Six writers are up for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke award for science
fiction
YOU learn to dive out of the way of buckets of blood and guts as you read
Mary Gentle’s Ash: A secret history. With an alarming talent for
realism, she propels the reader from horror to anger to involvement in 1112
pages. It’s an astonishing accomplishment. Gentle juggles archaeology, the
anthropic principle, golems and medieval Burgundy in her alternative history set
in motion by a genetic mutation, enabling its possessor to work miracles with
time and space.
Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents is about another…
