Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

Terence Eden’s Blog

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Book Review: Cosmogramma by Courttia Newland

· 300 words


Book cover with intricate twirling patterns of colour.

In his sharply crafted, unnerving first collection of speculative fiction shorts, Courttia Newland envisages an alternate future as lived by the African diaspora. Robots used as human proxies in a war become driven by all-too-human desires; Kill Parties roam the streets of a post-apocalyptic world; a matriarchal race of mer creatures depends on inter-breeding with mortals to survive; mysterious …

Book Review: Sexual Revolution - Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback by Laurie Penny

· 550 words


Book cover.

This is a story about how modern masculinity is killing the world, and how feminism can save it. It's a story about sex and power and trauma and resistance and persistence. It's a story about how you can track the crisis of democracy against the crisis of White masculinity, and how the far right is rising in response to both. It's a story about a social change. And at the centre of that story…

Book Review: New Moons For Sam, Becoming Kiwi – Life of a New Zealand Diplomat by Peter Hamilton

· 400 words


Book cover showing a moon rising over the sea.

In 1961, a boy from Somerset embarked with his family on a six-week voyage to New Zealand. He left behind an English village where generations of his family had lived, to make a new home in a remote country that was still closely tied to the one he'd left. Despite challenges adapting as new immigrants, these were good times to be growing up in rural New Zealand. But the country was about to…

Book Review: The Atlas of Unusual Languages by Zoran Nikolić

· 500 words · Viewed ~212 times


A book cover featuring some unusual letters and accents.

We communicate through the spoken and written word and language has evolved over the centuries. Many languages have survived although only in small pockets throughout the world. This book explores a selection of those languages. Did you know that some people believe that the speakers of Burushaski, the language of a distant valley below the Himalayas, are actually the descendants of the…

Book Review: The Transgender Issue - An Argument for Justice by Shon Faye

· 3 comments · 900 words · Viewed ~323 times


Book cover of The Transgender Issue.

Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war 'issue'. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized 'debate' which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people…

Book Review: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

· 550 words · Viewed ~261 times


Book cover - a human stands in a massive tube and looks at the sky.

Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organisation was simple: To advocate for the world’s future generations and to protect all living creatures, present and future. It soon became known as the Ministry for the Future, and this is its story. From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a vision of climate change unlike any ever imagined. Told entirely through f…

Book Review: Bias Interrupted Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good - Joan C. Williams

· 500 words


Book cover.

Companies spend billions of dollars annually on diversity efforts, with remarkably few results. Too often diversity efforts rest on the assumption that all that's needed is an earnest conversation about "privilege." That's not enough. To truly make progress with diversity, equity and inclusion, we must focus less on documenting the problem and more on just stopping the transmission of it. In…

Book Review: Alien 3 - The Unproduced Screenplay

· 500 words · Viewed ~271 times


A grim alien menace.

The first-draft Alien screenplay by William Gibson, the founder of cyberpunk, turned into a novel by Pat Cadigan, the Hugo Award-Winning “Queen of Cyberpunk.” William Gibson’s never-before-adapted screenplay for the direct sequel to Aliens, revealing the fates of Ripley, Newt, the synthetic Bishop, and Corporal Hicks. When the Colonial Marines vessel Sulaco docks with space station and milit…

Book Review: The Man Who Died Twice - Richard Osman

· 300 words


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It's the following Thursday. Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He's made a big mistake, and he needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real threat to his life. As bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a ruthless murderer. And if they find the…

Book Review: The Cabinet - Un-su Kim / 캐비닛 - 김언수

· 350 words


A digital chameleon.

The Cabinet is a story about the documents that record these symptomers and the man who manages the documents in Cabinet 13. This seemingly ordinary, old cabinet is filled with stories that are peculiar, strange, eye-pop- ping, disgusting, enraging, and touching. However, the fast changing world is also full of all sorts of unbelievable things. Perhaps symptomers exist not only in the novel but …

Book Review: The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes by Zoë Playdon

· 600 words


Book cover with a big red cross on it.

Ewan Forbes was born Elizabeth Forbes to a wealthy landowning family in 1912. It quickly became clear that the gender applied to him at birth was not correct, and from the age of six he began to see specialists in Europe for help. With the financial means of procuring synthetic hormones, Ewan was able to live as a boy, and then as man, and was even able to correct the gender on his birth…

Book Review: The End of Bias - How We Change Our Minds by Jessica Nordell

· 600 words · Viewed ~269 times


Book cover for The End of Bias

Unconscious bias: persistent, unintentional prejudiced behaviour that clashes with our consciously held beliefs. We know that it exists, to corrosive and even lethal effect. We see it in medicine, the workplace, education, policing, and beyond. But when it comes to uprooting our prejudices, we still have far to go. With nuance, compassion, and ten years' immersion in the topic, Jessica Nordell …