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New books six to nine: Halting State, Fermat's Last Theorem, and short stories
6) The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction. Which serves as quite a good reminder of why you should never buy anything with "edited by Mike Ashley" on the cover. But it was only 20p, and there were several stories in it that I didn't otherwise own copies of. There is, however, nothing 'extreme' about it, except for the opinions the editor expresses in his introductions, which range from merely ignorant to extremely offensive. I really should have remembered, because they did actually manage to detract from my enjoyment of the other contents.
7) Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction. A nice collection of good stories; their definition of "Scottish" is a little flexible, but who cares when you have so many good stories by different writers gathered together? (Including a couple of authors I'd not encountered before, but will be looking for in future....[Hannu Rajaniemi; Deborah J. Miller])
8) Halting State (Charles Stross). Charlie's reliably interesting, and Halting State is good near-future sci-fi[1]. I'm not entirely convinced by the second-person viewpoint - I can see why he's done it, and it does work nicely in some ways, but I still found it interfered with my involvement in the book; in a sense that enhances one of the effects, but it did function as a slight mental itch that distracted me, and I suspect I would have enjoyed it more if it was written from a traditional third-person perspective. A highly enjoyable plausible (and consistent) speculative near-future Scotland, where the difference between computer games, the real world, and the people who write one and live in the other isn't quite as clear as some might hope. [Library book.]
9) Fermat's Last Theorem (Simon Singh). Singh's popular science books are always well-written and interesting, and this is no exception. It's much more story than explanation, though, so don't get it expecting to learn much about the actual maths!
Also a couple of re-reads - DWJ's "Year of the Griffin", and "Accelerando" and "The Atrocity Archives" (because Charlie is like popcorn or tigers - you can't stop with just one:).
[1] I've now (I think) read everything of Charlie's except the Merchant Princes books. I'd say that the Laundry books are his best, although I'm the right type(s) of geek to get all three sets of jokes, which probably helps. The MP series will have to wait until the first one is in the library on the same day I am, unfortunately, which might be a while.
7) Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction. A nice collection of good stories; their definition of "Scottish" is a little flexible, but who cares when you have so many good stories by different writers gathered together? (Including a couple of authors I'd not encountered before, but will be looking for in future....[Hannu Rajaniemi; Deborah J. Miller])
8) Halting State (Charles Stross). Charlie's reliably interesting, and Halting State is good near-future sci-fi[1]. I'm not entirely convinced by the second-person viewpoint - I can see why he's done it, and it does work nicely in some ways, but I still found it interfered with my involvement in the book; in a sense that enhances one of the effects, but it did function as a slight mental itch that distracted me, and I suspect I would have enjoyed it more if it was written from a traditional third-person perspective. A highly enjoyable plausible (and consistent) speculative near-future Scotland, where the difference between computer games, the real world, and the people who write one and live in the other isn't quite as clear as some might hope. [Library book.]
9) Fermat's Last Theorem (Simon Singh). Singh's popular science books are always well-written and interesting, and this is no exception. It's much more story than explanation, though, so don't get it expecting to learn much about the actual maths!
Also a couple of re-reads - DWJ's "Year of the Griffin", and "Accelerando" and "The Atrocity Archives" (because Charlie is like popcorn or tigers - you can't stop with just one:).
[1] I've now (I think) read everything of Charlie's except the Merchant Princes books. I'd say that the Laundry books are his best, although I'm the right type(s) of geek to get all three sets of jokes, which probably helps. The MP series will have to wait until the first one is in the library on the same day I am, unfortunately, which might be a while.
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Nova Scotia is excellent; I particularly admired the Boswell pastiche.
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