Graeme Taylor took a slow camera on a fast train and the result is a look at the world through the Flash’s eyes. People almost look like statues. Found via Edwin Mijnsbergen.
Not a widower
A good day today. Neither England nor Holland has gotten the 2018 Worldcup and more importantly, S. has gone through her operation with (so far) no complications. She went in at around two o’clock scared but calm and was out of the operation room by six. With a bit of luck the recovery will be fast and she’ll finally be able to leave the hospital soonish.
Books read November
I went on a bit of a sprint this month, reading some twenty books or so in an attempt to up my rate. For the first half of the month I actually managed a book a day, which slowed down a bit later on.
A Civil Campaign — Lois McMaster Bujold
Is this a rom-com or the most hard science fiction story Bujold has ever told? Both. Brilliant, but rereading it you know that dinner scene is coming, making it even more cringeworthy than the first time.
The Babylonians: An Introduction — Gwendolyn Leick
A very short textbook introduction to the Babylonians. Good to get a basic overview, but nothing more.
Empire of Bones — Liz Williams
An Indian outcast rebel queen is the sole contact for a highly advanced but even more stratified alien race.
I Shall Wear Midnight — Terry Pratchett
The last Tiffany Aching novel is not quite as good as the previous ones.
Diplomatic Immunity — Lois McMaster Bujold
Not really a necessary book, to be honest, as everything build up during Komarr and A Civil Campaign is lost for just another fun Miles romp.
Shards of Honor — Lois McMaster Bujold
The first Barrayar novel, introducing Aral Vorkosigan to Cordelia Naismith.
Barrayar — Lois McMaster Bujold
What happens when Cordelia went shopping during the Barrayarian civil war.
Surface Detail — Iain M. Banks
Banks’ latest Culture novel has a very unpleasant, but worryingly plausible scenario at its heart. What if technology progresses so far that it becomes possible to recreate whatever hell your religion has thought up in virtual reality?
The Warrior’s Apprentice — Lois McMaster Bujold
The first novel starring that little hyperactive git, Miles Vorkosigan. Failing his entrance exam for the Barrayarian army, Miles goes on holiday to Beta Colony and as one thing leads to another creates his own mercenary fleet and manages to end not just a foreign war, but also a complot against his own empire.
The Vor Game — Lois McMaster Bujold
Once again Miles has gotten into trouble on Barrayar, hides into his alternate persona of Admiral Naismith and manages to thwart yet another plot against Barrayar.
Brothers in Arms — Lois McMaster Bujold
Kept on Earth thanks to a failure in bureaucracy, Miles meets his clone brother Mark for the first time, as he is the target for another complex plot against the Barrayarian empire.
Borders of Infinity — Lois McMaster Bujold
A collection of three short stories, with some connective tissue.
Ethan of Athos — Lois McMaster Bujold
On Athos there are only men, no women, and when new egg stock needs to be bought for their uterine replicators it’s the somewhat naive Ethan send out to get them, only to run into a galactic complot
The Pocket Essential Philip K. Dick — Andrew M. Butler
A literary cheatsheet for the master of paranoid science fiction — evidence of his arrival amongst the literati.
Mirror Dance — Lois McMaster Bujold
Miles’ brother not his clone Mark returns, tries to borrow the Dendarii for his personal vendetta, fucks up royally and Miles has to save him — and then he’s killed and it’s Mark to the rescue…
Memory — Lois McMaster Bujold
And we’re done with Miles Vorkosigan, ending with the novel in which his entire life and career is destroyed, leaving having to rebuild it from the ground up.
The Quantum Thief — Hannu Rajaniemi
Charlie Stross mentioned this guy to me two years ago as the writer to watch; this is his first novel. It didn’t quite live up to the hype, but if you like cyberpunk space opera in the vein of Stross, Egan or Sterling, Rajaniemi will be right up your street.
The Ruin of the Roman Empire – James J. O’Donnell
An interesting view on the Fall of Rome, blaming not the socalled barbarians, but the emperor who thought to save the empire from them, Justinian I for the collapse of the Western empire.
Pride of Chanur — C. J. Cherryh
The first in one of Cherryh’s more lighthearted series still has her trademark method of putting her characters under enormous stress, as the crew of the Pride of Chanur has to deal with the strange hairless alien that has turned up on their ship.
Chanur’s Venture — C. J. Cherryh
The first sequel to Pride of Chanur.
Fingers crossed
So to recap: S. has been in hospital again since early July, after another nasty bout of infection, recovered enough by August to schedule an operation, we got married, she got another nasty infection while in hospital, another trip to the IC unit, a slow recovery through September and October, some uncertainty about rescheduling the operation and finally last Friday the news that it will go ahead, this Thursday. She’s scared stiff and I can’t blame her; her track record with operations, or recovery from there in this hospital has not been great, despite the best efforts and good will of everyone involved. The ioperation is intended to repair some of the damage done earlier and if it works, will mean she’s less vulnerable to infections as well as remove a source of chronic pain, both of which should aid her recovery and actually make it able for her to go home. A lot is riding on it, so you can imagine the extremes of hope and fear we’re going through, even apart from imagining what could wrong during the operation and its aftermath. We’ve been here before and we know that even if everything goes well, it will be a tough, hard slog, especially for S. herself of course.
On a lighter note, my youngest brother did something very sweet indeed and bought her an Ipad, as she could barely use even a netbook. The Ipad is brilliant for using in hospital when you can’t sit up properly or use a keyboard easily and all you want to do is read the papers. It has helped a lot by distracting her.
Wish us luck.
Surface Detail – Iain M. Banks
Surface Detail
Iain M. Banks
627 pages
published in 2010
The problem with any new Culture novel is that they’ll never be as good as the original three — Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games and Use of Weapons. Back in the late eighties when these books were first published there was literally nothing like them; now we know what the Culture is like, what to expect from Banks and there are whole generations of sf writers who have been influenced by him writing similar sort of novels. Yet everytime I still hope that the next Culture novel is as good as the first three, which is unfair — even if it is, it won’t have the same impact.
But Surface Detail comes close. From his first published book, The Wasp Factory, Banks has had a reputation for writing well crafted but often repulsive scenes of violence and torture and here he surpasses himself. Because in Surface Detail he gives us a horrifying but all too plausible idea: what if you could use virtual realities to create the hells your religion says sinners should be cast down into? What if civilisations routinely went through a stage in their development when their technology was good enough to create simulations of hell, but their morality still primitive enough to actually want to subject people to them? One of the first scenes in the book shows what that would look like from the inside and it’s not for the squeemish; it actually gave me some bad moments reading it just before I went to bed. No cuddly fantasy hell this; imagine whole creative output of an entire species devoted to making up ever more cruel tortures, without end.