Review of The End of Everything by M. John Harrison

Over the past few years, my thoughts return with increasing frequency to the Camus-esque absurdity of normal life. Juxtapose the thousands of years of work, sleep, family, food, etc. with the fresh soil modern humanity is tilling (AI, screens, globalization, politicized media, etc.) and its mindblowing—in slippery yet sturdy, bizarre yet normal, out of touch yet 100% palpable, Camus-esque fashion. There are people following the love advice of chatgpt. That's a human doing what humans would do given such an opportunity, yes? But chatgpt?!?! Capturing this (seeming) juxtaposition pitch perfect artistically, narratively, and thematically, is M. John Harrison's The End of Everything (2026).

Boil away the skin and hair, muscles and organs, and in its bones The End of Everything is a near-future alien invasion of Britain. The iGhetti have appeared slowly and steadily in myriad forms on the island nation's shores, sometimes invasive of daily life and sometimes just hovering on the perimeter. In the wake of their arrival, government is degrading, a dense fog has descended on Europe, and all manner of the odd and uncanny is washing ashore. Two characters, Philip the beachcomber and Marnie the senior citizen artist, attempt to come to terms with their evolving world.

Review of The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel

It's always an interesting question: what will the current generation go down as when all is said and done. It's an interesting question because, the youngest generation always faces the harshest criticism, yet seems to defy that criticism in interesting ways as time goes on. It's still too early to tell with Gen Z, but one thing for certain is that their youth will be youth, going off doing the wildest, logic-defying things that the youth of every prior generation did. Optimism is priceless, but only for a time, when a price must be paid. Matthew Kressel, in his 2026 novella The Rainseekers, features the lives of people reflecting on their youth.

The Rainseekers is a quasi-frame story. It is ostensibly about Sakunja, former holo star on Earth now journalist on Mars. She recounts for the reader this path, including her joining a group of people on an excursion to be the first to witness rain on the red planet. During the overland journey, she talks with her fellow travelers, and agrees to write the stories of two for her newspaper—an orphaned engineer and a reformed Muslim truck driver. That is, until a not-so-proverbial wrench is thrown into the works of the excursion.

Review of Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin

Robert Heinlein is best known these days for a handful of novels—Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. But before these books were published, Heinlein had built a foundation on YA fiction featuring silver space ships, clunky computers, intergalactic aliens—he helped shaped the stereotypes. Almost two decades later, when science fiction was near the end of the generation which followed Heinlein's YA work, New Wave sf, Alexei Panshin decided to throwback with Rite of Passage (1968), and oddly enough, was rewarded for it.

Rite of Passage is as classic a YA bildungsroman as classic YA bildungsromans can be. It tells the story of Mia Havero, teenager living aboard a galactic ship that moves from planet to planet, trading knowledge for the goods its limited population need to stay alive. Eugenics are part of the reason the population is tight, but another is that every teen must go through a rite of passage. Each year the group of teens coming of age are dumped on a strange planet with basic supplies, and thirty days later the ship returns to pick up the survivors. Hotheaded, arrogant Mia has a lot of work to do to get ready for this trial.

Review: I Hear a New World by Alan Moore

In 2022, Alan Moore signed a Bloomsbury deal to write a five-book series. At the time Moore was excited, saying he bubbled with fiction (I paraphrase). A difficult feeling to sustain, Moore nevertheless delivered a sparkling, exuberant effort two years later in The Great When. An irreverent mix of Dickens, Joyce, and Aleister Crowley, Moore deployed his singular style on an alternate, mid-20th century London indeed, in bubbly fashion. But could Moore maintain the groove in 2026's I Hear a New World, second book in the series?

It takes a fun, meandering road, but I Hear a New World eventually picks up on the happenings of our weak-chinned hero, Dennis Knuckleyard. Roughly ten years after the events of The Great When, Dennis is still possessor of the key brought back from Long London, and in the early going, he uses an opportunity at a socialite party to pass possession to Joe Meek, a music producer. Meek's never the same after, and Dennis finds himself caught between an occult rock and octogenarian hard place.