Reviews
Review of The Anti-Catastrophe League By Tom Ough
Let's begin by stating that Tom Ough’s The Anti-Catastrophe League is rather a triumph, the sort of book that one imagines being read in a comfortable armchair, with a roaring fire, a glass of excellent port, and perhaps an escape plan in case the supervolcano erupts mid-sentence. Mr Ough has set himself the enviable task of cataloguing the most stylish ways civilisation might be abruptly curtailed. He takes us from cosmic billiards (asteroids) to the wrath of the Earth’s own plumbing (supervolcanoes), with diversions into nuclear brinkmanship, pestilence, and that most fashionable of modern nightmares, rogue artificial intelligence. The effect…
Hyperion
Hyperion – Dan Simmons Chaucer with Plasma Rifles, Pilgrimage with Purpose, and the Empire of Man at a Crossroads If The Canterbury Tales were rewritten aboard a torchship headed for the edge of annihilation, and every pilgrim carried a PhD, a sidearm, and a tragic backstory, you might find yourself somewhere near Hyperion, a novel that is as sweeping in scope as it is meticulous in moral inquiry. Dan Simmons’ Hyperion is many things: science fiction epic, philosophical meditation, poetic cathedral, and ecclesiopolitical thriller. But read through the Anglofuturist lens, it is something rarer still: a space-age parable about duty,…
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams The End of the World, with a Cup of Tea and a Very British Towel If Anglofuturism had a slightly eccentric uncle who drank Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters for breakfast and still insisted on the importance of a well-folded towel, it would be The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. On the surface, Douglas Adams’ masterwork is a cosmic farce a surreal romp through time, space, bureaucracy, and the bewildering absurdity of modern life. But dig beneath the digital babblefish and improbability drives, and one finds something rather more Anglofuturist: a vision of the future in which dignity,…
Collected Anglofuturism – Alexander d’Albini
One part philosophical sparkplug, one part cultural handbook, this gem doesn’t just define Anglofuturism, it embodies it. Whether waxing lyrical about stoic engineers or detailing the aesthetics of a gentleman’s orbital workstation, d’Albini invites readers to join a movement not of protest, but of purposeful building. The tone? Rousingly optimistic, with just the right hint of arched eyebrow. It's the sort of book one might keep in there cockpit for emergencies right next to the hip flask and monocle.
The Fifth Element
A cracking interstellar romp that whirls through operatic explosions, French fashion, and galactic bureaucracy with a surprising undercurrent of Anglofuturist virtue. Among the explosions and flying taxis, there’s an unmistakable thread of order holding the chaos together—service, structure, and love holding back the abyss. Add in a priesthood preserving ancient knowledge and a soldier who’d rather save the world than posture about it, and you’ve got yourself a blueprint for tea-and-crumpets cosmology. By Jupiter, it’s magnificent!
Jerusalem – Jez Butterworth
An Anglofuturist tale by accident rather than design, but by thunder does it strike the mark! Rooster Byron is a man out of time, equal parts bard, rebel, and prophet of Albion’s half-forgotten mythos. In a world of Tesco car parks and mobile mast dystopias, he’s shouting through the fog, demanding we remember the sacred. It’s about roots, resistance, and refusing to go quietly into the processed night.
Red Dwarf
created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, Grit, Grime, and Grace Aboard the Last Ship of the Empire If The Crown depicts the burden of tradition in palaces and parlours, Red Dwarf does the same at the arse end of the universe, in a space-mining vessel held together with duct tape and stubbornness. This is not prestige sci-fi, it is Anglofuturism with curry stains. It is civilisation’s flickering pilot light, tended by the unlikeliest of keepers: a slacker, a hologram, a creature evolved from a cat, and a neurotic cleaning robot. And, dear reader, it is glorious. The Ship That Time Forgot Red…
The Prisoner (1967)
A surreal slice of seaside paranoia, “The Prisoner” is what happens when British exceptionalism takes a long walk and finds itself kidnapped by a Kafkaesque bureaucracy in a bowler hat. But beneath the eccentricity lies the Anglofuturist marrow: a war veteran, Number 6, clinging fiercely to identity, liberty, and honour even when faced with weather balloons of doom. Escape may be futile, but dignity? Always achievable. A series that knows the future needs backbone as much as it needs innovation.