Launching a full-frontal assault on Western anxieties

Fiction: Borne, By Jeff Vandermeer, Fourth Estate, €17

Jeff Vandermeer never looked like a writer fated for mainstream success. His early fiction is outré, even by the standards of contemporary science fiction: in Finch (2009), for example, the imaginary city of Ambergris is invaded by sentient ambulatory mushrooms (for a while, in the precincts of SF fandom, Vandermeer was known as “the mushroom guy”). To all appearances, Vandermeer’s talent was defiantly baroque, dreamy, ...