It Doesn't Have To Be Right…

… it just has to sound plausible

Tag Archives: sue thomas


by 2 Comments

100 books, part 5

100 books that “shaped your world”… Sounds easy enough. Until you start thinking about titles. I could have just banged out a list, and not worry about whether some of the books actually deserved to be on it. But no, I had to put together an annotated list – which meant I had to give a reason why each book made my 100. You can find the earlier parts of my list at: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4. But I’ve also included a full list of the 100 Books That Shaped My World at the end of this post. Because this is the last post on the topic, and it covers…

The 2010s

I spent all but the last ten months of the decade living in South Yorkshire, buying far too many books online and from local charity shops. It all got a bit out of hand. When I put everything in storage and moved, I filled 85 boxes, mostly with books. I also sold about 15 boxes of books, and gave away close on 100 paperbacks. The good thing about this was it actually financed my move north. Even so, I was still a little surprised at how much I’d amassed.

I did, however, read plenty of books this decade. Just shy of 1500, in fact. My reading tastes also changed. As the 1990s and 2000s had progressed, I’d found myself reading more and more “literary” fiction, although science fiction still formed the bulk of my reading. During the 2010s, I started reading more British postwar fiction, and treasuring the prose of a number of such writers.

But I wasn’t just drifting toward fiction that wasn’t genre, I was also starting to be put off by current genre writing. Twenty-first century science fiction, especially US sf, began to privilege sentiment over rigour. And then there was the somewhat florid prose, and the over-use of metaphors in an attempt to add invention to over-familiar sf tropes. Changes in the publishing industry also meant editors chased debuts – because at least debuts weren’t “categorically killers”… yet – and the decline of marketing budgets pushed most of the promotion online and onto the authors themselves, and reviewers, bloggers, fans and readers. Which made it all tribal as fuck. The growing dominance of fantasy also limited the science fiction considered commercially viable, and in recent years several popular works have melded the two genres.

Of course, writers whose works I liked and admired were still published, and I discovered new writers whose books I liked and admired, and, even though I’ve been reading science fiction for close on 45 years, there’s still plenty of old science fiction for me to explore (even if its appeal is often somewhat limited).

This is, of course, a purely personal perspective. The science fiction genre has changed – this is hardly surprising – not only artistically but also in the way the publishing industry treats it. Some of those changes have worked for me, some haven’t. But it’s probably telling that only three category sf books from the 2010s appear in the list below, and one of those is in a negative capacity.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, DH Lawrence (1928). My father had been a big fan of Lawrence’s fiction for much of his life, even going so far as to drag my mother to Taos to visit Lawrence’s shrine during a visit to the US. I think perhaps because of my father’s reverence for Lawrence, and what I imagined 1920s prose to be like, I sort of avoided reading him. But for some reason I decided to give Lady Chatterley’s Lover a go, and immediately fell in love with the book and Lawrence’s prose. So much so, in fact, that I tracked down Lawrence’s other books. But even that wasn’t enough, and I spent a long time hunting down copies published in the 1970s by Penguin, with white covers and Lawrence’s name in orange, as shown to the left. I now have twenty-eight of them. I’m still working my way through Lawrence’s oeuvre.

Seven Miles Down, Jacques Piccard & Robert S Dietz (1961). I can’t remember what prompted it – possibly watching the terrible BBC TV series The Deep – but deep sea submersibles, particularly historical bathyscaphes, became another “enthusiasm”. It took me a while, and it wasn’t cheap, but I tracked down a copy of Seven Miles Down, the only book written about the record-breaking descent to Challenger Deep, some 11,000 metres deep, by the Trieste in January 1960. Two people have since equalled that dive – James Cameron in 2012 and Victor Vescovo in 2019. The enthusiasm fed into my fiction, and the Trieste appeared in a couple of short stories and the third novella of the Apollo Quartet. I also collected several books on submersible and undersea habitats.

Synthajoy, DG Compton (1968). I consider Compton one of the best prose stylists UK science fiction has produced. He was not one of UK science fiction’s best plotters (which, as I suggested in a recent Reading diary post, may be why he switched from writing crime to science fiction). But it’s not just Compton’s prose I find so impressive, he was also superb at writing characters and he liked to experiment with narrative structure. All of which are on display in abundance in Synthajoy. The book is told entirely from the POV of its protagonist, but her story drifts back and forth seamlessly in time, building up the story from both present and past. Compton’s best books all exhibit a very 1970s aesthetic, which I admit I also find appealing. Compton’s books led me to the works of other British sf authors of the 1970s, some of whom I had read in previous decades, but now I found myself appreciating them, especially those whose novels were explicitly British.

China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F McHugh (1992). This book makes my list not because it’s a good book – which it is – or because I’m a fan of the writer – I haven’t actually read all that much by her – no, it makes my list because it was the first book reviewed on SF Mistressworks. Back in 2010, there’d been a conversation online about the fact so few British women genre writers were in contract with publishers in the UK. So I put together a list of 100 science fiction novels by women writers that had been published prior to 2000, a sort of response to the SF Masterwork series published by Gollancz. And after the list, it seemed like a good idea to build a website which reviewed science fiction books by women writers published before 2000. So I did. And it certainly changed my reading. Not only did I seek out sf novels by women to review for SF Mistressworks, but I also made an effort to balance my reading between male and female writers, and not just in genre fiction.

Correspondence, Sue Thomas (1991). When I was at university in Coventry, I remember visiting a bookshop/cafe called The Wedge. They had a carousel filled with books published by The Women’s Press, most of which, I seem to recall, were the sf titles in their distinctive grey design. I didn’t buy any, I wasn’t into that sort of science fiction at that time. But after kicking off the SF Mistressworks website, it occurred to me The Women’s Press sf titles would be good books to review. I had a read a few in the years since graduating from university, but now I decided to collect them. And I built up quite a collection: 45 out of 52 titles (including the two YA titles), both the grey cover design (A and B format) and the ones with the black-and-white striped spines. Correspondence was the first title published by The Women’s Press I read specifically because it had been published by them. I went on to read many more – again, because they had been published in The Women’s Press sf series.

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (2013)
God’s War, Kameron Hurley (2011). I’m not sure it’s fair to say these two books “shaped” my world, but I bought and read them because of the social media buzz attending them. I thought them both good, but one better than the other, and I did read both trilogies through to the end. Of course, there have always been books published that generate excitement within fandom, but the ones I remember from the early 1990s were by authors with proven track records. Both Ancillary Justice and God’s War were debuts, and the buzz promised they were something different. They’re both space operas, of course, but very different in their approach to the subgenre. And, it had to be said, to me they felt like they were indeed doing something new with space opera, something interesting. There was nothing unique about that – Colin Greenland had done the same more than twenty years ago with Take Back Plenty, but his re-imagining of space opera seems to have ended with him. The success of Leckie’s and Hurley’s books – especially Leckie’s, which seemed to win every English-language sf award on the planet – promised real change in the subgenre. It could be argued Becky Chambers’s The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet also fit the same pattern, but its online buzz felt manufactured, and I hated the book and thought it badly-written, derivative and mostly cheap sentimentality. But the Hurley and Leckie showed the power of social media in genre fandom, and that still influences my reading to some (albeit diminishing) degree.

Evening’s Empire, David Herter (2002). Herter is an author I picked up on after reading his debut, Ceres Storm, published in 2000. He makes this list for two reasons. First, even though I bought Evening’s Empire when it was first published, it sat on my bookshelves for nine years before I eventually got around to reading it – and then I picked it as the best book I read that year. It’s not the book I’ve owned the longest without actually reading, but it’s a good example of one. The second reason is that Herter was quite open about his writing plans. He wrote an East European fantasy set in Czechoslovakia post-WW1, and a dark fantasy based on Something Wicked This Way Comes… but, sadly, the ambitious space operas he blogged about have yet to appear. It is, perhaps, one of the downsides of social media.

Spomeniks, Jan Kempenaers (2010). As I remember it, I stumbled across a website with photographs of Yugoslavian monuments to those who died in World War 2. Further research led me to an ad for Kempenaers’s exhibition of photographs of many of those monuments, not all of which had survived intact. The exhibition published a book of the photographs, which I bought. And that sort of sparked off another “enthusiasm”, this time for architecture, specifically East European and Soviet Modernism, and Oscar Niemeyer. To be honest, it was all pretty much eye candy to me. While the engineering of exploring space and underwater I find fascinating in a technical way, buildings and architecture not so much. But I do enjoy looking at pictures of the sort of buildings that seem to embody the enthusiasm for, a celebration of, the future that at some point around the middle of last century seemed humanity’s reward for its discoveries. Er, despite the Cold War and the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction.

The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers (1946). Among the things my father left behind when he died was a collection of about one hundred Penguin paperbacks he’d bought in the late 1960s and early 1970s, most of them directly from the publisher (there was a receipt in one). I’d read one or two of the books over the years, but few of the authors in the collection had appealed to me. But I took my pick of them, intending to give the authors I’d not read before a go. The Member of the Wedding was the first book I read of the ones I took. It wasn’t… to my taste. But it did not alter my plan to work my way through the collection. And that proved an excellent decision – as can be seen below. Twice.

Leviathan Wakes, James A Corey (2011). Like the Leckie and Hurley mentioned above, this book received a lot of online attention. And even more so when it was turned into a television series. Many people recommended it to me because, they felt, it was the sort of science fiction I liked: near-future hard sf. I fucking hated it. I thought the book was terrible, with deeply embedded, and unquestioned, right-wing sensibilities. The attempt at diversity struck me as little more than a thin glaze. And the plot hinged on an act so heinous it should have been unthinkable to any civilisation that claimed to be, well, civilised. It was also American as fuck. I tried watching the TV adaptation, but gave up after one too many mentions of torture. Leviathan Wakes made me realise I was no longer willing to put up with the right-wing bullshit endemic in space opera which science fiction fandom, and the general sf-reading public, seems happy to accept.

Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, Malcolm Lowry (1961). Among my father’s Penguin paperbacks were three by Malcolm Lowry – this collection, Under the Volcano and his debut, Ultramarine. I was aware of Under the Volcano, although I’d never read it; but I knew little about Lowry, his life or his other works. Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place was… interesting. Until I got to the novella, ‘Through the Panama’. It blew me away. I read more Lowry, learnt of the semi-autobiographical nature of his fiction. I loved that. I loved his discursive prose style, his use of meta-narratives. He became a favourite author, and I began to collect his books – in first edition. I have now read all of his fiction, except his last unfinished novel, La Mordida.

Girl Reading, Katie Ward (2011). One of the things I dislike about the online culture surrounding books and fandom is that everything seems to be given five stars in reviews. It’s bad enough that many online reviews are indistinguishable from marketing hyperbole, but the tendency to give everything top marks has meant retailers’ ranking algorithms now count only the number of reviews, and don’t weight them by the number of stars given. Potentially, giving a book five stars is only setting up a future reader for disappointment. Which does not mean every now and again a book comes along that rightly deserves five stars. Girl Reading was one of those books. And, astonishingly, it was a debut. Sadly, Ward has yet to follow up on Girl Reading. I’ve been eagerly awaiting a second novel from her for eight years.

The Wall Around Eden, Joan Slonczewski (1989). I started collecting copies of the Women’s Press sf titles partly because some of the books interested me, but also partly because they were ideal material for the SF Mistressworks website. Slonczewski was not an author I had read before, although her name was known to me, chiefly from her novel A Door into Ocean (also in the Women’s Press sf series). I had not expected much of The Wall Around Eden, but I was delighted to find the novel was put together like a precision-built watch. Many of the books I read, I read critically; but this was the first time I found the actual craft present in a novel to be the most impressive thing about it.

Women of Wonder, Pamela Sargent, ed. (1974). Another read prompted by SF Mistressworks. Once I looked into it, I discovered there had been several female-only science fiction anthologies published over the years. Women of Wonder was not the first, but it was a prominent pioneer. And yet there are people who insist that women writing science fiction is a twenty-first century phenomenon. It’s a bullshit position. Women have been writing science fiction – very successfully – since it was invented. And there were many women who wrote novels and stories in early centuries which fed into what became science fiction. But, somehow, women sf authors were written out of the genre’s history, probably by the cyberpunks of the early 1980s. That rewriting of genre history was one of the inspirations behind SF Mistressworks. I went on to read – and review – several female-only sf anthologies, and found a number of authors whose longer works I then sought out.

HHhH, Laurent Binet (2012). This was a book that generated some small buzz among my circle of acquaintances on social media, despite not being genre – and most of my circle are genre writers and fans. It is, in fact, WWII history. And yet it’s also about the author and about the process of writing the history book. Its ostensible subject is Reinhard Heydrich, a Nazi bigwig and war criminal, one of the men responsible for the Holocaust, and, during the period covered by HHhH, Reich-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. But it’s not Heydrich, or Operation Anthropoid, the attempt to assassinate him (which succeeded more by accident than design), that puts HHhH on this list. The Nazis have never been an “enthusiasm” of mine. But I have always been a fan of experimental narratives – not so much experimental prose, like stream-of-consciousness, but narrative structures other than straightforward linear. HHhH helped crystallise my interest in such narratives – and helped explain why some books I had read in previous years had appealed to me so much. It’s something I’ve continued to explore, both in my reading and my own writing.

The End of Days, Jenny Erpenbeck (2012). I think this was also a recommendation. Or perhaps I saw a review of it in a newspaper. There was another book with the same premise – a person who lives through several alternate variations of their life – which proved much more popular, particularly in genre circles, and that was Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life. But I fell in love with Erpenbeck’s dry reportage-like prose. If I had become disillusioned with genre’s turn to over-written and sentimental prose, then the clarity and emotional distance of Erpenbeck’s novel – albeit translated – was exactly the sort of fiction I wanted to read. And I went looking for it.

Party Going, Henry Green (1939). And speaking of clear prose, Henry Green is surely a master of it. I found this omnibus of three of his novels in a charity shop, but it was around six years before I got around to reading one of the novels. And then I was sorry I’d not read it much sooner. Green’s prose is among the best I’ve read. And, astonishingly, he makes no concessions towards his readers. Everything – the plot, the characterisation – is conveyed through dialogue. Coming from a science fiction background, a genre which feels a need to explain everything, a genre which has developed a number of techniques for lecturing the reader, not just in invented worlds and “facts”, but also in information the reader could easily find out for themselves, this was something to definitely striking. It might seem that mainstream fiction, or even crime fiction, or thrillers, do not use exposition, but of course they do, it just occupies a different place in the narrative. Green’s novels showed me that stripping back exposition to the bare minimum did not have to handicap a narrative.

Nocilla Dream, Agustín Fernández Mallo (2006). Nocilla Dream came to my attention via a review on a friend’s blog, and it sounded intriguing enough for me to give it a read. Like the Binet above, Nocilla Dream uses a non-standard narrative structure – in this case, short unrelated sections, only some of which are narrative. It is also pretty much the antithesis of Green’s fiction, in that some of the sections are pure exposition, pure dry reportage, not always related to the fictional narratives. There’s more, of course, to Mallo’s book, which is the first of a trilogy, and which spawned a literary movement, the Nocilla Generation, in Spain. I plan to explore the other Nocilla Generation writers, and have so far read only a novel by Álvaro Colomer, titled, coincidentally, Uppsala Woods, but few of the books have been translated into English, and Spanish is not a language I speak or read. Perhaps I should try learning it.

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (1931). This was another book from my father’s Penguin collection. I knew of Faulkner, but knew nothing about the man or his fiction. An early twentieth-century US author – and while I had read one or two of them many years before, I couldn’t say any had really appealed to me. But The Sound and the Fury did something those other US novels had not done: it used an experimental narrative structure. It told its story through three limited POVs, none of which were actually central to the plot. I was hugely impressed. Books with complex narrative structures interest me, and it’s something I’m keen to explore in my reading. Faulkner’s prose is also wonderfully sharp. I have already read more Faulkner.

Here is the full list, for those of you like lists in, er, list form:

1 The Golden Bird, Jan Pieńkowski & Edith Brill (1970, UK)
2 The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Alan Garner (1960, UK)
3 Destination Moon, Hergé (1950, Belgium)
4 Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan of the Apes, Burne Hogarth (1972, USA)
5 Dan Dare: The Red Moon Mystery, Frank Hampson (1951, UK)
6 Doctor Who and the Zarbi, Bill Strutton (1965, UK)
7 Starman Jones, Robert A Heinlein (1953, USA)
8 Gray Lensman, EE Doc Smith (1951, USA)
9 The Trigan Empire, Don Lawrence & Mike Butterworth (1965, UK)
10 Jack of Eagles, James Blish (1952, USA)
10 Tactics of Mistake, Gordon R Dickson (1971, USA)
10 Time and Again, Clifford D Simak (1951, USA)
13 Final Stage, Edward L Ferman & Barry N Malzberg, eds. (1974, USA)
14 Dune, Frank Herbert (1966, USA)
15 Traveller: Characters & Combat, Marc Miller (1977, USA)
16 The Undercover Aliens, AE Van Vogt (1950, USA)
16 The Winds of Gath, EC Tubb (1967, UK)
18 The Book of Alien, Paul Scanlon & Michael Gross (1979, UK)
19 The Dune Encyclopedia, Willis E McNelly, ed. (1984, USA)
20 The Future Makers, Peter Haining, ed. (1968, UK)
21 Dhalgren, Samuel R Delany (1975, USA)
22 The Right Stuff, Tom Wolff (1979, USA)
23 The Far Pavilions, MM Kaye (1978, UK)
24 Iceberg, Clive Cussler (1975, USA)
25 The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists, Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski (1983, UK)
26 Radix, AA Attanasio (1981, USA)
27 The Barbie Murders, John Varley (1980, USA)
28 Serpent’s Reach, CJ Cherryh (1980, USA)
29 The Science Fiction Sourcebook, David Wingrove (1984, UK)
30 The War for Eternity, Christopher Rowley (1983, USA)
30 Under a Calculating Star, John Morressy (1975, USA)
30 Where Time Winds Blow, Robert Holdstock (1981, UK)
33 Knight Moves, Walter Jon Williams (1985, USA)
34 Kairos, Gwyneth Jones (1988, UK)
35 The Space Mavericks, Michael Kring (1980, USA)
36 The Female Man, Joanna Russ (1975, USA)
36 The Fith Head of Cerberus, Gene Wolfe (1972, USA)
36 The Five Gold Bands, Jack Vance (1950, USA)
36 The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin (1969, USA)
40 The Innocent, Ian McEwan (1990, UK)
41 Use of Weapons, Iain M Banks (1990, UK)
42 Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland (1990, UK)
43 Raft, Stephen Baxter (1991, UK)
44 Semiotext(e) SF, Rudy Rucker, Peter L Wilson & Robert A Wilson, eds. (1989, USA)
44 The Brains of Rats, Michael Blumlein (1989, USA)
46 Metrophage, Richard Kadrey (1988, USA)
47 Dreamside, Graham Joyce (1991, UK)
48 Iris, Wiliam Barton & Michael Capobianco (1990, USA)
49 A Vision of Battlements, Anthony Burgess (1965, UK)
49 How Far Can You Go?, David Lodge (1980, UK)
51 Angel at Apogee, SN Lewitt (1987, USA)
52 C is for Corpse, Sue Grafton (1986, USA)
52 Guardian Angel, Sara Paretsky (1992, USA)
54 The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell (1957, UK)
55 An Exchange of Hostages, Susan R Matthews (1997, USA)
55 Bending the Landscape: Fantasy, Nicola Griffith & Stephen Pagel, eds. (1997, USA)
57 Coelestis, Paul Park (1993, USA)
58 Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling (1996, USA)
59 Cotillion, Georgette Heyer (1953, UK)
60 The Master Mariner, Nicholas Monsarrat (1978, UK)
61 The Second Angel, Philip Kerr (1998, UK)
62 The Children of Anthi, Jay D Blakeney (1985, USA)
63 The Forever War, Joe Haldeman (1974, USA)
64 The Mechanics of Wonder, Gary Westfahl (1998, USA)
65 The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan (1990, USA)
66 Watchmen, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons (1987, UK)
67 The Incal, Alejandro Jodorowski & Moebius (1980, France)
67 Valérian and Laureline 4: Wlecome to Alflolol, Pierre Christin & Jean-Claude Mézières (1972, France)
69 The Levant Trilogy, Olivia Manning (1977 – 1980, UK)
70 Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature, Robert Irwin (1999, UK)
71 Ascent, Jed Mercurio (2007, UK)
72 Moondust, Andrew Smith (2005, UK)
73 Alanya to Alanya, L Timmel Duchamp (2005, USA)
74 Poems, John Jarmain (1945, UK)
75 Postwar Military 4: Avro Vulcan, Andrew Brookes (1985, UK)
76 The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott (1966 – 1975, UK)
77 The Stainless Steel Rat, Harry Harrison (1961, USA)
78 First Man: The Life of Neil A Armstrong, James R Hansen (2005, USA)
78 Carrying the Fire, Michael Collins (1974, USA)
78 Return to Earth, Buzz Aldrin (1973, USA)
81 Lady Chatterley’s Lover, DH Lawrence (1928, UK)
82 Seven Miles Down, Jacques Piccard & Robert S Dietz (1961, USA)
83 Synthajoy, DG Compton (1968, UK)
84 China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F McHugh (1992, USA)
85 Correspondence, Sue Thomas (1991, UK)
86 Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (2013, USA)
86 God’s War, Kameron Hurley (2011, USA)
88 Evening’s Empire, David Herter (2002, USA)
89 Spomeniks, Jan Kempenaers (2010, Belgium)
90 The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers (1946, USA)
91 Leviathan Wakes, James A Corey (2011, USA)
92 Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, Malcolm Lowry (1961, Canada)
93 Girl Reading, Katie Ward (2011, UK)
94 The Wall Around Eden, Joan Slonczewski (1989, USA)
95 Women of Wonder, Pamela Sargent, ed. (1974, USA)
96 HHhH, Laurent Binet (2012, France)
97 The End of Days, Jenny Erpenbeck (2012, Germany)
98 Nocilla Dream, Agustín Fernández Mallo (2006, Spain)
99 Party Going, Henry Green (1939, UK)
100 The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (1931, USA)


by 2 Comments

Readings & watchings 2011 #7

A bit of an epic post this, partly because in my last readings & watchings I only gave the books I’d read and not the films I’ve watched. But how can more be bad, eh?

Books
Troika, Alastair Reynolds (2010), is the first piece of fiction Reynolds has had shortlisted for a Hugo. It lost out on best novella to Ted Chiang, which is unfortunate. With Chiang on the shortlist, everyone else stands little or no chance of taking the award. Having said that, I’ve yet to read Chiang’s award-winning The Lifecycle of Software Objects, though I have the Subterranean Press edition on my book-shelves. And the copy of Troika I read was also the Subterranean Press edition, although the novella originally appeared in Godlike Machines, a SFBC-only anthology. Clearly the US Science Fiction Book Club is quite influential in Hugo nominations. Troika is BDO sf meets alternate Soviet space history, but is not, I think, Reynolds’ best work to date, despite being short-listed. The BDO itself feels too enigmatic, and the final twist on the “present day” sections doesn’t quite make sense of the whole thing. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t have nominated (had I chosen to pay for the privilege of doing so).

Correspondence, Sue Thomas (1991), I reviewed on SF Mistressworks here.

SVK, Warren Ellis and d’Israeli (2011), was sold on a gimmick: it requires a black light torch (packaged with the comic) to read some of the speech balloons. It is otherwise a fairly typical Ellis sf piece, with a nice twist in the end. A freelance fixer is called in by a government department to recover a piece of technology, which, it transpires, allows a person to read the thoughts of other people (and it’s those which are printed in invisible ink). D’Israeli’s art is good, Ellis’ dialogue is also good, but it all feels a little thin and a bit overwhelmed by the invisible ink gimmick.

My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time, Liz Jensen (2006), I picked up in a local charity shop because I remembered enjoying her The Rapture (2009) (see here). That later novel had been marketed as literary fiction – Jensen herself is marketed as a literary fiction writer – but was plainly sf. And so the title of My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time suggested the same also held true for it. And so it does. A prostitute in late 19th century Copenhagen goes to work as a cleaner for the widow of an inventor who vanished several years before. In the basement of the widow’s house, the prostitute finds a strange device… and is inadvertently catapulted to modern-day London. There she discovers the inventor and a colony of time-displaced Danes, all of whom have chosen to build new lives in twenty-first century Britain. All have been warned, however, to keep their contact with the locals to a minimum. But then the prostitute falls in love with a London man… The story is told entirely in the prostitute’s voice, which gets a little wearying after a while, but it’s well-handled. I think I’ll seek out some more of Jensen’s books.

Silversands, Gareth L Powell (2010), is Powell’s first published novel. It was published by Pendragon Press – and Powell’s first novel by a major publisher, The Recollection, has just come out from Solaris. Something similar happened to Mark Charan Newton. Perhaps it’s a pattern. Silversands is a solid sf mystery set on a a colony world. When a ship from Earth arrives – it’s important to the plot that the wormholes which connect the colonies can’t be navigated – it triggers a series of events which threaten to bring down the colony’s government. Though only short, the novel is well-paced, the characters rounded, and the setting sketched in with skill. Despite all this, it’s not especially memorable, perhaps because its one big idea is peripheral to the plot and only impacts at the end.

Heaven’s Shadow, David S Goyer & Michael Cassutt (2011), I reviewed on SFF Chronicles here.

Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years: Science Fiction by Women, Pamela Sargent ed. (1995), I reviewed on SF Mistressworks here and here. I need to track down a copy of the complimentary volume, Women of Wonder: The Classic Years.

Adventures in Capitalism, Toby Litt (1996). To be honest, the most interesting thing about Litt’s career so far has been his intention that each of his book be alphabetically titled. Which is not say that those of his books I’ve read so far have been bad. I quite enjoyed Corpsing (2000), and while Journey into Space (2009) was a little old-fashioned I did think it nicely-written. But the stories in this collection, Adventures in Capitalism, are somewhat variable, and several of them are, well, a bit dull.

Spin State, Chris Moriarty (2003), was August’s book for the reading challenge, and I wrote about here.

The Magician’s Nephew, CS Lewis (1955), is the seventh Narnia book by year of publication, but the first according to internal chronology. In fact, it’s a prequel and explains the origin of Narnia. Which is that, well, Aslan made it. Just like that. But in a lot less time than six days. Neighbours Digory and Polly use one of Digory’s uncle’s magic rings and find themselves in a strange wood. In the wood are pools of water, and each pool leads to a different world. Unfortunately, the first world they visit is in some sort of magical stasis, after evil witch Jadis spoke the Deplorable Word in order to defeat her ruling sister (I can think of many deplorable words, so I’ve no idea which particular one Jadis actually used). Digory foolishly wakes Jadis, who follows them back to Victorian London, and promptly wreaks havoc as she tries to conquer it – despite her magic powers not working. In desperation, Digory and Polly use the rings… and send themselves, Jadis, a cabbie, his horse, and their uncle to a land of nothingness. Then they hear singing, light appears, and so too does Aslan, and Narnia is created. There are some nice touches: a piece of a street lamp used by Jadis as a weapon in London is dropped by her, and becomes the street lamp in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Jadis becomes the White Witch; and the cabbie and his wife become the first kind and queen of Narnia, despite being working class.The dialogue throughout is quite fun, although, the Garden of Eden rip-off was blatant and the general tone of the book is very preachy. Definitely one of the better books of the series, though I still wouldn’t recommend them to a kid.

From Russia with Love, Ian Fleming (1957), is the fifth 007 book, but was the second film to be made. It was also a far more successful film than its predecessor Dr No, and so probably responsible for the existence of the franchise. Given that I’d previously read four Bond novels, you’d think I’d know what to expect from the fifth one. Admittedly, my memory’s vague on the plot of the film – I remember only the periscope, the attack in the gypsy camp, and the iconic punt through the Basilica Cistern. The first two certainly make an appearance in the book, but not the third. And if I’d thought the other Bond books contained an uncomfortable strand of misogyny, in From Russia with Love it’s downright offensive. Not only does Istanbul station chief Karim Bey insist that all women want to be raped, but the scene at the gypsy camp sees the women present treated as nothing more than amusement for the men. Then there’s the racial stereotyping and racism… Bond was better when he stayed in the UK. I can’t honestly recommend this book to anyone, and the more of them I read the more I’m convinced they only remain in print because of the film franchise.

Orbital Vol 4: Ravages, Sylvain Runerg & Serge Pellé (2010) is, I think the last of this series – at least the ending suggests as much. Though it’s been sold as the fourth book of a series, it’s actually the second in a two-part story – with Volume 3 Nomads – as the story continues on directly from that earlier volume. Something alien and mysterious has been killing fish – and now people – in the mangrove swamps near Kuala Lumpur, just as the preparations for a celebration of the Human-Sanjarr alliance (they fought a war not so long ago) are in full swing. The locals are revolting and convinced some alien nomads who have settled in the swamp are responsible. They’re not, of course. At least, not directly. I’ve enjoyed this series – it’s good solid sf, nicely drawn and well thought-out. If it seems a bit abrupt in places, or choppy in others, I suspect that’s more the style of bandes desinée than it is the fault of the writer.

Dancer of the Sixth, Michelle Shirey Crean (1993), was a reread for review for SF Mistressworks here.

Films
What A Way To Go, dir. J Lee Thompson (1964). Every now and again I like to watch a bit of fluff. Once, my preferred choice had been crap science fiction films – of which there are very, very many – but watching them is actually hard work. Now, I’d much sooner watch something from the 1950s or early 1960s – they’re far more entertaining, there are no bad special effects to burn out your eyes, the acting is of a much higher calibre, and the scripts actually display some wit. Having said all that, What A Way To Go is a bit of an odd beast. Shirley MacLaine plays a young woman who inadvertently inspires each man she marries to become successful and rich. So much so, in fact, that on her last husband’s death, she is determined to give away the vast fortune she has amassed. But the government won’t accept it. (Things were clearly very different in those days.) Her husbands are played by Dick van Dyke, Paul Newman, Gene Kelly, and Robert Mitchum – so this is a star-studded comedy. There’s even an extended dance number – with MacLaine and Kelly, of course – in the middle. It’s quite a strange film. I enjoyed it, though.

…All the Marbles, dir. Robert Aldrich (1981), was Aldrich’s last film, and while it has its moments, it’s not especially memorable. Peter Falk plays the manager of a female tag-team wrestling duo. Most of the matches are fixed, but the two wrestlers are determined to make it to the final in Las Vegas. And so they do – though not without Falk making some enemies along the way. This is a pretty grim film. The characters are just about hanging on, and the story takes them through some of the grimmer parts of the United States. I think it’s supposed to be a comedy, though there aren’t many laughs. At least, some of the characters are so broadly-drawn, they belong in a comedy. The wrestling itself reminds me wrestling on British telly back in the early 1980s, during the heyday of Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and the like. Although, of course, they weren’t women.

Where The Sidewalk Ends, dir. Otto Preminger (1950). I do like Preminger’s movies. I’m not so keen on Dana Andrews as a leading man, however. He always strikes me as a bit too louche and expressionless for the roles he plays. In this film – consider a classic noir – Andrews is a police detective who accidentally kills a suspect. He tries to cover up the death by accusing a cabbie who called on the victim. Except the cabbie is actually the victim’s father-in-law, and Andrews’ detective falls in love with the estranged wife (played by Gene Tierney). This is classic twisty-turny stuff, all baggy suits and trilbies and mean streets. They don’t make them like this anymore.

Skyline, dir. the Strause Brothers (2010), is, as far as I understand, a rip-off of Battle: Los Angeles, for which the Strause brothers provided special effects. For whatever reason, they decided they could do a better job themselves, and made their own film. Perhaps they should have stuck to special effects. There are some mysterious aliens. And they have attacked Los Angeles. And there is a bunch of bad actors stuck in a penthouse apartment, who try to escape. Er, that’s about it. Avoid.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, dir. Fritz Lang (1956), I reviewed for VideoVista here.

Shirin, dir. Abbas Kiarostami (2008). I’ve now seen three films by Kiarostami – and several more by other Iranian directors – and I’m still not quite what to make of him. Certified Copy (2010) was a clever and accomplished drama (see my VideoVista review here); Taste of Cherry (1997) was odd but entertaining, though the ending was near-genius; but Shirin… The film takes place in a cinema with an entirely female audience. The camera moves from face to face, while the dialogue from the movie being shown is heard (it’s the story of Khosrow and Shirin, a 800-year old Persian tale). That’s it. A series of close-ups of faces, many in hijab. For 92 minutes. I don’t think it works as a concept.

My Best Enemy, dir. Wolfgang Murnberger (2011), I reviewed for VideoVista here.

Brief Encounter, dir. David Lean (1945). I’d never seen this before. I know, unbelievable. But there you go. And now that I have seen it… I was disappointed. Perhaps because it does exactly what it says on the tin. Celia Johnson travels regularly into town on the train. One day, she meets Leslie Howard. They enjoy each other’s company, so they meet whenever they’re in town. It goes further. Meanwhile, both have families at home. I actually felt sorry for Johnson’s husband – he seemed like a decent sort. And she was so drippy, the whole affair felt about as __

Videodrome, dir. David Cronenberg (1983), is another film I’ve somehow not seen in the twenty-seven years since it was released, though I have seen many of Cronenberg’s other films. It is… odd, though it hasn’t aged well. All that snuff television, screwing with your minds stuff is a little old. I suspect some of it was back in 1983. The weird organic gun was peculiar, as was the body-horror bits. Sometimes they felt like they belonged in a different film. And there was a surprising cheapness to the production, which I hadn’t expected – perhaps because Cronenberg’s later films have better production values. Oh well, I’ve seen it now.

La veuve de Saint-Pierre, dir. Patrice Leconte (2000), I reviewed for VideoVista here.

Moolaadé, dir. Ousmane Sembène (2004). I’ve found myself watching a lot of African cinema in recent years, particularly North African. So when Lovefilm threw up Moolaadé – set in West Africa – I wasn’t especially interested in seeing it. But I stuck it on my “world cinema” list, and several weeks later it was sent to me. And i thought it excellent. It’s set in a small rural village in Burkina Faso. Three girls have run away from the traditional female circumcision ceremony and seek protection from Collé, who had refused to have her daughter’s genitals mutilated a few years before. Collé use moolaadé, magical protection, to ensure the girls are kept safe within her house – or rather, the house of her husband, which she shares with his other two wives. The men of the village are not amused, as they consider female circumcision necessary for marriage, as well as required by Islam (neither, of course, is true). In an effort to control the women of the village, the men gather up all their radios and destroy them. A visiting trader – a veteran of the local civil war – takes the side of the women, as does the headman’s son, who has recently returned from working in France. But the women are not empowered, and it does not go well. This is an excellent film, a definite contender for my best of the year. I’d like to see more by Sembène but, unfortunately, Moolaadé is the only film of his available on DVD in the UK. Make more available, please.

Star Trek: The Next Generation season 4 (1990), in which the Enterprise-D boldly goes on and on and on, in its continuing mission to provide bland science fiction television entertainment with the occasional episode which makes you sit up and take notice. Not to mention the several episodes which are downright embarrassing – like ‘Brothers’, in which Picard returns home to France and argues with his brother. Or ‘Data’s Day’ – but then, I never liked the character of Data. Or the one with Lwaxana Troi in it, another character I dislike. On the other hand, Legacy’, in which Tasha Yar’s sister plays one faction against the other against the Enterprise isn’t bad. And ‘The Drumhead’ manages a consistent feeling of paranoia throughout. But the overwhelming sense seems to be of blandness – bland uniforms, bland characters, bland stories. Four seasons in it and it feels like the programme is already well settled into a rut. It needs jollying out of it. Perhaps that happens in season 5. I can but hope.

Kiss Them for Me, dir. Stanley Donen (1957), I watched most of on Film4, but then ended up buying the DVD for a couple of quid. What an odd film. It’s ostensibly a screwball comedy, set during World War II, but it’s hard to know what to make of it. Cary Grant plays a war hero Navy pilot who’s had enough, and wangles a week’s furlough in San Francisco with two buddies. The trio plan to get drunk and party the entire time. And so they mostly do. Jayne Mansfield plays a dumb blonde, with a voice like fingernails on a blackboard, as comic relief, but Grant has his eye set on Suzy Parker (who, for some bizarre reason, had her voice dubbed over by Deborah Kerr), the fiancée of an industrialist who could arrange for Grant and his buddies to sit out the rest of the war. Grant leers a lot, there are some strange comic turns, and the natives of San Francisco don’t exactly seem brimming over with patriotism.

Next, dir. Lee Tamahori (2007), stars Nicolas Cage, who perhaps in some alternate world hasn’t turned into a parody of himself. Perhaps in that same alternate world, Philip K Dick’s stories won’t have been bent and twisted in the service of Hollywood, and he’s mostly remembered as a sf author and not a provider of glossy middle-brow concept movies. In Next, Cage can see two minutes into the future, and the FBI are after him because they’ve figured this out and are convinced his talent can help them find the nuclear bomb terrorists have hidden somewhere in the US. It’s all very silly, Cage plays his part with a sort of wooden-faced intensity, and Tamahori manages some good action set-pieces. Dick’s stories demand you think about them; the films they’ve made of his stories demand you don’t.

Caramel, dir. Nadine Labaki (2007), was a surprise. It’s about three women who work in a beauty salon in Beirut. One is in an affair with a married man, and hasn’t noticed that the local policeman is in love with her. Another is a lesbian, and fancies one of the salon’s customers. And the third is engaged but has not told her husband she is not a virgin and is afraid of the consequences should he learn so. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The cast play their parts well, and there’s much about the story that is very Lebanese. While Caramel may be a feel-good movie, it’s not insultingly so.

Dark Matter, dir. Shi-Zheng Chen (2007), I reviewed for VideoVista here.

The Stoning of Soraya M, dir. Cyrus Nowrasteh (2008), I had mixed feelings about. Like the female circumcision in Moolaadé, stoning is barbaric and unjustifiable. The Stoning of Soraya M is apparently based on a true story. It’s set in a village in Iran, where a man falsely accuses his wife of adultery because she won’t divorce him and allow him to marry a younger woman. Stoning is barbaric. Any justice system in which women are judged more harshly than men is barbaric. any justice system which sentences people to death is barbaric. It doesn’t need for Soraya M to be innocent and virtuous. So what if she had committed adultery? The fact she was stone is condemnation enough of the village and its justice. Making the husband out to be a manipulative moustache-twirling villain is entirely unnecessary and feels like the story is pandering to people who might consider adultery crime enough – for a woman only, of course – to require severe punishment. The Stoning of Soraya M is a film worth seeing but, sadly, it undermines its own argument.

Twelfth Night, dir. John Gorrie (1980), I’m fairly sure I saw when I was at school, though the Shakespeare play I studied for English O Level was Henry IV, Part 1. It’s another typical Shakespearean comedy of mistaken identities and cross-dressing. Felicity Kendall plays Viola/Cesario, Robert Hardy is Sir Toby Belch, Clive Arrindell is Orsino, and Sinéad Cusack is Olivia. Alec McCowen plays a good Malvolio, both unctuous and creepy. I was, incidentally, surprised to discover that the line “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them” is from this play – specifically from a love letter written by Sir Toby, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Feste the jester, but purpotedly from his mistress, Olivia,  as revenge on Malvolio. In context, it seems an ironic choice of phrase for people who use it to justify their own over-inflated sense of worth. Much Ado About Nothing remains the best of the comedies I’ve seen so far, though this one comes a close second.

Blake’s Seven series 4 (1981) feels like an unwanted coda to the first three series. And so it was. The makers had not expected to be renewed after series three, and so had to quickly cobble together something for an additional thirteen episodes. Including a new spaceship, since they had blown up Liberator. Plus a new base. And several new additions to the “Seven”. The base is underground and belongs to a salvage-man of dubious legality who Avon’s gang defeat and kill in a story entirely ripped off from The Picture of Dorian Gray. His lover and partner, Soolin, joins Avon, and the obsequious computer of his ship, Scorpio, makes up the seven. The Federation/empire ruled by Servalan which Blake and co had destroyed is now busy recreating itself, but Servalan – believed dead – is reviled. So she has re-invented herself as Sleer, a police commissioner, and is busy planning a return to power. It’s as well Blake’s Seven finished after this season. The special effects are embarrassingly cheap, the sets more so, the stories don’t make much sense, and the story-arc seems to lurch about without coming close to any sort of end. So they killed everyone off. They should have kept it to three series.

Iron and Blood: The Legend of Taras Bulba, dir. Vladimir Bortko (2009), I reviewed for VideoVista here.

Chronicles of Narnia 3: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, dir. Michael Apted (2010), led to a small discussion on Twitter. I maintain the films are better than the books – I find the books deeply patronising, and their old-fashioned sensibilities often offensive. The films at least have modernised the books’ attitudes. However, as was pointed out to me, this has not always been done for the better. When on the island of the invisible Dufflepuds, in the book a magic tome allows Lucyto hear what everyone else thinks for her, whereas in the film she imagines what her life might be like were she as beautiful as her sister, Susan. It’s a step backwards as Lewis was mostly evenhanded in his treatment of gender, with the girls as noble and heroic as the boys. But then, the best bit of the Narnia books is that the Pevensie children remained in Narnia as kings and queens, grew up and ruled wisely… and then returned to their real lives as children, no more than minutes older than when they had left. Lewis throws all that away in a single line. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a string of minor adventures, in which Prince Caspian, Lucy, Edmund and cousin Useless Eustace try to discover the fates of the seven lost Lords of Narnia. Which they do.

Twin Daggers, dir. Keun-Hou Chen (2008), I reviewed for VideoVista here.

Only Angels Have Wings, dir. Howard Hawks (1939), is the sort of Hemingway-esque movie they don’t make any more. And with good reason: it’s mostly nonsense. Cary Grant plays the manager of a small fleet of aeroplanes which carry mail over the Andes. It’s a dangerous job because they don’t have radar, or even planes powerful enough to fly over the tops of the mountains. So they have a tendency to crash in the passes when the weather is bad. And it’s often bad. There’s lots of macho posturing, the dialogue is snappy, Cary Grant makes good fist of his role despite the part not requiring debonair charm, Rita Hayworth smoulders, and the model-work for the aeroplanes almost convinces. I do like the Silver Fox’s movies, and many of them are classics, but I’m finding that the ones I like are not always the ones everyone else likes…

30,000 Leagues Under the Sea, dir. Gabriel Bologna (2007), was produced by The Global Asylum. So when I sat down to watch it I knew I was going to get a shit film. I was not disappointed. It’s allegedly an update of Verne’s classic, though how increasing the number of leagues signals that fact is a mystery. A US ballistic missile sub has sunk in a deep marine trench, and so the Navy calls in Lieutenant Arronax and his deep sea submersible. To make matters more interesting, they put the submersible under the command of Arronax’s ex-wife, Lieutenant Commander Conciel. The submersible descends from the USS Abraham Lincoln (an Iowa-class battleship that can somehow manage 75 knots) to 20,000 feet, where the missile sub lies. Bizarrely, there is a bubble of reduced pressure there, which allows the crew of the submersible to use ordinary scuba gear. It doesn’t explain how the missile sub didn’t implode on its way down, however. Also down there is a vast submarine, commanded by Captain Nemo, who wants to use the sub’s nuclear missiles to destroy the world above the waves. Arronax must stop him, even though some of his crew have been brainwashed by a device of Nemo’s. This film has no redeeming qualities – the CGI is crap, the acting is worse, the script is dreadful – with exchanges such as “I want it soon.” “How soon?” “Immediately!” – and the story makes no sense. How The Global Asylum remains in business is a mystery.

Mammoth, dir. Lukas Moodysson (2009). I was not very impressed by Moodysson’s Container – although I like his other films, especially Lilya 4-Ever – so was somewhat afraid I’d feel the same about this film. But I actually thought it was superb. A young dotcom millionaire files out to Thailand to sign a deal with some venture capitalists. His wife is a surgeon in the ER at a New York hospital. Their nanny is a Filipina, who has left her two young sons back in the Philippines. But it’s a film mostly about children. In Thailand, the millionaire heads for the beach, bored by the negotiations, and there meets a young prostitute. He pays her to go home, rather than sleep with him. But she returns the following day and offers to be his guide. Meanwhile, the wife objects to the nanny introducing the couple’s young daughter to Filipino culture. While in the Philippines, the older of the two boys tries to make extra money by selling his body. Gael Garciá Bernal is astonishingly good as the young millionaire, but the rest of the cast are also very good. An excellent film, and another contender for the best of the year.

Moonwalk One, dir. Theo Kamecke (1970), I will be reviewing at some point on my Space Books blog. It’s a strangely hippie documentary of the Apollo 11 mission, which gives a very real idea of contemporary reactions to it.

Dark Descent, dir. Wilfred Schmidt (2004). When I saw a description of this, I thought it might prove interesting as it’s set in an undersea habitat in the Challenger Deep. What I hadn’t expected it to be is a complete rip-off of Outland (which was itself “inspired” by High Noon). Dean Cain (how the, er, super have fallen) plays the marshal of the aforementioned habitat, which is actually a mining-town. He’s cleaned the place up as it was a hive of scum and villainy – well, drunken violence, the occasional murder, prostitution and vice. Days before he is due to be relieved, he learns that three villains he put away are on their way back to take their revenge. But everyone else in the facility is afraid of them. There is too much in this film which makes no sense. The facility is at the deepest part of the ocean, and the pressure outside is seven tons per square inch. It’s such a dangerous place, in which survival is so totally dependent on machinery, you wouldn’t put there the sort of people who would booze it up, get violent, and behave like criminals. Stupid. The rest of the plot involves some drug which allows humans to take the pressure – water pressure or the stress of the job? Can’t be the water pressure, because no pill is going to make seven tons per square inch survivable. As is later proven when a jet of water at that pressure goes straight through a man. Anyway, the local doctor has been secretly trialling overdoses of the drug, and this has led to a series of suicides. When Cain gets suspicious, the company hires the three villains to sort him out. A film to avoid.

Apollo 18, dir. Gonzalo López-Gallego (2011), I reviewed on my Space Books blog here.


by Leave a comment

Shelf stackers

I didn’t think I’d bought that many books since my last book haul post back in early June, but when I came to take photos of my recent purchases… Well, there you go. It appears I have bought rather a lot. No wonder my postie just cards me and runs away.


Some aeroplane books to start. I have two or three of Steve Ginter’s Naval Fighter Aircraft series now, but only for the aircraft I actually find interesting, like the Martin P4M-1/-1Q Mercator. The books are well put-together, with lots of photographs and information. Convair F-106 “Delta Dart” and All-Weather Fighters were bought chiefly for research for my moon base novella.


Some sf novels by women writers. Kaaron Warren’s Mistification is one of the few books I kept from the big box of Angry Robot releases I won in the alt.fiction raffle. Jane Palmer’s The Watcher goes with the other Women’s Press sf novels I own, as does Sue Thomas’s Correspondence. Melissa Scott’s Shadow Man is for the 2011 Reading Challenge, and Lyda Morehouse’s Resurrection Code I think was recommended to me by Amazon after I bought Kameron Hurley’s God’s War. I’ll be writing about it here soon.


Some first editions – well, okay, Medium For Murder by Guy Compton, AKA DG Compton, is actually a Mystery Book Guild edition. Selected Poems is signed; as is At First Sight, Nicholas Monsarrat’s second novel, from 1935. Both were lucky eBay finds. First editions of The Bridge are typically expensive, but I managed to find one for a reasonable price.


Three for the Watson collection (see here) from Andy Richards’ Cold Tonnage.


Some sf paperbacks. I read Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy years ago, but never owned copies. Now I have all three books, I’ll be giving it a reread sometime. I’ve also been picking up Ballard’s books, as I find them far more appealing now than I used to. Embedded is another book from the alt.fiction raffle prize. And finally, two from the relaunched SF Masterworks series – I’m fairly sure I read Simak’s City many, many, many years ago (I was a big Simak fan in my mid-teens); I know I’ve certainly not read Wells’s The Food of the Gods.


Heaven’s Shadow I swapped for my Interzone review copy of Daniel H Wilson’s Robopocalypse with Robert Grant of Sci-Fi London (ta, Robert). I want to read Heaven’s Shadow because it features near-future space exploration; I expect to hate it because it’s a mega-hyped techno-thriller type sf novel. DH Lawrence’s The Lost Girl and Iain Pears’ Stone’s Fall are both charity shop finds. City of Veils is the second of Zoë Ferraris’ crime novels set in Saudi Arabia. I’ve already read it and thought it much better than her first novel, The Night of the Mi’raj.


Some first editions. I have about a dozen of Pulphouse Author’s Choice Monthly mini-collections, and am trying to complete the set. But only the signed, numbered editions. I’ll have to read Newton’s City of Ruin before I tackle the third book in the series, The Book of Transformations. I read American Adulterer earlier this year and liked it enough to buy a cheap copy of the hardback.


I didn’t know Modernism Rediscovered was going to be so bloody big when I ordered it from Amazon. It was only about £13 (and I put part of a voucher toward it as well). It’s an abridged edition of the three-volume set, which costs… £200. Contains lots of lovely photos of California Modernist houses. Red Planets I’m looking forward to reading. I really should read more criticism, and this looks like an interesting set of essays.