I’m currently rebuilding the website as the old one got totally messed up when i was playing around with things (no idea what happened).
So i thought that while it was a total clusterfuck mess of SQL, i would take the opportunity to give it a whole new life and everything.
So if you go clicking on things you might find that very strange things happen. Don’t moan, i know a lot of things are broken, i’m working on it, it takes time.
I’ve got tons of old posts and pages from three websites that i’m working through and will be gradually posting all the stuff i want to keep on here while fixing all the broken things as i go through, one post, one page, at a time.
On top of doing all that, i will, of course, be continuing to add more new content and my latest posts will always appear directly below.
Or, if you prefer, you can also follow me on Twitter and Pinterest where i put a link to all new posts.
Enjoy
Will I Live to See My Utopia? — P. Djèlí Clark
Inspired by the TV show Watchmen. You can read it over at Uncanny.
An interesting and thought provoking essay by one of my favourite writers. Djèlí is a historian by day and he provides lots of links for you to learn things with.
And for those of you who haven’t watched Watchmen yet, then seriously get the fuck out from under that rock you’ve been living under and turn the computer on and find it. Seriously good TV.
P. Djèlí Clark’s Page
#watchmen #tv
Feeling Rejected — Alastair Reynolds
You’ll find this in the collection, Deep Navigation.
Reading this, one wonders if Alastair once had an academic paper rejected and that this is somehow a therapy session. There doesn’t seem to be much more to it.
Dyson spheres: a wonderful trope for story telling, but the idea that an actual intelligent society capable of such feats would go to all that trouble simply because they can’t control their urges to continually fuck up the front hole, producing ever expanding colonies of the results of the misguided sexual desires, just because a few seriously backward thinking Homo sapiens can’t see beyond their own retarded thinking and retarded sexual desires, is preposterous.
And the idea that we should be judging the amount — and level — of intelligent species in the galaxy on the amount of Dyson spheres we can detect is even more preposterous. Just one more example of the arrogance of Homo sapiens.
Alastair’s Page
#scifi #alastairreynolds
Pushing Ice — Alastair Reynolds
Another one of those super long 10000+ Loc point novels that Alastair seems to enjoy writing.
The story starts with an ice pusher, named Rockhopper. Rockhopper is a big space ship that finds valuable comets, etc., around the solar system, attaches big mass drivers to them and pushes them wherever they’re needed in the solar system for their materials: ergo “Pushing Ice”. It just so happens that Rockhopper ends up as the only space ship owned by the big corporations that is capable of catching up with one of Saturn’s moons that has just decided to fly away from Saturn and the rest of the solar system.
And thus begins the big chase, with mutinies, murders, aliens, and all kinds of other mayhem thrown in for good measure: did i mention there’s 10000+ Loc points of this?
It does begin fairly slow going but as you go along it all picks up speed as the stakes become higher and higher and by the last third of the book i was in couldn’t-put-it-down mode, turning pages at any brief opportunity life presented.
Super good, and it’s also left very well open for another episode should Alastair ever wish to let us have some more: please can we have some more, Alastair?
And next book on the Alastair time line will be Feeling Rejected, from 2005.
Alastair’s Page
#scifi #alastairreynolds
The Frost on Jade Buds — Aliette de Bodard
When i first read all the Xuya stories i didn’t have a copy of this one because i refused to be ridiculed by some luddite (whoever dictates the pricing for the Solaris Rising anthologies) with their ridiculous pricing tactics, so, sadly, i just had to skip over it in the timeline. But i never stopped hoping that one day Aliette would take back control and release this in a more reasonably priced, ebook, alternative, and she did: thank you Aliette! 
You can find this in the collection The Dragon that Flew Out of the Sun and Other Stories, and hopefully like me you’ll just stop whatever it is that you’re doing and dive straight back into the Xuya-verse and get some reading done. This has been a long time coming.
My other thought was that i really needed to reacquaint myself with the series before beginning this story, so i jumped back one story to A Slow Unfurling of Truth and re-read that to settle back in. And i have to say, i’m really glad i did.
While the Xuya stories jump around the galaxy quite a lot, you do occasionally get two or three books that run in a sort of mini-series, and The Frost on Jade Buds certainly follows on wonderfully from A Slow Unfurling of Truth.
What struck me this time with A Slow Unfurling of Truth that i didn’t pick up on last time is how much of these stories are influenced by Aliette’s heritage. One can see so many similarities between Earth’s Western countries and the Galactics lining up against Earth’s Eastern countries being represented by the Scattered Pearls Belt: a daughter with one parent from each caught between. Both books are brilliantly written and a must read as a pair.
All i can hope for now is some more Xuya books to fill the later years of my life: such a great universe. Meanwhile, i’m definitely planning to begin reading the rest of Aliette’s other stories once i’ve finished reading all of P. Djèlí Clark’s books (only three of those to go).
Aliette’s Page
#scifi #aliettedebodard
Lily, the Immortal — Kylie Lee Baker
A rather good, thought provoking story concerning internet celebrities and what may happen to them after they die.
Imagine if some big corporation somehow obtained the rights to the social media channel, used all those hundreds of hours of footage to produce a deep fake, and then continued to use that celebrity for their own marketing purposes in whatever way they chose. And what about the loved ones left behind?
Best of all, you can read it for free over at Uncanny Magazine. There’s a podcast version but it doesn’t really work as the lesbian narrator of the story is being read by a man. It’s like getting a white cis-gender heterosexual to play a black transgender lesbian in a film.
Kylie’s Page
#kylieleebaker
Everlasting — Alastair Reynolds
You’ll find this in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories.
This is one of those
I take from this story that Alastair also thinks
Alastair’s Page
#scifi #alastairreynolds
The Paladin of Golota — P. Djèlí Clark
Once again, Djèlí writes the perfect short story, this one about zealots going to the battle fields of Golota to kill and die for their respective gods.
On the floor dying, is Zahrea, one of the zealots, and waiting to pick her body clean of valuables is Teffe, a picker, one of the local orphans who survive by combing the fields after each battle for anything worth selling. Teffe doesn’t believe in gods but while he waits for Zahrea to die he has no choice but to listen to everything she has to say about that.
Super good.
This is available in the periodical, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly — Issue 37.
Next up on Djèlí’s timeline, from 2019, is The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington
P. Djèlí Clark’s Page
#fantasy #pdjeliclark
The Real Story — Alastair Reynolds
It’s
A reporter gets a message from Mars that she believes can only have come from the person that were first to land there, the person who has been missing ever since. So off she goes to meet them to get the story of the decade.
Super good writing with a really well done take on Dissociative Identity Disorder, and a wonderful base jumping experience that’s not to be missed out on.
After Fresco, which i felt was well below par for Alastair, this was definitely back to his usual high standards of sci-fi.
If ya wanna read you’ll find this in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories.
Next up in Alastair’s bibliography is Century Rain from 2004: his very first super length novel.
Alastair’s Page
#scifi #alastairreynolds
The Angel of Khan el-Khalili — P. Djèlí Clark
The second story from the Dead Djinn Universe, which i only just got hold of with it having been quite some time since i finished the other three books (silly me thought it was a trilogy). But not to worry, while it would have been better to have read it before The Haunting of Tram Car 015, it was very much worth reading still and doesn’t detract from anything i’ve already read in this series.
Once again, all the super good writing we’ve come to enjoy from Djèlí, my only question would be is will there be any more Cairo books? I do so hope so, this is a fantastic world Djèlí has created that begs to be explored a lot more. And i totally recommend this whole series for everyone, even if you’re not already into steampunk flavoured fantasy with a North African twist you soon will be.
This is available in the anthology, Clockwork Cairo and also can be read for free over at Tor.com.
P. Djèlí Clark’s Page
#steampunk #fantasy #pdjeliclark
Fresco — Alastair Reynolds
You’ll find this in the collection, Deep Navigation.
A rather brief short story about an observatory near Jupiter that listens to broadcasts from other galaxies.
I get the idea that this should be a prequel to something: not sure what the point is being on its own. Ho hum.
Next in the timeline from Alastair, it’s The Real Story from 2002.
Alastair’s Page
#scifi #alastairreynolds
Fiction
. . .me thinks it’s a good time to re-read Asimov.
Nonfiction
Nonfiction
