Search Worlds Without End

It is the dawn of the fourth millennium, and for trader Nathanael Freer it is business as usual. Tile Dance, his ship, is in the safe hands of KathKirtt, an AI with two minds, and a loyal krewe of cybernetic and android helpers. His latest commission-to deliver a shipment of nano-forges to the planet Eolhxir--is routine enough. All seems okey dokey.

But it is not. A virulent data plague is infecting the local spiral arm of the galaxy all the way from Old Earth. Universal darkness threatens the vast concord of living civilizations. And a trap has been laid that will draw Freer and his lover, Ferocity Monthly-Niece, into an eons-old conflict. His new contract is, in fact, far from routine, and Eolhxir holds the key to everything.

Canary Fever is a collection of reviews about the most significant literatures of the twenty-first century: science fiction, fantasy and horror: the literatures Clute argues should be recognized as the central modes of fantastika in our times. The title refers to the canary in the coal mine, who whiffs gas and dies to save miners; reviewers of fantastika can find themselves in a similar position, though words can only hurt us.

This is the fourth such collection by John Clute. Several older pieces are included here, though the great bulk of the book - over 200,000 words - was first published between 2003 and 2008. Every review has been edited. Errors and incoherencies have been removed when possible. The original versions of some reviews - in particular those written in the past year or so - have been treated as first drafts, and have been brought into final form.

One piece, on John B Watson and Behaviorism, is previously unpublished.

For nearly 40 years John Clute has been reviewing science fiction and fantasy. As Scores demonstrates, his devotion to the task of understanding the central literatures of our era has not slackened. There are jokes in Scores, and curses, and tirades, and apologies, and riffs; but every word of every review, in the end, is about how we understand the stories we tell about the world.

Following on from his two previous books of collected reviews (Strokes and Look at the Evidence) this book collects reviews from a wide variety of sources, but mostly from Interzone, the New York Review of Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Weekly. Where it has seemed possible to do so without distorting contemporary responses to books, these reviews have been revised, sometimes extensively.

125 review articles, over 200 books reviewed in more than 214,000 words.

"Look at the Evidence" assembles work from many British and American newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals and books. Almost all the material presented deals with the period 1987 1992, a period during which science fiction faced huge challenges and new science fiction proliferated. "Look at the Evidence" represents a seismograph of the radical changes in the SF genre, from the long demise of First SF to the growth of the fable of exogamy.

Contents:

• 56 Reviews (various books) - (unknown) - essay
• xi - Preface (Look at the Evidence) - (1995) - essay
• 3 - Necessary Golems - (1992) - essay
• 8 - Pilgrim Award Acceptance Speech - (1994) - essay
• 17 - Year Roundup: Science Fiction Novels of the Year - (1988) - essay
• 28 - Marching Initials - (1987) - essay
• 32 - Big Brothers Watch Avalon - (1987) - essay
• 35 - Plug Your Ears, It's Paxwax! - (1987) - essay
• 40 - Mimesis Chills Out - (1988) - essay
• 75 - Year Roundup: Science Fiction Novels of the Year - (1989) - essay
• 86 - A Protocol of Candour, with Victims - (1988) - essay
• 90 - Trinities - (1988) - essay
• 97 - Space Aria Caught in Larynx, Thousands Flee - (1988) - essay
• 101 - Romancing the Stilts - (1989) - essay
• 105 - A Worm in the Opera - (1989) - essay
• 109 - Instruments of Love - (1989) - essay
• 139 - Year Roundup: Science Fiction Novels of the Year - (1990) - essay
• 149 - New Found Lands - (1989) - essay
• 153 - Century Migraine - (1989) - essay
• 157 - Razor Dancing - (1989) - essay
• 162 - Makers' Dice - (1992) - essay
• 166 - Guards, Unicorns, Zool - (1990) - essay
• 170 - A Sperm Called Trilogy - (1990) - essay
• 173 - Heart Gravel - (1990) - essay
• 195 - Year Roundup: SF Novels of the Year - (1991) - essay
• 207 - Flopsy, Dropsy, Cottontail - (1990) - essay
• 211 - Oh, Good - (1990) - essay
• 215 - True and Blushful Chutzpah - (1990) - essay
• 223 - Mine! All Mine! - (1990) - essay
• 225 - Thomas Alva Edison Be Proud - (1990) - essay
• 230 - Angel Tricks - (1990) - essay
• 234 - Vive? - (1991) - essay
• 238 - End Gait - (1991) - essay
• 241 - Sounding Hollow - (1991) - essay
• 246 - The Captain Habit - (1991) - essay
• 277 - Year Roundup: Science Fiction Novels of the Year - (1993) - essay
• 288 - Use of Cormorants - (1991) - essay
• 292 - Chaos Seen - (1991) - essay
• 295 - No Wonder - (1991) - essay
• 301 - Grail Plate Sieve - (1991) - essay
• 305 - House of Card - (1991) - essay
• 310 - from Vive? - (1991) - essay
• 311 - Templars - (1991) - essay
• 316 - Punner at the Wheel - (1991) - essay
• 319 - Gods and Sods - (1991) - essay
• 355 - Year Roundup: Is Science Fiction Out to Lunch? Some Thoughts on the Year 1992 - (1994) - essay
• 362 - Welcome from the Zones of Thought - (1992) - essay
• 367 - The Whips of Disenchantment and the Death of Ire and Bats - (1992) - essay
• 373 - Come, Adam, This Time The Berries Are Sweet - (1992) - essay
• 379 - Puppet Dark - (1992) - essay
• 383 - Mars Joins the Human Race - (1992) - essay
• 388 - Beaks and Saws - (1992) - essay
• 393 - Thin Ice, Sun Burns - (1992) - essay
• 395 - Teething the Gap - (1993) - essay
• 399 - Exogamy Dentata - (1993) - essay
• 408 - Bat the Snatcher and the Porcine Undeads - (1993) - essay
• 420 - On the Arthur C. Clarke Award - (1993) - essay
• 427 - Karel Capek - (1990) - essay
• 430 - M. John Harrison - (1989) - essay
• 435 - Aldous Huxley - (1993) - essay
• 438 - Introduction (The White Dominican) - (1994) - essay
• 443 - Introduction (The Architect of Ruins) - (1992) - essay
• 447 - Introduction (Her Smoke Rose Up Forever) - (1990) - essay