I’ve seen people asking: why the resurgence of interest in the west and the frontier within sff fiction? Why this stuff, why now? For the first time in my life I may be accidentally in sync with a trend of sorts. There are even “weird west”-themed conventions. (Cherie Priest Julian Comstock Emma Bull’s Territory the towering Against The Day and so on). I gather there are a number of other western-themed fantasies or fantastic-themed westerns around right now. It’s steampunk - not in the sense that there’s a lot of actual steam, but on the other hand there are ornithopters. There are evil trains and guns that talk to people (but only bad people). The world is in flux there’s a great war between the forces of modernity and industry and the forces of, well, everything else. The Half-Made World is a western, or almost-a-western, an alternative world western set in a fantastic, exaggerated, mythic and surreal and absurd version of the western frontier. So if the moon-laser thing has worked out OK, everyone will already know all about the book. I asked Gilman if he’d tell Omnivoracious readers a little bit about the genesis of the novel. Le Guin: “Vivid and accurate prose, a gripping, imaginative story, a terrifically inventive setting, a hard-bitten, indestructible hero, and an intelligent, fully adult heroine-we haven’t had a science-fiction novel like this for a long time.” The evocations of landscape, the conflict between the servants of the Gun and the servants of the Line, both of which involve either the supernatural or super-advanced science, the interactions between the characters, are all masterfully written.Īdvance praise has been equally effusive, including this blurb from Ursula K. It also features a strong and compelling female main character in the person of Lyvset Alverhuysen, tons of mad invention, and an ingenious plot.

Felix Gilman’s new novel The Half-Made World is a powerful reimagining of the West with amoral characters and a hard-edged Steampunk feel that puts the “punk” back into the subgenre with a vengeance.

The half made world