Shores of Night

If role playing were a boy, Sarah Newton would be the smart girlfriend that was ever so slightly too good for him.  The evidence I point to for this is her first novel, Mindjammer, a heady mixture of action, crunchy science fiction elements and that perennial cyberpunk or transhuman question: what does human mean? The narrative is a thick, detailed piece of hugely advanced science fiction, that's almost William Gibson like in the intensity of the ideas it introduces; certainly I haven't felt so overwhelmed by concepts since I first read Neuromancer, and I don't consider myself to be a stranger to odd ideas.  The setting that Ms Newton has created is full of technological marvels, ranging from what might be considered digital telepathy to implants that allow the characters to think their way online or enhance their reflexes; essentially they are in complete control of their biology and capable to correct any fluctuations that arise if they need to (so they can willfully ...

My wife's blog has gone live, as has her Etsy shop.  Please visit and support her. http://emiliaetherheart.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/this-is-how-it-begins.html?showComment=1339338753098#c6148168233714400345

A little while ago I asked my Facebook friends for suggestions for Post-apocalyptic media to read, watch and play.  Thanks to their suggestions I compiled quite a large list (which I’ve recreated here) so that I could make my way through them and review them like the hideous reading, reviewing nerd I am.  So far I’ve made barely a dent on it, I’m still reading the books I own and the local library has remained quite unmolested by my demands for mutants, psionic powers and people generally suffering in the wake of various forms of apocalypses be they nuclear, alien, bacterial, zombie or more prosaic, like the world running out of oil or the environment changing so much that plants are difficult to propagate. I suppose the question is why I would choose to do such a thing, especially in a world that’s pretty bleak at present.  Surely these vistas of horrific, twisted worlds are the last things that anyone would want to read especially for pleasure?  Well yes… and no....

It’s been a long time since I did anything other than review books, or comment on other people’s thoughts on this blog.  In fact it may be that I’ve never done anything but that… to be honest, I forget.  In any case I thought it was time to do something that brought people up to date vis-a-vis my own work: so welcome to “all about me”. First, the big scary news; I’ve been diagnosed as having a hernia, which isn’t exactly pleasing.  There are four ways of getting one and as I’m not too overweight or pregnant (that would be a modern miracle, wouldn’t it?) it must be down to one of the other three.  I’m choosing to think it’s down to the moving heavy furniture option, simply because that sounds more gallant and noble.  I’m not in too much pain, far less than I expected to be in actually (it aches at times but nothing more than that and long may that continue), and I’ve opted to have it operated on rather than wander about with a metaphorical Sword of Damocles hangi...

A recent novel, only coming out in 2009, the WindUp Girl is a biopunk novel that posits a triple apocalypse, first that the oil runs out, second global warming will make the seas rise dramatically and thirdly that the natural world comes under attack from genetically engineered viruses and organisms designed by humans to be more “efficient”, or more human friendly, if you prefer with predictably disastrous results.  This has led to a situation where wide spread devastation has swept the world, in a wave that’s led to a long contraction, a period with little trade or communication that is largely kept a mystery.  We know that it has toppled China completely as a world power, or possibly even a place where people can live (at which point it must have been something significant given the size of China), but mysteriously left the USA, or perhaps more accurately American biogenetic engineering companies, in a position of strength; something I can only ascribe to the fact the autho...

The Chrysalids is a golden oldie from the 1950s and one of my favourite books, I’m afraid if you’re looking for an unbiased view it might be best to look elsewhere.  That said I’ll try to step back and be objective rather than simply type, ‘it’s chuffing brilliant, why haven’t you read it?’ over and over again.  It’s very concisely written and well put together, the kind of book you could read in an afternoon. Written in the 1950s, atomic energy and warfare casts a long shadow over the book, even though the apocalypse is kept something of a mystery for most of the book, referred to as ‘the Tribulation’ and seen as God ordained as a punishment for man’s wickedness.  Later it is revealed, albeit by means of show rather than tell with Wyndham making references to patches where the ground is covered by acres of black glass of the variety that is certainly a popular image of one of the effects of a nuclear explosion, that the culprit of the devastation is almost certainly a ...

As the Charles Stross antipope pieces ( http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/10/the-hard-edge-of-empire.html ,  http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/11/a-zeppelin-wearing-a-top-hat-s.html )  concerning Steampunk have reared their ugly heads again in various places across the internet, largely sending Steampunks into fits of disgust or boredom, I thought I’d try to throw some light on possible reasons why and try to get to the bottom of the reaction that Stross and various other writers have to the Steampunk genre (which is what they’re responding to, I’d imagine that most of them haven’t even heard of the subculture or have no opinion on it one way or another). The first issue seems to be one of classification, Steampunk is certainly fantastic fiction but it differs from its parent, Cyberpunk, in that whilst that genre is a certainly a form of science fiction (albeit one that resembles noir crime fiction spliced with advanced technology in a dysto...