Never Was Magazine

[Never Was Magazine]

Winter in Madrid

Those looking for a good World War II story could do far worse than C.J. Sansom’s Winter in Madrid

The Spanish Civil War: that allegedly heroic time of brave Republicans and Socialists fighting off dastardly Fascists. It is the time of Homage to Catalonia, of human beings “behaving as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.” The time of international brigades and socialists being either inspired or disillusioned, depending on who they encounter. It was Guernica, and it was the…

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Dexter & Sinister: Detecting Agents

Murder, espionage, mechanical marvels and… a talking cat! Our review of #steampunk novel Dexter & Sinister: Detecting Agents

This story takes place in Hammersmythe, where the rich are rich and those that aren’t struggle to make their way in life. One of the latter is John Sinister, down on his luck and sleeping on his sister’s couch.

Until he is asked by a wealthy family, whose children he used to be friends with, to look into the death of their eldest son. Determined to get to the truth about his friend’s death, John…

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Out of the London Mist

Lyssa Medana explores the perils of being an ethnic minority in #steampunk London in Out of the London Mist

One of the first things that struck me about this book is how apropos its title is: running through the entire novel is an all-consuming sense of dread brought out by what is best described as magical fog. It’s not hard to visualize the characters wrapped in clouds, appearing only in fading silhouettes as they walk through this darkened recreation of Victorian London.

Out of the London Mist, by…

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Red Storm Rising

Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising is a classic of the World War 3 genre

Red Storm Rising (1986) is a classic of the World War III genre. Tom Clancy’s second book, coming on the heels of the enormously successful The Hunt for Red October (1984), depicts a NATO-Warsaw Pact war in the mid-1980s fought entirely with conventional weapons. (Although the risk of nuclear escalation is present.)

The book opens with Azerbaijani terrorists destroying the main Soviet oil…

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Everyday Fashions of the Fifties

Everyday fashions of the 1950s: The final installment in Hilde’s reviews of fashion history books

For the final installment in our fashion history catalogue book series, we are examining the pages of the era that is probably best known when people think about retro fashion: the 1950s.

When 50s fashion is mentioned, most will think of pin-up styles, sexy tops and pencil skirts, victory roll hairdos and big circle skirts. And greasers à la James Dean and Mutt Williams.

Or skirts with poodle…

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The World Set Free

The World Set Free: The allure of apocalyptic utopianism

In certain political science (or political shit-posting) circles there is a term “accelerationism”, referring to a belief that the problems of society should not be ameliorated but rather exacerbated in order to cause the collapse of a preexisting social order so that something else may be built on its ashes. The justification for this is simple: anarchy is a blank slate upon which any…

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[Never Was Magazine]

Everyday Fashions of the 1940s

Everyday Fashions of the 1940s

If you have studied the pages of the volumes of previous decades in this Fashion History series, you will find that this book is probably the least varied. That is because the 1940s were pretty fashion-stable. There were changes in the silhouette for both men and women during the period, but nothing like the dramatic shifts of 20s and 30s.

Nonetheless, if you are into World War II-era fashion,…

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