RELEASED 28 APRIL
5/5
272 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Emily St John Mandel Publisher Picador
In so far as it has ended, there was a strange quality to the conclusion of the coronavirus pandemic. In the UK, for all that Boris Johnson proclaimed a “freedom day” in July 2021, the pandemic has almost seemed to peter out, as Covid-19 has became endemic among a population protected by vaccines.
And yet there’s an underlying sense of the pandemic being unfinished business. There are the lives that will never revert to previous patterns. There are the friends and relatives whom we didn’t mourn properly. There’s the sense of looking back to days that seemed impossibly vivid at the time, but where it’s now puzzlingly difficult to recall what happened when. Looking ahead, real life, whatever that may turn out to be, has in key respects yet to begin again – or perhaps we’re fearful that real life will turn out to be a procession of new variants, stagflation, wars and climate change biting.
All this is worth mentioning because there are books where the adage that all science fiction is about the era in which it’s created seems especially apt – rarely more so than in the case of Sea Of Tranquility. This is a lucid dream of a book, one that features a pandemic, and even a successful author in Olive Llewellyn who – as St John Mandel did with the Clarke Award-winning Station Eleven – has previously written about a fictional pandemic. Whether by accident or design (probably a combination of both) it squarely occupies the emotional territory of early 2022.
Esta historia es de la edición May 2022 de SFX.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición May 2022 de SFX.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
THE DYING DAYS
RUSSELL T DAVIES, NCUTI GATWA AND MILLIE GIBSON LOOK AHEAD TO THE TWOPART SEASON FINALE
BEWARE THE DUCHESS!
Oh, it’s been such a laugh.
Demon Daze
Archie launches its first Premium Event as Judgment Day comes to Riverdale
JEDI SLAYER ONE
A STAR WARS MURDER MYSTERY FROM THE CREATOR OF RUSSIAN DOLL? SFX GOES BACK TO THE HIGH REPUBLIC ERA TO INVESTIGATE THE CASE OF THE ACOLYTE
Children Of The Evolution
Nu-heroes assemble in Marvel's brave new Ultimates universe
Atlas Smith And J-Lo
Atlas director Brad Peyton on his intergalactic AI actioner
Pride Of Place
Wedding bells ring for Mystique and Destiny in this year's Marvel Voices: Pride
EightLegged Freak
The director of the Alieninfluenced Sting talks about his spider horror
Beauty And The Beast
Director Bertrand Bonello talks his vision of an artificial tomorrow in The Beast
Paint It Black
The Orphan Black story continues with Echoes, a new series set 30 years after the original