Tuesday, 24th of December, 2002

I said I’d replace this “current reading” entry with proper reviews as I finished the various books I’ve been reading. But I’ve decided that, in order to keep a certain sense of continuity, I’ll leave this post here and just add posts for the various books. I wrote:

I finally got The Omega Expedition by Brian Stableford, the final book in his six book future history… I can’t wait to begin them all now, but before then I have a few free-standing books to read.
At the moment I’m reading Adam Roberts‘ new novel Stone. Although I haven’t read the previous two novels by this new British author, I know he is an exciting writer… I’m half-way through Stone, and it’s very good indeed. The protagonist is a psychopath of sorts, a one-in-a-million in a rather homogenised galactic society infused with and transformed by nanotech. The far-future science here is very convincing, and the characterisation is very detailed indeed. Great stuff!

However, I had to take a break from reading Stone, because issue #9 of Spectrum SF finally arrived, and within it, the final section of Charlie Stross’s new short novel The Atrocity Archive. Readers of this blog will know how much I respect Charlie and love his writing. This novel is an insane and hilarious mix of his obsession with Lovecraftiana and computer programming. I am, of course, loving it.

Meanwhile, I found the latest issue (also #9 as it happens) of Grooves mag, an idm-focused mag which began asa zine and has become progressively more professional in both presentation and content. Also received the latest Wire mag in the mail yesterday (the January 2003 issue) and the latest New Scientist, which is always a Christmas/New Year Special Issue at this time of year… Lots of extra reading!
And we shouldn’t forget some great comics, including the Flaming Carrot/Reid Fleming (World’s Toughest Milkman) crossover issue… and at Phantom Zone Bondi Junction’s pre-Christmas sale I found a cheap copy of Jason’s Shhhh (not sure how many “h”s there - published by Fantagraphics) and Dan Clowes’ Twentieth Century Eightball collection. Woohoo! The book by Jason, who is I believe a French comic writer (unless he’s Canadian) has no dialogue at all, but the stories therein are very affecting and delightfully drawn. The Clowes volume collects a whole lot of funny stuff from his Eightball comic, and is amazingly varied in style but consistently hilarious.

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