What if today was the last beautiful day ever?
Tomorrow would turn out to be dreary and dismal, overcast weather and the sun would never shine again.
Is there any hope?
This is how i feel in our current UK summer. We had a lovely May and early July and then the weather turn crap. And everyday since it’s been more crap weather. Will the sun ever come back?
Anyway, it’s a good little tiny short story that you can read for free on Robin’s website.
Bye for now.
Alastair is back with one of his great little stories.
This time Alastair has conjured up a racing league where the races circumnavigate small moons and such within the solar system. This is about one race, the race around Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. Super geologically active, you’d have to be insane to be racing around this. It kind of reminds me of all the old stories of early motor racing, before actual race tracks and before the FIA came along and sanitized everything.
So if you like a good motor racing story, or like Alastair’s short fiction, you’ll enjoy this one.
Now i go back to eagerly awaiting Alastair’s next book.
Bye for now.
To begin, i would just like to mention that i received a free copy of this book from Kathleen and Kelley to read and review.
I’ve always been a total fan of the Fortune series, always great writing, great characters, interesting relationships, with lots of action and shenanigans, and this story was more of the same.
This story follows on from Outrageous Fortune, so do read that first.
In this story Kathleen teams up with Kelley McKinnon once again and what the reader gets is another wonderful adventure with the crew of the Errant when they get a passenger job to carry some doctors to another part of Fortune (they’re like Fortune’s vesion of “Doctors Without Borders), but one of these passengers isn’t who he says he is. Anyway, when this passenger goes to meet up with an old friend all hell breaks loose and, once again, trouble soon finds the crew of the Errant and shenanigans ensue. Plus, we get an update on John and Jagati’s budding romance . . . awwww!
All in all, while not a big long book, it’s a very good little adventure within which we learn a lot more about our favourite airship crew and, also, a very good little adventure that’ll keep you awake reading at bedtime when you should be going to sleep. But who needs sleep, right?
A must read for all Fortune fans and if you’re not a Fortune fan yet then i would humbly suggest that you go to Outrageous Fiction and get a free copy of Soldier of Fortune and give it a read. Yes, the first book in the series is free to try, so what’s stopping you? The planet Fortune is a wonderful stage setting for these really good, character driven adventures that Kathleen and Kelly take us on. If you like lots of action with great characters and great writing you won’t be disappointed.
Bye for now.
Fairly good, but this series is getting rather repetitive. I really think Joseph needs to go off on a different tangent with this story line. Lex really doesn’t need to be saving every universe in existence in every story, surely there’s something else he’d rather be doing?
I like the crazy Karter stuff with lots of Ma, just not saving the universes every time Lex gets in a space ship.
Bye for now.
Available in the collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More.
A fun little story about coming home.
A human councillor on an alien world goes home to watch his childhood home be demolished. Along the way he reminisces about his childhood there.
It’s different and i quite enjoyed this: you might also enjoy it.
Next up will be Visit the Sins.
Bye for now.
If you enjoyed Joseph’s Book of Deacon side story The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy then you’ll love this little story.
Eddy borrows a few spells from his sister and goes off on an adventure to find Rustle, who hasn’t turned up for his latest visit.
Yes, those naughty fairy catchers are at it again, but they didn’t factor Eddy into their accounts.
I really enjoy the Rustle and Eddy stuff, so this was a very welcome sequel which i also really enjoyed.
Bye for now.
A nice little side story for all you fans of Joseph’s Book of Deacon series.
Ivy goes on a wander to cheer herself up when she gets a bored after saving the world and becoming an ambassador. One day, during her wander, she walks into an inn where Malthropes aren’t exactly made welcome.
A sweet little story.
Bye for now.
Have you ever fell asleep in a dream and in that sleep you start dreaming, only to fall asleep in that dream and start dreaming again. But then you wake up from that final dream and a new day begins, but it’s just soooo fucked up you can’t understand what’s going wrong with the world: because you thought you’d actually woken up because you forgot you fell asleep within a dream within a dream and you haven’t actually woke up, woke up, you just woke up within the next dream level up, you’re still dreaming. And it takes a while to realise what the fuck is going on. If that’s never happened to you then you’re really missing out a wonderful mind fuck.
It’s just like what happens in the film Inception, they go to sleep and dream, then go to sleep and dream and then go to sleep and dream, in order to get so far down the rabbit hole in order to get the thing they want.
And yes, you can fall asleep in dreams and then dream in that sleep and so on. It’s freaky!
Why am i telling you this? Because Silas Coade, our protagonist within Eversion, appears to be doing the same thing. So if you liked that idea in Inception you might just really like this one as well, because this is just as good but in a much different way. I can’t tell you why it’s different because it would totally ruin the story, you just have to believe me that it’s really good and read it for yourself.
This is currently Alastair’s last published novel and i’ve read everything else he’s written apart from the young adult, nonsensical, Revenger trilogy, which i just couldn’t cope with. So now i sit eagerly awaiting the next great story from this master of science fiction: let’s hope it’s not too long in appearing.
Bye for now.
Available in Belladonna Nights and Other Stories.
And here’s me thinking that i’d read all the Revelation Space stories, and then i find this one. Admittedly, it was published after i had read most of the Revelation Space series, so i’ll forgive myself for not reading it in the chronological order of Revelation Space.
But, anyway, it’s always nice to get another Revelation Space story thrown into ones life now and again.
This one takes us back to Chasm City, after the plague has mangled it, following a clean up crew on the lower levels. I really enjoyed it. Once again, as most things by Alastair, extremely well written and brilliant sci-fi.
Now all i have to do is wait for the next Revelation Space story, which i hope won’t be too long in coming. I love this series.
If you haven’t read Revelation Space then i suggest you follow it in chronological order and read everything — it’s really, really good.
Bye for now.
A super good time travel novel without all the annoying paradoxes within which some writers seem to get themselves messily tie up in knots.
I can’t really say much more without ruining the story. So i’ll just say, even if you don’t usually enjoy the temporal sci-fi stuff, read this, it’s good.
Next up in Alastair’s literary journey is Polished Performance.
Bye for now.
Available in Made to Order: Robots and Revolution — Anthology.
A really good story set aboard a sleeper ship that is flown and managed by robots while all the wealthy humans sleep the long cold sleep.
But something goes wrong with the cooling system for the sleepers and the robots become worried that they’ll be core wiped to cover up the mess when they get to their destination. Thus begins the cunning plans of the robots to avoid annihilation.
Next up in Alastair’s literary journey is Plague Music, which is actually a Revelation Space story set in Chasm City.
Bye for now.
I read this soooo many years ago and decided to put it away for a few years before reading it again. But the years came and went and finally i jumped in and did it.
And yes, i enjoyed it totally again.
It’s a rather strange book dealing with authoritarian rulers and their lackeys, but what happens if the lackeys decide to do something unexpected?
Set in a colony on where the Dead Sea used to be before it overflowed and flooded all the Mediterranean’s surrounding countries. The colony now mines the special, addictive, purple salt that was sealed down beneath the ground and sells it to the rest of the world.
The authoritarian 75, based in Paris, own the colony and have a global monopoly on the salt it produces. They have sealed it off from the outside world and only keep in contact with the governor via a green box delivered by a special ship. the governor, in turn, instructs his 6 lackeys to do his bidding.
And then, one night, things all change. The governor’s 6 lackeys send 6 letters to the 75 explaining what happened and they in turn bring in Phileas Book, a constructor of strange crosswords for The Times to decipher the chaotic letters and to work out what the truth is and what really happened in the colony.
It’s a really strange story and quite unlike anything else i’ve read, but it is totally enjoyable and has a great ending.
Bye for now.
This is written by the author as though a desperate housewife is telling him personally about her affairs and marriage problems.
I gave up about a third of the way in, i couldn’t take it any more.
If you’re the kind of person that likes reading about chaos in other people’s relationships then it might just suit you, but that’s not my thing at all.
Awful main character.
Bye for now.
The third book in the Before The Coffee Gets Cold series, and what a great book.
If you haven’t read any of this series yet then i really, whole heartedly, suggest you get back to the beginning and give them a go. The time-travelling-chair-in-a-cafe really is such a great story telling device, especially with the rules that come along with it.
And it’s in those rules that the stories shine. The main one being that you cannot change anything in the present by going back to the past. This rule really does sort the wheat from the chaff and creates stories that are deep and meaningful for all of us.
This third book takes us away from the first cafe to another cafe in Japan with it’s own chair and ghost. The owner has gone away so some of the crew from Tokyo have taken over because only a female over the age of 7 years, from their family, can pour the coffee.
A lot of this book is about death, and how we all deal with the death of a loved one, and the ending is incredible: Toshikazu really nailed the ending, it’s so perfect and so moving. It’s not often that my eyes get soggy at the end of a book, but this one did it perfectly. While the whole book is really good, it’s only when you get to the ending that you realise that it’s all been about building up the ending, where Toshikazu brings everything to a perfectly sharp focus.
And don’t forget, the next book in the series, Before We Say Goodbye, is coming out in September 2023, so be sure to put that in your diary.
Bye for now.
A bit of a strange book. I like the idea of being stuck in limbo, just on the edge of death, and going through all your regrets and considering what you could have done differently; how it might have all worked out if only you’d gone for that cup of coffee, or hadn’t quit the band, etc.. But what i don’t like at all is why it had to be dumped into the parallel/multiple universe twaddle. Parallel/multiple universe twaddle is just twaddle and it really doesn’t need promoting.
Scientists who bang on about god being nonsense who then claim that every time we make a decision a whole new universe if formed are obviously more deluded that people who believe in god – and that’s pretty deluded.
Schroedinger’s cat is not neither alive nor dead, it’s not stuck in a quantum state in between. It’s either dead or alive, one or the other, you can’t have both. Locking it in a toxic box and pretending that it’s neither of either until you open the box is just the most ridiculous thing to come out of science. Yes, if a tree falls in the woods and you don’t hear it does still make a rather big noise, ask the fox.
That said, if you just read the book as about someone stuck in limbo, in that timeless moment just before death, then it’s a really good book. It just doesn’t need the twaddle.
Bye for now.
As a bare foot runner myself i’ve been meaning to read this book for a very long time, but it just kept on sitting in my to-read pile always being overlooked for some exciting fiction to read instead. But now, finally, i dived in and got it read.
And it’s really good. Christopher has a way of writing that is just captivating and really takes the reader into the depths of the Copper Canyons to meet the Tarahumara and to experience a world that was left behind a long time ago.
To be able to look back in time in this way with the Tarahumara and to see just what super healthy, wonderful, running machines, Natural humans truly are when they’re not pampered by modern appliances and poisoned by modern diets.
This book is a must for anyone who runs, especially for anyone who is even thinking about taking up running, and also for anyone remotely interested in Human evolution and what makes a Homo sapien so special amongst all other animals.
So if you haven’t read it yet, just do so. It’s wonderfully written and a super page turning read meeting some really interesting characters (all true life characters) along the way. It’s not only a great read but a great journey.
And, having enjoyed his writing soooo much, i’m now very much looking forward to reading Christopher’s other books.
Bye for now.
Click on picture for a nice biggy look.
Every once in a while the Lophophora williamsii, that also lives in my house, makes a pretty. Every once in a while being like 4 or 5 years.
Yeah, Bobble (that’s his name) is a bit stingy with his pretties. I grew him from seed and he’s about 20 years old now.
So, not only one of the slowest growing plants ever, but also one of the rarest flowering plants. It’s so rare that i even published this in a full colour photo on this monochrome website, which is also about as rare as Bobble flowering.
Anyway, i just thought i’d share.
Bye for now.
Just before Musashi died, he wrote a set of precepts for his favourite student. In this book the precepts are discussed one by one by five martial artists from different backgrounds and careers.
A really good look at Musashi and his ideas with five different interpretations of both the man, the legend and his precepts.
A must read for those of us who are interested in Japanese culture, especially from the feudal era.
Bye for now.
This trilogy is twaddle. I gave it a good a go but gave up on book two, didn’t get around to reading this.
Hopefully Permafrost will have Alastair back to grown up books and may he never attempt young adult stuff ever again, he really isn’t very good at it.
Bye for now.
I tried, i really did, but i just can’t take any more and i’ve given up on this stupid trilogy. It’s all too much young adult for me and, worse than that, it’s not even very good young adult. It’s just totally unbelievable nonsense.
A child is playing silly games with grown ups, the grown ups know the child is playing silly games with them but they keep letting the child have its way even though the child is probably going to get them killed. Yeah, right!
Alastair should stick with what he does best, sci-fi for intelligent grown ups.
So, unfortunately, my quest to read everything by Alastair Reynolds has come to an end. I’m not reading the rest of this trilogy unless someone pays me £1000.
So, skipping ahead, the next book in Alastair’s literary arsenal is Permafrost. Let’s hope he’s back to normal and it’s as good as his usual stuff.
Bye for now.
A rather interesting book all about dopamine, and how it controls us and shapes our world.
Me thinks everyone should read all the books they can about neurotransmitters, this being a fairly good one.
The annoying thing to me is that while there’s quite a lot of discussion on how our genetics affect out dopamine levels and responses, there is a complete lack of discussion on epigenetics, as though they have no influence whatsoever. There’s also a complete lack on how diet and lifestyle affects dopamine and other neurotransmitters. So while this is a fairly good look at dopamine in general, i wouldn’t take it all at face value because there’s simply too much left out, IMHO.
But lots of people just want to blame the genes they were given and take the “It’s not my fault” path, so maybe this book is written for them.
Bye for now.
Not the greatest story Alastair has ever told. It’s all very young adult-ish stuff, and it’s really not anything like what i love about Alastair’s usual sci-fi.
But, i suppose, every writer may wish to have a try at some YA stuff occasionally. I just really hope that Alastair doesn’t ever do it again, thank you.
I mean, let’s be serious, a child who isn’t even old enough to leave home, escapes and takes on the system’s most feared and devastating pirate? Really? And adults just fall over themselves to do her bidding?
But, as i’m committed to reading the whole of Alastair’s writings, i must continue with this farcical trilogy and see where it leads.
So next up it will be Shadow Captain.
Bye for now.
Wow!
Once again, Blake has written one of the best pieces of sci-fi i’ve ever read. A literary wonder. Totally un-put-down-able.
Not only is this a great story about the coming environmental apocalypse and the extinction event that will wipe Homo sapiens from the face of the Universe, this is also a great critique of Homo sapiens’ hubris and arrogance with regard to Nature.
Homo sapiens has got this seriously fucked up idea that it can control and rule Nature and that there’s no need to change the way we are because science will always find an answer to all our woes.
This is one of those books that i’ll be telling everyone i know to read — it’s that good — even though i know probably none of them will bother to read it because, hey, what do they need to know that they can’t watch on television or Youtube?
Anyway, i’m off back to Alastair Reynolds to finish off the last 7 of his books that i haven’t read already.
Bye for now.
And we’re back with the Wind Breaker crew for another episode of fuggy shenanigans.
Captain Mack is busy beginning his retirement plans when life decides to have other plans. So it’s off back to the fug for yet another crazy adventure with another crazy nemesis to foil their plans. Super good writing once again from Joseph.
If you liked the TV show Firefly and you haven’t given the Free-Wrench series a try, then please do. It’s basically a steampunk version of the show.
Next up i’m off to read Upgrade by Blake Crouch, which i’m very much looking forward to. Another fantastic writer that everyone should give a bit of their reading time to.
Bye for now.
A short little tale from Robin to keep us going while we eagerly await Robin’s next full length novel.
What happens when you find yourself on the wrong plane? How, exactly, do you end up on the wrong plane in the first place. And what, exactly, is this wrong plane about and where’s it going?
A fun adventure for those who worry their little butts off about flying: great airport reading while you have half an hour to kill before a flight.
Bye for now.