modern times and the corrupting nature of political power.
CM Lowry asks Cécile has the book is as a story since it's 2000 pages as therefore has the …
This month CM Lowry is talking to author Juliet Kemp, about The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin in ‘This Book I Read...’
Topics covered include:
Ursula K. Le Guin's hero status amongst fans of Speculative Fiction and Sci-fi
The mind blowing impact it has had upon Juliet's life
The two planets of Anarres & Urras and the contrasts between them - both in terms of flora & fauna but also in terms of political and social systems.
Sometimes subtitled 'An Ambiguous Utopia',
The Dispossessed explores themes of late Capitalism, Anarchy & Time. It's a very political story.
The idea that revolution is a continual process, and something that we as individuals must embody and encapsulate
The concern that structures, even within anarchist societies, can be calcified and rigid, not allowing for the transmission of new ideas - so it's everyone's jobs to continue to be alert and continue to advance the revolution.
The way that Le Guin uses two story lines that start out disconnected but end up converging
Juliet's favourite things about the book, including the beauty of Le Guin's writing and the detailed working out of what an Anarchist society might look like in practice.
Juliet's challenges with
The Dispossessed, such as the dryness of Le Guin's writing at times and the heavy going philosophical content. There are also issue surrounding Le Guin's gender portrayals, which can in part be explained by the times it was written in (1970s), and the fact that …
This month CM Lowry is talking to author Zilla Novikov, about Cascade by Rachel A Rosen in ‘This Book I Read...’
Topics covered include:
The premise of the book, which is that people are trying to affect change and fight against an impending crisis from within the existing power structures and, unaspiringly, this doesn't go too well.
The use of dark humour in
Cascade to deal with the serious socio-political issues of our times such as the rise of fascism and climate nihilism.
The use of magic to help the protagonists fight off these evils.
Rosen's includes of characters from various indigenous and marginalised people groups as a way to highlight their plight.
Zilla shares a quote, that really helps to illustrate how timely Rachel's writing was. None of us are out of harms way, we all need to be aware of changes going on in our world and how they can affect us.
The beauty of how human the characters in
Cascade are, and that they live daily lives, like all of us. This helps to fight against the dehumanisation and 'otherness' that often causes people to hate each other.
The cool way that magic works in
Cascade, and it's limitations. Instead of being liberating, magic can be incredibly frustrating. Rosen brings a certain sense of realism to the ways magic would affect everyday life, for example, being able to see every possible outcome causing the character huge amounts of anxiety and crippling their love …
This month CM Lowry is talking to CJ Eggett, writer and game designer, about number9dream by David Mitchell in ‘This Book I Read...’
Topics covered include:
The common confusion between David Mitchell the author and David Mitchell the comedian of Peep Show fame!
Mitchell's use of modern magical realism to sort of lull the reader into a false sense of security before tricking them.
Using similar literary themes throughout the book to pull the reader back to central themes.
Mitchells clever use of language to capture the imagination of the reader.
Intertextuality - full living worlds of things and stuff that connect with each other between texts. Or objects placed with a text that connect the created world with out real world.
The process that Mitchell works with to create as authentic an experience as possible for his settings and characters.
CJ encourages us to hunt out number9dream and read it because, in his opinion, it's David Mitchells best book. It's wildly underrated, full of fun and high drama.
Stories within stories within stories, like Russian dolls!
Links to things we discussed:
CM Lowry's latest Kickstarter Project
Four Borg
MORK BORG
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The poet
Anne Carson
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
Making History by Stephen Fry
House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami
A Wild Sheep Chase …
What have we been up to?
Beyond Cataclysm has been...
Going to conventions.
This Winter we've been at Dragonmeet and Airecon! We plan to also be at Tabletop Scotland and UKGE later in the year!
Printing cool things!
We've also released three games! Tyrannosaur Inside, Lucky for None and Bar Fight!
Podcast podcast podcast
Our podcasts have begun a regular 2 weekly release schedule:
In the first half of the month a new
This Book I Read... drops...
...then in the second half we release a new
What Is Roleplay? episode!
ISBN COFFEE coming soon...
Finally, we've finally got the prelaunch page for ISBN COFFEE live! Why not follow it?
Chris has been...
Listening: to the debut album from Lucias Malcolm, lead singer of Call Me Malcolm! It's called Past, Present and Future Regrets and you can hear it on bandcamp. Emo-ey punk rock. Good stuff.
Playing: Notorious, an awesome solo bounty hunter game. Lots of fun!
Reading: Stephen King's The Dark Tower series - first time I've got stuck into something of his aside from the seminal book on how to be a writer, called "On Writing" which EVERYONE should read...
Watching: The West Wing. Again. I'm not a big TV person, but this is my second time through the classic early 00s political drama series. My only issue with it is that it makes you believe more deeply and hopefully in politics than is sensible...
Working: Nearly got …
