Exalted in the international halls of power, pored over in the chancelleries of Europe, admired on US university campuses, wielded in the business class lounges of Asia and endorsed by Steve Bannon, the Economist is singular both in its commercial reach and ideological self-assurance. Former subscribers range across the political and intellectual gamut from Marx to Mussolini, and have also included Woodrow Wilson, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Franklin D Roosevelt and Hitler’s finance minister. Boasting a print circulation of 859,000, no journal has remained so resolute in its status as the ur-mag of Anglophone liberalism.
Yet on 15 September 2018, as the title celebrated its 175th anniversary, God’s voice quivered. “We were created 175 years ago to campaign for liberalism,” that week’s editorial read. “Liberalism made the modern world, but the modern world is turning against it… For the Economist this is profoundly worrying.”
When writers are working in a series, there is a risk that its world will close in on itself. This world began with “Borne,” the story of a woman living in a broken-down apartment building in the City who finds a cuttlefish-slash-houseplant with the awareness of a little boy.
With “Dead Astronauts,” VanderMeer has expanded to a multiverse with a poisoned past, engineered monsters and a possibly redeemable future, all from something that was merely decoration. There’s no limit to where it might go next.
My Fake Rake is a feast of female empowerment, positive friendships, feel-good moments, and social satire. And as the first book in a series, it builds a delicious world you'll want to come back to — hopefully because the delightful supporting characters will get their own stories next.