RaveNew ScientistWith Even Greater Mistakes, she precisely unpicks what is behind the choices writers make available to their characters ... In \'The Time Travel Club,\' the process by which we pick ourselves up after life has been devastated by our own choices is unspooled in a beautiful, haunting little tale ... Anders excels at revealing how various hidden mechanisms shape our lives and at showing us their artifice ... But as Anders shows us, we have choices in how to deal with these rigged systems. We can always throw the whole lot in the bin.
Lauren Beukes
RaveNew Scientist... the book shines as one of the best thought experiments of its kind, in which Beukes has stitched together the surprise matriarchy of The Power, the millenarian despair of Children of Men and the deeply intelligent questions of Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness ... Yet it isn’t all nihilism. Beukes seeds the book with hopeful rumours of matriarchal societies that have sprung up in other countries. There are never many details beyond the promise, like mirages just over the horizon ... Afterland is that rare creature, a ripping tale that neither shies away from big questions nor interesting answers. What happens when the powerless get power? There is no guarantee that the previously oppressed will wield it any more judiciously than those who oppressed them. It isn’t about the individuals. It is about the society they need to maintain.
