Pirate Enlightenment playfully dismantles the central myths of the Enlightenment. Its actors were Malagasy women, merchants and traders, philosopher kings and escaped slaves, exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice by Western revolutionary regimes a century later. In this jewel of a book, he offers a way to 'decolonize the Enlightenment', demonstrating how this mixed community experimented with an alternative vision of human freedom, far from that being formulated in the salons and coffee houses of Europe. For Graeber, Madagascar's lost pirate utopia represents some of the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought. This was the Golden Age of Piracy, a period of violent buccaneering and rollicking legends - but it was also, argues anthropologist David Graeber, a brief window of radical democracy, as the pirate settlers attempted to apply the egalitarian principles of their ships to a new society on land. Its true origins lie thousands of miles away on the island of Madagascar, in the late seventeenth century, when it was home to several thousand pirates. A brilliant companion volume to the best-selling Dawn of Everything' Amitav Ghosh The Enlightenment did not begin in Europe. CHASING SHADOWS: VISIONS OF OUR COMING TRANSPARENT WORLD by David Brinįor more info on PIRATE UTOPIA, visit the Tachyon page.'A characteristically radical re-reading of history that places the social and political experiments of pirates at the heart of the European Enlightenment. MIRANDA AND CALIBAN by Jacqueline Careyġ0. Kirkus, starred review Who are these bold rebels pillaging their European neighbors in the name of revolution The Futurists Utopian pirate-warriors of the tiny Regency of Carnaro, the unlikely scourge of the Adriatic Sea. KINDRED: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL by Octavia Butler and John Jenningsĩ. Published: November 2016 Available Format (s): Hardcover and Digital Books Provocative, exotic, and very entertaining. In February for the fourth consecutive month, the book appeared on the Borderlands Books best seller list.ĥ.
There a LOT packed into this little volume and it is quite a triumph for Bruce Sterling and Tachyon Press. The ambitious Soldier-Citizens of Carnaro are led by a brilliant and passionate coterie of the perhaps insane. Mortal enemies of communists, capitalists, and even fascists (to whom they are not entirely unsympathetic).
Bruce Sterling deserves a lot of credit for turning many of the tropes of the genre of its head to make the story work.įinally, a word about the artwork all of the marvelous and madcap illustrations in Pirate Utopia are the work of John Coulthart, who also wrote an entertaining essay about how his work in the book was influenced by Futurist artists of the period. Utopian pirate warriors of the diminutive Regency of Carnaro, scourge of the Adriatic Sea. The crazy quilt of a plot is just barely on the sane side of satire and is always twisting and turning in unexpected directions. Lovecraft (as American spies?), and Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels (as innocent bystanders?). Barkley at FILE 770 nominates the work for the Hugo Award.īased on a true story of a similar city that actually existed between 19, Sterling takes a small piece of obscure history and turned it into a brilliantly funny and by turns, grotesque piece of alternative-diesel punk history.Īmong the cast of characters who are part of the action are Guglielmo Marconi (the inventor of radio), Benito Mussolini (as a newspaper editor!), Harry Houdini and H.P. Lovers of artful books won’t want to miss it.Ĭhris M. This small but exquisite volume packs a lot of power for its size. Let’s hope this is a beginning of a trend at Tachyon. It’s an extremely nice package in terms of quality, design, and artwork. The bright primary color gives added energy and contrast to Coulthart’s black and white Italian Futurist illustrations. The red ink used on the book jacket makes the Soviet Constructivist cover really pop while tying in nicely with the red endpapers inside. It delivers on many different levels: as an engaging alternate-reality tale by Bruce Sterling that is peppered by historical figures from our own timeline, as an illustrated work by World Fantasy Award-winning artist John Coulthart, and as a study in enlightened use of art historical references in book design. PIRATE UTOPIA is a rarity – an illustrated book from Tachyon Publications. In the March 2017 LOCUS, Karen Haber is impressed by the book. Reviews keep rolling in for Bruce Sterling’s triumphant PIRATE UTOPIA.
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