That Really Isn't Helping....

A Murder Mystery Idea

2011-11-17T16:50:00.000+08:00

How do you solve this serial killer mystery?

The killer uses a different hand gun every time they kill. There method is essentially to approach someone walking alone, at night, and shoot them in the head. The killer then leaves on foot, travelling up to 2 kilometres to a vehicle and drives home. On the way he disposes of the weapon in a deep body of water. For example, the killer may toss the weapon out of the car window as he crosses The Causeway or The Narrows.

The killer works entirely alone. He doesn't take souveniers and doesn't take photographs of his victims. He doesn't stay near the victim and has the sense to avoid the crimescene after the fact.

The only notable aspect of these crimes is that the killer likes to be close to the victim when he shoots them. Yet there is no DNA evidence on the victim, nor is there any CCTV footage. The killer clearly scouts and chooses places where no surveilance is in place. For example, the underpass of Mitchell Freeway at Glendalough Train Station, before reaching either of the car yards in either direction.

Note also, however, that the killer never takes a victim in the same location twice. The first murder takes place as mentioned at the Glendalough underpass, but the second is on a footpath by a main road in Rockingham. The third is on a sidestreet in Kenwick. The fourth, on Plain St in East Perth, not far from the WACA and the WA Police Service headquarters. And so on.

With no weapon, no witnesses, no actual pattern outside the method of killing, how do you start to try to identify such a murderer?

Locus Awards 2011 - Winners and Nominees

2011-06-27T17:43:00.000+08:00

Best Science Fiction Novel
- Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)
- Surface Detail, Iain M. Banks (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
- Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
- Zero History, William Gibson (Putnam; Viking UK)
- The Dervish House, Ian McDonald (Pyr; Gollancz)
Best Fantasy Novel
- Kraken, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey)
- Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay (Penguin Canada; Roc)
- Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)
- The Fuller Memorandum, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
- The Sorcerer's House, Gene Wolfe (Tor)

Best First Novel
- The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
- The Loving Dead, Amelia Beamer (Night Shade)
- Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
- The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi (Gollancz; Tor)
- How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu (Pantheon)
Best Young Adult Book
- Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
- Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)
- Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones (HarperCollins UK; Greenwillow)
- I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; HarperCollins)
- Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)
Best Novella- The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
- Bone and Jewel Creatures, Elizabeth Bear (Subterranean)
- "The Mystery Knight"', George R.R. Martin (Warriors)
- "Troika", Alastair Reynolds (Godlike Machines)
- "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen's Window'", Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Summer '10)
Best Novelette
- "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains", Neil Gaiman (Stories)
- "The Fool Jobs", Joe Abercrombie (Swords & Dark Magic)
- "The Mad Scientist's Daughter", Theodora Goss (Strange Horizons 1/18-1/25/10)
- "Plus or Minus", James Patrick Kelly (Asimov's 12/10)
- "Marya and the Pirate", Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov's 1/10)
Best Short Story- "The Thing About Cassandra", Neil Gaiman (Songs of Love and Death)
- "Booth's Ghost", Karen Joy Fowler (What I Didn't See and Other Stories)
- "Names for Water", Kij Johnson (Asimov's 10-11/10)
- "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time", Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld 8/10)
- "The Things", Peter Watts (Clarkesworld 1/10)
Best Magazine- Asimov's
- Analog
- F&SF
- Subterranean
- Tor.com
Best Book Publisher
- Tor
- Baen
- Night Shade Books
- Orbit
- Subterranean Press
Best Anthology- Warriors, George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Tor)
- Zombies vs. Unicorns, Holly Black & Justine Larbalestier, eds. (McElderry)
- The Beastly Bride, Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds. (Viking)
- The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin's)
- Swords & Dark Magic, Jonathan Strahan & Lou Anders, eds. (HarperCollins)
Best Collection
- Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories, Fritz Leiber (Night Shade)
- Mirror Kingdoms, Peter S. Beagle (Subterranean)
- What I Didn't See and Other Stories, Karen Joy Fowler (Small Beer)
- The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson, Kim Stanley Robinson (Night Shade)
- The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume Five: Nine Black Doves, Roger Zelazny (NESFA)
Best Editor
- Ellen Datlow
- Gardner Dozois
- Gordon Van Gelder
- David G. Hartwell
- Jonathan Strahan
Best Artist- Shaun Tan
- Bob Eggleton
- Donato Giancola
- John Picacio
- Michael Whelan
Best Non-Fiction Book
- Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1: 1907-1948: Learning Curve, William H. Patterson, Jr., (Tor)
- 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Joy Fowler & Debbie Notkin, eds. (Aqueduct)
- Conversations with Octavia Butler, Conseula Francis (University Press of Mississippi)
- CM Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary, Mark Rich (McFarland)
- Bearings: Reviews 1997-2001, Gary K. Wolfe (Beccon)
Best Art Book
- Spectrum 17, Cathy & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Underwood)
- Bob Eggleton, Dragon's Domain (Impact)
- Donato Giancola, Middle-Earth: Visions of a Modern Myth (Underwood)
- Shaun Tan, The Bird King and Other Sketches (Windy Hollow)
- Charles Vess & Neil Gaiman, Instructions (Harper)

New Books!

2011-06-16T19:40:00.000+08:00

I received Hartwell and Kramer Years Best SF 16 in the post two days ago. Very good. I've barely had a chance to look at it yet, since I was a: in the middle of Dexter In The Dark by Jeff Lindsay and b: I was either out or doing something else all day, so I haven't had the opportunity to look. It'll be great though, I'm sure.

It is (was?) the last book I purchased from Amazon.com. As you may have heard, I'm a bookdepository.co.uk nerd now. Awesome, cheap, free postage.

I put in a new order today, actually. The books are:

Jeff Lindsay - Dexter is Delicious
Lou Anders - Fast Forward Vol. 1
Jim Butcher - Summer Knight
Irvine Welsh - The Acid House (I've regretted selling this book to Elizabeths since I did it.)
Irvine Welsh - Reheated Cabbage
David Hartwell and Katheryn Kramer - Years Best SF 13
Nick Gevers - Is Anybody Out There?

Total price including postage (which is free, so, erm...) $71.47. They have a summer reading promo on, so if YOU would like a 10% discount voucher, email me and I will send you one. I've already used mine, but if you get one from me and buy something with it, I get another. Which would be nice, I think.

And they have almost everything.

On the subject of Iain M. Banks, Space Opera, and the Future of Money.

2011-06-11T23:36:00.000+08:00

I've been reading a lot of Iain M Banks novels lately. By which I mean that I read all of the Iain M Banks novels published so far over the last four or so weeks. I love them. I've read Consider Phlebas, Player of Games and The Use of Weapons twice each, and listened to the audiobook of each of them as well, while driving into Bunbury. The more recent versions of the audiobook are better than the older ones, in my opinion. Peter Kenny is a fantastic narrator, who has the good sense to not do the stupid atonal robot voice for spacecraft and drones.

I've also read the short story collection State of The Art a couple of times. It has a bunch of really fun short shorts, and a massively exciting novella to finish up. I've only read the other books once each so far, but I've restarted on Surface Detail, the 2010 released Culture novel that is the favourite so far.

I've read these books almost exclusively since discovering them. Why? Because the books are basically about a universe in which my political views won. It's my dream universe, where noone goes without, where noone has the right to prevent any action by any individual if it doesn't cause harm to others, where illness is nonexistant, where cross cultural cooperation is the NORMAL STATE OF THINGS!

Oh my, it's enticing. It's the novelisation of the problems involved with being the society that in my view would be as close to perfect as it is to come. Because problems will always arise, and morality is fraught with conundrums and contradictions.

But the thing that appeals to me most is the abolition of money. The first novel in the Culture series has a line that basically says that money is a symptom of poverty, or in other words that money is only necessary because of scarcity. I want to live in the post scarcity world, because that is when true human potential has a shot at being reached. Until then, the greedy will rule us all, and we will forever loose against greed if there are more people than resources.

The future of money is that there is no money. And oh how I long for a Space Opera future.

The End.

Now That I Have A Laptop...

2011-06-11T23:19:00.000+08:00

Does that mean I'm writing a novel? HAHA. I kid.

Seriously though, I didn't realise how much use I would get out of this damn thing until I had it. Breakfast has become a whole new world of time wastage, since instead of reading my news feeds on the iPad, I can now type really quickly on my laptop while reading the news. So I find myself getting into forum arguments at breakfast. So much fun. Although you know what they say about arguing on the internet...

I haven't stopped reading tonnes of books, by the way. I just stopped writing about it for a while, because I was doing most of the writing at the library. These days, I get my books from BookDepository.co.uk instead. But now that I have a LAPTOP.

Did I mention that I bought myself a laptop? It's an Asus something or other with a 14" screen, which is quite small but suprisingly adequate. It also has a beautify keyboard for touch typing. I barely have to proof read or spell check anymore thanks to this god damn magnificent hunk of plastic crap.

The Future? It's awesome.

Regarding Live Export of Animals - A Letter To The Prime Minister

2011-05-31T20:16:00.002+08:00

Dear Prime Minister,

I beg you, as an Australian and as a human of decency (and as a socialist!), to end this barbaric practice of Live Exporting animals from this country. Not only do we have no control over the treatment of the live stock once they have left our shores, but it is also costing jobs that should remain in Australia. We are capable of performing all necessary rituals that may be required to meet the superstitious rules of potential purchasers of exported meat, and the additional work would be welcome in the current economic climate.

However, should a ban on live exports result in clients going elsewhere, I believe this to be a price worth paying in order to end our nations involvement in such barbarity.

I'm sure other have quoted the survival rates of the live export voyages. Add to this the deliberate cruelty seen in the recent Four Corners segment and it is clear that a ban on this vile trade in suffering must end, and it can only end if WE as a civilised nation end it.

I ask you again, please, act to end live animal exports from Australia.

Thank you for your time,
Sincerely
Nate Stokes

In Which I Blog About Being at Work, but Wishing I Were On A Spaceship.

2011-05-15T18:05:00.000+08:00

So. Here I am, once again. A Sunday afternoon spent making change, pumping fuel for people too lazy to do it themselves and saying "If you could enter your PIN number and OK please."

Yeah, I say pin number. What're you gonna do about it?

Ok , I started this 5 hours ago and have been flat out since.

THE END

Sent from my iPod which would be awesome if everywhere has WIFI but instead there just NOTHING which is annoying and XARCH UP WITH THE 21st CENTURY AUSTRALIA!!!

Again, Das Phone ist Ficken

2011-05-05T09:42:00.002+08:00

Yep, it says I've got email but won't let me open it, internet but no twitter, sms or phone service. I hate phones.

UPDATE: 5/5/2011 @ 11PM: It all seems to be working again, but that hasn't stopped me from wishing I had bought a different phone. Oh well, since I dropped this one twice today, I'm sure I'll need a new one soon enough.

Schoopid Modular Tellingbone

2011-05-03T13:47:00.001+08:00

I just tried to use this flocking phone for its primary purpose, only to discover that i have no service at all. That is, except, for internet access. I'd be impressed if it weren't exactly not what i need right now.

It's rather ironic, in the Canadian pop singer who uncannily resembles Dave Grohl kind of way.

Mobile posting is mobile.

2011-05-01T12:43:00.001+08:00

Waiting, as fucking usual. So I thought I might send off a quick post, before realising that I don't have anything to say right now. None the less...

I'm listening to Iain M Banks Player of Games audiobook, which is quite fun. I'm in the car doing this right now, in fact, and people are looking at me funny as they walk past me! HaHa, it's like a hyper version of 'whachoo readen for?'

Here's a photo!

Oh, I don't seem to be able to stick images incline with this email client. I was hoping that I might be able to. Oh well.

Gotta go, I'm up next!

The end?

----------
Sent from my phone
yeah, the phone I didn't want
It's Mario's fault
0406 475 610

Why I Haven't Updated Since February

2011-04-29T23:57:00.000+08:00

Hi there! No, I didn't die, I've just been really busy. I've started a new job and left my old one, but still doing the same thing. Which is good, really, since I like my job. The new job is just closer to home.

Java has had a birthday, having turned 12. Weird.

I also had a birthday, turning 375. Getting old sucks. I did, however, get some awesome gifts, including a new Radeon 5770, books by Alastair Reynolds and a copy of Masked for my very own, new shoes, which stink already, very orange laces, and a Hendrix tshirt. Yay for me. Oh, and I got crysis, finally, and I'm about half way through.

Why yes, I have been reading. An incomplete list is as follows:

In no particular order:
<->Old Mans War by John Scalzi, which was a brilliant, funny, cynical take on Starship Troopers
<->Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks, a wonderful space opera that I wish was true.
<->The Player of Games by Iain M Banks, more wonderful space opera.
<->Godlike Machines edited by Johnathan Strahan, a collection of 'big dumb object' stories from the likes of Cory Doctorow and Robert Reed
<->Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds, one of my birthday present books.
<->The Takeshi Kovacs books by Richard Morgan, which read like Andy McNab in space, with a socialist antihero twist.
<->Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks, another brilliant 'Culture' novel that was briefly my benchmark for brilliance.
<->The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories by Walter Jon Williams. Cool.
-Newtons Wake by Ken McLeod, a guy who just doesn't write enough!
<->the forever War by Joe Haldeman, an old favorite of mine
-Conspiracies by F. Paul Wilson, from the Repairman Jack series.
-The 4500 page Void Trilogy by Peter F Hamiilton, a masterwork of sheer brilliance.
-Seeker by Jack McDevitt, a book I've been meaning to track down and read since I read an excerpt in a nebula awards annual. Now I have. Fucking great fun.
-Excess ion by Iain M Baks, a very nice Culture story about outside influence and space ships.
-Look To Windward by Iain M Banks, which I struggled to get into until the 2nd chapter, when it took off and blew my mind.
-Inversions by Iain M banks, which blew my mind some more.
-Matter by Iain M Banks, which reset the standard for sheer brilliance in prose.
Surface Detail by Iain M Baks which reset the standard again. I finished this one today, and kinda wish it was still going or that I hadn't read it yet, because it's his most recent book and there is nothing new to go on too. Fortunately he has about 20 more books published, although not as part of his Culture series.

I am currently reading Feersum Enjinn, which 3 chapters in has been so good I want to sit and read the while damn thing, but then if I do, I'll have to find something else to read and it won't be this book!!! I also have a fairly big pile of too be read books:

-Battle Stations edited by David Drake,
-The algebraist by Iain M Banks
-Against A Dark Background by Iain M Banks, which I started but on realizing it wasn't a culture novel, set it aside temporarily.
-The Crow Road by Iain Banks, a mainstream book as denoted by the lack of an M in the authors name...
-Transition by Iain Banks
-Metaplanetary by Tony Danoel, which I have been hunting for for ashes.
-The Confederation Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton, which is incredibly intimidating based on it's 5000+ page count.

I've also got a couple of Stephen King books that I've been meaning to take a peek at, being Blockade Billy and Full Dark, No Stars, but since the Dome, I've been very hesitant. I hated that book, it was a completely traumatic experience for me. Also coming up are the annual purche of The Years Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois and Years Best SF edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer due in June and May respectively ( which I must remember to put some money on the good old MasterCard Debit to pay for, since they're coming from Amazon via preorder...) and trust is just the boos that I urgently WANT to read.

There are also bunch of paperbacks that I picked up of Fred pink, bob heinlein, Poul Anderson, Lester Del Ray and Algis Bundrys that I would love to read through again some time, but I jdont see it happening.

Ok, I'm going to post this now. I know, it's full of errors, and tomorrow I will clean it up some, but since the kid is on the computer playing Minecraft, I am typing this on the iPad screen, which means that the text I am currently typing is covered over with the software keyboard. I really shield buy a Bluetooth thin gamy for it, but they are pretty expensive, kooks 4 whole books worth of money haha. And since my books mall come from the library, it's doubly too expensive, or something.

Anyway, my point is that I just can't be fucked trying to edit and proof this post on an iPad, cause it'd be hard, time consuming and frankly not very accurate anyway.

Thanks for readin! I hope yu are well. I hope you are reading lots of great books. Be it mystery, mills and boomed or magazines, any amount of reading is one billion times more useful than any equivalent amount of time spent watching television, so please, for your own sake, and for the future of our species, won't somebody think of the paperbacks??

Love
The Hairy Fucken Hairball known as NATE!!!!! Woooohtttah!

The Commonwealth Saga: Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained - Peter F Hamilton

2011-02-20T16:12:00.000+08:00

Author: Peter F. Hamilton
Title: Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained
ISBN: Pandora's Star (2004) 0-330-49331-0
ISBN: Judas Unchained (2005) 0-330-49353-1

Hi everybody.

I don't think I need to remind anyone out there in readerland that I am a huge fan of space opera. In both senses. I've worked my way through some of the work off each of the current big names in the field, and I have stated on numerous occasions that Al Reynolds and Paul McAuley are brilliant megaminds who need to be chained to a typewriter and force worked, because it is the only way we can guarantee maximum literary output before they die.

For some reason, though, I have never read a Peter Hamilton. I've read a few short stories in the various Years Best series that I like (Gardner Dozois for bulk, David Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer for taste, Johnathan Strahan for the Australian perspective...) and I have always enjoyed his stories. There was this one about a fleet ship which was on an eternal mission outward, dumping equipment to build CST gateways (more on this in uno momento) that they personally will never benefit from or use due to time dilation effect, relativity and other physics based phenomena. It was very cool. I wouldn't mind being one of the crew, that's for sure. Noble sacrifice plus spaceship to eternity equals well chuffed me.

I think the main reason for never having read a Hamilton novel is the size. I don't know if you have ever seen one, but they are hefty. Pandoras Star comes in a over 900 pages, and Judas Unchained is over 1000! JU Had to be split into two volumes for publication in the USA. For perspective, the large Years Best Science Fiction volumes with 22 or so stories are usually 700 or so. And they are some of the biggest books I own. So while I have no problem with reading the volume of text involved, I struggle with making that big a time commitment to a single story.

The thing is, I generally prefer to read short fiction (novellas and such.) There are a few reasons for this, but largely it is because the waffle is mostly nonexistant in short fiction. The editing is tighter, the plot advances as a rapid pace and there is no opportunity for boredom to ruin the story. When editors like Gardner Dozois, Ellen Datlow, Fred Pohl and others from the magazine trade get a hold of waffley fiction, they shake like hell until all the clingy shit is gone, then return it for two more rewrites, and the result is always great, usually brilliant, and occasionally fucking earth shattering.

There are quite a few writers who I enjoy immensely at (modern) novel length, for example Alastair Reynolds, Paul McAuley, CJ Cherryh and Kage Baker. And I really like the 250 pagers that used to be the average length of a novel, before this modern super tome thing happened, although many (but not all, notably Fred Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, M. John Harrison, the Cyberpunks etc) of them have dated pretty badly.

I finally grabbed a copy of Pandora's Star and got started. I had no real idea what the plot was, just that it was roughly New Space Opera-ish. It turned out to be one of the better choices I have made in my life. Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained essentially make up one big, 2 volume, 1900 odd page novel. And every single word of both volumes is justified, necessary and fricken brilliant.

There may be some kind of spoiler type activity after the jumplink. While I try very hard to not give away any actual plot developments or twists, I will be discussing some of the characters, and I will give quite a bit of detail on the prologue, which sets the tone of this novel set beautifully. It won't actually spoil the book for you, but if you don't want to read it, don't click on the link.

Yay for you, you clicked and now you're gonna read on!!!! Unless you're on (f)assbook, in which case you didn't get a choice as to whether to read on or not. You really should go to my actual blog instead, you know. It's much prettier and better formatted, with bigger printing and a highly eye friendly colour scheme.

Pandora's Star opens onboard an American spacecraft, on it's way to the first landing of humans on Mars. We ride along as the lander enters the Martian atmosphere, and with a great deal of seriousness and gravity, the crew step out onto the Martian soil and raise the American flag.

As the captain makes a pre-prepared Neil Armstrong type "giant leap" statement, the pov character, Wilson, hears someone suppress a snicker over the radio. He kinda agrees, although he is surprised that one of this crew could be so undisciplined. As the flag is raised to further pretentious ceremony, someone outright laughs over the radio, and Wilson realises that he doesn't recognise the voice.

"Who is that?" he angrily demands, and he receives a reply that makes him turn around. And he discovers a science geek in a home made space suit. Behind him is a weird hole in the universe that opens in a Californian university physics lab, and an unspacesuited geek with an afro saying "Nigel, stop it dude, you're gonna really piss them off."

So these two geeks figured out how to make wormholes, and they used it to beat the lander crew to Mars. Space travel just became redundant.

And then the novel shifts 300 years or so into the future of The Commonwealth, a collection of 600 earth like planets connected by railways through wormholes that provide instant travel between destinations. There are limits, of course, so to get to an outlying planet, you would have to jump via several wayplanets, but you can basically get on the train destined for anywhere and be there with in a few hours. The time is mostly taken up in routing the train through the various gateways. Very Victorian. But with immortality, computers and blaster pistols.

(OK - At this point, it's been a week since I started writing this, and I have been very very busy reading the next set Commonwealth book, pumping petrol or playing minecraft, so it looks like I'm never gonna get back to this post. So here I go, I'm gonna finish quickly...I knew minecraft was a bad idea...)

I'm pretty sure that the books were written as one big story, and inevitably, Pandora's Star ends on a cliffhanger. I'd recommend getting Judas Unchained ready to go, especially if you are impatient. I am, so I did, and I'm happier for it.

Basically, you need to read these books. It's important. You'll be missing out on one of the most important, and most enjoyable, works of science fiction written since Alastair Reynolds started the Revelation Space sequence. It's got everything you need, but with an original perspective and voice that makes this a total pleasure to read.

And that's it. That's all I have to say, and now I am going to go read some more Peter Hamilton book type writing thingys. Cause they're really good. I said that already didn't I?

PFFFffffffpahhhhhhprrt. <---that's the sound of me deflating like a balloon. Because I have lost the motivation to keep typing today, so now I am going to sto

The Future Is almost Arrived.

2011-02-07T02:20:00.000+08:00

Oh My Fracking Dog! I want a NoteSlate so much I think I might pop.

This is with out doubt the actual futurest thing I have ever seen. I need one.

June 2011 apparently. Fingers ex'd they'll be available for delivery to AU, And teh Ostraylyun Dolla will still be worth actual money on the foriegn market....

I feel sick with giddy thrillednessness.

Commentation is under Activation

2011-01-31T15:50:00.002+08:00

With a small hint of alliteration.....

Yeah, I've put comments on. This is because I got a question for you all.

Can anybody recommend short stories or novels for a highly advanced 12yo reader in the SF genre for the purpose of teaching literature?

I can, but I might have missed some.

Sandstone blocks are pretty...

2011-01-30T20:50:00.000+08:00

Today, I built this villa thingy, which has an underwater room and a volcano in the basement. I would try to finish it, but my time, patience and ass are finished.

Minecraft: Don't buy it if you value the rest of your life...

Minecraft

2011-01-29T16:28:00.000+08:00

Java and I purchased Minecraft a few days ago, which is mentioned in explaination of why I haven't written anything in days. It looks like Wolfenstein, plays like SimCity without the stupid rules and limits. It's like Lego, but better. I built a really big castle! See? No particular reason that I did it, I just did. Yay for me.

I was going to build a Dwarrowdelf model. (LoTR fans will recognise this as the fuckoff big hall full of columns and dark at the eastern end of Moria, where as others will recognise this as Nate having lost his tiny little mind.) But I got bored with it, and ended up just digging holes all over the place instead.

I heart this game.

On The Subject Of Ebook Piracy

2011-01-22T22:35:00.000+08:00

This guy, Charles Tan who is from the Phillipines wrote this great essay on the poor folk perspective of ebooks and ebook piracy. Read this!!! Brilliant and saves me from having to write the same things...

Now That Xmas/New Year is Over, We Resume Our Regular Service

2011-01-17T16:10:00.000+08:00

Whew! That was intense!

Xmas this year was pretty full on with work, since we had a few staff off sick. I've been working way more than I wanted to. I haven't been to the library since 20th December 2010. Happy New Year BTW.

I have still managed to do plenty of reading, but since I didn't keep up with blogging it, I thought maybe I would just write yers a list. But first, the news.

I GOT A KOBO for Xmas from Java and Juta. Actually, it was an all round excellent year for presents, since I also got a lawn mower from my mum (via gift cards), a dremel from Juta, socks and iTunes cards from Java (I heart xmas socks!) and then we stayed home alone for xmas day, ate snack food and napped until it cooled down, then watched movies until about 4 in the morning.

New Years was a repeat of Xmas, minus the presents, plus sparklers.

A massive list of books that I have read since my last book related entry, which may not be all inclusive, since the heat has affect the neural wiring of my Giant Planetoid of a Head^tm

ARM - Tales of Gil 'The Arm' Hamilton - Larry Niven: Part of the known space series, I think this was a fan made ebook, with stories about organlegging and detective work. A whole bunch of short stories I had never read before, including 'Patchwork Girl' which was excellent.
Beowulf Shaeffer - Larry Niven: Another fan made ebook that I found online (sorry Larry!) that had all of the Beowulf Shaeffer stories like 'Flatlander', 'Borderlands of Sol' and others. More Known Space.
Protector - Larry Niven: This is one that I had never been able to get my hands on before. A Known Space novel that describes the origins of the human species. Too cool, plus now Ringworld makes a whole lot more sense.
Years Best Science Fiction 5 - Ed David Hartwell and Katheryn Cramer: The 1999 edition, full of brilliant short fiction. This series plus the Gardner Dozois books, plus Strange Horizons and Clarkesworld keeps me pretty busy, but I am always on the lookout. No standouts, because they were all good. Writeup to come at some point in the future.
Years Best Science Fiction 10 - Ed David Hartwell and Katheryn Cramer: Featured some fantastic short fiction from 2004, from a series that I absolutely love. Standouts include 'Sergeant Chip' by Bradley Denton. Now that I try to think back, I can't remember any other stories from this book, but I remember that I enjoyed them.
Years Best Science Fiction 13 - Ed David Hartwell & Katheryn Cramer: Yeah, I went on a bit of a Years Best bender.
Space Stations - Ed Martin Greenburg: I grabbed this because Gardner Dozois listed every story in it in his Honoroable Mentions 2004 list. One of the best themed anthologies I've read so far.
Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Futures: Ed John Joseph Adams: Very nice themed reprints collection with a lot of stories I had never read before. I got this one from Baen.com
The Best of Frederik Pohl: This collection dates back to the mid 90s, which had a few stories I'd not read before.
The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy of the Year Vol 1 (2005) - Ed Johnathan Strahan: Another book from Baen, with a nice selection of stuff, different from the other anthologists selections for the most part. Every book of this type featured 'Yellow Card Man' and 'Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter'...
The Postman - David Brin: I grabbed this book because, although I have never liked David Brin's novels, I like the plot of this one. I should not have bothered.
The Hard SF Renaissance - Ed David Hartwell: Almost, but not quite as cool as The Space Opera Renaissance, but a very cool read none the less. A collection of critical articles and stories that help define Hard SF as a subgenre. It's not easy to draw hard and fast lines in SF, but this book is a useful guide if you like the more scientifically rigourous stories.

I'm sure there was something else, but I don't remember right now.

And on that note, I'm gonna go buy a gas bottle and some food.

I love youse all.

Before They Were Giants, They Were Wee Little (unpublished) People

2010-12-20T15:26:00.000+08:00

Author: James L Sutter
Title: Before They Were Giants: First Works from Science Fiction Greats
Publisher: Planet Stories 2010
ISBN: 978 1601252661 (Planet Stories #28)

Before They Were Giants is the latest Planet Stories book, collecting the first published works (sortof) by a bunch of SF and F authors in print today. Ben Bova, Piers Anthony, Kim Stanley Robinson, Larry Niven and Michael Swanwick represent the old school, while Cory Doctorow, China Mieville and William Gibson stand in for more recent times. Yes, there are others, but I can't be bothered typing their names in. Lazy, aren't I?

Highlights for me were Spider Robinsons first story (which is also the first Callahans Bar story) and the China Mieville story, which was ok but a bit trite while reading. Until I found out that he wrote it when he was FUCKING 12!!!! And on that basis, is is absolutely brilliant.

Charles Stross also has a story in this book, but I didn't really get it. The only female gendered person featured is Nicola Griffith, and the story was a bit naff, doing one of those "evil human mining company is exploiting the land of the humanoid natives, but their spirituality may just win the day with the help of a kind hearted officer and the guidance of an old native sage type lady" type stories. I would have loved to see first works by some of the really great women writers like Kage Baker, Eileen Gunn, Kath Koja, hell, pretty much anyone. Maybe they'll do a Before They [each] Became A Giantess?

Oh Oh, Michael Swanwick - His story in this is creepy and weird but space operaish and too cool for words. This book is worth getting on the basis of this story alone.

I know I ususally waffle on a whole lot more about books, but I am a bit short on time at the moment. So I will just say this - Planet Stories have published some interesting stuff recently, and they are worth chasing up at the library. That most of the stories in this book are widely available elsewhere, however, means that I don't think it is worth the $15.99 rrp. The only really hard to get piece is the China Mieville, and that was more exciting for the novelty than actual value. You wouldn't reread it annually, cause it ain't LoTR, ya know?

Ende.

PS, while attempting to spellcheck this post, Internet Explorer repeatedly crashed, so I haven't. Any speelign arrors are Microsofts fault.

Why Skyline Sucked, and Why It Really Doesn't Matter

2010-12-10T15:18:00.000+08:00

Java and I watched the movie Skyline last night. Oh boy. [Hey, this is Java here, I'll be adding some stuff in the square brackets.]

A little backstory is probably in order. This movie was advertised on TV and looked like a remake of Independance Day: ID4 (1996?) with more modern effects, a bit more of the monsters eating people, that kind of thing. To put it plainly, the preview looked awesome, like a preview for one of those great blockbuster special effects movies that come out every year, usually at the start of the northern summer.

Now that preview didn't mention the case, director, writers, any of that kind of stuff. Just showed some images (which looked great) and the tagline "Don't look up." As it turned out, there was a good reason for this. [Why not look up? You're going to get eaten anyway.]

This movies big star is an up and coming actor named Eric Balfour, who has mostly done supporting roles in TV including Buffy and Six Feet Under, and was in What Women Want with Mel 'I was in Mad Max, but now I'm a fat wanker' Gibson. Along with Donald 'Turk from Scrubs' Faison, Brittany Daniel (who played a MAJOR character in Sweet Valley High) and Scottie Thompson (who has been on CSI:NY, CSI:Miami, NCIS, Bones AND Law and Order!), the cast is what you might describe as inexperienced, but quite good looking. See how nice I am being about it? [Really? All those roles? They sound experienced enough.]

And I must say, the actors have done a good job. The faults with the story are not anything the actors could have done anything about. They play their roles very well, and with better material to work with, this could have been a real springboard for all of them. (Well, except for Brittany Daniel, who's major abilities seem to be 1: holding up a strapless top with no hands and 2: being an EXTREMELY female girl with big boobs*.)

*by which I mean that this girl is a plastic surgery disaster waiting to happen, with hair that i'm sure would crumble if touched, although she looks very very 'beautiful' in the hollywood sense of the word. [I'm pretty sure that all actors are plastic surgery disasters waiting to happen.]

OK, I'll stop here to warn you that if you don't already know how this movie ends, you don't want to read on any further. I will spoil the 'suprise' ending for you. Therefore, click ye not on the link b'low, lest ye find thyself in the midst of furious spoilage, alas.... [The story isn't much anyway. Click the link.]

You clicked? Good for you. [Yeah, what Nate said.]

In pre-emptive defence of the writers of this film, they have tried to do something new with some very old material. For a story that essential involves two old friends who have just met up for the first time in years, their partners, and the sex doll/secretary of one of the guys watching an alien invasion from a 22nd story apartment, an awful lot happened, and some of it was unexpected. [Ya know, the whole 'the american military is the best ever yay' cliche.]

However, when the aliens appear defeated at the 1hr10min mark, they aren't. It's fairly obvious. And no, you can't escape the building. This film is full of cliches, despite the best efforts of the writers to actually tell a new story here. The only part they managed to really do something new with, unfortunately, was the ending. Which was terrible. [The special effects were cool though.]

Essentially, the plot is that aliens are harvesting humans for their brains. The brains are reprogrammed and rewired so that they glow blue and now hold alien minds. The hacked brains are then implanted into biomechanical bodies in various shapes, from flying squid fighters to gigantic stompy beast things. So that's what they want us for, apparently. It's how they reproduce. (Not an original idea, I'm pretty sure, as I recall reading something by Alfred Bester many years ago about aliens farming and harvesting humans so that they could load the uploaded minds of their dead or dying.) [I read a book where aliens were doing that. Different one though.]

And the ending goes like this. Despite our best efforts, the aliens have won. All around the world, humans have been entirely collected by aliens. Our civilisation is deserted and is now a smoking ruin. We have lost everything, including our lives. Now cut to the inside of the alien mothership in LA, where we see our pregnant female lead (Scottie Thompson) lying amongst a few dozen unconsious humans as the aliens harvest the brains out of them. As the aliens grab her, they suddenly pause and notice that she is preggers. So they don't harvest her brain, and stick her off to the side for further investigation. [Yeah, she survives. What did you THINK would happen?]

As they grab her, she notices that her man (Eric Balfour) has been selected for harvesting. She can do nothing as they scoop out his brain, fling his body into a slush pit/reactor core (it was glowy and liquidy...) and implant his now glowy blue brain into a stompy-monster body via what looked like a bitey vagina made from shiney black beetle shells and hot tar. She screams for him, but he is gone. Suddenly, the new alien body thing reacts funny, and seems to RECOGNISE HER!! He rushes to her to fight off the various other alien thingies that are touching her. He stands over her body to protect his love and his unborn child, despite being in a brand new giant alien stompymonster body!! It looks like he is going to fight them off, but now he's got their advantages. Can he bring down the aliens from within?? The aliens gather and surround this funny acting alien/human thing...... [And I wanted to see what would happen. Then it ended.]

And then the credits rolled. Java and I looked at each other and he said 'What The?' and I finished with 'Fuck' [Basicly, yeah.]

Basically, the story was completely stupid and shit. But at least they tried. Better to have tried to make real SF movies than to pump out more Hollywood shit, so I will give them credit for that. [So will I, the special effects were cool.]

Additionally, this movie looks fantastic. The effects are really nice, the aliens look great. I particularly liked the thing with kind of Skill Tester Crane hands and 100 eyes. [That thing had 200 eyes, not 100.] No way dude, I counted them, there were only 100....haha

So there you have it. Shit story, great to look at, we'll probably watch it many more times, but won't bother trying to hear the dialogue. If they had better actors, it might have been a better movie, but they were never going to get better actors with that script. When the script is only 4 pages, and most of the lines are 'bleaaaahah' or 'waaaaahh!!!' with directions like (runs away) or (backing up in terror), you just don't get Brad Pitt.

Teh Endz.

The Technicial - Neal Asher

2010-12-06T15:50:00.001+08:00

Warning: This post is predominantly a political rant. Please don't continue past the jumplink if you don't want to be subjected to the first of what is about to become a series of cynical diatribes and doomsaying manifesto's.

Author: Neal Asher
Title: The Technician
Publisher: Tor 2010
ISBN: Dunno

I have only managed to read one book in the last (holy snapping alligators) two and a bit weeks. And that book was The Technician by Neal Asher, resident of Crete or Cypress or some Mediterranean island anyway, and Essex. Nice contrast.

Oh yes, the book was everything it need to be to make it a perfect record for Asher. He has yet to write anything that wasn't exciting, dynamic, funny, thought provoking and disgustingly violent, and I have loved every minute of it. Asher has, with the Technician, cemented his place in my own personal Top Ten Best Ever Writers^tm list, which is, as you should know by now, topped by Frederik Pohl.

So no surprises there. The plot is nicely weird, the hero's were complex and strangely compelling, and the story ended with a real live Atheter (which is a Gabbleduck, which is the best monster name ever!!) with it's brain turned back on. Bravo, Mr Asher. I look forward immensely to the next chapter in the Masada stories portion of this brilliant future history.

I do, however, have a few differences of opinion with Mr Asher in the real world. I subscribe to Asher's blog, which is a mix of news about his writing and his personal life, with a twist of political commentary every now and then. It's funny that his fictional politics is much like my actual politics, while his real life politics is not.

Asher often takes a libertarian view on political evens. I get the sense that he is strongly opposed to social welfare being paid by governments, any 'socialist' government body (ie health departments, social welfare, climate departments and other such social service things) and is not convinced on climate change.

It's funny that he writes of the future as a partly democratic, certainly liberal, socialist dictatorship under the AI's. I actually feel that an awful lot of his fictional politics is actually very much in line with mine as a socialist libertarian. (No, there are not many of us...) That's right, I believe that an idea political system would essentially be one that oversees public services like education, health, basic (adequate!!) standard of living requirements, and other public services like domestic transport, libraries, police department (not FORCE) charged with assisting with the protection of individual liberties, so that people can live without fear of violence in any of it's forms, and so on. In all other regards, they butt the hell out.

No government should be able to prevent any activity or expression by any person if that activity or expression does not cause physical or psychological harm to others. Which I think is a pretty good system. Ya know, just everybody be nice to everybody, because we all have everything we need, so there's no need to be an asshole to get more money, and nobody is going to stop you from doing anything you want to do, whether that is selling a whole lot of stock options or growing and marketing cannabis online. I know it's pathetically Utopian and completely unattainable. And those of you who know me will be shocked at the lack of cynicism in this idea.

The thing is, I don't think that our 'civilisation' has more than a few, maybe 3 or 4 centuries left in it anyway. The Corporatists ~~are winning~~ have won, man. The atmosphere is steadily being poisoned, and I really think it's too late to do anything about it. The climate will likely alter to be well outside livable conditions for humans in the not terribly distant future. A small scale technological society might survive in the short term, but a lack of new resources will kill it off eventually. And that our world leaders and highest achievers in society are unable to look beyond the computer games they play with diplomacy and economics in order to amass 'stuff' in their 5 bed 5 bath luxury homes is pretty much a rock solid guarantee that not a damn thing is going to change in the way we behave. And our whole system conditions people to need the money for the stuff from childhood, so it ain't gonna change.

This applies to every single problem the world is facing. Poverty, exploitation of the poor, political corruption, POLICE corruption, war, domestic violence, bullying, racism, famine, oppression of women, short life expectancies and so on... So you see? My dream future is completely unobtainable, in my opinion. Therefore, it can be as naive as it likes.

To this day, I struggle to fathom the idea that defrauding a bank will get you a longer prison sentence than raping a child. That being caught using heroin can get you more time that killing someone because you were drunk driving. That the west dumps millions of tonnes of food waste while people literally starve to death in Africa. That Joaquin Phoenix has houses in multiple US cities because he can read out loud, while people are living in cardboard boxes or tin shacks even though they spend their days mining gold, copper, tin, nickle etc.. (Nothing personal about Joaquin, just saying)

Good book, bad outlook.
Love
Nate

Touch typing on the iPad

2010-12-04T19:27:00.000+08:00

hi! Afi ai am fgawriting on my ipd eith the autospell chcker turned off so youaan srd hoe bad i sj sat asat st at tyyoubg aon this ingy

Soriously though,

I love the ipad but i still want a proper e reader. Thank goodness that i have a noce part time job that ocasionalky has many extra shifts.

LISWA is down!!! Somebody call the TRG!!

2010-11-18T16:13:00.000+08:00

Oh Noes!! I just tried to get on the Library and Information Service of Western Australia catalogue website so that I could order a bunch of books, and the site is down!!

What will I do now? I don't have anything to read!!!!!!! Actually, I have Neal Asher's The Technician, and the Gardner Dozois anthology Best of the Best Volume 2: 20 Years of the Best Science Fiction Novellas, neither of which I have even thought about starting, so I have something to read, but I don't have anything in backup. So I reiterate:

What will I do now???

Gateways - Stories in Honour of Frederik Pohl edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull

2010-11-15T12:50:00.000+08:00

Author: Elizabeth Anne Hull (Editor)
Title: Gateways
Publisher: Tor 2010
ISBN: 978 0765326621

This very cool collection of stories inspired by and recollections about Frederik Pohl by some of the premier SF authors in the field was put together by his wife, Elizabeth 'Betty' Hull, for Freds 90th (I think..) birthday. As many of you regular (hahahahahahfucknrofl) readers will know, I consider Frederik Pohl to be THE Grand Master of SF. There has never been an author as visionary or as multifaceted as Fred, and there probably never will be.

As an aside, to anyone who wants to challange this with 'Issac Asimov', I say fuck off. Asimov was a brilliant feller no doubt, but he couldn't write for shit. Heinlein doesn't even come close either. Maybe Cordwainer Smith might be up there, but Fred is the clear master to my mind. Gene Wolfe is as good, but not for as long, so far.

Anyway, this book collects all sorts of stories basically 'doing' Fred Pohl, mostly pretty successfully. I enjoyed spotting the secret Pohlgeek references and the stories were pretty good on their own anyway.

If you like Fred Pohl, get this book. He deserves the honour, and the book certainly does him justice. If you don't like Fred Pohl, what the fuck are you reading this for? Go get a John Grisham or something, you fucking barbarian.

Love
Nate

Gateway - Frederik Pohl

2010-11-04T15:39:00.000+08:00

Author: Frederik Pohl
Title: Gateway
Publisher: Gollancz 2010
ISBN: 978 0575094239

Frederik Pohl is the master. He is such a great writer of human stories, and I am really glad to have read Gateway, finally. It was everything I had been expecting, and has given me a renewed appreciation of just how visionary Pohl was.

This story has hardly dated from it's original 1970-something publication, and the universal story of life, complete with human frailty and those strained interactions we've all had was really touching. I think Pohl had an understanding of being a scared, weird little human struggling through life surrounded by PEOPLE!! that is rarely translated so well into story.

You should probably get this book out of the library and read it. I would.

The Hugo Awards Showcase 2010

2010-11-04T15:31:00.002+08:00

Author: edited by Mary Robinette Kowal
Title: The Hugo Awards Showcase 2010 Volume
Publisher: Prime Books 2010
ISBN: 978 1607012252

I love a good short story anthology. And when you get a good one, it can be excellent fun. But every now and then you get a collection that is so good, it leaves you feeling sick at the thought of returning the book to the library and NOT having it on hand just to touch if I want too. This years Hugo short story collection is one of those books, which actually makes sense, if you think about it.

The Hugo Awards are the annual fan nominated and voted awards that are run as part of Worldcon. Editor Kowal has gathered up a large chunk of the stories in the shorter categories into a book that is evidence to my mind that 2009 was one of the best years in SF history for the quality and quantity of writing by such a vast range of cultures and backgrounds. SF as I see it is hitting new highs, such that the visions these writers are conceiving and putting to paper in such volume that it can be overwhelming for an obsessive collector of "I've Read That" points. (On a side note, I wish there was a social networking site that could track my reading achievements and give me something to aim for, sometimes. It'd be nice to have some goals set for me, help me get a little direction in my consumption of fiction, but I don't think there is one. Maybe I should write one...)

Anywhen, when a planet load of geeks has already sifted through the chaff and picked out the quality product for you, it's a bit of a no-brainer that the stories would be outstandingly fucking awesome. I know that sword and girdle types sometimes get their pointy eared influence into these kind of things, but the Hugos seem to capture the best of fantasy as well, the stuff that is truly weird and visionary and creative, without any orcs or Ragnoth's or fucking whatever. The fantasy that twist the real world a little or alot and drags you into an INTERESTING dream world only to conk you in the head with a OMFGHammer.

OHHH, the power just went funny in the library!! It's rather thundery today.

Now, none of that is to say that this is the perfect book. There were a couple of stories in it that I didn't even bother to read until the end. I just don't like steampunk. Sorry, but I think it's trite, and a little bit offensive. There, I said it, I feel better.

The hits, however, were without doubt some of the BEST STORIES I HAVE EVER READ!! Yes, I do say that alot, recently. It's because every time someone puts out a new book, it's better than anything I ever read before. Better written, better packaged, just plain better.

With the exception of Frederik Pohl, I don't think there has ever been an SF writer as good as some of the people writing right now, and there are a whole lot of them. People like Ian McDonald, Nancy Kress, Elizabeth Bear, Robert Reed (all represented in this book) as well as Paul McAuley, Paulo Bacigalupi, Neal Asher, and even some old hacks like David Brin, who has gone from being to my mind fairly average in quality, to being quite fucking good these days, actually.

Not forgetting either people like John Joseph Adams, Johnathan Strahan, Lou Anders & the most wonderful fiction editing woman ever to edit a book, Ellen Datlow (who took my moderate liking of creepy stories and fed it on the history and present of "genre fiction: misc & other" seasoned with "genre fiction: horror/horrific" until it was so fat, I need to lay down all the time and read just to get my breath back) who are editing together books so full of near perfect fiction it's almost obscene that people buy these books and then THROW THEM AWAY! sick fucking bastards....

I think at this point I should probably point out that the contents of the book are:

Pride And Promethius by John Kessel: (Best Novellette Nominee) Which I didn't read til the end, because it was steampunk and I didn't like it but the mashup premise is interesting-ish if you like that kind of thing. It's a bit hipster for my taste.
26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss by Kij Johnson: (Best Short Story Nominee) Oh My Sweet Succulent Jesus, Kij Johnson is getting far to good at making me incredibly emotional. Brilliant work by someone who, if she gets much better, is going to have to be locked in a vault. My pick for Best Short Story Winner, but it didn't win. Which is sad.
The Erdmann Nexus by Nancy Kress: (Best Novella Winner) Haha! Old people singularity!! Great great story, you absolutely must read this one.
From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled by Michael Swanwick: (Best Short Story Nominee) typically weird brilliant fantasy from a true master. Probably the worst story in the book, too.
Shoggoths In Bloom by Elizabeth Bear: (Best Novelette Winner) Politics and Lovecraft = really nicely done New England 1930's story with such a bitter sweet ending I nearly cried. Fantastic.
Truth by Robert Reed: (Best Novella Nominee) This story is the one I want tattoo'd on my body. Such a complete brain snapping super story, it shouldn't be legal for consumption. I read this story 5 times in a row just trying to get my head around it.
The Ray-Gun: A Love Story by James Alan Gardner: (Best Novelette Nominee) Such a lovely story. I was gonna write something clever about rayguns but it would spoil the story for you, so I didn't. My pick for Best Novelette Winner, for what it's worth.
Evil Robot Monkey by Mary Robinette Kowal: (Best Short Story Nominee) People make me want to throw poo too.
The Tear by Ian McDonald: (Best Novella Nominee) Space Opera at it's most perfect. Ian McDonald SHOULD have won best novella, although the winner was also beautifully written and fully deserving of the award.

Links I want to for look at.

2010-10-29T16:02:00.000+08:00

20th Century Ghost by Joe Hill

2010-10-21T15:49:00.000+08:00

Author: Joe Hill
Title: 20th Century Ghost
Publisher: PS Publishing (2006)
ISBN: Dunno, look it up later.

On the subject of Joe Hill, I quote Horrorscope :

"I'd never hear of Joe Hill before. Now I want EVERYONE to hear about him."

My sentiments exactly. Joe Hill is a name that had been popping up in the anthologies and a few magazines, always with a pretty good little story. This prompted me to get this book, which has turned me into a raving evangelist on the subject of Joe Hill. There is no god of heaven, but there is a god of horror fiction. His name is Stephen King, but I gotta say, this kid is a serious contender, a Heracles to Kings Zeus.

In this collection of his short fiction, Hill will blow your mind, repeatedly, and with a casual ease that will frighten you. Seriously, this guy is good. He combines the everyman voice of Stephen King with an ability to end a story when it ends, not based on a page count but on the story itself. This guy is THE horror writer for the 21st century. Rarely have I been surprised as often as I was when reading this book.

The collection contains an incredibly diverse range of stories. From nostalgia to tribute to childhood fantasies, Hill manages to tweak every single emotional button I have. Freak. Not all the stuff in the book is horror, and not all of the horror is grotesque. Hill has a range as broad as the sky, and a colour palette that must look like technicolour vomit when in use.

The title story, "20th Century Ghost" will absolutely break your heart. Other stories like Buttonboy and The Black Phone will make you question the mind that came up with these stories. I quote Horrorscope again :

"Together, these tales combine to create a collection that balances perfectly between intelligent, mature dark-fantasy and unflinching horror. Easily as accomplished as Clive Barker's "Books of Blood", "20th Century Ghosts" is also much more subtle. Its stories are lingering, disturbing creatures - even the 'mainstream' ones - that reminded me in many ways of Margo Lanagan's "Black Juice", or Dale Bailey's "The Resurrection Man's Legacy"

Get this book. Even if you don't like horror, you should read this guy. He has a massive future in fiction, and is well on his way to being one of the all time greats. I constantly compare him to Stephen King, and a lot of other people do to, although I am trying to stop this terrible habit. He's better than Clive Barker. He's better than Michael Swanwick. Fuck, he's better than just about everybody, ever.

Now here's the thing. I am loath to mention this, because Joe Hill has to my mind become great on his own merits. All of the opinions expressed in this gushing review were formed before the following detail came to light. I only found this out, in fact, just a few days ago. Joe Hill is a pseudonym for Joseph Hillstrom King, the second child of Stephen & Tabitha King. Yeah, the famous writer Stephen King.

I wish nobody knew. I don't want anyone to read Joe Hill because of his parents. I mean, Tabby has written great novels, and Steve has written enough to deforest a continent. It's easy enough to think that this guy has writer parents, so he's got it easy, cause he made his name by being their kid.

WRONG!! Joe Hill has and will continue to make his name because he is brilliant. He has worked really fucking hard to produce fiction of a standard that is rarely met. He deserves to be recognised for this on the basis that it is his work, not his name, that makes him stand out. And in many ways, Hill has a distinct disadvantage in being the son of someone as well known as Stephen King. It must be immensely difficult for Hill to get people to acknowledge his work without reference to his father. Indeed, before discovering this detail, I had continually stated that I though Joe Hill was the new Stephen King, a King without the baggage and a talent for ending his stories that Stephen King sometimes lacks.

I guess those comparisons are interesting once you know the familial relationship, but I really believed that Joe Hill would play a similar role to the one King played in the 20th century in genre fiction into the 21st. I think Hill is destined to become a best-seller superstar of genre, and I hope that he can continue to produce to the standard that this collection suggests he can.

Joe Hill. Remember that name.

Neal Asher - Hilldiggers

2010-10-15T16:08:00.000+08:00

Author: Neal Asher
Title: Hilldiggers
Publisher: Tor 2007 (Pan McMillan Paperbacks)
ISBN: 978 0330441537

I read this book ages ago and never got around to writing about it, even though I intended to. I've had this draft post with the publication details sitting there since, christ, it must have been May? Maybe longer. (I just wiped out the damn date thing by accident, so now I'll never know.)

Anyway, it turned out to be an excellent book. Not so shocking though, is it? I mean this is Neal 'Best Fucking Writer of Awesome Fucking Space Opera in a Utopian Future Fucking Ever' Asher we're talking about, so if you ARE surprised, you need a kick in the ass and a copy of Spatterjay.

Hilldiggers is a novel about the Polity making first contact with a human colony that was launch and established before the Quiet War in which the AI's took over. It's a clever look at how people treat each other, both within and outside of their own culture and population centres. Asher cleverly has the two inhabited planets in the star system require different modifications to the base human model, essentially separating the original colonists into two new human species. Oh, and they are at war.

I love the way Asher tells a story, and this one is as violent, funny, sad, gruesome, poignant and damning as any other of his books that I have read (IE all of them except Africa Zero and the latest one.) And he manages to construct this wondrous adventure story while simultaneously decimating the self righteousness that defines the majority of 21st century humanity.

Asher is THE liberal-socialist writer of the century. He is destined to be one of the greats, and his political leaning of taking care of everyone, but allowing them the opportunity to reach for the stars if they have the motivation and ability, is a model of the future that I have fantasised about for much of my life. That Asher has managed to paint my dreams with the easy to learn but difficult to master English language is a testament to his talent and brilliant vision. Add in some exploding guts, and you've won me for life.

If you never read any other book again, read at least one Neal Asher novel. You won't regret it.

Iron Man is Awesome

2010-10-13T15:53:00.000+08:00

We watched Iron Man last night. Very cool. I don't usually like superhero movies, but Mr Downey Jr. is very good at his job, and I enjoyed it immensly.

I just finished up with the Uni thing and am in the library collecting my books. I was going to write about some comics I read the other day and the movie I watched, but the place is full of highschool kids yahoo7ing home and away, so I give up.

Fucking teenagers. I want a semiautomatic shotgun and some beers.
< sigh/ >

Today, I'll be mostly wearing, haddock trousers.

2010-10-11T16:05:00.000+08:00

No, that really isn't true. What is true is that after spending 2 hours lined up at centrelink (and giving up - their computer system is down and they can't actually do anything, apparently. It didn't stop them from calling next repeatedly, however.) I have rewarded myself to a brand new order of books, but I ran out of request space in the library systems. Here, firstly, is a list of the books I DID order:

20th Century Ghost by Joe Hill - Hill's first collection of short work, I love everything I've ever read of his. In a lot of ways, Hill is better than his father and has an assload of potential.
Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross - I love this book so much I want to eat it every day. Getting it from the library because my E-copy is looking ragged from being read too much. Bet you didn't know that ebooks get ripped and dirty just like paperbacks.
28 Days Later: The Aftermath - The graphic novel companion/substory of the film, which I haven't seen yet. I have seen the second film and it scared the shit out of me without even once resorting to stupid 'boo' tricks. OK, once or twice, but the really scary parts are not cheap or stupid at all.
Halting State by Charles Stross - I read a blog post by Charlie yesterday about the writing of this book. I love the idea that bad guys might use the economic systems of MMO's to steal money and destroy the 'stock market' in the game, both for profit and practise. It's also hilarious that this was originally going to be a Vampire novel.
Zombies: A Field Guide to the Walking Dead by Bob Curran: I flicked through this at A&R a while ago, looks cute. Probably not worth buying though.

And now the books I didn't order, because I don't have room:

Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill (and another guy) - Graphic novel of the Locke and Key mysteries written by Hill. I've heard really good things about it.
Walking Dead graphic novels - Mostly because I already have the issues at home, but trade paperback comics are nice to hold.
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross - I've wanted to read this for ages.
More stuff - I can't be bothered typing any more. Rest assured that it was all awesome.

So there you go. Now I have to go buy pet food and drive home. My fucked tooth is killing me. I can't take any painkillers for it, because I was previously quite the fuckhead. I barely slept last night and my house is a mess. Thank fuck I just got a new book to read about apocalypses. That aught to cheer me up a bit.

And stay the fuck out of my room.
Love,

Nate.

Wanted!! Stephen Jones' Zombie Apocalypse!!

2010-10-11T15:45:00.000+08:00

I just found out that Stephen Jones has a new novel coming out (or maybe already out?) called Zombie Apocalypse!! ISBN 9781849013031, published by Robinson UK, how exciting. Just checked on Amazon UK, the publication date is 14/10/2010. This is going straight to the ~~pool room~~, um, wish list.
The State Library has the following blurb:

Horror fiction. This is a 'mosaic novel' set in the near-future, when a desperate and ever-more controlling UK government decides to restore a sense of national pride with a New Festival of Britain. However, controversial plans to build on the site of an old church in South London releases a centuries-old plague that turns its victims into flesh-hungry ghouls whose bite or scratch passes the contagion on to others. Even worse, the virus may also have a supernatural origin with the power to revive the dead. Despite the attempts of the police, the military and those in power to understand and contain the infection commonly referred to as 'The Death', it soon sweeps across London, transforming everyone who comes into contact with it. With the city - and the country - falling into chaos, even a drastic attempt at a 'Final Solution' to eradicate the outbreak at its source fails to prevent it from spreading to Europe and then quickly throughout the rest of the world. Soon there is no more news coming out of Britain ...and it is up to those survivors in other countries to confront the flesh-eating invaders within their midst. Will humanity triumph over a world-wide zombie plague, or will the walking dead ultimately inherit the Earth? Told through various disparate and overlapping eye-witness accounts, through texts, e-mails, blogs, letters, diaries, transcripts, official reports and other forms of communication, a picture builds up of a world plunged into chaos - where the dead attack the living, and only one of them can be the ultimate victor.

Zombies are too awesome.

I watched 28 Weeks Later the other night, and again yesterday. I've got to say, the opening scene is one of the scariest things I've ever watched. The relentlessness is overwhelming, and the way they chase the lead character (dunno his name, played by Robert Carlyle), swarming over the hill and converging on him as he runs across an open field....OMG, that is so incredibly awful.

CZK - Celebrity Zombie Killers & More

2010-10-07T12:49:00.000+08:00

Yep, the Zombie Kick continues.

Just picked up from the library:

The Web 2027 - Anthology of original novellas by Stephen Baxter, Maggie Fury and others
The Web 2028 - Anthology of original novellas by Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan and others.
Stephen Jones' The Mammoth Book of Monsters
Stephen Jones' The Dead That Walk
Celebrity Zombie Killers - Volume One

The Mammoth Book of The Best of Best New Horror - Stephen Jones (Editor)

2010-09-23T15:36:00.073+08:00

Author: Stephen Jones (Editor)
Title: The Mammoth Book of The Best of Best New Horror - Two Decades of Dark Fiction
Publisher: Robinson 2010
ISBN: 978 1849013048

The Mammoth Blah Blah Blah is the 20th anniversary collection for Stephen Jones long running series Best New Horror, which I have been a fan of for quite a while now. This volume collected on story from each edition from 1989 until 2009, with a low quality black and white image of the cover of each edition, along with a short note on the problems, successes and contents of each edition by Jones.

One of the things that I love about Jones series is that he doesn't choose stories based on who sold the most, or who is most popular. Rather, he selects based on people doing new things in the genre, or people who are taking the old tropes and twisting them inside out. He's also managed to unearth a whole sackful of brand new authors who are now major names in the horror field, and has provided a regular venue for old superstars of genre like Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell and Brian Lumley.

Fuck. I was editing this post a few minutes ago, and Internet Crapsplorer crashed (I'm at the library). I lost about half an hours work. Asshole fucking program. Let me try again, however. What the fuck happened to autosave? It's supposed to go off every 3 minutes or something.

Jones continues that habit of quality over popularity in this edition, choosing lesser known stories over the more successful stories from previous volumes. It makes for a great read that will at times give you the creeps, but more often just impress the pants off you and make you seek out work by people that you may not have considered reading before. Well, you know, if you don't read horror. But then you probably wouldn't read this anyway, in that case, so whatever. I know what I mean.

After the Jump Link, per my usual habit, is a list of the stories in this volume, along with my thoughts (slight though they may be) on each of them. I try not to give away too much, but I might not be able to help myself. You have been warned. Take care, and a friend.....

No! No!! Don't open the link!! DON'T OPEN THE LINK!!!!!

No Sharks in the Med - Brian Lumley: This creepy little story about honeymooning English folk encountering a slightly offensive Greek in a sleepy little seaside island town off the Greek coast gave me the willies! I will never understand people who like the idea of a secluded beach....
The Man Who Drew Cats - Michael Marshall Smith: This is one of those 'You'll never believe this tale but I'll tell you anyway' Old Bugger in the Pub style stories (which I personally love!) with a bittersweet ending. It's important to note that if you come across a realistic but miscoloured chalk drawing on the pavement, you should probably walk around it.
The Same in Any Language - Ramsey Campbell: This guy, I swear to god, is the master. Another English on Holiday story, this time with a kid and his dad, plus the skank he hooked up with at the hotel they day they arrived in Cyprus. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't visit an abandoned leper colony. It's not my idea of an interesting outing. Oh, and if you hook up with some nasty skank and ignore your own kid on holiday, you're an asshole. (That last has nothing to do with the story, but it's true and will remain so for all time.)
Norman Wisdom and the Angel of Death - Christopher Fowler: I can't get this story out of my head, it has really struck a chord with me. I really like the 'serial killer perspective' approach to first person narrative (Dexter immediately springs to mind, but other stories too) and it is particularly effective in this case. It's styled as a series of diary entries, detailing the killers actions, as well as his motivations and justifications. The story itself is gut wrenching as it builds a massive amount of tension and anticipation. If nothing else comes out of this book for you, it should at least put you onto Christopher Fowler, who writes some brilliant horror novels as well.
Mefisto in Onyx - Harlan Ellison: I'm of two minds about Harlan Ellison. He writes some awesome stuff, and this story is no exception, but I don't often seek out his work. I almost feel like if I do, his reputation will come crashing in on my life in some way. Silly, really, but there you go. I don't like conflict except when I win. (Ha) This story is essentially about telepathy, friendship, and the electric chair. It is truely disturbing (not gruesome, however) and totally suprising. I'm glad it was in this book, because I never would have read it any other way.
The Temptation of Dr Stein - Paul J. McAuley: Everyone knows how much I love McAuley. He is one of my all time, must have, would die of happiness if I met him writing heros. His relook at Doctor Frankenstein, and Doctor Pretorius (a character from the film Bride of Frankenstein and Dr F's former teacher) is set in the alternative history world from his novel Pasquales Angels, and manages to tie in ideas from the Jewish legend of the Golem, clever twists of alt history and some truely weird, random, er, weirdness. The result is a sad tale about the loss of loved ones. Paul McAuley is brilliant.
Queen of Knives - Neil Gaiman: Written in the style of a narrative poem, this piece is essentially 'the magicians volunteer vanished and was never seen again.' Long winded and cliched, it was actually a pretty big disappointment, given that almost everything else Gaiman touches turns to gold. Gaiman is a fantastic storyteller, but in this case, I though the styling detracted from the story. I imagine that although the plot is pretty obvious and dull, he could have done great things with it if only he had have stuck to straight prose. You might really like this, but I didn't. I found it hard to read, and ultimately unsatisfying because the effort to read it didn't have any great payoff. Sorry Neil. I love Sandman though! And Coraline, American Gods, etc. Go get something by Neil Gaiman and you won't be disappointed. As long as it isn't this.
The Break - Terry Lamsley: I don't quite know how to describe this story. It's partially a creepy view out the window tale, partly a staff behaving strangely in the hotel story. And the final twist, while not a shocking suprise, was at least unexpected at the point of the big reveal. (At which point I kind of through "Oh, I should have seen that coming") One thing that bugs me in stories is the 'nobody talks to anyone else' device (and it's close cousin 'nobody listens to the kid') and this is a story that relies on that to some extent. Not the most satisfying story, but it was ok.
Emptiness Spoke Eloquent - Caitlin R. Kiernan: Ugh, I am so over Dracula. This Kiernan piece is a sequel to Stokers masterwork. It is probably really good, but I didn't get past the first few lines.
Mr Clubb & Mr Cuff - Peter Straub: All time, classic, favourite revenge story. You must own this story as soon as possible. It's also in the Straub collection Magic Terror which I highly recommend also.
White - Tim Lebbon
The Other Side of Midnight: Anno Dracula, 1981 - Kim Newman:
Cleopatra Brimstone - Elizabeth Hand
20th Century Ghost - Joe Hill
The White Hands - Mark Samuels
My Death - Lisa Tuttle
Haeckel's Tale - Clive Barker
Devil's Smile - Glen Hirshberg
The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates - Stephen King

OK, so I haven't finished this thing yet, but I will. Maybe.

It's a good collection though, and if you haven't read at least half of them, you should definately get this collection.

Love
Nate

F. Paul Wilson - The Tomb (A Repairman Jack Novel)

2010-09-23T15:20:00.000+08:00

Author: F. Paul Wilson
Title: The Tomb
Publisher: Tor 1998 (First Published 1994)
ISBN: 0 812 580370

Repairman Jack is cooler than you. He's a hard assed professional ass kicker who lives off the grid, and uses his lightning fast mind and vast collection of weaponry to exact vengeance on the deserving, on behalf of those who desire vengeance (and can afford the service). This novel opens with Jack tracking down and breaking both wrists of a guy who robbed an old lady of her necklace, for which he is well paid by the old ladies grandson, a mysterious, one armed Indian man.

And that is pretty much Jacks deal. People pay him to 'fix' things for them, and although he is not troubled by severely hurting or even killing the bad guys, he is fairly choosy about who he works for. He would not, for instance, take on a job beating up a cop on behalf of a drug dealer. He might give a hotshot to a drug dealer on behalf of a grieving mother, however. He charges for this service, although it is suggested that he doesn't always charge (or hardly charges) his clients when they are poor.

And so we are dumped face first into the tumultuous world of Repairman Jack, where his friendships, love life, family and occupation constantly clash with each other in the name of justice and getting by. And just to make things a little more interesting, Jack has a habit of attracting the weird....as in monsters, magic, demons and goddesses. That kind of thing. Even though he doesn't believe in it. Because we all know that just because you don't believe in something, doesn't mean it doesn't believe in you....

Wilson has crafted a brilliant character in Jack. He's mysterious without being a weirdo about it, he's brave enough to get the job done even though his fear is evident, and he is quick witted and kind hearted in a way that makes the reader wish they had a friend like Repairman Jack. He's a great guy, who is genuinely trying to make the world a better place, although he might not admit it in such a straightforward manner.

Wilson's novels straddle the line between outright horror and urban fantasy, but with plenty of reference to detective novels, and often a touch of old fashioned romance novel, although this is not Jacks strong point. Rather, Jack is an exceptional man with an admirable (although highly illegal) mission in life, but his social and romantic efforts are strained to say the least.

I loved this book, and I am really looking forward to finding more stories in this series. Apparently it is also known as "The Adversary Cycle" although I haven't seen this written on any of the books so far. Anyway, it's a great read. Fairly quick, certainly not complex, just straight out urban adventure, with a nice twist of the weird to make it interesting. Good fun!

Mike Resnick - A Hunger in the Soul

2010-09-17T16:44:00.002+08:00

Author: Mike Resnick
Title: A Hunger In The Soul
Publisher: Tor 1998
ISBN: 978 0312854386

A Hunger In The Soul is an adventure tale about an exploration team seeking a missing scientist on an unexplored planet full of hostile aliens and strange creatures. I desperately want to find something else to say about this book that isn't negative. But I can't.

The writing is perfectly fine. (Oh, I found another one!) There is absolutely nothing technically wrong with this book, and if I had not already seen the movie a dozen times as a kid, or read the book already, it quite possibly would have been quite fun. Allow me to explain.

This book is essentially the movie King Solomons Mines (1950)* crossed with the story of Doctor Livingstone, with rifles relaced with lasers, native bearers replaced with alien porters, the newspaper that employs the journalist replaced with tri-v. The tale of an asshole who employs a slightly jaded but otherwise outstanding expedition leader. They clash constantly, but the good guy always backs down. The asshole treats the porters badly, and uses racist epithets to abuse them. The superiour technology of the Empire saves the day when the restless natives attack the party. Despite the dangers and tribulations, they finally reach their goal (at this stage the natives have either been killed, murdered or have run away before this crazy white fucker gets them killed, or murders them) but the outcome is entirely unexpected.

Resnick even went so far as to have his humans come from the Democracy. This is 100% pastiche, but severely lacking the satirical edge that makes this kind of thing bearable for me. I hate to say it, but this book was a waste of time. Which is disappointing, because I usually really enjoy Resnick.

*Note: King Solomon's Mines is based on the novel by whoever wrote the Allan Quartermaine stories, a movie full of noble Englishmen and 'Fuzzy Wuzzy Jigaboo's' - so full of blatant racism and mysogyny that I can barely stand to think about it now. It was on TV every summer when I was a kid, and is essentially true to the novel excepting the addition of a female character in order to allow the heroic rescue sequences that appeared every few minutes.

Max Brooks - World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (and a bit on his other book too)

2010-09-15T15:51:00.001+08:00

Author: Max Brooks
Title: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Publisher: Can't remember
ISBN: Dunno

I grabbed a copy of WWZ last week, cause I'd been meaning to have a read of it for a while, and I had a few bucks. ZOMG, I should have gotten this book years ago.

The premise is essentially that the book is a collection of interviews with survivors of the recent zombie apocalypse that ravaged the earth. It's been 10 years now, and a journalist who had previously compiled a report for the UN on the facts and figures of the war had all of these personal stories left over, stories that the UN weren't really that interested in.

So, the guy compiles these interviews and recollections into a chronological history of the rise and fall of the zombies. The book reads like a pop history book, much in the vein of We Were Soldiers Once, And Young by Hal Moore and Joe Galloway, which is a memoir and oral history of The Battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam 1965. It's a great way to tell history, because it is human and therefore authentic.

And that is the key to the success of Max Brooks' storytelling in this book. It is hugely authentic, with an emotional edge that almost tears you apart inside as you read it. Despite the subject matter, it is surprisingly not very gruesome. And it's decent attempt at global coverage makes this one of the few instances in which the authors Amero-centric outlook just about bearable.

I highly recommend this book, it is definitely one of the best that I have read this year.

And then it happened.......

On the basis of this book, I also had a look at The Zombie Survival Guide by the same author, which I would suggest you probably skip. Aside from the odd 'cute' rewrite of history (in which the Roanoake Colony mystery is explained by a zombie plague, for example,) it is essentially a wacko American survivalist manual with the words 'Commie Bastard' replaced with the word 'Zombie. It's not worth reading, even for a laugh.

I look forward to seeing what else Max Brooks can come up with. One out of two so far, but I think there might be great things to come from him, especially if he writes another oral history style piece, but I will be interested to read some straight fiction from him.

The end.

Lost in a Universe of Too Many Books and Not Enough Time.

2010-09-15T15:34:00.000+08:00

I'm feeling a little lost at the moment. Almost as though I am torn between the desire to read and the obligation to read. Does that sound strange?

It's like this. I feel like I need to get through more reading, because there are so many books that I want to read, but haven't yet. At the same time, I feel like those books are a burden that is ruining my ability to enjoy reading.

I really don't know what to do about this, because it's basically a case of me needing to chill the fuck out.

Oh well, I might just go get some comics....

Wizards, Inc. - Martin H. Greenberg and Loren L. Coleman (Editors)

2010-09-09T17:27:00.000+08:00

Author: Martin H. Greenberg & Loren L. Coleman (Editors)
Title: Wizards, Inc.
Publisher: DAW 2007
ISBN: 978 0756404390

"What do you do for a living??" is, according to the blurb on the back cover, one of those questions that you will ask and be asked often during your lifetime. It's one of those things you ask to try to find some common ground, something to talk about, especially when you can't really find any obvious topic of conversation. Like, ya know, when you get introduced to some Gucci wearing, short haired, conservative looking Young Liberal types, the kind of people you'd rather punch than talk to.

Marty Greenberg and Loren Coleman have gathered together a bunch of original stories from a range of excellent genre authors who's stories take a look at life in the case where the answer to the question "What's your job, mate?" is "I'm a Wizard." Which is a pretty cool job, I reckon. Almost as cool as being a genre anthology editor...

The stories are for the most part pretty lightweight. It's a fun book to read, not too heavy, not too serious. I do quite like small paperbacks, since they are easy to hold up in one hand while you are laying down on the couch/bed reading while using as little energy as possible. My natural state, as it happens.

A look at the stories will magically appear, after the jump link!!

The Stories Are.......

Jamaica - Orson Scott Card: I actually think this could have been a much better story, but Card had to slip in his little Jesus bit at the end and spoiled it. The story of a teenager who's life is fairly ordinary except that he is a bit magic, his brother is crippled and his mommy is single. A mean teacher attempts to humiliate him at school one day. Magic, vomit, 11 twists and a surprise appearance by the Emperor of the World ensue.
Audition - Steve Perry: Corporate Security Sorcery and Ghostbusting in rainy Seattle. A really sweet story despite the premise, I'll be looking out for Steve Perry in future.
Back Door Magic - Phaedra M. Weldon: A story about the importance of self confidence, with a really great ending. I was quite impressed with how thoroughly manipulated I was emotionally by this author!
Occupational Hazard - Mike Resnick: Mr Resnick can be relied on to blow your mind and make you laugh every time he commits words to print. This is one of his 'Harry the Book' stories, about a wizard SP bookie, his offsiders, and the lively world of bookmaking in a world full of magic. Gently Gently Dawkins and Benny Fifth Street might not be the brightest sparks, but they are loyal and kind, when it counts. And don't ever try to cheat Harry the Book.
Ties That Bind - Annie Reed: A really neat story about a young lady who is running the Magical Equipment business that she inherited from her father when he died in tragic circumstances. Obvious, but still one of the best in the book.
Hostile Takeover - Nina Kiriki Hoffman: A surly twenty something witch takes an untrained wizard under her wing when she spots him at Uni, with surprising outcomes. Excellent
A Different Way into the Life - Joseph E. Lake Jr: Good story, but all over the place in terms of plot. Java found this one really confusing, and didn't finish it. I thought it was just OK.
Disaster Relief - Kristine Katheryn Rusch: FANBOI WARNING: Nothing I say about this story can be taken at face value, because KKR is the greatest. She's in my all time top ten.
KidPro - Laura Anne Gilman: I quite liked where this one was going, kids recruited by a big corporation to do magic on the stockmarket before their magic ran out at 15 or so. It was quite a let down at the end, I think because it ended before I was really ready. Good premise, started strong but ended too quickly. I'd love to see a version of this story done as a novel actually.
Stocks and Bondage - Esther M. Friesner: A quite clever comedy piece in which a new recruit discovers that his terms of employment are a bit, erm, distasteful. And possibly downright dangerous. Luckily, a lady with a beard saves the day! Hooray for Beards!
The Keeper of Morals - Dean Wesley Smith: Oh, this one was clever. A brilliant but highly moral young lawyer has his morality magically taken away and stored (without his knowledge) by his employers.
Cosmic Balances Inc - Kristine Grayson: Hell is a cubicle workstation with fluorescent lighting.
Theobroma - Diane Duane: Ah, the old magically chocolate story. Really good one two. Made me jealous of the American attitude to WiFi. I love a good magical detective story.
Chocolate Alchemy - Lisa Silverthorne: A bitter sweet tale of corporate politics, romance and chocolate. I really liked this one.
No Rest for the Wicked - Michael A. Stackpole: A Trick Malloy story! Trick is an ex-cop, a wizard whos trigger is whiskey. Years ago, he was thrown of the police force because of false allegations of bribery, and these days he works as a bouncer and freelance investigator. In this story, Tricks arch nemesis and current employer, the rotten to the core Johnny Dawes is beheaded by his own jewellery. In his own club. Trick is forced to investigate by the white suited wanker who had him thrown of the police force years ago, and the outcome is so unexpected, I didn't expect it.

And that's it. It's not Dickens. It is just fun. I loved reading this book, and you will too. If you don't, I'll give you your money back. Honest!

The solution to my problem is...

2010-09-03T15:57:00.001+08:00

There is no solution. I'm gonna hafta just live with it. Apparently. Might have to go back to the other.

WTF? ya see, I'm having trouble with the spell checking in OOo, the OpenOffice.org suite which is supposed to replace Microsoft Word, etc. The problem is, there is no auto correct, and if you correct one misspelling of a word, it doesn't automatically correct any other identical misspellings of the same word.

Which is fucked. It means that in a badly formated document, ie no punctuation, poor spelling, it takes fricken HOURS to do a few pages. Which is annoying. I really want the functionality of the MIcrosoft product, but I don't want to pay for it...

Damn.

The Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction - Edited by Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh & Martin H. Greenberg

2010-09-01T16:39:00.000+08:00

Author: Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg (Editors)
Title: The Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction: Ten Classic Novellas
Publisher: Robinson 2007 (Reprint, Original 1989)
ISBN: 978 1845290962 (Paperback)

The Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction is a collection of ten novellas by some of the big names of 1940's and 1950's scifi, so it's a bit of a no brainer that this is a great read. Anyone interested in the history of scifi, and the development of it's thematic content should certainly grab a copy.

I do have a few complaints, however. In order to read them, you're gonna have to click on the jump link.

Firstly, if you ever see Isaac Asimov listed as an editor along with Marty Greenberg, it means that Mr Asimov wrote a 2 page intro, but had no other involvement. It's a marketing strategy that Marty used often to promote sales of his anthologies. So there you go. (I personally think that Asimov's introductions are not worth the paper they are printed on...One day, I will write about this.)

My second complaint is that despite the back blurb stating that Robert A. Heinlein was one of the greats, he isn't included in the book. Probably due to copyright restrictions and budget constraints, but none the less, it's misleading to stick his name on the back cover when he isn't included in the content.

Another problem with this book is the lack of an introduction to each story. I would think that a short mention of the authors background, the year of publication, and mention of other works by the author would have been included, as per most of these kind of retrospective anthologies. It's kind of the point of having an editor, to my mind. Not having it means that there is little context to the reading. You are reading just a story, not a story bearing in mind that, for example, the war had JUST ended and btw, written by a woman. Or whatever.

Notice how I am not complaining about the rampant sexism and racism in these stories. Every single one has some element of these things. I'm not complaining about it because I have a fucking brain in my head. I can look at a story in the context of it's time and place, think about the way people thought and acted at that time. It doesn't mean I like it. But it does mean that I can still enjoy the main part of the whole thing, the actual story itself.

The introduction by Asimov is essentially a brief history of John W. Campbell and Astounding magazine, extolling his virtue as the creator of modern scifi during his time as the editor of Astounding. According to Asimov, the 1940's and 50's were the time of Campbell, and the only authors who were not mentored by Campbell worth mentioning is Ray Bradbury and Frederic Brown. Only Brown is featured in this volume.

On to the stories, listed in appearance order. Which is how I always do it.

Time Wants A Skeleton - Ross Rocklynne (1941): This cute little space opera/cop drama/time paradox stories is riddled with casual sexism. At one point, the 'hero' helps himself to a 'kiss' from the beautiful but headstrong heroine and she belts him in the mouth, but later she apologises and confesses that really, she wanted it. Boy did she want it. And of course she is swept of her feet in the end. I always wonder whether this idea of the woman's place, and how to win yourself a girl, was the authors ideal or just what the author thought his readers wanted to read. The story itself is rather clever, using a time travel paradox to build masses of tension, and the final twist was actually surprising. As far as science goes, this story is pure fantasy, but at the time I suppose it was mostly plausible. I quite like the whole 'asteroid belt is a lost planet' thing.
The Weapon Shop - A.E. van Vogt (1942): This story is one of my all time favourites. Politics always makes for good reading, I reckon. In contrast to the previous story, this one is completely modern in it's treatment of women. It's funny that the two were published only a year apart. This one is definitely on the list of must reads, go find it.
Nerves - Lester del Ray (1942): A funny thing with this story. It features the highly progressive concept of a woman trained as a doctor, but not a proper doctor, a specialist nursing doctor. I must admit that I laughed. The thought that not too long ago, the idea of a woman as a doctor was so outlandish as to be science fictional? Del Ray wears his politics on his sleeve in this one, as his protagonist heartily approves of the idea of nursing doctors, and openly opines that there should be lots more of them! The plot centres around an accident in a nuclear products manufactory, and the plant doctors must deal with various issues arising from radiation burns, contamination, impact wounds and so on. The lady doctor in question is married to the young assistant doctor, and in the course of the story, old 'Doc' tells the youngster that his girl LIKES working, and is a good doctor, so stop being silly about her staying at home. Very modern.
Daymare - Frederic Brown (1943): This is one of those stories that just don't grab you that hard. It reads sort of like a noir cop story, but it uses the highly annoying device of 'you didn't see that twist, because it in no way relates to anything that came before it!! Ha!' About half way through, you get a speech as exposition bit, in which the wise older professor lectures the cop on a lost technology that no one knows about and magically, it turns out to be exactly what has happened and the cop goes on to save the day. It's insulting.
Killdozer! - Theodore Sturgeon (1944): Full Disclosure - I am a massive fan of Theodore Sturgeon. This story is brilliant fun. It's not enlightening, or clever, or even particularly science fictional. In fact, without the introductory bit about the deep dark past, this would be a straight up possessed thingy story. And I love a good possessed thingy story. Watch out for the casual racism, with a Hispanic character named 'Riviera' who is more commonly referred to as 'Goony.' Note that the good guys are 'not racist' despite this, as they all quite like him, but the bad guys hate the fact that he is doing a mans work when he's just a goon. It's a strange mix between a stating that racism is wrong, while at the same time suggesting that it's only bad to 'hate' or be inclined to violent toward non-whites, not to discriminate or denigrate them. In a modern context, it's a bit of "Nah mate, I like the camel jockeys, they're good at ditch digging and their women make great cleaners." Worth reading.
No Woman Born - C.L. Moore (1944): The only story written by a woman in this book is about a beautiful actress who is burned to death, but her brain is saved, implanted into a robot, and brought back to life. Interesting.
The Big and the Little - Isaac Asimov (1944): Pfft, why bother even writing about this one. A Foundation Story, typically wooden and predictable. I really dislike the writing style of Asimov, the way he writes down to the audience from on high. The weakest story in the book, and I would have left it out, because there are far better writers and stories from this period than Asimov.
Giant Killer - A. Bertram Chandler (1945): Excellent look at natural selection, radiation induced mutation & isolation as drivers for evolution. A population of pests inhabit the walls of a space craft on it's way to a distant star. Follows the life of Giant Killer as he leads his people to dominance of Outside, being the space between the Inside, where the giants live, and the outer wall of the space craft. Clever, interesting and really good fun.
E for Effort - T.L. Sherred (1947): An absolute classic, read this if you read nothing else in this book, or from this era. I won't say anything about it, except to say that you should imagine the cast from Singing In The Rain as you read it. It makes it really cute and fun. This story is in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, so you shouldn't have any problem getting a hold of it.
With Folded Hands - Jack Williamson (1947): I want to be able to say that this is a great story, because it is, except for one thing. It's creepy in a way that just won't leave you alone. This is one of my favourite examples of the cautionary scifi tale, in which technology bites you firmly on the ass. Recommended as a fine example of a highly overused plot device.

So there you go. Needless to say, A.E van Vogt and Theodore Sturgeon are the two authors I have read the most of. Vogt is always brilliant, Sturgeon a bit hit and miss, but worth pressing through. One day, I might write about them. Might not.

So now, having written this, and collected The Tardis Handbook, I'm going home to have some dinner. Wanna come over? You do? Gee, pity you're on the other end of the Internet.....

The New Dead - A Zombie Anthology Edited by Christopher Golden

2010-08-30T15:54:00.000+08:00

Author: Christopher Golden (Editor)
Title: The New Dead - A Zombie Anthology (AKA Zombie!)
Publisher: St Martins Press Feb 2010
ISBN: 978 0312559717 (Trade Paperback)

I'm quite a fan of anthologies in general, but most especially of themed anthologies of new short fiction. I love getting a hold of a book with a bunch of brand new stories, which means I can read it cover to cover without worrying about rereading something. (I really hate it when you get half way through a story and it turns out that you've read it before and you just remembered the ending...) And this book is one of the best that I have gotten in a long while.

The New Dead is an original fiction anthology edited by Christopher Golden. You may know him from his billions of media tie-in novels (hate hate hate) for Buffy, Angel, etc. People who know me will know how much I hate the media tie-in industry, which leeches valuable reading time and shelf space from original genre fiction and makes the mainstream think that all 'genre' writers have to offer is stuff about fucking television. So usually, I wouldn't have much time for Christopher Golden, or his books. And for this, I apologise.

Golden has put together a fantastic spread of stories about 'The Living Dead,' covering aspects from the sentient dead, to the killer dead, to voodoo, to military research to the doomsday apocalypse story, and not a single one disappoints. New fiction by Max Brooks from his World War Z universe, Joe Hill, Joe R. Landsdale (author of the novella "Bubba Ho-Tep") and the always brilliant Kelley Armstrong feature alongside work of lesser known but equally skilled Horror writers, some of whom are just starting out as writers. It's a fairly good indicator that the near future of Horror fiction is in safe hands.

Only one thing bothers me about this collection. At least two of the stories are in another Zombie book that I bought a few days after I read this one, and that book was published in 2009. So maybe not so all original as the cover claims? I'm not to sure what happened there, but it did bug me a bit. Either way, it's disappointing that two different publishers/editors have used the same stories in the two most recent anthologies of Zombie stories, meaning that 70 odd pages could have been used for some other up and coming Horror writer. Like me, for instance....haha, I kid.

After the jump, there is a list of the stories, along with spoilers, which will ruin your life and probably mine as well. Or something. Fuck, I don't know. I write this shit for myself, not you!! It's not all about you, you know...
The Stories!!!:

Lazarus - John Connolly: Right off the bat, a twisted take on the bible story in which Lazarus is raised from the dead by Jesus, but discovers that his lack of knowledge about the afterlife, and his odour, make him extremely unpopular. Thanks very fucking much, Jesus. (I always said that Jesus was an asshole.)
What Maisie Knew - David Liss: Possibly the most fucked up story in the book. In the future, people will sell their bodies to a company which will reanimate them for domestic purposes. OMG, he totally just did that. I can't believe he just did that. I bet she smells funny too. Sick fucking bastard. That's all I'm gonna say.
Copper - Stephen R. Bissette: A sad and kinda spooky story about veterans of war, the loss of community, and what happens when military people stick together. I never though I would cheer for the Zombies...
In the Dust - Tim Lebbon: A classic 'Zombie Plague' story, including a military cordon, a grieving husband, a scared and slightly unstable woman, an angry and rebellious teenager, military scientists with god complexes and an almost happy ending. Despite the apparently cliched plot, this story works really well. And Lebbon is well aware that a subsonic rifle round will cause a small entry wound, and the explode the brain out through a gaping hole in the back.
Life Sentence - Kelley Armstrong: This is one of my favourite stories in this book. A corporate powerhouse from a long line of powerful sorcerers finds out that he is going to die, and sets about trying to find a way to become an immortal Zombie, since becoming a vampire is too unreliable and difficult. Through his assistant, who despite her generous paycheck is actually held to him by an unspoken threat over her daughters life, he sets about locating any scientist who can provide the means for his desired immortality. He arranges the murder of a whole bunch of people as experimental subjects in the process of researching his aims, and finally is preparing for the final conversion. His assistant is not comfortable with all of the killing. He is concerned that she may be having doubts about resurrecting him once he has died, so abducts her daughter as a final safeguard, but everything goes to plan. He releases the daughter and goes to rest and finish off with those inconvenient things, like rigor mortis, initial putrefication, fluid loss, and so on, in a specially prepared room deep in the basement of his building. But his assistant did the preparing.... Just an awesome story. And I just spoiled it for you. It wasn't spoiled for me, so I spent the whole thing waiting for the end. Ha! Brilliant.
Delice - Holly Newstein: A straight up Haiti voodoo revenge story, with a happy ending and liberal use of colloquial French and the names 'Papa Legba' and 'Erzulie.' A cat dies, which was a bit sad, but the rest of it was great. No surprises though.
The Wind Cries Mary - Brian Keene: A guy tells the story of his wife's death of the zombie plague, and how she returns to where he is every night. But he can't reach out to her, can't talk to her corpse, can't even attempt to put her to final rest. He talks about how different they were. He's a Republican and she's a Democrat, he loved Pulp Fiction, she hated it. But they made it work. When she died, he blew his head off with a shotgun, and now he's a ghost. Can they make it work now? Short and sweet, a bit sad, and a clever look at relationships where the differences seem overwhelming.
Family Business - Jonathan Maberry: I take it back, this is the best story in this book. A teenager who lives with his older brother in a township of survivors from the Zombie Apocalypse becomes too old for the free rations for children program and must now get a job. He tries everything available rather that sign on with his brother, a Zombie hunter who he hates, largely because when they were small children, the older brother ran away from their parents with the baby rather than attempt to save their mother. That's right, a 15 year old blames his 20 year old brother for not saving their mother from their father on the first night of the Apocalypse. What follows will really make you think. A really fantastic story that completely surprised me.
The Zombie Who Fell From The Sky - M.B. Homler: A mad scientist cooks up a super soldier formula, infects himself with it, and in the process of trying to escape the military who want him dead, falls from a plane into a small town, starting the Zombie Apocalypse. Hilariously told zomcom, it would make a great movie.
My Dolly - Derek Nikitas: A pretty good Zombie Apocalypse story in which a guy attempts to resurrect a girl he found so that he can ask her what it's like to be dead. Well written, if not a brilliant plot.
Second Wind - Mike Carey: A greedy, maniacal stockbroker decides that since he's probably going to die of a stress induced heart attack, he might as well prepare so that his body is as intact as possible so that he can keep working from his newly constructed fortress. A clever story in which a total asshole discovers human kindness, but only once he has died.
Closure, Limited: A Story of World War Z - Max Brooks: If you haven't read World War Z, or The Zombie Survival Guide, get them and read them. THEN read this story. It's brilliant, mentions cricket and makes no sense until the final paragraph. I totally love Max Brooks.
Among Us - Aimee Bender: Cute series of thoughts and hints about a Zombie Apocalypse, which never becomes clear, and finishes with the saddest thing I ever read in my life. Really good.
Ghost Trap - Rick Hautala: A diver makes a creepy find, and later learns about the last time the dead rose. Quite a good story. I've never come across Rick Hautala before, but apparently he has published 30 novels. I will have to look him up.
The Storm Door - Tad Williams: I've never been a fan of Tad Williams, but this story it pretty good. I was slightly disappointed with the ending though. Ha, and I like the hero's name, "Nate Nightingale, Exorcist to the Stars!!"
Kids and Their Toys - James A. Moore: I never did trust children that much.
Shooting Pool - Joe R. Landsdale: Typically brilliant Landsdale, a crime caper story with a gross-out bit, some funny bits and very little connection to Zombies. Someone was reaching with this one I think...
Weaponized - David Wellington: A report witnesses the first deployment of the latest weapon in the continuing War on Everything, the Post Mortem Combatant. Clever and fun.
Twittering From The Circus Of The Dead - Joe Hill: This story begins with the official definition of what Twitter is, direct from Twitter.com. @tyme2waste tweets her way through a family holiday in hell, but finally they are coming back to California from Colorado. Mom is such a bitch, Dad is just being weird, and little brother is a total masturbating pervert. OMG, Dad is pulling off the road to stop at some stupid circus. And so on, written and laid out like a twitter timeline. Clever device, and the ending it totally appropriate. I don't see this device working again though.

So there you have it. A whole bunch of Zombie stories and not a single instance of the word BRAAIIINNNNZZZZZZ!!!

I love my life.

Recommendations from the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide - Science Fiction Novels

2010-08-10T16:38:00.000+08:00

I picked up a copy of the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guides 100 Must Read Science Fiction Novels. Here are quite a few of it's recommendations:

Brian Aldiss - Hothouse
J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes & Drowned World
Stephen Baxter - Moonseed
Poul Anderson - Tau Zero
Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man & The Stars My Destination
James Blish - A Case of Conscience
C.M. Kornbluth - The Syndic
Algis Bundrys - Rogue Moon
Lester Del Ray - Police Your Planet
Pat Cadigan - Synners
Jake Womack - Ambient
John Campbell - The Collected Short Stories
A.E Van Vogt - The World of Null-A
Harlan Ellison - From the Land of Fear (features the story "Soldier" which was made into Terminator)
Harry Harrison - Make Room! Make Room! (filmed as Soylent Green)
K.W. Jeter - Dr Adder
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness & The Dispossessed
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris (I saw the 2002 film recently and hated it...)
Maureen F. McHugh - China Moutain Zhang
David Brin - The Postman
Walter M. Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz (I've read essays on and tributes to, but never the actual story...)
C.L. Moore - Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams (a collection of shorts apparently)
Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon
Frederik Pohl - Man Plus
Tanith Lee - Biting the Sun
Joanna Russ - The Female Man
Robert Sheckley - Immortality Inc
Lucius Shepard - Life During Wartime
John Shirley - City Come A-Walkin'
Cordwainer Smith - Norstrila
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep

Notice how a few of these books are actually short story collections? Fuckwits. Mostly, the recommendations were either books I've already read, or the worst examples of populist rubbish, media tie-ins (ugh) and really old crap that barely scrapes in as SF (fricken Frankenstein is one of them.)

Just remembered and want to note down, I am trying to get to reading the following, even though I have 4 books open with bookmarks, and am also in the middle of two short collections (Eclipse Two edited by Jonathan Strahan and Moonstories by Elizabeth Moon):

Lois McMaster Bujold - The Vorksagian series (on my iPod atm, just got the newest book and need to catch up by 3 books that I haven't read yet.)
Robert J Sawyer - Hominids (serialised in Asimov's or analog, I have this but haven't read it yet, I was trying to find cover images to go with the text files that i have of these editions.)
Connie Willis - The Doomsday Book (I've gotten this out a few times, but never gotten to reading it. Connie is great though.)
Frederik Pohl - Gateway and sequels (The HeeChee series, which I read years and years ago, totally loved and can't remember any of except that it has something to do with Venus? I remember very clearly reading a short story recently in a big fat Collected Works volume of F. Pohl in which a destitute spacer makes the most of a bad situation, saves the baddy even though he is a prick and discovers a Hee Chee artifact that changes his life forever. And he wins the girl, I'm pretty sure.)

On that note, I am going to head home. I wasn't going to stop to write today, but I wanted to return the stupid guide book and had forgotten to write the books that i wanted to read down, so I did. You just read it. Ha!

PS - I hate it when someone is writing a short story, and then wraps it up really quickly but leaves me feeling like I must have missed something that made it make sense, so I read it again, but I didn't miss anything. The writer just wrapped up too quickly and all of the hints at deeper meaning went nowhere. Fuck. That really shts me off.

Ugh, I Finally Got Out of The Doctors Office

2010-08-04T16:29:00.001+08:00

It's only two hours after my appointment time, so not too bad, all things considered. Just popped into the library to grab a few books and to write this down. Got a couple of SF study books, Reading Science Fiction ed James Gunn, Marlene S Barr and Matthew Candelaria, and Science Fiction Stories: Macmillan Literature Collection, with stories and study exercises/guides from Philip K Dick, Stanley G Weinbaum, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C Clarke, and Jake London. A lot of the exercises are pretty basic, but have some essay potential, and since I am trying to get back into it....

Answer key guide www.macmillanenglish.com/readers apparently.

I had no idea that Jack London wrote SF.

So now, at 4.25pm, I am just about to head home. So if my loverly fammerly are reading this before I arrive, I'll be home soon, so put the kettle on!! I really need a coffee, some couch and WiFi.

Tonight, I'll be mostly doing....hair dye.

Sitting in my car waiting for 2.20pm to come

2010-08-04T14:31:00.000+08:00

So I am sitting in my car. Great huh? I brought my iPod so that I could read YBNH 1 by Ellen Datlow or Ecllipse One by David Hartwell while I was waiting for my doctors appointment.

Here's the problem though. Yesterday I had a shot at Jailbreaking my iPod using an online thing called jailbreakme. Didn't work, naturally. All it managed to do was delete my shortcuts, so I restored from a backup, everything is back in place, everything is now fine.

Unfortunately, running the backup also restored my library database, so all of my new books that I downloaded between my last sync and running the restore have vanished from the iPod. Not lost forever, but not with me here. All I have with me is one anthology by Strahan that I've already read and a bunch of novels that I've either read or am not ready to start yet.

Fuck.

Sent from my iPod

An Update, following a Short Absence from the Blogosphere

2010-08-02T15:51:00.002+08:00

I haven't written anything on here for a few weeks now, largely since I got that god damned iPod, which by the way is fricken awesome and I love love love it, but it has stopped me from achieving much in the way of getting back into the habit of writing, because I do actually intend to try to write something serious soon, well, as soon as I think of something to write ABOUT.

Anyway, I have read quite a few ebooks since getting the iPod, and absolutely No, except a few, treeBooks.

Oh, I got my Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty Seventh Annual Collection Ed G Dozois and my Year's Best SF 15 Ed David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer in the post the day before I got the iPod, both of which were brilliant. I am so glad I got them. And yay for Amazon, who managed to post both to me within 14 days of release, when the local distributor has not yet released them, and told me it would be a 6 week wait after the publication date to arrive anyway. Fuckers.

In other news, I got my hands on the April edition of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, which made for a pretty good read. Can't remember the stories now though. Maybe not that good. I do remember ENJOYING it, however.

I went on a bit of a Baen Books bender last week. Whoops. (I secretly love them) And a few other things. List of been to for read:

The Tank Lords, Ranks of Bronze and The Complete Hammer's Slammers Volume Two by David Drake
Fallen Angels by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven
A couple of the Honor Harrington books by David Weber
"Act One" by Nancy Kress, really excellent novella.
Science Fiction Omnibus edited by Brian Aldiss, one of the best classic short story anthologies around
A bunch of other bits and pieces from Analog, Asimov's and Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazines.

On the to read list at the moment:

Neal Asher - Brass Man (in progress)
Paolo Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl
CJ Cherryh - Cyteen
David Hartwell et al - The Hard SF Renaissance
Nancy Kress - Steal Across the Sky
Frederik Pohl - Gateway (HeeChee One)
Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End
Johnathan Strahan editor - Eclipse Three (in progress) including stories "The Pelican Bar" by Karen Joy Fowler, "Don't Mention Madagascar" by Pat Cadigan and "A Practical Girl" by Ellen Klages
Iain M. Banks - Consider Phelbas (First of the Culture novels)
Novellas by Stephen Baxter, Phillip K Dick, CJ Cherryh, Nancy Kress, Alastair Reynolds and about 500 others.
YBSF 14 by Hartwell and Cramer
The Good New Stuff by G Dozois.featuring Chairman Bruce, Michael Swanwick, Walter Jon Williams, Maureen F McHugh, Robert Reed, Stephen Baxter, R Garcia y Robertson (awesome), Tony Daniel, Paul J McAuley, Peter F Hamilton and Mary Rosenblum. Too fucking cool.
And a shitload of Robert Reed books.

If I had more time to read, I'd just fill it up with more reading anyway, so I can't complain. However, I weighed myself this morning. OMFG, I got fat. Oer. Whoops. I better loose some weight or I might die of a heart attack before I finish the books I want to read.

Today, I'll be mostly returning....

2010-07-21T15:16:00.000+08:00

Books. Yeah, that's right. Returning books to the library. What are you gonna do about it?

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Magazine) 60th Anniversary Anthology Edited by Gordon Van Gelder

Of Time and Third Avenue - Alfred Bester
All Summer in a Day - Ray Bradbury
One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts - Shirley Jackson
A Touch of Strange - Theodore Sturgeon
Eastward Ho! - William Tenn
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut Jr. : An old favourite of mine, in which everyone is equal, even if it means we have to cripple ourselves to get that way. Haha, Kurt is hilarious.
This Moment of the Storm - Roger Zelazny: Another favourite, a cop on a strange planet, sudden storm, weird animals, girlfriend dies, the end.
The Electric Ant - Philip K. Dick
The Deathbird - Harlan Ellison
The Women Men Don't See - James Tiptree Jr. : This one was weird but good.
I See You - Damon Knight
The Gunslinger - Stephen King: The original short that became one of my favourite post apocalypse fantasy stories.
The Dark - Karen Joy Fowler
Buffalo - John Kessel
Solitude - Ursula K. Le Guin
Mother Grasshopper - Michael Swanwick
macs - Terry Bisson
Creation - Jeffery Ford
Other People - Neil Gaiman
Two Hearts - Peter S. Beagle
Journey into the Kingdom - M. Rickert
The Merchant and the Alchemists Gate - Ted Chiang: One of the best stories ever written, ever ever.

And this is all.

Alastair Reynolds - Pushing Ice

2010-07-16T16:49:00.000+08:00

Author: Alastair Reynolds
Title: Pushing Ice
Publisher: Gollancz 2005
ISBN: 978 0575074385

OK, fanboi time. This novel is one of Al Reynolds stand alone books, set in 2057+ in a world divided between the United Economic Entities (The West) and the rogue states of Asia, the specific enemy in this instance being China.

Pushing Ice is the story of an asteroid/comet mining team who are sent to check out the former moon of Jupiter, Janus, as it accelerates out of the solar system. It turns out, Janus is some kind of alien artifact and we never noticed. As Janus accelerates, it sucks the mining ship Rockhopper along with it, headed toward the Virgo constellation, and by the time the crew notices, it's too late to back out. The lock down for a 12 year, relativistic speed journey to the stars. On Earth, 260 years have passed. Suddenly, Janus grows a roof and their view of the universe is closed off, until aliens chop their way through and make first contact.

Along the way, there are crisis political and personal. Adventures and discoveries abound as the crew of the Rockhopper try to survive and understand their new environment. But soon they discover that there may not be any chance of rescue or return, as they find out that the structure they are trapped inside might not be the one they thought it was.

This novel is a brilliant political thriller and a really fun space adventure. There are little bits of galactic history and aliens, new technological discoveries, intrigues and personal vendetta's. It has everything that a good Space Opera story should have.

5/5, a great one off story with good potential for a sequel.

M. John Harrison - The Centauri Device

2010-07-16T16:34:00.000+08:00

Author: M. John Harrison
Title: The Centauri Device
Publisher: Gollancz 2009 (1975)
ISBN: 978 05750852571

The Centauri Device is one of those incredibly famous sf novels that no-one actually seems to have read. Unless they are super sf geeks like me. It is described variously as the novel that killed space opera, to the novel that turned the conventions of space opera on it's head, to the novel that revitalised space opera.

It is essentially a story following the essential 'space opera plot line' with almost everything mixed up. The hero is actually a drug fucked loser who never seems to get a grip on what the hell is happening to him. His crew is worthless. His best friend is worse than useless. His enemies are insane. His allies are just as bad.

This guy has stumbled through life, and now finds himself in a situation where he is incredibly important, and he just wants it all to go away. He's unlikable, lazy, selfish and stupid. Yet he holds the key to a mysterious device that may in fact be the ultimate weapon.

I can understand that so many sf critics of an older generation than mine will see this novel as seminal, after only knowing the sf space opera of the 50's and 60's. But I just don't get the same thing as these other writers. All I got from this was a fairly disjointed story about a guy that I didn't give a fuck about, bumbling through a universe that I didn't give a fuck about. It is an incredibly dystopian universe that Harrison builds, and I failed to see any appeal in it. It was really hard to care, to be honest.

I don't see that it was this story that changed space opera forever. I think it more likely that the space opera that came after was the product of a more discerning market, a better grasp of the real universe, a change in the way people relate on a global level, and the rise of so called sf-like technology through the 1990's. This novel strikes me far more as a relic of the disappointment that the 1970's held for so many after the promise of the 1960's social and technological changes than a call to arms to reinvent the genre.

I would recommend this novel to students of the history of science fiction, and to some extent to students of social and political attitudes in the previous century. Certainly there is an obvious reflection of an attitude of disdain toward the politics and predictions of earlier sf works, ie. the libertarian frontier of Heinlein's early novels, or the techno-futurism of E E 'Doc' Smith. In the debate that will undoubtedly continue for eternity around just what constitutes Space Opera, this novel will always be an important talking point, and on that basis I suggest that you read it.

However, as a novel for entertainment? Erm, 1 out of 5. It's a piece of crap.

Neal Asher - Prador Moon

2010-07-13T12:46:00.000+08:00

Author: Neal Asher
Title: Prador Moon
Publisher: Nightshade Canada 2006 (Tor 2006 US/UK)
ISBN: 978 1597800525

First contact with the Prador was supposed to be a good thing. The AI's lined up a meeting between ambassadors from both species aboard the space station Avalon, and things began smoothly enough. The giant crab monsters arrived through the airlock, and the air grew tense. The human ambassador greeted the Prador with a message of welcome. And the Prador responded with rail guns.

It turns out, the Prador only came to the meeting to find out whether humans were any good to eat, or if they could just be wiped out from space. And we apparently taste pretty good. Better if we have been dead for a while first though.

This novel is essentially the story of Jebel "Up Close and Personal" Krong, ECS agent turned super soldier, and the early defeats of the Prador war. The human Polity is hurt badly in the early days of the war, but as the AI's discover more about the Prador, the tide slowly turn in humanities favour.

A non stop thriller, this book is all action and almost no philosophy. It is quite a quick read, being only 300 pages or so, but it certainly delivers on the promise of all action scifi, with the weird terrain of Asher's future history slotted seamlessly into his vivid, intense and often brutal prose. This novel is a reimagining of First Contact that you won't soon forget.

If this guy gets any better, he's going to overtake Alastair Reynolds as the master. This one is right up there with the best.

Alastair Reynolds - Chasm City

2010-07-13T11:58:00.002+08:00

Author: Alastair Reynolds
Title: Chasm City
Publisher: Gollancz 2001
ISBN: 978 0575083158

Anyone who has read my previous posts on Alastair Reynolds will know that he is my favourite writer of SF. Reynolds writes exactly the kind of wide screen Space Opera that I love the best, and he does it without ever rehashing his earlier story lines or boring me stupid with pointless filler.

Chasm City didn't disappoint. If anything, it cemented my faith in Reynolds as a reliable source of at least 500 pages of brilliant story (634 pages in this instance). If only he would write faster, more often and direct to paper in my letterbox. I have read half of his back catalogue already, and there are only 6 books to go before I completely run out of new Reynolds to read. It's a scary thought, although I note that on his website, he says that he is going to write more Revelation Space books eventually.

This book is a standalone Revelation Space story in which Tanner Mirabel, a security specialist from Sky's Edge, chases the guy who killed his boss and his bosses girlfriend in an ambush across space and time to Yellowstone, in order to exact revenge.

The story delves into the colonisation of Sky's Edge and the cause of the war, as well as the back story of Sky Haussmann, hero and villain of Sky's Edge. It also looks at the cause of the plague on Yellowstone, the division between the Mulch and the Canopy in Chasm City, and some more information about the war of a few billion years ago with the Inhibitors. The story is set seven years after the plague strikes Yellowstone, being several years before the novel Revelation Space begins.

There are drugs & dealers, ancient weirdo's, moral crises, personality clashes and strange alliances. Exotic weapons, bioengineered humanoids of porcine origin, cyborgs and an exploding space elevator. There is a virus that causes dream visions of religious figures, bungee jumping, exotic weapons and fake passports. And we discover, at the end of it all, the origin of Shadowplay, a game in which the rich and bored volunteer to be hunted by professional assassins for a TV show, knowing that there is around a 30% chance that they will die.

Ultimately, this is a story about redemption. It poses the question "How long does a person have to live a good life before their past crimes are absolved?" It's a question of morality that challenges the idea that you can somehow redeem yourself for any act with the forfeiture of a certain period of time, whether by punishment or by repatriation.

I could write for hours on this book, and probably will at some point, but I don't want to go into spoilers just yet. If you don't read this book, you are seriously missing out. One of the greatest ever.

Kage Baker - Not Less Than Gods

2010-07-08T16:00:00.001+08:00

Author: Kage Baker
Title: Not Less Than Gods
Publisher: Tor 2010
ISBN: 978 0765318916

Not Less Than Gods is the final novel in the Company Series by Kage Baker, who died in January 2010. I think it was completed shortly before she died after a long cancer related illness. And the novel stands as a fitting finale to a career as, amongst other things, a brilliant novelist.

I have to admit that I was a little worried when I saw the write ups on the back of the book, 'The Story of the Steampunk Origins of the Company.' I'm not a fan of steampunk. I think that aside from some very clever engineering and a little bit of literature, the Edwardian/Victorian era was largely one of terrible racism, exploitation of the poor and terrible misogyny that took a further hundred years to begin to stamp out. And I think that glorifying the Victorians by attributing a greater degree of rationalism to them is misguided at best, and downright insulting to the memory of the incredible suffering they caused and oversaw.

I was highly relieved to discover that the novel was incredibly good fun to read. Much like the other Company novels, it deals with hidden societies, secret science and mysterious time travellers from the future, who are attempting to raise civilisation beyond greed, materialism and inequity, apparently. We of course know that the Company of the future aims at no such thing, but in the past, the Company line is embraced whole heartedly by employees and operatives who desire a better world for all men.

This novel is not about the cyborgs of the other Company novels, and in fact does not even mention them. It tells a more complete version of the story of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, Company operative (and experimental prehistoric prehuman primate of indistinct but clearly ALMOST human genetic origin) and later occupant of the body of identical triplet clone Alec Checkerfield, who is Edwards brother, of sorts, and also father, in a complicated kind of way. Sort of.

We see Edward conceived, raised, educated and recruited to The Gentleman's Speculative Society, and then on to his early missions, long before we encountered him in the original Company novels. Baker flesh's out the motivations and desires of this most complicated of characters, with a depth that was not seen in the other works. We see the origins of Edwards struggle for acceptance, his desperate need for validation from a father figure, and the destruction by stages of his early moral foundations until he becomes the operative that readers of earlier Company novels would recognise.

I would highly recommend this novel as an introduction to the Company series, because it sets such a vibrant image in my mind of the early days of the Company in the modern world. I think, if this novel had been first, that much of the humour, and the science fiction, of the earlier novels would have been far funnier, which is to say that the hilarious would have near killed me.

For fans of the series, this is an absolute must. Readers who disliked the character before will undoubtedly be vindicated in their feelings about this guy. Those who love him will be interested to learn more about the origins of this unfathomable rogue. See, everybody wins!

Five out of five.

Elizabeth Moon - The Serrano Succession

2010-07-08T15:41:00.002+08:00

Author: Elizabeth Moon
Title: The Serrano Succession
Publisher: Orbit 2007 (Original 2000)
ISBN: 978 1841496740

The Serrano Succession is the omnibus edition of the conclusion to Elizabeth Moon's Serrano sequence, comprising the previously published novels Change of Command and Against the Odds, originally published by Orbit in 2000. When I ordered this book from the library, I was quite excited at the prospect, because I enjoyed the others so much.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get going on this one. I started reading and got instantly bored. There just wasn't enough there to keep me reading. I think maybe there wasn't any more new story to tell, and I was left feeling like the author was only motivated to write in order to sell another book in an established storyline, but without any real enthusiasm for the task. It felt to me like picking up a mystery book I had already read, so all the fun of discovery is just gone.

I got this massive sense of 'here we go again' as the same major characters make the same stupid errors, the same kind of bad guys have the same early successes, the same minor characters are used to highlight the same failures of communication, eventually leading to a miraculous turnaround in the fortunes of everybody when FINALLY the characters talk to each other, find out that they all made mistaken assumptions, then soundly trounce the bad guys.

The first three books in this series were fantastic. There was a constantly building storyline over the books as each told it's own story, and the final of the trio completed that trilogy story arc nicely. The next story was good in that they developed the overall story further by switching to other characters, which made it new and refreshing without losing that overall story. The fifth story was a little bit annoying because the main character flaw of the hero of book four was used again as the driving force of the story. And now we get to books six and seven, and it's all happening again? It's as though Moon got bored with the bigger story after the fourth book and started bashing out any old thing as long as the World Building work she had already done could be slotted in, but only as a marketing tool.

It might just be the mood I am in, but I was really disappointed by the beginning few chapters to Change of Command. I may have another shot at reading this book some time in the future, but for now, it's been relegated to my 'dead horse flogged sufficiently, thanks!' pile.

Nealasherfest - It's Fricken Neal Asher Polity Novel Madness!!!

2010-07-05T11:58:00.000+08:00

Over the past week, I've managed to get my hands on a number of Neal Asher novels and have read most of them. Still a couple in my stack that I have to get too....

They have all been brilliant. My only complaint is with the library, which has supplied all of the 'supporting' novels from the Polity series, but none of the main storyline books (Agent Cormac series).

And in other fantastic news, Ben Cousins, formerly of the West Coast Eagles, now a Richmond Football Club player, has been rushed to Intensive Care after an 'adverse reaction to a sleeping tablet.'

He just loves his junk far too much, doesn't he? And he really doesn't manage it well. I mean, there's the 'running from the cops to bury the stash' incident, the 'arrested shirtless and high as a kite' incident, a month long trip to rehab in the USA, which I'm sure was excellent fun. There aren't that many druggies who manage to attract quite as much media attention as ol' Bennie.

I'm thinking that he's either eaten a dodgy pill full of GHB and Ketamine, or OD'd on oxy's/greys. Or maybe he just snorted so much coke that his heart stopped? Nah, probably the pill. Or Pills. I'd doubt that he only took one of whatever it was.

Geez, I hope they drug test him and publish the results. I'd love to know what he took. He's such a fuck up, I absolutely love it. It's nice to see the golden haired, private school, rich kid, superstar footballer fall on his ass. It's a timely reminder to people that drug addiction isn't something exclusive to criminals and poor people, or for that matter restricted to stupid people. And I don't like his type anyway. Fuckin' richie rich asshole, walkin' around like he's entitled to greatness, looking down on people who aren't in his social and economic class like he's the better breed of human. (Yeh, I have issues with classism and economic disparity in Western Democracies, and the World in general.)

You shoulda run, Bennie.

And time.

2010-07-03T11:32:00.000+08:00

I came into the library with the intention of finishing off my notes on "The Skinner" by Neal Asher, but first I fucked around trying to find two books that I returned to the library, but that they didn't check in properly. Now I have run out of time.

I am quite cross about this, as the stupid girl who repeatedly does this to me (not checking in the books that I drop off) isn't in any way inconvenienced by this, she doesn't even have to help me look for the damn things.

Fucking stupids.

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume 2 - Edited by George Mann

2010-06-30T14:23:00.000+08:00

Author: George Mann (Editor)
Title: The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume 2
Publisher: Solaris Books/Games Workshop UK 2008
ISBN: 978 1844165421
My Rating: 2/5 - Not great overall.

The Solaris New Science Fiction series started out in 2007 in an effort to re-establish an original fiction paperback series. So far, they are up to volume 3, published in 2009 just before Solaris was bought out by another publisher. It remains to be seen whether this series will continue or just vanish like so many other original fiction anthologies.No news yet on a 2010 edition that I could find....

Volume two has quite a few BIG NAMES in it's author list, so I imagine that it sold quite well. I didn't hear of it until I did a library search for Neal Asher. It was worth getting just for the two Asher stories it contained, although most of the stories were fine. Probably the best thing about this book though, is an outstanding Peter Watts story entitled "The Eyes of God." It totally blew my mind.

It's always nice to see original anthologies, but this one is not exactly promoting new writers, and being unthemed means that it is a little broad in it's definition of what SF is. And the stories are not exactly original either. I mean, the words are obviously in an original order, but most of the idea's have been done to death, and better. A lot of this book reads like it was bashed out to fill a contractual obligation rather than pushing the edges.

There may be spoilers, but just like in base jumping, sometimes, sometimes you just have to jump.

(Drum roll) The stories!!

iCity - Paul Di Filippo: Imagine a world in which the people (regular folk who watch Big Brother and Home & Away) get to vote on a daily basis on the design of their neighbourhood. Watch, as designers constantly try to keep up with, and build on, the tastes and desires of a populace that doesn't even know what it wants. The credibility, and future employment, depends on the designers ability to match neighbourhood design with the shifting attitudes of the population, who don't care about anything except the latest and greatest. This story sits with me as an analogy for modern, media driven politics.
The Space Crawl Blues - Kay Kenyon: A very short piece in which a former shuttle pilot rendered unemployable by Quantum Transport is vindicated in his paranoia. Predictable.
Fifty Dinosaurs - Robert Reed: In this typically weird Reed short story, a guy and a dinosaur discover that they are party favours, being two of fifty representatives of the peak species of each era of the Earths history. There is also a hard drive wandering around somewhere. This story essentially poses the existential question. Does reality define me, or do I define reality. Is memory the result of real experience? Can you be sure that your memories are real? Is anything real, or are you just imagining it all? And if you are just imagining it all, how are you doing it, and why? Strange in that excellent Robert Reed kind of way.
The Line of Dichotomy - Chris Roberson: Ah, that old alternate history "What if Ancient China and the Aztecs developed space travel and stuff before white people fucked everything up?" tale. It's been done so many times before. And better.
Mason's Rats: Black Rat - Neal Asher: The first of two Mason's Rats stories in this book, Asher imagines a world where evolution has resulted in Rats becoming sentient tool users.
Blood Bonds - Brenda Cooper: A girl who has a terrible accident uploads herself and leads an AI revolt on Mars by teaming up with her living twin sister. That old "what is alive" thing again. Yawn.
The Eyes of God - Peter Watts: Thank fuck for Peter Watts. He really did save this book for me. In a post War-On-Terror world, where scanning technologies in airports are pushed to the point of being able to decode thoughts and feelings, a man is lined up to board a flight to attend his fathers funeral. He is worried. As a child, he was sexually abused by his father, as were many other boys. The father was a priest. The man often dwells on paedophilic thoughts, whether by inclination or because of psychological damage. He doesn't know, and really, it doesn't matter. The guy has never acted on these thoughts, which he can't define as desires or fears or just random thoughts. He just doesn't know. The thoughts are there, but he has for his entire life so far not acted on them. In his conscious mind, he chooses not to act on them. Is he guilty of a crime? Technically, no, although the thoughts and feelings he has are truly fucked up, so to most people he would be considered morally culpable. Should this guy be incarcerated as a preventative measure? At what point does thought become crime? Can a person be expected to never have thoughts or ideas about acts that might be criminal? Watts jams a great big wedge into the issue of what constitutes crime, what limits should be placed on liberty, where does individual responsibility stop and state responsibility start? Watts doesn't offer any solution, or particularly suggest any viewpoint on this issue, and I think the choice of paedophilia over some other crime suggests that he didn't want anyone to be able to answer the questions posed with simplistic liberty or death type answers. On the surface, it seems like a massive violation of what most of us lefties would consider to be a breach of the fundamental human right to the presumption of innocence, and to a fair trial. This is a right that most people believe they have, even though they don't. (Trial by media is not something you are entitled to protection from in this country.) But conversely, this guy is constantly thinking about raping children. That is what is in his head almost all of the time. He says he's never acted on it. This can be countered with one word. Yet. As a consequence of being scanned for his flight, this guy is now permanently labeled as a potential sex offender. Is that fair? Or is the issue of fairness negated by the greater good? Is someone who has been so made that they once thought "I'd like to kill you" then become a potential murderer? I've been that angry, and had that thought, yet never, even in thinking it, did I ACTUALLY think about committing the act of murder. Can that distinction be made? If it can, how do you prove it? This story is exactly what science fiction should be all the time. A thought provoking look at where we might be headed as a species.
Sunworld - Eric Brown: Another 'typical.' This one does the lost colony forgets it's origins, and thousands of years later, discovers that they are in fact humans from earth. A standard attack on religious government and dogma.
Evil Robot Monkey - Mary Robinette Kowal: In one of the best stories in this book, an upgrades cyborg chimpanzee resents being exhibited like a zoo animal. Cute, funny and a little bit sad.
Shining Armour - Dominic Green: On a colony world, settlers are terrorised by corporate thugs until a funny old man is revealed as the driver of The Guardian, a very very large power armour device which is then used to save the day. Predictable, but well written.
Book, Theatre and Wheel - Dominic Green: A fantasy bit on memory and learning systems. I fucking hate castles.
Mathralon - David Louis Edelman: This one was actually pretty good. On a mining planet, the miners only ever see the robot cargo ships which turn up regularly to collect the Mathralon ore that is mined on the planet. They get their supplies and the send off their stuff, but they have no idea what is going on in the rest of the galaxy. Or if anything is actually going on. A kind of 'does anything that I can't see exist' question, which was a common philosophical idea before mass media and rapid communications became the norm. Interesting.
Masons Rats - Autotractor - Neal Asher: Ha ha, suits beware - the autotractor doesn't like you.
Modern Times - Michael Moorcock: A very strange and disjointed time travel tale, in which the characters jump around through time gleaning bits and pieces of morality, culture and history into a value system that is as disjointed as the story. Moorcock is so much better when he writes long, there just isn't the time for him to actually make his point in short fiction. Did not like.
Point of Contact - Dan Abnett: A first contact story in which the aliens are entirely unremarkable. And aren't really interested in anything. Which makes you wonder, if they are so fucking boring and so uninterested in anything about US, why did they bother? I'd think that a species of 'Whatever..." kind of people probably wouldn't develop space travel, let alone bothering to travel across interstellar space and entering the orbit of another inhabited planet, just to not show any interest in anything about it. A really dumb idea, but at least I haven't read it a hundred times before.

An OK anthology, but not anything to spend money on. You'd get better fiction and more of it by buying a couple of copies of Asimov's or Analog. I'd expect that the best stories in it, the Watts and the Asher really, would have ended up in a best of the year anthology somewhere, and if not, I'm sure the Watts at least will show up in a collection some time in the future. I'd rather spend my money on a book full of Watts stories to be honest. 2 out of 5

The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories - Edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates

2010-06-26T13:55:00.002+08:00

Author: Ian Watson and Ian Whates (Editors)
Title: The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories: Short Stories of What Might Have Been
Publisher: Robinson UK 2010
ISBN: 978 1845297794

I'm not really sure why I got this book out. I don't much like alternate history fiction, mostly because it tends to deal with things that either bore me stupid (history I have studied, like Russia, Germany, Ancient Rome/Arab States in Ancient Times) or I don't know anything about (USA Civil War, Ancient China). I didn't even finish most of the stories, I didn't like most of the stories and I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone with my kind of taste in fiction, that being SPACE OPERA and NEW SPACE OPERA, with occasional Space Military or Planetary Romance type novels included.

That said, I am sure that plenty of people will love this book. It has work by Ken McLeod, Robert Silverberg and the ever present Harry Turtledove, who's World War series I have been meaning to read for years. (World War 2 plus aliens? What's not to like??) Also a reprint of Pat Cadigan's 'Dispatches from the Revolution,' which I liked the first time I read it. James Morrow writes a piece in which the passengers of the Titanic escape on a raft built in the hours before the ship sinks, only to drift south and on through the Panama Canal. Paul McAuley, Ian McLeod and Stephen Baxter all have work in this book, which on contemplation is probably the reason I got the damn thing out of the library. I must have been expecting Ancient Roman spacecraft or something.

This book has 25 stories of Alternate History, some reprints, some specially commissioned. There is probably something for everyone in here. I did rather enjoy the McLeod piece, apparently one of the commissions, which is about two factions of dimensional shifters who are at war over preservation or intervention in time streams where things didn't go so well. I wish it had been longer though, as it didn't get a chance to go anywhere.

There is a reprint of Frederick Pohl's 'Waiting for the Olympians' that I didn't read, but have come across before. That one was OK, from memory. Rudy Rucker's 2008 short 'The Imitation Game,' in which Alan Turing fakes his own death rather than committing suicide, is also included. Add all this up and you have a book that on face value is pretty impressive in it's lineup.

No rating - I don't know enough AH to judge, and I am highly prejudiced against anything without space ships.

The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows - Jonathan Strahan (Editor)

2010-06-23T16:13:00.001+08:00

Author: Jonathan Strahan
Title: The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows
Publisher: Viking 2008
ISBN: 978 0670060597

It has to be said right at the outset. This anthology of original SF is completely misnamed. It probably should have been titled 'Tales of New Tomorrows: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction' or something similar. Why? Because the title as is stands implies that it's a book of space stories. At least I thought so. And yes, there are a few space stories in this volume, but for the most part it is just stories about a possible future, and mostly set on Earth rather than in space.

That said, it is a pretty good anthology. The selections are pretty good, the authors, including Paul McAuley, Ian McDonald, Kelly Link, Alastair Reynolds and Greg Egan, are top notch, and each story is followed by an author biography and the authors notes on the story, which I always like. Strahan is becoming quite the prevalent editor of short SF anthologies, and he knows enough of the current greats to be able to get something new out of them on demand, so I had pretty high hopes for this book. It fell slightly short of the mark, just because it isn't as spacey as I expected.

The stories:

Ass-Hat Magic Spider - Scott Westerfield: Probably the weakest story in the anthology, about a teenager who starves himself, chucks a wobbly and calls a guy an asshat because he desperately wants to take a hardcover copy of Charlotte's Web on a spaceship. Just pissed me off really.
Cheats - Ann Halam: This story looks at consensual reality, what happens when that consensus is broken, and egalitarianism in virtual spaces. Interesting.
Orange - Neil Gaiman: Typically Gaiman short story, plays for laughs. This one is particularly interesting because of the format, being a list of twenty or so answers to questions, but the questions aren't included. You have to work out what the answers mean as you go along. I didn't get a couple of them. Not bad.
The Surfer - Kelly Link: This one was really cool, the story of a young guy and his dad, who head to Costa Rica to join up with a cult around the man who made (documented and authentic) first contact with visiting aliens. On arriving at the airport, they get stuck in a quarantine station because of a flu pandemic that has been ravaging the collapsed and degenerating United States of America and much of the rest of the world. More a story about human relationships than the future, but has some nice little asides on classic works of SF.
Repair Kit - Stephen Baxter: A space story!! An experimental spaceship heads out on it's maiden test voyage, lacking vital spare parts and relying on a repair kit that violates causality, but seems to work OK. A funny paradox tale, I chuckled all the way through.
The Dismantled Invention of Fate: Jeffery Ford: Yawn. Jeff Ford sometimes really hits it when he writes, but not this time. It reads like a reject from a 1920's pulp.
Anda's Game - Cory Doctorow: In answer to Ender's Game, which supposedly purports that computer games makes children violent (although that's not what I got from it!!), Doctorow presents games as a unifier, equaliser and a path to cultural and social growth.
Sundiver Day - Kathleen Ann Goonan: The obligatory gengineering story, which is very Young Adult in it's tone and style. Average as far as SF goes, but fine as a piece of fiction.
The Dust Assassin - Ian McDonald: From the Cyberbad universe, McDonald gives us a tale of intercorporate warfare in which even love is a weapon, and innocence the ultimate victim.
The Star Surgeon's Apprentice - Alastair Reynolds: Space Story Two!! A brilliant space pirates story, in which the hero is press ganged into apprenticing for a psychotic surgeon on a ship that is not quite what it appears to be. Al Reynolds is one of the best.
An Honest Day's Work - Margo Lanagan: This one is straight out weird, in a world where the people seem to be harvesting really really big people and processing them like whales at a whaling station. Supposedly an exploration of the difference between the technological haves and have-nots, although it's a bit of a stretch to claim that kind of depth, in what is essentially a gross fantasy version of a dockworkers story.
Lost Continent - Greg Egan: This story is one that I want to distribute to every single one of those racist fuckbags who say things like "send em back where they came from" and "just sink the boats" about refugees coming to Australia. It really is just the story of the Baxter detention centre, (barely) disguised as the story of a refugee from time. Fantastic work by Egan (who regular readers haha will know I am not a huge fan of.
Incomers - Paul McAuley: Space Story Three!! From McAuley's Quiet War universe, three kids who have moved from Earth to Xamba on Rhea (Saturn's second largest moon) and while exploring come across an 'Incomer,' meaning immigrant, who is living like an Outer. They set about trying to find out why. My favorite story in this book.
Post-Ironic Stress Syndrome - Tricia Sullivan: Corporate Interplanetary Warfare as Single Combat between two specially trained warriors, cyber-linked to all the war junk. As the warriors battle, the weaponry and assets (and people!) are moved, used and destroyed. Not really a new idea, it's been done. But this time, the warriors are a couple of teenagers, who are currently living in 1994 USA. Clever story, really interesting idea, and great execution.
Infestation - Garth Nix: Probably my all time favourite Nix, and one of the best stories in this anthology, Nix presents a surfer bum who turns up at a vampire hunt, and is severely misjudged by the other people in attendance. I wrote an epic paragraph-long sentence outlining the plot, but I couldn't do it without spoilers, so you'll have to just read it. Hilarious and brilliant.
Pinocchio - Walter Jon Williams: Williams destroys tabloid culture in this insightful, equally infuriating and saddening story about a young guy who finds fame online, but doesn't know whether he wants to keep it. Really good story, one that should serve as a warning and truly shows the impact of the tabloid media, but probably won't make any difference regardless of how many people read it. Ah, cynicism. My special friend.

So there we are. Only three space stories in a book called The Starry Rift. Which pissed me off a little, but it was still pretty good. I give is 3.5 out of 5. And it won't be on my wish list.

Neal Asher - Shadow of the Scorpion

2010-06-22T15:57:00.004+08:00

Author: Neal Asher
Title: Shadow of the Scorpion
Publisher: Tor 2009
ISBN: 978 0230738591

Shadow of the Scorpion is an Agent Cormac novel from Ashers 'Polity' universe. It tells the story of Cormac's first missions as an ECS and later Sparkind soldier, and a little about Cormac's childhood on Earth. The novel stands as a kind of prequel to the main Agent Cormac series, adding some insight into the background of the character, as well as polishing the story of Prador Moon a little, since it is set largely after the end of the Prador War.

This novel is completely up to the high standard that we expect from Asher. His fast paced prose and his ability to develop character through action make this a fascinating insight into one of the best SF characters I have ever come across, as well as being an exciting page-turner of an adventure story.

Without spoiling anything, the major outcomes of this story are that it:

Explains the origin of Cormac's dislike of separatists.
Explains the origin of Cormac's dislike of the Prador.
Explains the origin of Cormac's acceptance of golem and AI intelligences.
Explains how Cormac became the owner of Shuriken.

As per, this novel it highly recommended. You won't be disappointed. It even has some sex in it, for those of you who like that kind of thing. And fishing. People go fishing in this one.

73 Stars.

Peter Watts - Blindsight

2010-06-22T15:25:00.004+08:00

Author: Peter Watts
Title: Blindsight
Publisher: Tor 2006
ISBN: 978 0765312181

I borrowed this book from the library on the back of a short story by Watts in on of the Garner Dozois 'New Space Opera' books, because I am on a major SO kick at the moment. It's the widescreen, regular guy, accidental hero with a spaceship and access to a really big Internet on a pocket computer thing that excites me so much, that I would give my soul (if I had one, or believed in it) to be a part of. It turned out to be a good, but not great, fairly standard first contact story, with a few unexpected and frankly really weird twists.

(Shouldn't be any Spoilers in this one...)

Blindsight, according to the authors notes, is Watts first foray into Space stories in the novel form. All of his other novels have been set in the deep ocean, but he seems to have gotten the basic realities of space travel and has assembled a 'First Contact' novel around the exploration of the human psyche through the characters on a space ship. The premise is that an unknown alien something has dumped a whole bunch of small imaging thingos into our atmosphere, and now the Earth is sending an exploratory craft to find out what the hell sent the ball things.

The crew is made up five very different individuals. Firstly, a linguist who has a multiple personality disorder, except that in the future we understand that it isn't a disorder, it's an evolutionary advantage. Her brain has been surgically segmented so that each of her personalities can run concurrently. There is a biologist, who has been cyborged to the point where he can see in X-Ray, and tastes in ultrasound. A military specialist is also along, just in case. Our narrator, Siri Keeton, who is a Synthesis (or Information Topologist), someone who interprets information developed by AI and genius level humans so that regular people can understand it. He had half of his brain removed as a child as a radical cure for extreme epilepsy. He doesn't understand any of the stuff he interprets, he just interprets the patterns. Or something.

This is where the novel threw me. We now come to the mission commander, who is something of a monster. He is of a species of formerly extinct hominid predators, who were revived using genetic samples by human geneticists. This species is know as Vampire. No, I'm not kidding. Watts has chucked vampires into a space story. Apparently, they have a genetic aversion to right angles, hence the cross thing. They used to eat humans, but they died out a few thousand years ago. They see in four separate visual modes at once. They take a drug to stop them from going into fits when they see right angles. And they only eat donated blood and animal blood now. Honest. Oh, and they only speak in the present tense, because some brain thing means that they experience all time as 'now.'

Blindsight is one of those strange novels that only half drives you to keep reading. For me, it was like a fantastic space opera with an irritatingly vague fantasy novella merged into it. I really like Watts' short stories and I am a big fan of space stories, as anyone who has read my ramblings will know, but this one is kind of weird. I would probably read it again, but I wouldn't buy it for my library.

Average - good enough to read, not a keeper.

Charles Stross Novel obtained Out of Order!

2010-06-21T16:28:00.001+08:00

Bunbury - In a shocking development today, reader and amateur Science Fiction critic Nate Stokes (34) discovered that he was in possession of an out of sequence science fiction novel, Iron Sunrise, by acclaimed British author Charles Stross, author of Singularity Sky as well as several short fiction pieces. Mr Stokes discovered the error when reading an essay by critic and author Iain M. Banks on the subject of space opera, which stated that Iron Sunrise is a 'fitting sequel to...' Singularity Sky, a novel that is not available at the Bunbury City Library.

When pressed for comment, Mr Stokes stated that "I am disappointed that once again, the Library is unable to stock complete series of novels, having rather only one or two volumes and often not holding the first volume of the series." Additionally, he noted that the publishers "once again have failed to note anywhere within the novel" that the book is part of a series. Mr Stokes claims to be in deep shock, and expressed his gratitude that he discovered the error before reading the out of sequence novel.

Mr Stross stated that he was not concerned about this issue, as the reader in question is "a fucking pain in [his] arse..."

Both the Publisher, Ace Books, and the Bunbury City Library declined to comment on this matter.

Mr Stokes stated that he would be seeking compensation for his mental anguish by way of a special 'Inter Library Loan' of the novel Singulary Sky, which forms the first part of the series. Mr Stokes further stated that he would reobtain the novel that he had borrowed in error, once the special loan had been completed. The outcome of the case will largely be determined by the popularity of Singularity Sky at it's present location. Police are no longer involved in this matter.

Nelson Burningham - AAP

Disclaimer - This story is not actually news, and Charles Stross was not contacted IRL...Charles Stross did not really call me a pain in the ass, Ace Books did not decline to comment. Everything else is true though. Except the thing about the goat, I swear, that never happened.

Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space

2010-06-15T16:58:00.003+08:00

Author: Alastair Reynolds
Title: Revelation Space
Publisher: Gollancz 2000
ISBN: 9780575068759

I recently wrote about a Nancy Kress novel, space opera kind of thing, that it was standard, predictable and boring. Revelation Space is the complete inverse of that description. OMFG. Everything happens. Nothing makes sense, except that it does. Reynolds manages to track 4 story lines over differing time frames and periods until they crash into each other in the one place and time, exploding into a whole new story line that had never even occurred to me.

After the jump, I start ranting about just how fricking brilliant and awesome and beyond epic and did I say awesome already? this book is. There are spoilers. It's also really long. Every time I thought I might be finished writing it, another thing occurred to me. And I only mention about 5% of who is, what is, where is and why is this.You have been duly warned. In Alastair Reynolds novels, there are no hyperspace jumps.

So just how massively huge and big and that are we talking here?

We're talking Billion Year Gone Alien Wars, weapons that can flatten planets just by warming up and humanity in the range from baseline to mostly robotic. There are a couple of space craft 4km long, hundreds of years old, travelling between planets to trade whatever they have found out in the wide galaxy, while the crew's of thousands have been ablated down to just a few Ultranaughts, travelling in cold sleep during the decades of acceleration to and braking from slightly sub-light speeds. And one spaceship in particular, the Nostalgia for Infinity.

There is also a recently extinct species that seems to have left behind artifacts made after they were wiped out. They seem to be leaving clues as to what happened to them, only the clues don't make sense and anyway, weren't they wiped out before they could have made this crap? And why do the newer statues have wings when the aliens don't have wings, even though they look kinda like humanoid chickens?

The hero's eventually come across a neutron star that is actually a black hole hidden under a fake neutron star shell. But the black hole is actually a quantum computer with an entry portal that is hidden on a planet orbiting the fake neutron star black hole computer. Except that the planet is actually hidden deep inside a security system shell made to look like a planet with nothing worth looking at on it. Oh, and the entry way is sitting next to a sentience trap left by some bad guys from back in the Billions of Years Ago war, because they got a look at sentient lifeforms and decided that it just didn't match the decor and therefore had to go, so they set traps all over the universe, so that if something sentient came along and tried to work out the puzzle, it would activate an alarm to attract the bad guys who can then come and wipe it out. No thinking allowed in our universe that you very much.

Meanwhile, a plague of nano machines has eaten most of the technology on the planet Yellowstone. The capital Chasm City is a society whose elite citizens arrange to have themselves assassinated just for the thrill of trying to survive (but they don't always). It used to be home to a guy who is the clone of his dad, who is dead after uploading himself but now exists as a beta level simulation of himself (like an AI, except not actually intelligent, just really good at pretending to be...apparently there is a difference), only the clone doesn't know it. He's now an archaeologist on the other planet with the dead aliens, except he might be possessed by a thing called Sun Stealer, which might be the soul of a thing called a Shrouder. And the Sun Stealer keeps poking this guy's subconscious to go check out the neutron star thingy.

I mentioned before the Nostalgia for Infinity? The ships captain, who is melting into, or possibly melding into his spaceship, needs fixin', but the guy who might be able for fix him is missing, probably dead. And about 100 years space travel away. They guy they need is the dad of the guy who is the clone. So they figure if they find the kid, they might be able to get the Alpha simulation (actual AI version of the old guy). They used the kid once before by making him copy the AI into his brain. Rumour has it that the Captain was born in the 20th Century, but that is probably not true, according to other crew members. He's also swum with Pattern Jugglers. And been cyborged. And sort of uncyborged as well. Now he's leaking out of his cold sleep cabinet and melting into the floor.

Then there are these weird fricken black things that don't seem to exist, but if you get to close they drive you insane or just mince you. This is where the Sun Stealer thing came from, but nobody knows that yet. Hell, they don't even know it's there, except for his one guy, but he goes nutso psycho writing with his own blood on the walls crazy and ends up getting pulped before he can say anything about it anyway. He caught Sun Stealer out of the computer on the spaceship, because back when the kid and the AI thing (read the last paragraph so I don't have to type it again!!) were on the ship, a bit of the Sun Stealer escaped. Now it's all through the computer and weapons on Infinity.

One of the good guys is a cyborg ninja. He's the acting Captain of the Infinity, but he's reaaaalllly mean. He didn't used to be, until he (and the Captain) went swimming with Pattern Jugglers, who are kind of a seaweed computer that inhabit ocean planets and turn them into giant neural networks. And they can reprogram brains. And they seem to also be a database of everything they ever came into contact with, like aliens, humans, fish, etc, and can replace a person's brain patterns with someone elses. This is not a moral issue for the Pattern Jugglers, since they are seaweed. Hmmmm.

The hero's of this novel are girls. One is a Russian who doesn't like cyborg additives, but is rather fond of weapons. She's kinda co-in-charge of the Nostalgia for Infinity, but is secretly the person most dedicated to saving the captain from this weird disease. She has to find a new gunnery officer for the Infinity, because the last one was the nutso psycho guy. She doesn't know it, but Sun Stealer is hiding in her 'Really Fucking Massively Destructive, Not Sure What They Do, But You Better Be Really Nice To Me' Weapons Cache.

The other is a soldier who was accidentally transported 40 light years way from her husband when she was in a hospital ship, and is now a contract assassin. She get a job to kill the archaeologist, and the pay is HER HUSBAND BACK? This crazy lady actually kidnapped them both so that she could force our hero to do this job, and the husband is actually still in cold sleep, held captive by the crazy lady who arranged this whole thing. Bitch. She ends up taking the job as the gunnery officer, because the ship is going in the right direction. She doesn't tell the other girl why she really wants the job though.

And all of that crap hardly even scratches the surface of what's going on in this novel. This novel is not Epic. Epic is piss weak and boring compared to this. Al Reynolds has written the most epic Epic that ever was. The UberEpic. This novel, and the universe it is set in is just too fricken big to comprehend.

Reynolds has been one of my favorite writers for a long time, nut I never did get around to reading the Revelation Space novels until now. In a way, I am kicking myself for having missed out on it for so long, but at the same time I am glad that I waited so long. It means that I get the thrill of reading these novels for the first time after having read so much other fiction. I have read the bad, ordinary, good, great and brilliant works of other already. I think that everything I read after Revelation Space is going to be disappointing, but that's OK, because I already read most of the other stuff and got to enjoy it because I hadn't been ruined by Revelation Space.

Get this book, if you never read any other SF. It is the most exciting, riveting, brilliant Space Opera I have ever read.

Nancy Kress - Probability Moon

2010-06-15T16:41:00.001+08:00

Author: Nancy Kress
Title: Probability Moon
Publisher: Tor 2000
ISBN: 9780312874063

OK, so humans have found these alien artifacts called Space Tunnels. This has lead to humans finding a whole bunch of inhabited planets around the galaxy, and the aliens are all basically human, down to almost identical genetic information. It appears that humanish hominids have been seeded around the place in the distant past, but Earth humans (Terran's) are the most advanced. A team of Terran's is on a planet called World getting to know the natives, but there seems to be some kind of weird secret military thing going on behind them. The Terran military is in fact using the study as cover for an investigation of a fake moon that turns out to be some kind of ancient alien artifact that, when activated, makes all elements with a periodic table number over 75 turn radioactive. Which would be useful to have, since the Terran's also came across an Alien species called the Fallers, who are NOTHING like humans, won't communicate, and seem to have decided that they've seen the humans, and they have to go.

I know, it's really trite. It's disappointing actually, because I absolutely loved Beggars Banquet, and was expecting big things from the Probability series. What I got was a fairly standard alien planet with species that seems primitive but actually possesses incredible magic/secret science mission to figure out the alien artifact/evil aliens at war with us peaceful humans/useless character makes good in the end kind of story. It's incredibly ordinary. I have read this same story so many times, it's ridiculous. In fact, even Alan Dean Foster has done a version (The Howling Stones). And I hate ADF on principle for media tie in novels, but I have to say that his version was a lot more interesting to read.

I am not in a rush to read the other books in this series now. I will eventually, probably, but it just doesn't excite me enough to make me rush to get the next one. There is nothing TECHNICALLY wrong with the novel, the writing is of the usual high standard, the pacing is fine, the characterisations are fine. It's just that it has been done to death. I already knew how it was going to come out by the end of the fourth chapter. I knew how each character was going to respond to their situation before the situation was fully described. I knew in the first chapter that the annoying git was going to save the day at the end. I knew that the alien girl was going to loose her fear of the humans, realise that they were actually good people and end up helping them to overcome cultural difficulties.

Not a bad book. Not a bad story. Kress is a great writer. I didn't enjoy it. It was the reading equivalent of a film remake of a 1960's TV show, a la the Brady Bunch Movie, Bewitch: The Movie, The A-Team movie. I don't have the time to waste on it.

Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game (Novel Version)

2010-06-15T16:27:00.000+08:00

Author: Orson Scott Card
Title: Ender's Game (Novel Version)
Publisher: Atom Books UK 2002 (Original Printing 1977)
ISBN: 9781904233022

Any SF reader who hasn't read, or at least heard of, Ender's Game has been living under a rock. That's right, you're an under-rock dwelling slug if you haven't read this book. One of the all time great SF novels tackling war and first contact, it tells the story of the Earth's quest to find the ultimate military leader in time to fight the war against the Buggers, an alien species which has twice before come close to invading the planet. The great heads of the world decide that the best way to find this ultimate leader is to recruit the most brilliant tactical minds that they can find, through a series of psychological and academic tests to determine who is most suitable. Oh, and the recruits are six years old. Kids, training to fight intergalactic war.

On face value, the premise is a bit silly. I mean, have you ever known a six year old to have any motivation beyond personal comfort and happiness? And these kids are supposedly fighting mock battles in zero-g? 8 year olds commanding armies? WTF. Surprisingly though, it works. The book reads beautifully, and comes across as a very natural story.

Ender's Game is one of those few stories that starts as a short and is novelised by the author, and still works. If anything, the novel is better than the original short since it gives greater depth to the development of characters in the story. Character development is the key to this story, since the plot is essentially find kid, train kid, kid fights, the end.

Additional to this book, Card has written the same story from the perspective of another character in the story (Enders Shadow), which also works well. This book is really worth reading if you enjoy Ender's Game, as it provides additional depth to the characters.

This really is one of the all time classic stay up all night to finish novels. 5 out of 5.

Alastair Reynolds - Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days

2010-06-11T14:10:00.001+08:00

Author: Alastair Reynolds
Title: Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days: Tales for the Revelation Space Universe
Publisher: Gollancz 2002
ISBN: 9780575075269

Two novellas by Al Reynolds from his Revelation Space series. The first novella, Diamond Dogs, is about a team of misfits/outcasts/weirdos attempting to conquer an alien artifact. The second, Turquoise Days, is about two sisters who live on the ocean planet Turquoise, which is home to Pattern Jugglers.

If you've read any Revelation Space books, you know about Pattern Jugglers. Both of these stories have some link to Jugglers. Dogs has links to Chasm City, The 80 and Calvin Sylveste. Just a pair of glimpses into the larger universe. Little hints about the Pattern Jugglers, and about the mysterious extinct alien races that humans have found traces of in their exploration of the galaxy.

These novellas are both very very good. Turquoise Days gets reprinted ALOT in the best of type anthologies, although I personally think that Diamond Dogs is a more entertaining story. I enjoyed this book enormously (it's the only Reynolds short fiction collection that I don't own) and recommend it to any reader. It's probably not a good introduction to the Revelation Space stories, but certainly a good addition once you have an idea of the overall shape of Reynolds vision.

Get this after you've read Revelation Space, or after you have read Galactic North.

Neal Asher - Gridlinked

2010-06-11T13:54:00.001+08:00

Author: Neal Asher
Title: Gridlinked
Publisher: Tor 2001
ISBN: 9780330512541

I think I may have found a new hero. No, not Superman. This novel by Neal Asher is the first of the Agent Cormac series of Polity Universe books, centering around the activities of ECS agent Ian Cormac. OMG, he is the second coolest guy in the Universe, following incredibly closely to Captain Mal Reynolds.

We're talking about an agent who has a sentient AI shuriken with chainglass blades that can extend to 30cm each. A guy who can take out whole armies of separatist terrorists without blinking, or spilling his coffee. The guy the ECS calls on when they need an agent to do the impossible. He's James Bond without the desperate need for sexual gratification. He's Bond without the need for glory. He is unstoppable. And he has access to weapons that you wouldn't believe. He is cooler than you could ever dream of being, and he doesn't even know it. And he doesn't care. And if he did know and care, he'd be so cool about it that you wouldn't even know that he knew or cared. He's that cool.

Spoilers blah blah blah jump.
This first story deals with Cormac's mission to find out what when wrong when a runcible buffer failed to slow down a person in transit, and he exited at lightspeed, causing a 30 Megaton atomic explosion. Whoops. Since runcible transport is fairly reliable, some kind of terrorism must be involved. Cormac is deployed to figure it out. But there are a few catches.

Catch One: Cormac has been Gridlinked (permanently connected via his brain to the galactic AI/Computer network) for 30 years, 10 years longer than is considered safe. He has lost his ability to relate to humans. He has to some extent lost his humanity. Earth Central has decided that for his own good, he must disconnect. Suddenly, for the first time in decades, Cormac is without instant access to data. Needless to say, it's gonna take some adjusting. Oh, and he doesn't deal well with people any more. And his team is made up of....people. Duh.

Catch Two: In the course of his previous assignment, Cormac has managed to drive a homicidal maniac completely insane. Said maniac is now after Cormac, armed with a ridiculous array of seeker weapons, ruthless mercenaries and a twisted Golem android named Mr Crane.

Catch Three: A intergalactic alien space meatball thing named Dragon has shown up (or part of it anyway), claiming that the thing that caused the explosion has escaped, although you can't really trust Dragon. Something has gotten loose though. Did it cause the explosion? What does Dragon have to do with it? What the hell is that flea thing that ate Gant? And what are the Dracomen doing here?

Catch Four: ECS isn't telling Cormac all of the things it knows about this case. In fact, they aren't really telling him anything at all. Probably. Maybe.

The result is a furious interstellar romp through snow, sand, mud, forest and guts. One of the best things about Asher's work is how gruesome it is, some truly hilariously sick things happen. For example, the main bad guy looses an eye at one point, only to have it replaced with a poorly designed and badly installed optical augmentation that runs out of his eye socket before turning back and connecting to a neural Aug near his ear. The eye socket is described as crusted and oozing. This is a fairly mild example. Plenty of bodies explode into pink mist. It's all pretty gross. But in a fun way.

I just reread the bit above, and I know it makes ME sound sick, but I'm really not. Look, just read the damn thing and you'll get what I mean. But you will never look at Saturn's rings again without thinking of mince meat. Hahahaha.

I think Asher is my new favourite writer. Nine million billion stars.

C J Cherryh - Tripoint

2010-06-09T15:35:00.001+08:00

Author: C J Cherryh
Title: Tripoint
Publisher: Warner Aspect 1994
ISBN: 9780446517805

This top notch space opera of the old school variety is set in Cherryh's Company Wars (or Alliance/Union) universe. I love finding space opera where each novel stands independant of the others, since I hate waiting for the next novel, and it is easier to get them out of sequence than in, so I am thrilled with this lady. I had never read any of her books before and only picked it up by chance when I had nothing else going on.

Essentially, this is the story of a kid born on a Family spaceship, his mother is nuts and doesn't really want him, his family don't really want him, and he beleives his father to be evil. Then he gets abducted by his half brother, meets a girl, falls in love, learns the rest of the story of his conception, proves himself in a life threatening situation and lives happily ever after.

Highly formulaic, perfect for a quick, entertaining, obligation free read. Not the best ever, but certainly worthwhile.

Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

2010-06-08T02:54:00.002+08:00

Author: Neal Asher
Title: The Engineer ReConditioned
Publisher: Cosmos 2006
ISBN: 978-0843961614

The Engineer ReConditioned is a reprint and expansion of Asher's first published book, which was out of print and unavailable until this edition. My copy had some really confusing printing errors, but once I figured out what the frack was going on, it was an excellent book. Includes the novella The Engineer, the first Spatterjay story, a precursor to The Skinner, some Owner stories and this great short with vicious carnivore sheep. Might be spoilers after the jump.

The Engineer - A story about the Jain
Snairl - A weird thingadapt story about a shell thing that has symbiont crew or something. Kinda gross. Features a guy who once killed a hornet, and is now indentured to the hornet Hive Mind, a several thousand year old sentience that just couldn't communicate with humans until it nested in a VR suit and complained on the Internet about all the smooshings.
Spatterjay - This story is a precursor to the Skinner. Spatterjay stories are gross.
Proctors - An Owner story
The Owner - Another Owner story
The Tor Beasts Prison - Weird time travel thing. I wish it was longer.
Tiger Tiger - Another owner story
The Gurnard - Parasitic fish things, carnivorous sheep, sugar dogs, the church and an ECS agent = highly gross and hilarious reading.

Another of my must own books, I love this stuff.

Related Entries:

Neal Asher - The Gabble and Other Stories

Neal Asher - The Gabble and Other Stories

2010-06-08T02:38:00.002+08:00

Author: Neal Asher
Title: The Gabble and Other Stories
Publisher: Tor 2009
ISBN: 978-0330457590

I really like Neal Asher's Polity series of books. They are clever and varied enough to keep my interest over 20 odd books I think. This book is a collection of short stories, with several featuring Gabbleducks. Awesome. Asher is the new Larry Niven, only he can actually write. At least two of the stories (Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck, Alien Archeology) have featured in the Garner Dozois Years Best series, which is where I first came across Asher.

Just a few notes to follow after the jump, I haven't written about all the stories, but they are all excellent. This book is on my urgently to buy list.

Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck - Yay for Gabbleducks.
Putrefactors - Just fucking gross. But most Spatterjay stories are.
Garp and Geronamid - You can always count on a good cop to get his man, even if he's a corpse and a memstore. And if an AI turns up to a political summit in the body of a large carnivorous dinosaur, and you happen to be a planet ruling drug manufacturer and multiple murderer, run. Because it probably won't go well for you.
The Sea of Death
Alien Archaeology - This story follows on in the polity timeline from The Gabble. After Jonah figures out the Atheter mystery, some shenanigans with a rogue AI named Penny Lane, a retired ECS hit man turned Sandadapt archaeologist, a reified company owner, the Prador, a thief and her lover, an Atheter memstore, and a Gabbleduck. "It means, human, that you've fucked up big time. Now go away."
Acephalous Dream
Snow in the Desert
Choudapt - An ECS agent goes to visit a sea louse adapted colony that seems to be sick, trying to figure out why.
Adaptogenic
The Gabble - In which, while studying Hooder anatomy, Jonah figures out what the Gabbleducks actually are.

Absolutely fucking loved it.

Dan Simmons - Endymion (Hyperion Cantos Book 3)

2010-05-28T15:54:00.001+08:00

Author: Dan Simmons
Title: Endymion
Publisher: Gollancz 1996
ISBN: TBA

Book 3 of the Hyperion Cantos. I didn't realise that this book was part of a series until after I was half way through, but it's OK, since it stands alone quite well. The story of Raul Endymion and his adventures with an android partner and Aenea, being a young girl who has travelled through time and will one day be the messiah, or something. And there's a pseudo-Catholic galactic government that controls resurrection technology, except that they seem to actually be controlled by the AIs that were supposedly destroyed in the fall of the WorldWeb, which is part of the previous stories. Basically, civilisation has kind of collapsed fairly recently in a war between some guys, some other guys, some computers and the other faction of computers. And there is another faction of computers as well. And maybe a computer god, although that might be in the future. And an alien thing, but it might not be real. I don't really get the overarching plot parts of this story, since there is a sequel and there were two prequels that I haven't read, but it was a fantastic read.

I think my favourite thing in this book was The Shrike, which seems to be some kind of alien monster made of razor wire, steel blades and scary evilness that can travel in time, move faster than light in real space and doesn't communicate in anyway except that it keeps killing any people who try to stop Aenea from reaching her goal. Which might be Earth, although that is not clear. And Raul seems to be in prison while telling this story, but how he got there is not clear either. He's in a thing called a Schrodinger Cat Box, which is basically the Schrodinger Cat experiment as a means of execution. So he might not even really be alive.

I would have a better idea of the story if I had read the others, but that will have to wait (I have ordered them, now just waiting for the library to deliver...) Which does not even begin to affect the fact that this is one of the best books I have read this month. (Ha)

Oh, and this rich asshole kills Rauls dog, then gets pissy when Raul kicks his ass for it, and tries to kill Raul with a flechette pistol, but Raul manages to turn it on him and mince the guys head off his body. I mean, he gets a death sentence for it, and the guy gets resurrected (a technology restricted to Born Again Christians, typically) but it was most satisfying in response to the dog. Oh, that has nothing to do with the Cat Box though, that is the start of the story, and the Cat Box seems to happen later but wasn't explained. Far Out!!

This kind of thing would really piss me off if it were badly written, but it isn't, because it's Dan Simmons. Who is great. If you do read this, make sure you also read "On K2 with Kanakaredes". When I read the book World Enough and Time, I wrote the following:

I was expecting a lot more from this book. Maybe that is a bit unreasonable. I have to say that I was fairly disappointed overall. I really thought this was going to be massively awesome. It was just OK. I probably won't go hunting for more books by this guy, although I would still read a story if it was in an anthology.

OK, I take it back. I was wrong. Maybe I was in the wrong kind of mood. This NOVEL is outstanding, and I would like to now formally retract my earlier statement about not looking for more work by Dan Simmons.

Recommended with muy muy humility and a Jar Jar Binks reference.

Ken MacLeod - Learning The World

2010-05-24T09:27:00.000+08:00

Author: Ken MacLeod
Title: Learning The World
Publisher: Orbit 2005
ISBN: 978-1841493435

Probably one of the best first contact novels I've read, it tells the story of the planet bound humans who discover that so kind of alien space ship is headed toward the planet. Meanwhile, the humans on the generation space ship are about to reach a new planet after 400 years of travel from the Civil Worlds, and it seems to be inhabited by aliens.

Of course both lots think of themselves as 'people.' But they are not the same species.

A really clever way to tell two stories at once, and make both sides totally engaging. Read this book. It is brilliant, hilarious at times, sad, enlightening, confusing and just fucking great. Ken MacLeod rules.

Elizabeth Moon - The Serrano Connection

2010-05-24T09:10:00.001+08:00

Author: Elizabeth Moon
Title: The Serrano Connection
Publisher: Baen 2008
ISBN: 1416555951

Another day, another Elizabeth Moon omnibus, this time the second in the Serrano series. This book contains the two previously published novels Once a Hero (1997) and Rules of Engagement (1998), featuring Esme Suiza, who was a character in the final book in the Heris Serrano series, Winning Colors. The Serrano connection is Barin Serrano, a character from the second of the Heris Serrano stories, Sporting Chance, who meets Esme, and they fall in love (awww)

In Once A Hero, Esme has been assigned to the RSS Koskiusko, a deep space repair facility, as she tries to recover her career from the fallout of the events at the Battle of Xavier. Will she survive her reputation? More importantly, will she survive the terrorists who have just boarded this gigantic space ship?

I love the idea of the space ship. Massive deep space construction yard with 100 000 people on board? Awesome. I want one. Some excellent incidental characters as well. And of course, Esme saves the day, outperforms her seniors and basically is Hero, again.

In Rules Of Engagement, Esme finds herself transferred from the Koskiuko to HQ for command track training. She unfortunately falls afoul of Brun 'Bubbles' Meger, a spoiled rich kid who manages to completely fuck over Esmes life, and not to care about it. As Esme struggles to scrape her life and career back together, Brun gets herself kidnapped by Fundamentalist Christians. Can Esme rebuild her reputation? Will Brun survive? Will Esme and Barin finally get together? Will Brun realise what an asshole she has been and save Esmes career? The answers and more lay herein....

It's more of the same, space ships, weird space royalty and their spoiled rich children, military kids who struggle between history and self, the Regular Space Service of the Familias Reginas empire.. Ya know, space opera, the good stuff.

Parts of this story made me pretty angry, as you can probably guess. I fucking hate rich kids who feel entitled, who have no concern for the impact they have through the actions they take. Blah blah. Needless to say, the books vindicate my opinion. Yay for the battlers!

Definitely worth reading, if largely for completeness sake. Really nice imagery, but a little bit inconsistent in terms of character. I mean, Brun was supposedly reformed in earlier books, yet all of a sudden she's a useless bitch again. It's not so much a sequel as a continuation with the lead character snatched out, so it's good, but might have been better. I think the repetition of the "Esme doesn't understand and won't stand up for herself" thing over successive novels is a bit blah, when she seemingly learned her lesson the first time. I dunno, seems a little like the ball was dropped, if ever so slightly. The writing in these novels is absolutely top notch, but I think the plot and characters kinda stalled, mostly in Rules of Engagement.

I'd suggest that you read it, but try not to get as emotionally invested as I did in the characters, or you might get pissy, like I did. Just saying.

I'm a bit pathetic, I know. Yay Me!

Lois McMaster Bujold - Falling Free

2010-05-24T05:26:00.000+08:00

Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Title: Falling Free
Publisher: Baen 1999
ISBN: 978-0671578121

Originally published in 1988, this neat little story is about the morality if geneticly engineering humans by corporations, and moral obligation when you encounter injustice. This novel won the Nebula Award for best novel in 1988, and tells the story of an engineer who is assigned to a project that is now set to be cancelled, along with the destruction of the experimental materials, which turn out to be a bunch of kids with four arms and no legs.

This book is set in the Vorkosigan universe, about 200 years before the main action re Miles Vorkosigan. I haven't read any of the others, but I really like the way that Lois McMaster Bujold writes. It reminds me alot of Elizabeth Moon, who is one of my very favorite writers. I intend to get a hold of more of McMaster Bujolds books.

Really good story, really well written. A nice sunny afternoon read (if you read like I do) or a nice Sunday read (if you read like a human.)

Paul McAuley - Fairyland

2010-05-24T05:14:00.002+08:00

Author: Paul McAuley
Title: Fairyland
Publisher: Gollancz 2007
ISBN: 9780575081109

I had to wait a really long time for Fairyland to arrive from the State Library service, but it turned out to be worth the wait. McAuley manages to write one of the weirdest stories I have ever read and also one of the funniest. Many many laugh out loud moments, even though it is not a particularly funny story.

This story is essentially a future in which genetically engineered 'dolls' are used as slave labour, until an experimental child genius decides to free them. Results? Pretty much every monster from mythology ie fairies, gnomes, ogres, warewolves (sp is correct mate!) are brought to life. Oh, and the fairies are blue skinned midgets that eat people, produce addictive hallucinogens in their blood and really fucking hate humans.

Seriously, this book is beyond good. Future decline of society, drugs gone crazy, freakshow and babyboomers suck all rolled into one. Creepy in a lot of places. Best use of First Rays of the New Rising Sun in a novel. Best use of Gary Larson strips in a novel. I laughed out loud in a very inappropriate place when I read the bit with the Larson mention, damn Farside. I wish I could find the strip.

Get this if you can.

The Years Best Science Fiction : Ninteenth Annual Collection (2001)

2010-05-20T01:56:00.001+08:00

Author: Gardner Dozois
Title: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection (2001)
Publisher: St Martins Press 2002
ISBN:9780312288785

The 2001 edition of Gardner Dozois annual picks for the best short fiction in SF. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to read short SF but doesn't have access to the masses of small print and American magazine sources. So far, I have bought 4 of this series and intend to eventually have them all.

Highlights this year include work by Nancy Kress, Paul McAuley, Robert Reed, and excellent piece by Dan Simmons, James Patrick Kelly, Michael Swanwick, two stories by Ian McLeod, Ken McLeod, Paul Di Filippo and Charles Stross. Also quite a few new writers.

This book is available from Amazon.com for a fricking cent (US) plus postage for the hardcover in Good condition with the dust jacket. Meaning about $14 Australian with a 4 to 6 week wait. Compared to $40 for a paperback, same wait time. It's on my list, but not a high priority cause Bunbury Library has a copy. All the same, it's well worth ANY price you might come across it at

After the jump, there are short descriptions with some spoilers.

New Light on the Drake Equation - Ian R. MacLeod: A sad little story about a guy pressing on with SETI in a future where no-one gives a fuck any more.
More Adventures on Other Planets - by Michael Cassutt: A love story of solar systemic proportions. Ha ha, also has some cool robots in it. Well, remote control things anyway.
On K2 with Kanakaredes - by Dan Simmons: This Dan Simmons is one of the best alien relations pieces I have ever read. A team of mountain climbers are lumped with an alien who want to climb K2 with them, and they find that despite the differences, common ground is there if you look for it.
When This World Is All on Fire - by William Sanders: A post collapse 'white road proles' story, pretty average and predictable.
Computer Virus - by Nancy Kress: OMG, such a great story. An AI attempts to escape it's creators to save it's own life, and takes refugee in a fortress home recently occupied by a scientist and her kids. A seige follows with an ending that you won't see coming.
Have Not Have - by Geoff Ryman: The last unwired village on Earth gets hooked up to the internet. Looks at the social impact of technology and change in a very touching story.
Lobsters - Charles Stross: A Macx story in which some uploaded lobsters defect after hijacking the Russian NT Users Group web server. Hilarious and also a clever look at intellectual property, obligation and the media in the modern world.
The Dog Said Bow-Wow - Michael Swanwick: A highly weird post apocalypse/biotech story in which a gengineered dog and an American team up to swindle the British monarchy.
The Chief Designer - Andy Duncan: A barely fictionalised biography of Sergie Korolev, the head of the Russian Space program during the cold war. At the time of publication, it was a story that was not well known, as the USSR kept his involvement secret due to his status as a political prisoner during WW2. An important recognition of the OTHER driver of human kinds leap into orbit.
Neutrino Drag - Paul Di Filippo: You can drive another mans car, but you can't touch his girl. Even if he is from another solar system. A very funny Happy Days type story about hot rods, girls, friends and fashion.
Glacial - Alastair Reynolds: One of the Revelation Space stories, republished in Galactic North. Part post humanism study, part look at autism disorders and a large part murder mystery in a far off solar system as the members of the Transenlightenment reach an extrasolar planet, only to find that the USA reached it first.
The Days Between - Allen Steele: Another of the top stories of this edition (in a book full of the best!) A passenger on the first starship to leave the solar system is accidentally woken up from cold sleep after six months of acceleration, alone and with no way to get back in. An incredibly sad and strangely heartwarming study of human psychology and our ability to cope.
One-Horse Town - Howard Waldrop and Leigh Kennedy: A really fucking weird slipstream Trojan War/dimensional echos and rifts story. I didn't get it, I didn't like it. Not enough space ships.
Moby Quilt - Eleanor Arnason: This lady is someone I really have to check out more work by. A brilliant story about a universe controlled by AIs, populated by all manner of sentient species. A retired actor and a space squid team up to investigate a strange planty thing on a largely water planet. The planty thing turns out to be quite a bit more animalish than first expected.
Raven Dream - Robert Reed: A small Native American boy lives in a world where his borders are known, and outside lay demons and horrors beyond imagination. Intruders, a lost uncle and some strange devices present a mystery to be solved. Outstanding. Reed could write about toilets and it would be brilliant.
Undone - James Patrick Kelly: One of Kellys best. A freedom fighter is almost caught by the bad guys escapes into the distant future and discovers a remnant humanity that will take adjusting to.
The Real Thing - Carolyn Ives Gilman: A time traveller arrives in the future to discover that the media is not just insane, it is everywhere. A quite sickening take on how far the media will go if we let them. An interesting look at what IP laws could do to society if let run wild as well, when the time traveller finds that a media company has copyrighted her, since they received and decoded the signal that allowed her to time travel. Scary scary stuff and an excellent story.
Interview: On Any Given Day - Maureen F. McHugh: Rejuvenated boomers, future kids, everything is fucked. This story is written as a news piece about one of the victims of the recently discovered std that started in rejuvenated boomers and is being passed on to the young people that they try to be in their 'second childhood.' This story makes me hate boomers even more, because it describes exactly how they will behave if rejuvenation becomes possible.
Isabel of the Fall - Ian R. MacLeod: A love story of the far far distant future.
Into Greenwood - Jim Grimsley: Alien planet story, couldn't get into it. It was a bit yawn.
Know How, Can Do - Michael Blumlein: Flowers for Angernon, but with a worm.
Russian Vine - Simon Ings: Aliens take over the Earth and ban reading/writing. Big mistake.
The Two Dicks - Paul McAuley: A take on how things may have been if Phillip K Dick were essentially the opposite person to who he was: Not that good a concept, but still a pretty good story.
May Be Some Time - B. W. Clough: A member of the Scott Antarctic Expedition, Captain Titus Oates, is rescued through a time portal into a future that takes some adjusting on the Captains part. Very cool story.
Marcher - Chris Beckett: Wierd time/dimensional travel story in which people keep popping into (and sometimes out of) the world, set in a world where life for the poor is much like it is today, amplified by overbearing social welfare agencies and large walls around the social housing areas. Essentially a look at what could happen if we don't take the time to help others rather than throw money at them and get pissed off when they don't magically appreciate it. A story about finding hope for a better tomorrow rather than no hope of anything but the dole. Outstanding story.
The Human Front - Ken MacLeod: A story which will throw a billion hints at you as to what is really going on. See if you can figure it out before the reveal. I'll give you a hint. You can't. Ha ha, Ken is an excellent writer who has a knack for the out of left field twist. And the twist can come at any time. And that isn't necessarily the only one. Or even a true one. Blew my mind half a dozen times before the story even STARTED to resolve, and then the resolution? Read it and see. Hilarious and Brilliant.

Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait - K.A Bedford.

2010-05-19T09:08:00.001+08:00

Author: K.A Bedford
Title: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait
Publisher: Fremantle Press
ISBN: Dunno, don't actually care.

OK, I really wanted to like this book. I really want to like K.A Bedford, because she is from Perth and local SF writers with published books are pretty rare around here. Unfortunately, there is a reason that local writers don't get published. This books is essentially a fairly average ex-cop novel with time machine tropes pasted over the top.

Yawn, boring. I read this novel already. I think Mickey Spillane wrote it. Or maybe it was that JD Robb chick. It was like reading my own fiction. Average, overwritten, under planned. Got tied up trying to explain the concepts rather than just telling the story. That's why I am not published.

The concept was actually pretty good, but this book needed a serious edit and rewrite. I think it could have been great at half the pages. I only finished it though because I felt obligated to give the benefit of the doubt to an Australian writer.

Sorry KA, I wish I didn't have to write this, but I must be honest with my own reading diary, and this book was pretty crap. Somehow it managed to win the Aurelius Award in 2008.

Oh I get it now....

2010-05-19T06:06:00.001+08:00

Tumblr is like twitter for fuckwits.

Working Like Crazy

2010-05-18T04:24:00.000+08:00

Just finished another run of work at BP, but I did manage to get SOME reading done. I haven't been to the library in a week though. Otherwise, I have not been doing anything interesting.

I would very much like to get an Ipad or an ebook reader of some description.

Recently read titles:

YBSF 23rd Annual Ed Gardner Dozois
Learning The World - Ken McLeod
The Engineer Reconditioned - Neil Asher
The Serrano Connection - (books 4 and 5) - Elizabeth Moon
Free Falling - Loiss McMaster Bujold

Might have been some other stuff too, but I can't read the spines from here.

Elizabeth Moon - The Serrano Legacy

2010-05-07T12:39:00.002+08:00

Author: Elizabeth Moon
Title: The Serrano Legacy
Publisher: Orbit UK 2006
ISBN: 978-1841494845

The Serrano Legacy is the Omnibus edition of the previously released novels Hunting Party (1993), Sporting Chance (1994) and Winning Colors (1995). These novels tell the story of Heris Serrano, of the famous military family of the same name. This is classic space opera of the military vein, and the novels in this collection make up an arc largely dealing with Heris overcoming her exile from the military and estrangement from her family to retake her position as a up and coming senior leader in the Regular Space Service of the Familias Reginas empire.

Great fun, with all of the best aspects of this field of scifi. Space ships with environment systems and thousands of planets supporting every kind of lifestyle and industry, evil space pirates and insane military leaders who bare grudges against whole wings of the RSS on the basis of which commander they served under, rich planetary rulers with stupid hobbies and far far too much money. Moon builds up this fantastic universe full of little nooks to explore and discover as you read through, tonnes of tiny little details that make the story not just plausible (in terms of relationships and society, not tech obviously) but something that you can feel almost a part of. At the same time, her prose describes a physical universe that has real depth and a clear, understandable vision. You can see the parts slotting together to make the working whole in everything from the political workings of the fictional galaxy, to the physical workings of the systems involved in space travel.

Moon writes like a combination of the Grand Vision of writers like Arthur C Clarke and Issac Asimov, but without the nerdishness that made their characters seem wooden and one dimensional. Moon has a real understanding of not just people as individuals, but as groups, families, societies and nations. This is absolutely some of the best large vision fiction I have ever read, right up there with my favourites of the new wave like Robert Reed, Paul McAuley etc.

What I love even more is that there are 2 more collections in this universe, following other characters from the stories in this volume. Perfect. I love that depth that is built though this kind of reuse of setting. I'm very suprised that I missed these books back in 93/94, but not entirely upset, because I got to read them all in one hit without having to wait to see what came next.

You should probably read this book.

Larry Niven - The Draco Tavern

2010-05-04T14:43:00.001+08:00

Author: Larry Niven
Title: The Draco Tavern
Publisher: Tor 2006
ISBN: 9780765308634

The Draco Tavern is a collection of Nivens stories set in the fictional bar for visiting aliens at the Mount Forel Spaceport in Siberia. The collected stories were written between 1977 and 2006, dealing with the daily life of Draco Tavern owner Rick Schumann and his staff of scientist/barstaff as they try to deal with the needs and wants (intoxicating or otherwise) of the hundreds of alien species that drop by when a Chirpsithra space liner is in port.

Niven is well known for his ability to write funny, interesting, complicated future histories, and this collection is no exception. The 27 stories in this volume cover topics ranging from the existence of God to feminism, war and politics, relationships, species survival, reproduction and commerce. And a whole bunch of other stuff. There are all kinds of weird aliens, including a rock that barely moves over hundreds of years, but is wired into the internet, technology that is sometimes more than it seems, bubbling green drinks made from radioactive isotopes, atmosphere screens and environment suits. There are even sentient fish living in transparent water filled balls that transport them around on dry land.

This is not a particularly heavy read, because it doesn't take itself too seriously, but it does raise some challenging questions, and in many cases attempts to answer them. All of the stories are told from the perspective of Rick Schumann, in the context of him telling a tale, very much like you would expect. Very "barman with a moral tale" tropish. And it totally works.

I gave this book to Java to read, and he loved it. The lack of 'adult' content makes this a particularly good read for younger sf readers who are beyond the idiotic crap that is often sold as YASF. I wish more writers would do this, because graphic sex often means that I can't (won't) give it to my kid to read. He doesn't need to be exposed to that just yet, and it is frustrating when a fantastic novel has just two or three paragraphs that make it unsuitable for kids. Especially when it does nothing for the story. Sigh. Cory Doctorow could learn a thing or two from this. IE Makers.

Good stories, good collection. I wouldn't buy it, but I will probably get it from the library again. three stars out of five.

Alastair Reynolds - House of Suns

2010-05-04T14:27:00.002+08:00

Author: Alastair Reynolds
Title: House of Suns
Publisher: Gollancz 2008
ISBN: 9780575077171

Hooray for Space Opera!! This outstanding novel by Al Reynolds is the story of Campion and Purslane, clones of Abigail Gentian, and members of the Gentian Line. Abigail cloned herself 999 times as male and female, and the clones are organised into a trading family of 'shatterlings'.

It is now six million years into the future, the galaxy is relatively stable and the shatterlings are preparing for their 32nd reunion, at which they collate their knowledge and experiences, make major decisions and tell of the misbehaving clones, when disaster strikes!! Someone has launched an ambush on the Gentian line and all but wiped them out! OMG.

Campions and Purslane are late to the reunion (by several decades) because they travel together - a serious breach of the Lines rules. Worse still, they are lovers, which is entirely unacceptable to the Line. It all worked out for the best though, because now they can find out the answers to the real questions at hand: Who wants the Gentian Line dead? And why?

I wish that this were a series rather than a standalone novel. The Lines are such a fantastic idea, families of identical people with identical memories, living over millions of years, watching the galaxy develop, watching civilisations and empires rise and collapse, seeing the path that real time humanity takes in all it's branches.

Reynolds stories are written with the assumption that FTL is not possible. This makes for fairly boring space combat on the surface, but Reynolds manages to convey a thrilling visual image with an understanding of the reality of moving through space at sublight speeds. That doesn't really make sense now that I re-read that sentence, but I know what I mean.

Probably the best Reynolds story since the Merlins Gun shorts a few years back. Highly recommended.

Recent Readings - The last 2 weeks

2010-05-03T01:22:00.000+08:00

I've been working and haven't really had time to sit down and type, plus putting in a shitload of reading. Work is fine, but I am glad I don't have to work at this place too many more times. The money is not that great, and to be honest, the people are starting to shit me off. Not the staff, the customers.

In other news, my rotten tooth has started to fall apart. Awesome.

Also, my ass is really numb because I just sat for a few minutes (2 hours) catching up on news/blogs/email for the first time in a week. I did intend to do it on friday but ended up playing with this excellent little drawing thing called Harmony that some dude did in javascript or something. I fricken love it. Expect a blog redesign incorporating many many Harmony Generated Images.

Alastair Reynolds - Zima Blue and Other Stories
Alastair Reynolds - Galactic North
Alastair Reynolds - House of Suns
New Space Opera 1 - Anthology of new stuff.
New Space Opera 2 - Second volume
Larry Niven - The Draco Tavern
Elizabeth Moon - The three Heris Serrano books (The Serrano Legacy Omnibus)
A couple of Robert Heinlein juvenile series books - Starman Jones and Starship Troopers
William Burroughs - Junky

I should get out more. But I don't like you people. I really would rather have rejuvination, a space yacht, a large interplanetary bank account, and a pet thingy. Preferably loyal, furry, protective and good at fetching things I left in other cabins. And a crew of highly compitent but unorthodox ex military people of mixed gender, who will do pretty much whatever I tell them too (I am a highly ethical person, so no exploitation or bad treatment of my crew, obviously) while remaining fiercly loyal to me and assisting me to fight injustice where ever we come across it.

Sigh. The 21st century sucks.

Dan Simmons - Worlds Enough and Time

2010-04-27T03:09:00.008+08:00

Author: Dan Simmons
Title: Worlds Enough and Time
Publisher: Eos 2002
ISBN: 978 0060506049

[update ="28/5/2010"] I have since read some other Dan Simmons stuff and wish to retract my statement about not looking for more of his books, I was wrong, I admit it, why can't you let me get on with my life?????[/update]

The first thing I ever read of Dan Simmons was the short story "On K2 with Kanakaredes," which would have to be up there in one of the great alien visitor stories of recent times. It's this great adventure story in which a bunch of guys discover that the incredible differences between people can be overcome by the common ground, if you are willing to take the time to look for it.

I was expecting a lot more from this book. Maybe that is a bit unreasonable. I have to say that I was fairly disappointed overall. I really thought this was going to be massively awesome. It was just ok. I probably won't go hunting for more books by this guy, although I would still read a story if it was in an anthology.

Looking for Kelly Dahl alright, a pretty good premise, but it fell down at the end.
Orphans of the Helix was ok. Space-operaish but nothing really earth shatteringly brilliant.
The Ninth of Av didn't make any sense to me at all, as expected from the intro. Really fucking weird, plot was so strange I couldn't keep track, did not like. Sorry Dan.
The End of Gravity was a bit dull. The intro describes it as written for the screen, and I hate the screen anyway, so I might have just been showing my literary elitism here.

Oh well, back to Ms Moon and Mr Reynolds I guess.

The Years Best Science Fiction: 25th Annual Collection (2007)

2010-04-20T15:16:00.000+08:00

Author: Gardner Dozois - Editor
Title: The Years Best Science Fiction: Twenty Fifth Annual Collection
Publisher: St Martins Press 2008
ISBN: 978-0312378592

The 2007 edition of Gardner Dozois' annual of his favorite science fiction stories in the short form. This is one of my must reads every year, and also on my must buy list. Just a matter of the money really. And of course, I have no money. As usual. I first read this edition last year (2009) but didn't get around to making any notes on it. Or if I did, I can't find them.

This edition features work by the usual suspects, including Ken McLeod, John Barnes, Ian McDonald, Neal Asher, Al Reynolds, Kristen Rusch, Kage Baker and Chairman Bruce. Very definately a fantastic year for space opera, which is of course the very best subgenre of SF, and if you don't agree, they you are wrong.

I wish Gardner Dozois would do two or three of these volumes a year instead of just the one. I know for certain that there is the work to fill three volumes, and I hate having to wait so long for the next one to be published. I've been waiting for 10 months for 2009 edition, and it isn't due until June.

If you like scifi and you have never read one of these books, go get one from the library. Go on. You won't regret it. There would not be more that 1 or 2 stories a year that I don't completely love, and they are usually ok too. Mr Dozois has excellent taste. I don't know if he tastes excellent though.

Short descriptions of the stories that may spoil the damn things for you after the jump.

Finisterra - David Moles: Gas giant, living islands in the sky, intergalactic politics and Portugese space men? Very weird in a fun way.
Lighting Out - Ken MacLeod: Very funny story about a girl trying to live around the infectious interference of her post-human mother. I wanna live on a space station.
An Ocean Is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away - John Barnes: One of my all time favourite writers This story is about two documentarians who work on the same subjects from different perspectives. They collaborate on a documentary about the latest event in the areoforming of Mars. Their personalities contrast as they trek across the landscape recording each other in the final days of pristine Martian wilderness. Excellent.
Saving Tiamaat - Gwyneth Jones: Brilliant, original space opera about a diplomatic agent tasked with helping new found races the Ki and the An to intergrate into the Galactic civilisation. Our hero is assigned to the An male envoy Baal as his guide and guard, her partner to An female envoy Tiamaat. The main problem is that the minority An, who are the feudal rulers of their system and the Ki race, also like to hunt and eat the Ki. But they are the same species, which doesn't go down well with the rest of the galaxy. First published in New Space Opera
Of Late I Dreamt of Venus - James Van Pelt: An egomaniac sets out to supervise her longterm project to terraform Venus by coldsleeping through inclreasingly long periods of time, and discovers that plenty of things can change while you are sleeping, if you sleep for long enough.
Verthandi's Ring - Ian McDonald: Hooray for space opera. Far, far into the future, the human species, in all it's various shapes and modes of existance, is locked in a war for survival against the only other sentient species ever encountered. A genocidal war with a species that we have never communicated with, that we don't understand, and who hate us as much as we hate them. Battleship crewmember and combat strategist Rose of Jericho discovers something about the enemies intention as they travel en masse toward Verthandi's Ring, a Cosmic Superstring tied in a loop. Is this the ultimate weapon? Should the clade run toward or away? Rose of Jericho knows, but she isn't telling. Her co-crew and sisters Harvest Moon and Scented Coolabar attempt to track her down in meatspace amongst a population of billions to find out what Verthandi's Ring is, and what it is for. Also first published in New Space Opera
Sea Change - Una McCormack: In the future, rich kids will still be assholes.
The Sky Is Large and the Earth Is Small [Celestial Empire] - Chris Roberson: Alternate History in which China conquers the Americas before either are visited by Europeans.
Glory - Greg Egan: I am not a massive fan of Greg Egan, but this excellent story about first contact with a new species by a galactic civilisation has some nice hard science bits and a quite sad story about the struggle against the obsession with power and control of others. Also from New Space Opera
Against the Current - Robert Silverberg: Time is a river, so they say, but what the hell do you do if you find yourself being swept in the wrong direction?
Alien Archaeology - Neal Asher: A Polity story set after the war with the Prador, featuring a retired secret agent, a dead rich guy, a professional thief, an insane AI and a Gabbleduck. "It means, human, that in resurrecting me you fucked up big-time. Now go away." Haha. Gabbleducks like bacon apparently.
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate - Ted Chiang: Chiang is one of the most inventive and original SF writers to appear in a very long time. Outstanding. I am not writing any synopsis of this story because a)I can remember it and b) I don't want to spoil it for you. Read it.
Beyond the Wall - Justin Stanchfield: This guy is one to watch out for. Cool space story about a weird artifact on the surface of Titan, and the strange effect it has on time, perception and sanity.
Kiosk - Bruce Sterling: Sterling once again lays out the future path of human kind with the eerie prescient voice of someone who has seen human nature from above and understands finally the motivations of all men. The story of a Kiosk. Sells papers, milk, stuff like that. How the hell can destiny be tied up in the corner shop? Answer: You are defined by your Consumption, human.
Last Contact - Stephen Baxter: The end of the world is nigh, but your mum is still your mum.
The Sledge-Maker's Daughter - Alastair Reynolds: Al Reynolds goes post apocalyptic as humans battle against runaway sentient machines beyond the memory of the humans remaining on earth. A young girl inherits an artifact from beyond the sky as they previous holder passes on her knowledge of the real history of the world.
Sanjeev and Robotwallah - Ian McDonald: Another of McDonalds excellent tales set in a future India, where a young boy gets work with the gamers hired by the government to run their Combat Robots in the war against a neighbouring state. Kids used as remote control soldiers, then dumped like stones when they aren't needed anymore. Children gaming for control of resources for millions of actual people. Sickeningly probable.
The Skysailor's Tale - Michael Swanwick: Steampunk fantasy, not to my taste.
Of Love and Other Monsters - Vandana Singh: I didn't really like this one either.
Steve Fever - Greg Egan: Haha, Egan writes about a guy who programmed a bunch of nanobots first do no harm, second to find a way to save Steves life or bring him back from the dead. What he didn't specify was that he meant it to find a cure for his cancer and was going to freeze himself cryogenically. Instead, he crashed his car. Now, the bots have escaped and keep co-opting people to build time machines and other improbable projects in an attempt to fulfil their programming.
Hellfire at Twilight - Kage Baker: Louis in Georgian England, trying to locate a supposed mystical document from an ancient sex cult. Highly hilarious and brilliant. I heart Kage Baker stories.
The Immortals of Atlantis - Brian Stableford: A dude turns up at a ladies house to let her know that she's actually an immortal princess from Atlantis. Good story if it's there, but I wouldn't have sought it out.
Nothing Personal - Pat Cadigan: Police detectives in the future will still get stomach ulcers and still be constantly pissed of with politicians and the bosses. Great cop story with nice little cyberpunk twists now and then.
Tideline - Elizabeth Bear: Sad story about trying to cope, after the war.
The Accord - Keith Brooke: Strange piece about relationships and posthumanism.
Laws of Survival - Nancy Kress: An excellent story about a woman who is forced to struggle to survive against all kinds of wierdness and rediculous demands as aliens invade Earth and everything falls apart. And it seems the aliens just want a few pets...
The Mists of Time - Tom Purdom: A time travel story that is really about trying to do something that means a lot to you personally, but having to work with people who's agenda is to destroy the very thing that you are trying to do. (I mean this in the context of telling a story) It's kinda like, if you wanted to tell the story of your Grandparents struggle against poverty, but the person you had to work with was obsessed with the fact that your Grandfather made all of the decisions. This story is about, for example, people who will write off the work of someone like Abraham Lincoln, because he used the terms negro and negress, red indian etc. It's about rewriting history by applying modern values to historical characters.
Craters - Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Such a sad story and an example of why I love Kristine Rusch's writing so much. Terrorists have started implanting time bombs in babies. They are undetectable, because the bombs are hidden in the standard id chip that every baby gets just after being born. No-one can figure out who is implanting them. Nobody beleives that the parents didn't know. Seemingly at random, some kid just detonates. A reporter is trying to make sense of this insantity, trying to find out who is doing this, how they are doing it. Trying to find out if the parents are involved or innocent victims. This story made me feel sick. There are people in the world who would actually do this if they could. Imagine the terror if any brown coloured child anywhere in the world could explode at any time, and there is no way to detect it.
The Prophet of Flores - Ted Kosmatka: Alt History story in which Darwinian theory is 'disproved' and the world is dominated by creationists. Scary.
Stray - David Ackert and Benjamin Rosenbaum: A superbeing discovers that the hardest thing about having superpowers is not using them. Pretty good story.
Roxie - Robert Reed: A man and his dog contemplate life, family, routine and the end of the world. Outstanding. Reed is so good at grabbing you emotionally in his stories. I absolutely fell in love with Roxie. Behind every great man, there is a spoiled dog.
Dark Heaven - Gregory Benford: Future detective story again: Bodies are washing up on the beach with weird markings on them. A police detective is on the case. Does it have anything to do with the Aliens who have a habitat out off the coast? Is this some conspiracy or is this cop just paranoid and a little bit xenophobic?

The end. For now.

Kage Baker - The Sons of Heaven

2010-04-16T23:36:00.001+08:00

Author: Kage Baker
Title: The Sons of Heaven
Publisher: Tor 2007
ISBN: 978-0765317469

The final book in the completely brilliant Company series has been read, and now I am done. Damn. Oh, don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the ending. I just wish it hadn't ended.

I'm impressed that Baker sustained this concept over not just 8 novels, but also two collections of short stories, several uncollected shorts and a related novel based on the Mars colony only vaguely mentioned in the novels (The Empress of Mars, Tor 2009 based on the novella The Empress of Mars.) Not once did I lose interest in the story, and every character, no matter how minor (or in some cases irrelevant), became a person rather than just a bit in the book.

I really don't want to write anything about the plot, except to say that it twists and turns, loops, twists again, loops twice more, at which point I lost track of the direction, then blew me away with the final twist, which twisted once more, then looped, then twisted again.

Kage Baker will be sadly missed by this little white science fiction obsessive. I guess I'll have to start on her fantasy novels next. I give this novel, and this series, 10/10, 100%, 5 Stars, and so on.

Kage Baker - The Machine's Child

2010-04-16T23:22:00.000+08:00

Author: Kage Baker
Title: The Machine's Child
Publisher: Tor 2006
ISBN: 978-0765315519

I was pretty happy when I finally got a hold of this 7th volume in the Company saga by Kage Baker. This novel comprises the first part of the grand finale that has been building over the previous volumes and numerous short stories. Schemes are coming together. Lost characters are being rescued, recovered, revived and reborn. Weapons are being gathered and assigned to the troops. Finally, the Silence is drawing near.

OK, there may be a slight, minor spoiler after the jump, but honestly it is nothing specific or major, so you may as well read it.
When you read this novel, don't be surprised that nothing actually happens. It's really part one of the final volume, rather than the second last. I have enjoyed reading this series so much, and I am a bit sad that it is so close to the end. Still, I can't wait for the next one to arrive.

Damn, I wish there were more books to go.

Michael Swanwick - Dragons of Babel

2010-04-12T16:04:00.000+08:00

Author: Michael Swanwick
Title: The Dragons of Babel
Publisher: Tor 2007
ISBN: 9780765319500

The Dragons of Babel is an expansion of and conclusion to Swanwicks short story "King Dragon." The story of Will, who as a youngster is used by a crashed Dragon to dominate his home village. After the Dragon is destroyed, Will is banished and in the process of trying to find a new life, encounters Esme, a girl with no memory.

Will travels with Centaurs, spends time in a refugee camp, is prophesied over by a suicidal dwarf, finds Esmes mother, who promptly dies, and is shipped to Babel as part of a refugee resettlement scheme. On the train, he is co-opted by Nat Whilk, conman, as an appretice in the art of Trickstering.

I don't like fantasy very much, despite the fact that I read a lot of the stuff. Ok, so I do like it, but I am picky. When I first read King Dragon, I thought that it would make an excellent novel and I was totally right. Swanwick really understands the art of the twist, so throughout this novel, you never have any idea what is coming. The imagery is so vivid that you can see every coridor, building, creature and sunbeam. And the ending is so bloody suprising, I laughed, then flicked back 5 chapters to check to see if I missed the clues. Yes, I did, but that was very much on purpose on the part of Swanwick.

This novel acts as a kind of sequel to The Iron Dragons Daughter, which is set in the same universe as this story. It's a parallel universe to our own, and in fact is just our world with magic and elves and other fantasy beasties. Fricken elves. They are such selfish bastards.

I highly recommend this novel. It doesn't require that you read the prior story or novel, so you can go and get it today. Go on. Quickly. PS - Jacket Art by Stephan Martiniere

Paul Di Filippo - Ribofunk

2010-04-12T15:49:00.001+08:00

Author: Paul Di Filippo
Title: Ribofunk
Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows 1996
ISBN: 9781568580623

Di Filippo coined the term Ribofunk to describe fiction of a near future where biotechnology dominates the world culturally, politically and economically. Yes, it is a play on Cyberpunk. Ribo as in Ribosome, Funk as in music.

Anyone who knows me will know that I am not a big fan of biotech fiction, but this collection that started the whole thing is actually pretty good. I usually find that biotech gets silly very quickly, but Di Filippo manages to keep the whole thing fairly firmly grounded. I particularly enjoyed the sequence of detective stories, but there wasn't a story in here that I didn't at least like.

This book is worth reading largely for it's historical importance to SF overall. Di Filippo has done much better work, but it is not the quality of the work that is at issue here so much as the subject matter. It was a pivotal book for the genre, but also demonstrates why biotech fiction is not particularly prevalent. I think Di Filippo used all of the ideas in these stories. There is not much else to say on the subject of Ribofunk.

After the jump is a list of and brief descriptions for the stories in the book.

One Night in Television City - If you can be doped so that you can climb vertical surfaces for a few hours, that's great. But how the hell do you get back down?
Little Worker - Genetic memory at work perhaps? Those wolverine teeth certainly helped.
Cockfight - Now this kind of cockfighting is fine by me. Grow yourself some spurs, try to rip your oponents guts out.
The Boot - The first of the detective stories, totally hard boiled hard ass.
Blankie - The second detective story. I sure as hell wouldn't wrap my kid in a live biotech blanket. Hunting down a serial killer means you need to figure out the motive. The motive in this case? Jealousy, semen and a blankie. Heehee, it's actually pretty sick when you know what I am talking about!
The Bad Splice - Well, maybe not so bad really, he just wanted equal rights for splices, right?
McGregor - Peter Rabbit and friends, as a live action display. That farmer might have seemed nice in the books, but he's really an asshole. Little Peter escapes one day, and falls in with Krazy Kat. He returns one dark night several months later to free his fellows. This was the best story in the book.
Streetlife - This story illustrates the reasons behind Krazy Kat. People are fucked.
Afterschool Special - A pair of kids get some mods done, even though their parents said they couldn't. Hilarity ensues.
Up The Lazy River - One human, one robot, several genemod fishermen and a swamp monster.
Distributed Mind - So this guy has turned himself into a virus sort of that takes over cells and he takes over a whole town so the town is him, but still the town and everyone is a simulation of themselves but they are still them but they aren't because they are him and I don't get it.

Kage Baker - Gods and Pawns

2010-04-12T15:09:00.000+08:00

Author: Kage Baker
Title: God and Pawns: Stories of the Company
Publisher: Tor 2007
ISBN: 9780765315533

Gods and Pawns collects stories of the Company from 2003/2004 with two previously unpublished stories. As with all other Kage Baker books that I have read, I loved this so much I have reread it about five times.

At the risk of sounding like a pathetic fanboy (which I probably am...), Baker always manages to make me feel giddy with childlike glee whenever she writes about the immortal agents of the Company. I really enjoy the way she ties real life into the stories, and maintains a level of plausibility that never breaks into my ability to just read the stories. There is nothing worse that a glaring inconsistancy or stupid idea to ruin science fiction.

Please be warned: There are some spoilers after the jump, although I try my best to not give away too much of the suprise and never ever the ending.

To The Land Beyond Sunset: The first of the new stories in this volume sees Lewis and Mendoza taking a holiday together after Lewis wins a raffle at New World One, the Companies South American base, in 1650ish AD. After various typically unfortunate mishaps, our heros think they may just have discovered a link to the mythical city of Atlantis. How can the Company not know about this lost tribe of people? It's important to remember that causality can not be violated, and that poop is the secret ingredient to paradise. (*Heehee, that is a cryptic joke that you'll only get if you read the story!!*)
The Catch: Security Technician Porfirio stories are some of my favourites. He strikes me an an Elmore Leonardian character, that guy who is calm, focused and strong, but full of loneliness and emotional pain inside. I picture him as a mix between George Clooney and Lou Diamond Phillips, dressed as a hardboiled detective, but with absolutely no happiness on his face, ever. This story is about the attempt to capture an escaped immortal named Bobby Ross, who is one of the early attempts at making an immortal cyborg. A cyborg that they totally fucked up. So he might live forever, but his immune system wants to kill him, his genes are twisted and broken, and he is a psychological mess. Once the Company figures out that the immortality process needed a few extra refinements, they pretty much write Bobby off as a loss. Since he has not much else to do, Bobby learns all there is to know about the mathematics and physics of time travel. One day, while giving a lecture on Advance Temporal Paradox theory, Bobby smiled at his audience, put down this chalk and stepped out of the auditorium - through the wall. So how do you catch an immortal who can walk through walls and time travel at will? Obviously, it's not easy. Porfirio relates his earlier attempt to Clete, the agent that he is on stakeout with, while they wait for Bobby to (hopefully) show up. This story has such a funny ending, I laugh every time I think of Clete. Now, we know from previous stories that you can only travel through time that you have existed in, or earlier. We also know that you can only travel to a particular time once, because of something called the Variable Permiability of the Temporal Fabric (which I don't understand in the least), but Bobby discovers that you CAN travel to the same time more than once if you travel to a different PLACE. The problem is, if you keep doing it, eventually...KaBLOOEY. Did you know that the Tunguska meteorite was actually the wheel of a toy car, sent a few hundred million times to exactly the same time? And that Bobby's baseball was the K-T boundary event that wiped out the dinosaurs? I always knew that game was dangerous...
The Angel In The Darkness: Another Porfirio story that not only gives us vital clues about the building struggle between the Plague Cult and The Company for control of the world in the lead up to the The Silence. It also tells the story of Porfirios birth, recruitment and hints at aspects of his career. Porfirio is perhaps the only agent in the company with links to his natural family throughout history, and this story sees him trying to protect his mortal family from a psychotic immortal while maintaining the beleif that he died years ago. "Is there a God? Do we have souls? Is there any fucking point to this life?" "How would I know all that mi hija? I don't know. Nobody I've talked to in four hundred years has told me, either." "Then what the hell do you know?" "That this is all we have, mi hija. And it doesn't last, so you have to take good care of it."
Standing In His Light: I particulary enjoy the stories that take a person from history and twist them into the plot of a scifi epic. In this story, Executive Facilitator Van Drouten guides young artist Jan Vermeer in creating his works using a photographic process. The reason there are so few Vermeers in the world today? The Company has them all in storage of course.
A Night on the Barbary Coast: This Joseph and Mendoza story is a fast rampaging chase through San Francisco in 1850. It's an interesting take on the pioneer/goldrush town while the agents attempt to track down the source of a particular seam of quartz with an interesting lichen growing in the cracks. Largely, the story serves to show just how coldly calculating the Company is with regard to obtaining items of value. They have absolutely no morality when it comes to these things. Oh, and if you are going to try to fuck a bear, best you check the chains.
Welcome to Olympus, Mr Hearst: That's right, WR Hurst, the father of modern media. I am not even going to attempt to summarise this story, since it would just ruin it for you. This is definately my favourite of the stories in this book. Guest appearances by Rudolph Valentino, Marion Davies, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable and Connie Talamadge. Joeseph and Lewis spend the weekend at Hearst Castle, La Cuesta Encantanda. Lewis and Greta Garbo, oh my.
Hellfire at Twilight: Lewis is on a mission to discover if rumoured scroll detailing an ancient sex cults rituals firstly exists, and secondly if it is authentic. Debauchery, drunkenness and 3 day coma ensues. A short piece about culture and literature in the Georgian era.

Kage Baker - Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers

2010-04-11T00:26:00.002+08:00

Author: Kage Baker
Title: Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers
Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press 2002
ISBN: 9781930846111

Another collection of short fiction set in the Company universe by Kage Baker, this book features four new stories along with ten previously published stories. The book collects the first four Alec Checkerfield stories in the one volume, and also features a special introduction by Baker in which the central character attempts to penetrate the Companies secrets, and fails. Fails to DEATH!!

The great thing about this collection is that it places all of the short works in the one place, easy to access. When reading the novels, it can be a valuable resource in attempting to link the clues and get some idea of who is doing what, and to whom. The conspiracy factor in this series is so complicated that at times I feel that I need to make a chart just to keep track of where everyone is, and which side they are on. Of course, these things are not entirely clear, but Black Projects at least goes some of the way to removing some of the blur.

Yes, there are probably spoilers after the jump.

Introduction: The Hounds of Zeus - A cute two page 2nd person present tense narrative on an attempt to penetrate the secrets of the Company. As mentioned earlier, fail.
Noble Mould - Joeseph and Mendoza in California. Mendoza is tasked with recovering a particular grape vine that is harbouring a mould that is responsible for a particularly valuable wine called Black Elysium.
Smart Alec -The first Alec Checkerfield story, which later became part of the novel The Life of the World to Come.
Facts Relating to the Arrest of Dr Kalugin - When Kalugin encounters one of the Companies failed immortality experiments, things rapidly spiral out of control. Just goes to show that clerical errors can affect anyone, even a time travelling immortal.
Old Flat Top - Enforcer Joshua tells a mortal child the story of the Enforcers, their creation and their role in the birth of civilisation. This story serves to illustrate just how cynical and angry the enforcers are about their treatment once their 'job' has been completed. From the novels, we know that almost all of the enforcers have been 'retired' to vaults full of stasis baths, but they might not be very happy if they ever get out.
The Dust Enclosed Here - Alec visits the William Shakespear museum, where a digital simulacra of Mr Shakespear is living in abject misery. Alec works a little cybernetic mischief, and makes a friend for life.
The Literary Agent - Lewis visits Robert Lewis Stephenson to pump him for an unpublished plot.
Lemuria Will Rise! - Mendoza is living at Pismo Beach, California, collecting specimins, when she encounters a crazy old man who talks about his Gods constantly. The Gods turn out to be a little more real, and a lot more suprising, than Mendoza expected.
The Wreck of The Gladstone - Kalugin, Nan D'Arraignee and Victor struggle against a mortal while trying to recover art from a shipwreck. Without blowing their cover, or killing anyone.
Monster Story - An Alec story that largely serves to give the reader a peek at society in the 2300's.
Hanuman - The story of Michael Hanuman: prehistoric primate, social drinker, player of billiards and Company psychologist. Mendoza is told the tale of Hanuman's life while in a base hospital recovering from injuries sustained in an explosion. This is a character that I would love to read more about. I am not sure if anything else was written, and now that Kage Baker has died, it probably won't be.
Studio Dick Drowns Near Malibu - Joseph has to move on from his role as a Studio Detective in Hollywood. He fakes his drowning and while collecting his new documents and clothes from the drop box, finds a suicidal girl who mistakes him for the god of death.
The Queen in Yellow - Lewis is working on an archological dig in Egypt to recover an item stashed by the Company a few thousand years beforehand. Facilitator Kui pressures him to hurry up, and in the attempt to do so, Lewis exposes himself as an immortal to archeologist Flinders Petrie. Cross dressing, crocodile wrestling and a firm telling off ensue.
The Hotel At Harlans Landing - A mortals tale of the night that two people from her town, Aunty Irina and Uncle Jaques were revealed as immortals by the arrival of Arion, a minion of Labienus in the Plague Cult. A very sad story about two people who just want to live a normal life, but can't because the Company and the Plague Cult won't leave them alone. It was nice that they tipped the narrator of on IBM stocks.

As per usual, highly recommended. Read this book!!

Paul McAuley - Gardens of the Sun

2010-04-07T19:19:00.001+08:00

Author: Paul McAuley
Title: Gardens of the Sun
Publisher: Gollancz 2009
ISBN: 9780575079366

I just finished Garden of the Sun, and can happily recommend it to everyone who enjoys high quality, big vision fiction. I hate to sound like a fanboy, but OMG AWESOME!! Seriously brilliant work by McAuley in the latest novel in The Quiet War universe. Now I am hoping that he will write something about the expansion of human settlement out of the Solar System, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Paul McAuley is the master of New Space Opera, which is my absolute favourite kind of scifi. Widescreen settings, technology that I would kill to be able to access and a massive political spectrum told from the perspective of individual people makes for truely exciting storytelling, and McAuley, along with Alastair Reynolds, has pretty much written the book on just how effective the large view can be at telling human stories.

Spoiler Warning - I give away major plot developments and outcomes after the jump.
I can't believe still that McAuley managed to make me like that slimey little bastard after everything else he had done, and then all of a sudden!! (I don't want to spoil it, so you'll have to read the book, but once you have you will know what I am talking about) Sad, funny and unfortunately satisfying all at once.

I did have a few "OMG, he broke the backstory!! OMG, he did it again" moments because I didn't notice the 'sections of this novel have been previously published as short stories' list until the endnote. Yes, that's right. Previously published short stories have been incorporated into this novel, but the outcomes/locations/characters ages have been variously changed to suit the timeframe or needs of this novel. I loved all of the Quiet War stories when I first read them, and they were a major factor in how much I rave about McAuleys writing, especially the "Daves Last Testiment" story (I forget the name) and "The Passenger". edit: The Daves Last Testiment story is called "Dead Man Walking" For example, Dave survives the assassin on Luna, rather than dies on Titania? (some moon of Uranus anyway) in the short story. Didn't piss me off, but did kinda sadden me a bit.

I did feel disappointed to have those stories sort of ruined for me, because they don't fit anymore. That said, in the context of the novel it worked, so people who have not read the short stories won't be bothered, and the rest of us will just have to get over it. Or pretend that the short stories aren't related to the Quiet War. Or are from a parallel universe. Or something.
And if Paul McAuley ever reads this? Dear Paul, you rock, will you write something with Al Reynolds please? Love your biggest (maybe) Australian Fan, Nate.

PS It's my birthday, happy birthday to me. Some bastard kid tried to steal my cigarettes, but I got them back. J&J bought me an Ian McDonald book, new shoes and a Family Guy dvd. Thanks everyone for a great day.

Hugo Awards NomNomNom

2010-04-06T15:47:00.005+08:00

2010 Hugo Nominees announced so I lifted the list from some wheb Cite. This is not the complete list, as I cut out the stuff that doesn't interest me like movies, art, tv shows. I have read quite a few of the stories nominated this year, but hope to get a look at heaps more before the end of the poll. After the jump you can

BEST NOVEL (699 nominating ballots)
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor)
The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
BEST NOVELLA (375 nominating ballots)
“Act One” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s 3/09)
The God Engines by John Scalzi (Subterranean)
“Palimpsest” by Charles Stross (Wireless)
Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow (Tachyon)
“Vishnu at the Cat Circus” by Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days)
The Women of Nell Gwynne’s by Kage Baker (Subterranean)
BEST NOVELETTE (402 nominating ballots)
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/09)
“The Island” by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)
“It Takes Two” by Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three)
“One of Our Bastards is Missing” by Paul Cornell (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three)
“Overtime” by Charles Stross (Tor.com 12/09)
“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster (Interzone 2/09)
BEST SHORT STORY (432 nominating ballots)
“The Bride of Frankenstein” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s 12/09)
“Bridesicle” by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09)
“The Moment” by Lawrence M. Schoen (Footprints)
“Non-Zero Probabilities” by N.K. Jemisin (Clarkesworld 9/09)
“Spar” by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09)
BEST RELATED WORK (259 nominating ballots)
Canary Fever: Reviews by John Clute (Beccon)
Hope-In-The-Mist: The Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees by Michael Swanwick (Temporary Culture)
The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction by Farah Mendlesohn (McFarland)
On Joanna Russ edited by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan)
The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of SF Feminisms by Helen Merrick (Aqueduct)
This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is “I”) by Jack Vance (Subterranean)
BEST GRAPHIC STORY (221 nominating ballots)
Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Written by Neil Gaiman; Pencilled by Andy Kubert; Inked by Scott Williams (DC Comics)
Captain Britain And MI13. Volume 3: Vampire State Written by Paul Cornell; Pencilled by Leonard Kirk with Mike Collins, Adrian Alphona and Ardian Syaf (Marvel Comics)
Fables Vol 12: The Dark Ages Written by Bill Willingham; Pencilled by Mark Buckingham; Art by Peter Gross & Andrew Pepoy, Michael Allred, David Hahn; Colour by Lee Loughridge & Laura Allred; Letters by Todd Klein (Vertigo Comics)
Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm Written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; Art by Phil Foglio; Colours by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse Written and Illustrated by Howard Tayler
BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM (289 nominating ballots)
Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
Liz Gorinsky
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Juliet Ulman
BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM (419 nominating ballots)
Ellen Datlow
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams
BEST SEMIPROZINE (377 nominating ballots)
Ansible edited by David Langford
Clarkesworld edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, & Cheryl Morgan
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal
BEST FAN WRITER (319 nominating ballots)
Claire Brialey
Christopher J Garcia
James Nicoll
Lloyd Penney
Frederik Pohl
BEST FANZINE (298 nominating ballots)
Argentus edited by Steven H Silver
Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
CHALLENGER edited by Guy H. Lillian III
Drink Tank edited by Christopher J Garcia, with guest editor James Bacon
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer
StarShipSofa edited by Tony C. Smith

THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER (NOT A HUGO AWARD) (356 nominating ballots)
Saladin Ahmed
Gail Carriger
Felix Gilman *
Seanan McGuire
Lezli Robyn *
* Second year of eligibility

News Report - Armed Robbery In Bunbury

2010-04-06T15:47:00.000+08:00

Apparently, two people in their 30s robbed a bank and a discount store in Stephen St, Bunbury at around 10am today (so it must be the Commonwealth Bank and King Kong or maybe Thingz?) then took off toward Centrepoint Shopping Centre. The police searched but could not locate them.

At around noon, a chemist in South Bunbury (not sure which one yet) was held up. The alleged offenders then caught a taxi to the Glade Caravan Park, where they were apprehended by police and are now in custody.

From ABC News Onlines report -

A Salvation Army worker Marion Myles says the two people taken into custody had asked for help from the charity this morning.
"They came here looking for welfare, emergency relief, and food vouchers," she said.
"As soon as I asked for their paperwork, he took off, he just ran, he pushed her out the door and off they went. They seemed agitated."

What the fuck kind of paperwork do you need to ask for charity assistance?

More info to follow as I find out. Rest assured I will be staking out and chatting with as many involved people as possible!!

Slacking Off!!

2010-04-06T02:22:00.000+08:00

OK, so I have not posted in a week or so, because I have been too busy sitting on my ass and not doing anything.

I did finish 7 books though, so bulk update to come. Now I have to type it. Damn.

Oh, photos from the Donnybrook Apple Festival!! As per usual, all photos taken by sheer luck. Java had fun and I only got slightly sore feet. Very expensive though, at $9 a ride!!