Topic
science fiction
2 essays follow this thread across the codex.
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The Serious Business of Dungeon Crawler Carl
Aliens flatten every building on Earth, invite the survivors into an eighteen-floor dungeon and broadcast what happens to them. A man in boxer shorts and his ex-girlfriend’s cat go in. Fourteen million copies later the thing is on a Clarke shortlist, and the real question is what this loud, rude, frequently ridiculous book is doing with science fiction that the polite books are not.
Literature · September 2026 · 18 min -
Six Books About What Gets Remembered
The Arthur C. Clarke Award turned forty this year and gave its prize to a novel about wolves coming back to Britain. But the more interesting thing is what the judges noticed about the whole shortlist—a thread running through all six books that none of their authors could have coordinated, and that says something rather precise about what science fiction is currently for.
Literature · August 2026 · 16 min- science fiction
- clarke award
- prizes
- publishing
- memory