Tag Archives: books

Next-Door to a Sequel

2010-01-30 – 17:17:09

Last night I finished Living Next-Door to the God of Love, by Justina Robson. I enjoyed much of it, but found it kind of frustrating and annoying, in ways that were hard to define. The main one, though, was that some things were insufficiently explained. Now, as SF readers we are used to jumping into [...]

By Martin McCallion | Posted in books, sf | Also tagged , | Comments (3)

Transitions in Real Life?

2009-09-12 – 01:11:22

The new Iain Banks book, Transition, is a science fiction novel. This is despite the fact that it is not published as by Iain M Banks. And I don’t mean the slightly-ambiguous, could-be-a-dream-or-somebody’s-madness-if-you-don’t-want-to-suspend-your-disbelief sort of thing you get in The Bridge Or Walking On Glass, either. This is out-and-out SF, no queries or discussion. It [...]

By Martin McCallion | Posted in books | Also tagged , | Comments (0)

Adverbs, by Daniel Handler (Books 2008, 16)

2009-01-14 – 22:03:37

Mr Handler operating under his own name, here, rather than his Snicket nom de plume. As such, this is a novel for adults, rather than children. Though in fact, is it even a novel at all? It is in fact more of series of short stories, or even vignettes. They are linked, or at least [...]

By Martin McCallion | Posted in books, books 2008 | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Halting State, by Charles Stross (Books 2008, 13)

2009-01-07 – 22:58:22

Posted out of sequence, for reasons unknown even to me. Writing about this novel is kind of embarassing for me, because I had the chance to make it better than it is, and I, er, blew it because I read too slowly. See, I was on quite a large list of people who saw a [...]

By Martin McCallion | Posted in books, books 2008, sf | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Lazarus Churchyard: The Final Cut, by Warren Ellis and D’Israeli (Books 2008, 14)

2009-01-04 – 01:35:39

Hmmm, once again I try a Warren Ellis, and find that it’s not as good as I expected, or hoped. ‘Good’, that is, in the sense of ‘exciting, dramatic, interesting’. I didn’t dislike it, and the story was OK; but it never really caught fire, you know? Still, it was his debut, so maybe the [...]

By Martin McCallion | Posted in books, books 2008, sf | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Veniss Underground, by Jeff Vandermeer (Books 2008, 12)

2009-01-04 – 01:24:55

I bought this in a second-hand bookshop, and tucked into the back there was a cutting from The Guardian of this review by Michael Moorcock. So go and look there if you want a plot summary: he does it much better then I could. It’s an interesting, dark story, and I’m not totally sure how [...]

By Martin McCallion | Posted in books, books 2008, sf | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)

ThiGMOO, by Eugene Byrne (Books 2008, 11)

2008-10-13 – 21:38:18

This is, in effect, a Singularity story, though a rather gentle, slightly comic one. The AIs that gain self-awareness and seek to achieve independence and change the world, start out as part of an educational project called the Museum of the Mind. In this construct there are a number of simulations of figures from history [...]

By Martin McCallion | Posted in books, books 2008 | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket (Books, 2008, 10)

2008-08-26 – 22:53:58

This is actually thirteen books, not just one. I’ve been reading it with my son over a period of several months. He, of course, had already read it, but we like reading together, and I was keen to know the rest of the story, after seeing the film (which is based on the events of [...]

By Martin McCallion | Posted in books, books 2008 | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

A Dream of Wessex, by Christopher Priest (Books 2008, 9)

2008-06-20 – 17:26:37

This is the motherlode of all brains-in-jars/life-is-a-computer-simulation-type stories. Gibson’s and the Wachowski’s Matrixes can both trace their origins back to here – or at least, they should be able to. I’m not aware of anything older than this that quite deals with this idea. At Maiden Castle in Dorchester in the near future (of the [...]

By Martin McCallion | Posted in books, books 2008, lj, sf | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Space Machine, by Christopher Priest (Books 2008, 8)

2008-06-17 – 21:08:09

What a fine conceit. Take the two great science fiction works by one of the genre’s defining masters, mash them up together, and use the result to tell the ‘inside’ story of both of them. It’s title is an obvious allusion to The Time Machine, but this is actually much more rooted in The War [...]

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