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Quicksilver
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4–5 minutes·
No comments on QuicksilverNeal Stephenson’s latest novel, Quicksilver, arrived on my doorstep (metaphorically speaking) some time last week. Initially I thought to myself, ‘I’m a busy guy, I don’t have time to read this 900 page book in one go, as I usually do. Instead, I think I shall read it in little chunks, perhaps a reasonable hundred…
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Coalescent
Stephen Baxter’s new novel, Coalescent: , sounds quite promising – in contrast to his last half dozen or so books, which have uniformly disappointed. It’s the first of three novels, each telling different stories but linked by a far future viewpoint: “Earth subsumed by the evolutionary step of the hive culture in man; a far…
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Steam Trek
Steam Trek – what a find! Some enterprising individuals have masterfully melded two classic SF genres, Star Trek and Steampunk. The result is a wonderful universe with Her Majesty’s Aether Ships exploring the solar system and protecting the United Kingdom of Planets. Long live Queen Victoria, and may her glorious reign continue as it has…
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Hit the Big Time
My old Experimental Psychology supervisor at Cambridge, Prof. Simon Baron Cohen, has hit the big time with his new book on autism, and his work is featured on the cover of the current Newsweek in an article called Girls, Boys and Autism. I should probably get around to buying his book some time (The Essential…
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Goosnargh
I never knew that Goosnargh was actually a real world until I read about ‘Goosnargh chicken’ in the Sunday Times today. I blame Douglas Adams in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish: ‘Goosnargh,’ said Ford Prefect, which was a special Betelgeusian word he used when he knew he should say something but didn’t…
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The Sparrow
Some excellent news – it seems that Mary Doria Russell’s novel The Sparrow is on track to being made as a movie. This is particularly good news because the studio concerned appears to actually understand the novel, as opposed to Universal, who originally optioned the screenplay and were going to hack it to pieces.
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A Love of Memory
Why Kim Stanley Robinson loves the science of memory
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Reading by the phosphor glow
There aren’t many authors left whose books I’d immediately buy, even if I didn’t know what they were about. I’d say that Neal Stephenson is up there, along with Vernor Vinge and precious few others. So yesterday, when I was browsing around at Fictionwise and saw that the October issue of Analog magazine had a…
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Ender’s Shadow
A friend, who shall rename nameless, once told me that she’d been recommended to read Ender’s Shadow, by Orson Scott Card. Ender’s Shadow is a ‘spinoff’ book that occurs during the events of the classic Ender’s Game novel, but from the perspective of Bean. If you haven’t read Ender’s Game, please read it now –…
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A Passage To Boredom
Here’s a comment I posted in a Metafilter on bad books today: Schools should never assign books for class reading. It’s a sweeping statement, but the agony treated upon students must be stopped. I remember reading ‘A Passage To India’ at school; it was the dullest thing I’d ever laid eyes upon. Maybe it’s a…
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