Category Archives: Fiction

Learning from Utopia

Posted on December 28, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

What is the function of alternative political and economic systems, whether actually existing or imaginary? Is it to offer hope that change is possible, or at least to provide some perspective on our own way of life?
Draws on ‘The Dispossessed’ by Ursula Le Guin. Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Education, Fiction, Reviews | Tagged Alternatives, Anarcho-syndicalism, Anarres, dystopia, Education, Equality, Science fiction, Urras, Ursula Le Guin, utopia, utopianism | Leave a comment

‘Bewilderment’ by Richard Powers

Posted on November 22, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

Bewilderment is an entirely rational response to what we are collectively doing to our planet. Confronted by the injustices, dysfunction and unsustainability of the world we’ve created, how can we not react with bewilderment? This wonderful novel is both an … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews | Tagged Biodiversity, climate emergency, Planet Earth, Richard Powers, Sustainability | Leave a comment

“You either bend the arc or it bends you”

Posted on September 12, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

‘Attack Surface’ by Cory Doctorow. ‘Attack Surface‘ (2020) is a gripping action-packed story of oppression and resistance with plenty of insights into the potential of new technologies and big data. It is also a powerful manifesto for the necessity of … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Politics, Reviews, Science, Science in Society | Tagged activism, Attack Surface, Cory Doctorow, Martin Luther King, social movements, surveillance, technology, the arc of history | Leave a comment

‘Light Perpetual’ by Francis Spufford

Posted on May 15, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

‘Light Perpetual’ is a wonderful celebration of life and love. It opens with some extraordinary time-stretching to describe the impact of a split-second destructive event in wartime. Then time is shrunk and stretched repeatedly in order to follow the ‘lost’ … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews | Tagged Francis Spufford, Light Perpetual | Leave a comment

Zola’s ‘La Curée’ and the corruption of desire.

Posted on April 2, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

Rougon-Macquart #2 Emile Zola’s ‘La Curée’ (1872), translated as ‘The Kill’, is an extraordinary novel of unbridled appetites, material and sexual, and of the moral decay and rottenness of unfettered capitalism. It shares a setting and many common themes with … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews | Tagged Brian Nelson, capitalism, corruption, desire, Emile Zola, Karl Marx, La Curée, modernity, Paris, Rougon-Macquart, speculation, The Kill | 2 Comments

‘The Ministry for the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson

Posted on December 20, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

Fiction can change the world and the didactic approach or the ‘novel of ideas’ can be compatible with good storytelling. Like any work of art, a work of fiction can change us as individuals and, through us, help to make … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Politics, Reviews | Tagged Archaeologies of the Future, climate change, climate emergency, COP26, Fredric Jameson, Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future, Thinking Global, utopianism | 4 Comments

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’.

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

The personal is political, and this wonderful book is both entirely personal and deeply political. Nervous Conditions (1988) is the story of Tambudzai, a young woman growing up in rural Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia) in the late 1960’s, told … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews | Tagged Africa, colonialism, Equality, inequality, liberation, Nervous Conditions, Race equality, racism, sexism, subjugation, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Zimbabwe | Leave a comment

‘Unsheltered’ by Barbara Kingsolver

Posted on August 11, 2019 by Eddie Playfair

Barbara Kingsolver’s novels are always fascinating and rewarding and her latest, Unsheltered (2019) is no exception. We follow two stories over a hundred years apart and set in the same location; Vineland, New Jersey, a town originally established as a … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews | Tagged Barbara Kingsolver, Charles Darwin, evolution, Mary Treat, natural selection, Unsheltered | Leave a comment

‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers.

Posted on March 10, 2019 by Eddie Playfair

Richard Powers is an extraordinary writer. If you’ve not yet discovered his novels, I strongly recommend them. He tackles big ideas which concern all of us while at the same time telling compelling stories about complex and conflicted characters who … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews, Science | Tagged global citizenship, interdependence, old growth forest, Patricia Westerford, Planet Earth, Richard Powers, Sustainability, The Overstory, Thinking Global, trees | Leave a comment

‘What if?’ – dystopias in fiction.

Posted on December 3, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

Fictional dystopias use the power of ‘what if?’ to change something or extrapolate particular social or technological trends and imagine the impact on people’s lives. The best ones are also good stories, well told, about people; their hopes, fears, feelings … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Learning resources, Reviews, Students | Tagged Ahmed Khaled Towfik, Divergent, dystopia, dystopian fiction, Nnedi Okorafor, Octavia E Butler, reading, The Parable of the Sower, utopia, Veronica Roth, Who Fears Death | 1 Comment

The last Corsican.

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

“I’ve decided to keep this diary because I’m going to die in the next few days…I am condemned because, having refused to be evacuated with the others, I will be annihilated by the incendiary bombs which are systematically ravaging the … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction | Tagged Corse Noire, Corsica, Jacques Mondoloni, Le Dernier Corse, The Last Corsican | 1 Comment

More fictional dystopias

Posted on March 26, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

Reading Dystopias offered an introduction to the genre of dystopian fiction through 4 classic dystopian novels. Here are four more which are also well worth reading. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953) [211 pages] Fahrenheit 451: The temperature at which … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Learning resources, Politics, Reviews | Tagged authoritarianism, dystopia, Fahrenheit 451, It Can't Happen Here, Margaret Atwood, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, reading, Sinclair Lewis, The Handmaid's Tale, The Man in the High Castle, totalitarianism | Leave a comment

‘Carthage’ by Joyce Carol Oates.

Posted on February 22, 2016 by Eddie Playfair

Joyce Carol Oates’ brilliant novel ‘Carthage’ carries the reader along on a compelling looping, zig-zag narrative which starts and finishes in the heart of a sympathetic comfortably-off family in the small upstate New York town of Carthage. Along the way, … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews | Tagged American Pastoral, books, Carthage, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth | Leave a comment

Hadrian, the enlightened pre-enlightenment leader?

Posted on December 21, 2015 by Eddie Playfair

Marguerite Yourcenar’s wonderful novel Memoirs of Hadrian takes the form of a personal memoir written for the future Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius by the emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE) as he faces death. The book is a brilliant portrayal of a leader who … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, History, Reviews | Tagged Ancient Rome, Cultural heritage, Emperor Hadrian, leadership, Marcus Aurelius, Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian, Niccolo Macchiavelli, values | 1 Comment

Reading dystopias

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Eddie Playfair

Reading dystopias Utopia: an imagined society or state of things in which everything is perfect or close to perfect. Dystopia: an imagined society or state of things in which things are very far from perfect to a frightening extent. An … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Learning resources, Reviews, Science in Society | Tagged 'We', Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Critical thinking, culture, dystopia, George Orwell, Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, reading, Science, Science in Society, utopia, Yevgeny Zamyatin | Leave a comment

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