Tag Archives: science fiction

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

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 [...]

Add a comment

British Summer Time, by Paul Cornell (Books 2008, 4)

Paul Cornell wrote some of my favourite episodes of Doctor Who’s recent years: ‘Father’s Day’, and the ‘Human Nature’/’Family of Blood’ two-parter. After the latter, I downloaded and read the ebook of his original novel (on which the episodes were based). So I came to this with some knowledge of his writing.
But not [...]

Comments (1)

Matter, by Iain M Banks (Books 2008, 1)

So, the latest Banksie. Always a treat, of course, and especially so when it’s a novel of The Culture. This one, though, is slightly disappointing.
It’s not actually bad—certainly not badly written (though he does overuse the phrases “appeared to be”, and “looked like”, when describing things; I was told off years ago (by [...]

Comments (2)