“Learmont is a virtuoso with the English language, which makes reading the book a double pleasure.”
23 November 2011: The Citizen calls Light Across Time “a high-flying novel” and says: It takes a writer’s courage to create a plot with such an intricate mix of situations and succeed in making a story out of it.
21 November 2011: Learmont visits a famous London cat.
14 November 2011: Nick Wood interviews Learmont in London for the World SF Blog.
12 November 2011: The ebook version of Light Across Time is now sold in the UK and elsewhere by the Book Depository.
23 October 2011: I’ve just finished, in two large gulps, Tom Learmont’s novel Light Across Time. Anyone who can stitch together time-travel, Nabokov, London pubs, hijacking, Free State vistas and Joburg’s Radium Beer Hall – an old haunt of mine – gets my vote. It is a wonderful piece of work. Christopher Hope interviewed in The Sunday Times.
13 October 2011: Light Across Time is now available as an ebook from Barnes & Noble in the US. Download the free B&N Nook apps, and read Tom Learmont’s “sweeping sci-fi saga” on iPhone, iPad, Android, PC and Mac – without needing a Kindle.
12 October 2011: Learmont is encouraged by the two types of review Light Across Time has been getting: either highly favourable, or sneering and dismissive. This extreme polarisation in critical opinion is said to indicate that a work is on the cutting edge.
10 September 2011: The latest issue of South African pulp mag Jungle Jim features a story by Tom Learmont: The Evil Water Sprite.
3 September 2011: SF and Fantasy in the City was a discussion topic at the Mail & Guardian Literary Festival. SF critic Gwen Ansell took the chair; Sarah Lotz, Louis Greenberg, Lauren Beukes and Tom Learmont held forth. PODCAST
AND… a four-star review from HEAT: This is very accessible science fiction, even for those who don’t like the genre.
12 August 2011: An excellent review in The Star by Jenny de Klerk. Also on Artslink. A sweeping SA sci-fi saga…
7 August 2011: A boost from Beeld: So eklekties en verrassend soos ‘n plaaslike Foucault’s Pendulum. Nog Tom Learmont, asseblief.
26 July 2011: Jenny Crwys-Williams talked about Science Fiction with Tom Learmont and Cedric Abrahams of SFSA on Talk Radio 702.
- Tom Learmont propounds Sturgeon’s Law: 90 per cent of Science Fiction is crap, but so is 90 per cent of everything else.
10 July 2011: Award-winning writer Liz Pienaar and her partner Justin Mueller hosted a Sunday “sop en dop” book launch for Light Across Time at ADS in Oaklands, Johannesburg. Sop was supplied by Harriet Pienaar and the dop was by courtesy of Leopards Leap. Stills by Paul Paddington and video coverage by Keith Page.
Tom Learmont, current newspaper man, and long-standing regular at The Radium, delivered a rollicking speech during his launch of “Light Across Time” yesterday. Great historical perspective about the sci-fi genre and his efforts to entertain and educate international audiences. Tom’s humour and humanity have echoes of Kurt Vonnegut. (Margaret o’ Connor)
6 July 2011: KIRBY vd MERWE interviewed Tom Learmont in Afrikaans, for the supplement By, which appears in several papers including Beeld and Die Burger: “I am in the Springtime of my senescence…” Read more…
20 June 2011: Light Across Time has been published and is available in most bookshops – and by mail order from online retailers.
16 January 2011: Tom Learmont has signed a world rights contract with Kwela Books for his novel Light Across Time. Kwela’s offer for the scientific romance came after enthusiastic recommendations from two publishers’ readers. Learmont is happy with the terms because there is no literary agent to take a cut; and also because Kwela has an excellent reputation as a house which promotes authors aggressively and stays loyal to backlist titles.