Sep 29, 2016

Oh Well, Yet Another Hell

Jakob Schmidt on R. Scott Bakker's The Great Ordeal, Third Book in the Aspect-Emperor Series

All of R. Scott Bakker's books have managed to deeply impress and annoy me at the same time. My enthusiasm for the first trilogy in his big-ass epic fantasy series remains strong, and I keep recommending it as a brilliant, philosophical and staggeringly eloquent work of literature that pulls no punches in depicting a completely disturbing vision of an already atrocious pre-modern world sliding into a kind of proto-fascism. However, the elements of the first trilogy that I disliked even on first reading – the rampant sexism that is bak(k)ed into the substance of Bakker's creation, the humor-less, one-note reliance on shocking ideas and imagery – become magnified in the follow-up series The Aspect-Emperor.

Sep 25, 2016

Otherland Speculative Fiction Book Club:


Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

 
by Marc Beyer and Inci German


So we had our first meeting in August 2016 and it was great!
Kudos to all the people who dropped by to make an evening full of geeky discussions and smart fun possible.

We started with the dystopian novel Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood which is the first book of the MaddAddam-Trilogy before The Year of the Flood and the concluding Maddaddam.

Sep 19, 2016

Welcome!



Welcome to the Otherlander’s Blog, the place that will satisfy your science fiction, fantasy and horror cravings!
In the last few years the Otherland Bookshop in Berlin, Germany has attracted quite an international crowd ... it’s time to take that into account and that’s basically what we’re doing with this blog. It is not the official website of the Otherland Bookshop (that you can find here), which is in German, but a place for us to stay connected to our English speaking community on the web.
We also want this project to be about much more than books. We want this to be about the whole genre and everything that goes with it: books, movies, comics, cartoons, mangas, even music.
Working in a science fiction, fantasy & horror bookstore, we realize how much people love SFF&H and more importantly that more and more people want to talk about what they’ve read/watched. We know how you feel, and we’re trying to make this happen by creating opportunities, in real life or online, where we can meet and get that load off your chest. You’ve seen a movie and you’re really impressed and want to shout it out? Just go ahead and be our guest, write something about it, send it to us. You’ve liked/hated an article you’ve read here? Leave a comment. You can’t stop watching that new show? Hell yes, tell us about it!
In order to keep you updated about the events in the shop, there will be some regular columns, mainly about the Otherland Speculative Fiction Book Club (which meets every second Friday of the month) and readings with international authors. Apart from the best reviews of old SFF classics that have already been published in our monthly newsletter (you can subscribe here) you can also discover new titles that impressed us.
We hope you will enjoy our blog as much as we surely will. We have a feeling this will be awesome!