Phillip Mann (1) (1942–2022)
Autore di The Eye of the Queen
Per altri autori con il nome Phillip Mann, vedi la pagina di disambiguazione.
Sull'Autore
Phillip Mann was born in 1942 in Britain. He is a science fiction author. He studied English and Drama at Manchester University and later in California before moving to New Zealand where he established the first Drama Studies position at a New Zealand university in 1970; at the Victoria University mostra altro of Wellington in Wellington. Between 1968 and 1970, he worked as a sub-editor with the New China News Agency in Beijing. "The Eye of the Queen" details the life of Marius Thorndyke, Earth's leading contact linguist and founder of the CLI (Contact Linguistics Institute) after he departs to the world called Pe-Ellia at the invitation of the species for whom that is their home world. This species, have been responsible for restricting Earth's space exploration to just a few inhabited planets none of which have attained space travel. This book met with great success. His next two books 'Master of Paxwax' and its sequel, 'Fall of the Families', have become classics of New Zealand literature. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes Phillip Mann's fiction as possessing "a strong visual and structural sense". Phillip Mann was made an Honorary Literary Fellows in the New Zealand Society of Authors' annual Waitangi Day Honours in 2015. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno
Fonte dell'immagine: Orion Publishing Group
Serie
Opere di Phillip Mann
Ending the Silences: Critical Essays on the Works of Maurice Shadbolt (1995) — Collaboratore — 2 copie
The Architect [short fiction] 1 copia
Lux in Tenebris [short fiction] 1 copia
Opere correlate
2001: An Odyssey in Words: Celebrating the Centenary of Arthur C. Clarke's Birth (2018) — Collaboratore — 53 copie
Monsters in the Garden : An Anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy (2021) — Collaboratore — 7 copie
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Data di nascita
- 1942
- Data di morte
- 2022-09-01
- Sesso
- male
Utenti
Recensioni
The Disestablishment of Paradise di Phillip Mann
great promise, wonderful imagination! I just came to dislike the 'voice' of the main character towards the end. the book /character required you to make some pretty fantastic logical jumps that I didn't feel were either warranted or helpful to the story. started great, left me with a slightly sour taste, which read made worse by going onto the author's website and reading some pseudo-scientific anti-human/technoligical progress comments. would definitely recommend to those that love Avatar.
I’ve been a fan of Mann’s fiction for many years, and even reviewed several of his books – positively, of course – for the BSFA’s critical journal, Vector, back in the day. I liked that Mann was considerably more literate than most of his peers, and exhibited a somewhat sideways approach to common science fiction tropes. I’d forgotten that Master of Paxwax, followed by The Fall of the Families, was Mann’s second novel, but I’d remember the broad shape of the story. What had not occurred to me at the time, and struck me quite strongly on this decades-later reread, was how much Master of Paxwax is a pastiche of Frank Herbert’s Dune. More than that – and the timing is tight, so perhaps I’m reaching – but quite a bit of the imagery in Master of Paxwax evokes David Lynch’s movie adaptation of Dune, released in late 1984. After discovering an alien Way Gate, humanity spread out into the galaxy and wiped out all (alien) competitors. This was the Great Push. Centuries later, human society has ossified into an imperium ruled by eleven Great Families, and countless other ones. The Paxwax are the Fifth Family, and Pawl, the third son, finds himself head of the family when his father and elder brother die. The second brother had joined the Inner Circle, ostensibly a semi-religious order of diplomats and advisors, but secretly the last refuge of the alien races subjugated, or even destroyed, by humanity. The Inner Circle has determined that Pawl Paxwax will return the galaxy to the aliens; Pawl Paxwax just wants to break with tradition and marry someone he loves, who is not of the Eleven Families. On the surface, this is a space opera that makes free use of the subgenre’s tropes. But there are many similarities with Dune, while not mapping directly onto its story – no white saviour narrative, no appropriation… And there’s all those aliens, of course. It is, perhaps, a more sensitively-written Dune… but it never manages Herbert’s book’s weight of background, one of Dune‘s chief appeals, because Master of Paxwax relies overmuch on space opera tropes. It’s a good book, perhaps even a forgotten space opera masterpiece, although I suspect that’s a label that applies to a great many books given the low bar most fans seem to apply to space opera…… (altro)
1 
iansales | 1 altra recensione | Apr 15, 2021 |
iansales | 1 altra recensione | Apr 15, 2021 | Could not get into it, and returned it to the library. The writing was too stilted and stiff, and I could sense a polemic shaping up.
I loved this book. It is set up as a frame story with an author telling of her writing of a biography of a famous biologist and her escape from a planet. Not only does the book contain the frame, but within the frame, the biologist tells tales written by another story teller. This story brings to life the impossible planet Paradise and shows the author to have a truly unique imagination.
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Statistiche
- Opere
- 18
- Opere correlate
- 8
- Utenti
- 572
- Popolarità
- #43,783
- Voto
- 3.4
- Recensioni
- 17
- ISBN
- 61
- Lingue
- 3