I bought this on the recommendation of Ken MacLeod, and wasn't disappointed. While the story is set in the future, it's not science fiction, it's a crime mystery. The futuristic setting acts merely to provide a whimsical - and frankly a bit silly - backdrop. That backdrop is somewhat similar to that of Morris's Dystopia, showing that a good novel can be built on such an improbable foundation. One of the ways this is far superior to Morris's book is that there's far less tedious speechifying. Sure, that means we don't learn all the details about how The Process transformed society, but we don't care anyway, The Process merely provides Coward with justification for the situations he puts his characters in and then, like in nearly all other good novels, it is their navigating their way through their troubles that entrances us. The predicaments don't bear up to scrutiny, just as the society that spawned them doesn't, but by the time you notice, you'll already be entranced by the characters and have suspended your disbelief for the duration - although the rice-free curry house was pushing it a bit.
I loved this book, and I'm sure you will too. If you're unsure despite my glowing review, you can read the first couple of chapters on the author's website.
This collection of short stories is, I'm afraid, rather disappointing. Sure, the individual tales are entertaining, but nothing really stands out. And combined together as a single book, it all gets a bit samey. There are a couple of places where Harrison's usual genius peeks out from the clouds, but not enough to make it worth buying.
This is meant to be a short story collection that "puts authors and scientists back in touch with each other, to re-connect research ideas with literary concerns". In this it largely fails, despite the positive remarks made after each tale by a scientist working in a field tangentially related to the story.
Of the 16 stories, only one is by an author I recognise (Ken MacLeod), but 5 stories really stood out - Moss Witch, by Sara Maitland; In The Event Of, by Michael Arditti; White Skies, by Chaz Brenchley; Enigma, by Liz Williams; and Hair by Adam Roberts. That last one is the only one that does a good job of weaving actual science into the story.
That sounds like a bad review, doesn't it. Well, it's not. At least not entirely. In 276 pages there were five good short stories. Obviously I'd expect more if all the stories were by one author who I already knew was good at their craft. But five good shorts by random unknowns is unexpectedly good going. I recommend this book.
There's definitely a fantastic story in here, and for the first three quarters of the book, that's exactly what you expect to get. It's certainly imaginative, and zips along at a fair old pace while still having time for those human moments that make the characters into people. But then we get to the last quarter of the book, and, like so many other sci-fi works that could be outstanding, that lets it down. It's confusing, both in terms of the sequence of events, but especially in terms of the characters' motivations, which seem to flip around seemingly at random.
I still liked it, but it's only a "good enough" book.
This is the middle book in a trilogy, and is self-published. The author used to be published by a "proper" publisher but is no longer. That is of course, a terrible recipe, and his work must, of course, be rubbish. But it ain't. Sure, it's not high art. But it's engaging and entertaining. And that's what ultimately makes a novel a good one. I've actually read this book before, but it was a coupla years ago, and given that the third and final part in the series is finally out, I thought I'd better re-read it to refresh my memory before tackling the last installment. And I'm glad I did. I polished it off during a 4.5 hour train journey, without getting bored even once. Worth buying.
I've been waiting for this for a long time, and the wait was worth it. The only real shortcoming (bearing in mind that I knew it was going to be modern pulp fiction) is that the resolution of the whole three book series is dealt with very quickly, almost skipped over. We see it beginning to take shape, but the reader is left to assume that events proceed exactly as predicted by a numerical simulation. I'm afraid that I lack the necessary faith in computers to fully accept that! The author's "Antares" series has the same simulation problem, although events are at least shown happening after the simulation in the finale of that series. Even so, good book, worth buying.
As was fashionable amongst British sci-fi authors of his generation (much of John Wyndham's work is fairly similar) this is a tale of a world-ending catastrophe, whose protagonist and other players are ordinary people to whom nasty things happen. There's no particularly happy ending and the author's explanation of events - and indeed the event itself that sets up the story - are laughable to a modern reader, but even so, it's a well-told, well-constructed, and well-written tale. Recommended.
Like the previous book, the world ends and ordinary people struggle to survive. There's a nice couple of twists too which make what would otherwise be fairly predictable (especially if you've read any other of his books) into a gripping tale.
In the afterword, the author tries to make excuses: "this is a novel. I have tried to dramatise the grand story of human evolution ... I hope my story is plausible". Well, no, it's not. That isn't a mortal sin in itself - plenty of really good stories are implausible, starting with one of the oldest stories that we have, the Iliad. But in dramatising, Baxter has made up a load of rubbish, including monkeys (and their far more primitive ancestors) giving each other names and all kinds of other silliness. I don't see why you can't tell the undeniably dramatic story of human origins factually, without introducing cuddly anthropomorphised Purgatorius, tool-using dinosaurs, and pterosaurs the size of whales.
Having laid into it like that, I do have to admit that it's a rollicking story whose silliness only made me want to scream a handful of times. I recommend it, although I aso recommend turning your brain off first, and not paying full price.
I've been waiting for a long time - it's eight years since the previous Culture novel! - for this, and thankfully it doesn't disappoint. It's rather more accessible than a couple of the previous books in the series have been, but without sacrificing Banks's usual inventiveness. It would make a good introduction to The Culture if you've not read any of the books before, and if you have it's a great continuation. Buy it.
The lovely Mr. Juan Lemmon reminded me that I need to review Shark In Venice.
This is Not A Good Film. It's vaguely enjoyable, once, while drunk, but it lacks quality, in pretty much all departments. This can sometimes be forgiven - I forgive the makers of Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, because their film is so delightfully over-the-top, cheesy and stupid. Trouble is, Shark In Venice doesn't hit any of those. It's not particularly OTT, at least no more so than an Indiana Jones film; it's not cheesy, taking itself quite seriously and it's obvious that quite a lot of money was spent on it; and it's not even stupid - it's ostensibly no more brainless than a thousand other, better films.
If only the film-makers hadn't taken their job so seriously they might have produced something that's actually fun. But no, by being so earnest, they merely emphasised their own incompetence.
I liked the Zelazny book that I reviewed a lot, despite it being confusing and not particularly well plotted - all down to the quality of the writing which was just beautiful. This is better. The writing is still as good, but the plot is clearer and the whole work is just so much less confusing and hangs together better. Mind you, the overall impression is, four days after finishing reading it, one of "wow that was good", but I'm buggered if I can remember what it was actually about!
Forward was first of all a physicist, and only secondly a writer of fiction. His fiction tends towards the scientifically plausible, without much in the way of "God Tech", and his better works are characterised by, errm, good characterisation. The people on his pages really are people, with lives, conflicts, desires and so on. That holds true for this work too, with a few minor exceptions. The characters are generally believable, even if those who stay "off screen" and are only talked about are somewhat one-dimensional - but that can easily be ascribed to the speakers' bias and limited knowledge. After all, plenty of us can't truly describe our bosses as fully-rounded people. The technology and science used is also believable. However, that's only that which is used. That which is inherent in the people (and I do hope you'll forgive me for being somewhat vague - being too specific would give away the "reveal" at the end of Forward's magic trick) is, at least in two respects, rather implausible. But this doesn't really take anything away from what is overall a good story, told well, by a skilled author.
I recommend it. If there were to be a sequel following the surviving character's new career at the end, I'd buy that too. And that, my friends, that wanting to read more, is the sign of a damned fine book.
Brighton Wok: not very good, but great fun and recommended if you appreciate amateur film-making.
The Warlords: great - Chinese cinema is really very good these days, even if it is still somewhat one-dimensional, with most of their films (at least of those that ever make it to the West) still being some species of martial arts or war movie.
House of Flying Daggers: good, but not great. The second half drags a bit and the plot goes through some rather silly contortions. Worth watching all the way through though.
This very short story is available for free download from Project Gutenberg. "Everything was perfectly swell. There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars. All diseases were conquered. So was old age." And yet the Utopia is utterly hideous. Once you read the two lines after those I quote, the ghastliness is obvious. And the line after that gives the rest away. Not worth reading.
Yeah, I know, it's another short story. I'm cheating horribly in my attempt to get back on track and read four works every month. Anyway, it's great. This is what science fiction should be - an exploration both of the physical world but also of the meta-physical, mediated by technology. Technology is what every literate person in advanced societies these days is familiar with, so technology is a good substrate for great story-telling, much like in more primitive times the common substrate might have been country house parties and religion - which is why Jane Austen and her ilk's work and the Bible seem like utter crap now but were so popular back in the Dark Ages. Chiang brings out the explorer's humanity, painting him as a sympathetic being with troubles, dreams, desires, and most of all hopes. Hopeful stories are terribly rare in all of literature.
I'm pleased to see that it won the 2009 Hugo for Best Short Story. You can, at least for now, read it for free online here.
I'm still a dirty rotten cheat. This is another short story (which can also be downloaded) and is another Lovecraft crossover. And it's done superbly well. If anything, the horror of Lovecraft's Elder Ones comes across better here than in the original, perhaps because I can relate more to the setting. The utter madness of Lovecraft's mythos fits all too well into Mutually Assured Destruction.
First published in 1962, this is one of the better examples of the pulp sci-fi of its era, and is, unlike almost all its contemporaries, still in print. This is probably because, while it does have some of the stupid prejudices of its age - women can not possibly win chess tournaments; the only female character is a tiny, but sexy, wimp - they are nothing like as all-encompassing as in the lesser works of the age. And also the technologies and ecosystems are, again unlike most of its contemporaries, mostly plausible. In particular, I doubt that Harrison was aware of the "brain-washing" Cordyceps fungi, but the alien symbiote whose influence and discovery drives the plot seems to be remarkably similar. The writing and characterisation is somewhat weak - again, showing its age - but the plot is strong and inventive, making this worth reading.
The subject of illegal whisky making, its history, the economic and social conditions surrounding it, and how it was combatted by the government, has the potential to make a great book for whisky afficionados, especially when you consider how many of today's large commercial distilleries have roots in illegal distilling. But this book isn't it. It starts well, with a survey of the economic conditions and circumstances of distilling. This makes an excellent text on how having different tax rates for the same goods in different places in a single jurisdiction is Just Plain Dumb, and how arbitrary and inconsistent law encourages crime.
But that's all that's good in the book. The rest is just an incoherent collection of uncited anecdotes and well-researched and cited facts, with obvious tall tales thrown in without comment (for instance the tale of how a cripple was able to jump from his boat into that of a customs crew and smash their boat apart while the excise officers and their crew were still on board). To add insult to injury, the publisher has obviously bulked out what is still a fairly slim volume by inserting a large space between each disjointed fact or anecdote, attempting to hide that with a small image. And finally, the scholarship (which would other wise be fairly good if only the editor had managed to bash it into a coherent shape) is terribly let down by an obviously biased treatment of the illegal distillers as folk-heroes and excisemen as The Enemy, while largely ignoring the violence between distilling gangs, the poor quality of the spirit (which wasn't aged like it is today) and the effects on health of an unregulated alcohol industry having little in the way of quality control.
I can't recommend this, not even to whisky lovers.
This month's booze tasting was a variety of rums, although it was structured as a rum and chocolate tasting, not just rum. The session was led by Duane Dove of Tobago Cocoa, who also runs a restaurant and bar (warning: music) in Stockholm, with a very large selection of rums.
Again, rum is a spirit I don't really know much about - I've drunk some before, obviously, but only stuff that you can get in any supermarket or pub - so the evening was educational as well as refreshing. And as with the armagnac tasting, I rather lack the vocabulary to truly describe what I was drinking, but I shall do my best ...
Angostura 1919, 8yo: vanilla and banana nose, sour cherries and ginger taste, with perhaps a little pineapple.
Diplomatico reserva exclusivo, 12yo: coffee and chocolate nose with something of the smell of a freshly painted room too, the taste was vanilla essence and very very sweet. Too sweet in my opinion.
Trois Rivieres 1997 vintage: bananas, spices and cherries on the nose, a spicey taste but rather bitter. It went quite well with the chocolate it was paired with, but doesn't stand up well on its own.
XM Royal Demerara, 10yo: vanilla, banana and almond nose, sweet honey taste.
Appleton Estate extra 12yo: perhaps the most whisky-like of all the rums that we tried, this had gentle smoke on the nose, with some resin developing over time and something redolent of an autumn woodland. The taste was berries with some dry mustiness. Very nice.
Now, if I lack the specialist vocabulary to describe rums, I lack that to describe chocolate even more. I'm rather sorry to say that, if you ignore the additives that were in some of the chocolates (such as orange peel) they all just tasted of ... really good chocolate.
The chocs were Pralus Trinidad (apparently available at Monmouth Coffee), Valrhona Trinidadian single estate (who have a crappy website that I can't link to), Amadei Chuao, and a couple of pralines from Dove's restaurant in Stockholm. All were very nice, and if I had to pick a favourite it would be the Pralus.
Posted at 16:32:17
by David Cantrell keywords: drinking | review
It's hard to decide what I think of this - other than that it's great and everyone should read it. It is not, contrary to what many think, an anti-technological screed, nor an anti-communist or anti-capitalist one. If anything it is anti-conformity and pro-individualism. That the World Controllers enforce conformity through technology and consumption of consumer goods is neither here nor there - it is clear that conformity enforced through other means, such as hierarchical religion, was equally antithetical to Huxley.
This example of early science fiction is certainly interesting as a view into the mind of cultured well-educated Victorians. They are violently racist, revelling in genocide to cleanse the world of "inferior races" for its population by white men and their eventual conquest of the universe; they are sickeningly religious and dabble in spiritualism. But in their favour, they seek scientific explanations for everything (even the supposed ascension of Christ is explained (badly) in scientific terms) and don't shrink from engineering. Indeed, the opening section is all about the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company, which seeks to abolish the curse of seasonal change by pumping water back and forth between the Arctic and Antarctic thus redistributing the mass of the Earth. And if that's not an engineering project I don't know what is!
Of course, a moment with a pocket calculator - or a Victorian slide rule - would demonstrate how utterly absurd such a project is. Much of the other science in the book is similarly silly, including homeopathy, arguing from conclusions, and so on. But there are some fascinating ideas buried in the dross. It's the first popular description I'm aware of of gravitational slingshots, for example, the first description of a practical speed camera, and contains a working explanation of how to find extra-solar planets by occultation of their stars' light. There's also some intriguing speculation about pocket-sized portable stars, almost identical in function and outward form to Asimov's "Foundation" series's atomic lights.
The story itself breaks down broadly into three sections: the first is a rather tiresome introduction to the main characters via their work with the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Co. Second is their journey to and exploration of Jupiter - where their first actions are to test whether the air is breathable by, errm, breathing it, and to find something to shoot. Oh there's lots of things to shoot. Cue a description of parallel evolution, lots of amusing theories, and a good Boys' Own adventure in the wilderness.
And then there's the unfortunate third section. This would have been much better omitted, leaving us with an enjoyable (if not very good) novel. Unfortunately, they find the Christian heaven on Saturn, spend lots of time talking to spirits and wibbling sagely at each other, and generally waste lots of valuable paper in printing their tiresome speculations. There's potentially some interesting thoughts here on the human condition and morality, but they spoil what was up to this point a work of entertainment. And in any case, there's nothing original there, it's all been done better by other authors.
So, worth reading? The first two sections certainly are, provided that you like the sort of silliness that H. G. Wells vomited forth, and provided you can put up with the quite revolting creatures that were upper-class Victorians. But I'd not bother with the last section if I were you.
I'm going back in time. I started off by watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos", which was inspired partly by Bronowski's "Ascent of Man", which I then watched. In turn, Bronowski's series was made as a reaction and follow-up to Clark's "Civilisation".
Both Cosmos and Ascent of Man were enjoyable surveys of their subject, and while I have a few minor factual quibbles and found both presenters slightly irritating, they pale in comparison to Civilisation.
I've only watched the first episode of 13 so far, but it's just awful. Sure, Bronowski also had some rather quaint 1970s views, but Clark's aren't just quaint, they're also Dead Wrong. And not the kind of Wrong that comes from being from a less advanced time and where we now know better. To take one example, he presents Islam as being an utterly anti-artistic and anti-civilisation movement, ignoring what was well known at his time, that cities like Damascus and Baghdad were centres of art and learning, and even if we only look at Europe he's still ignoring the Alhambra.
He's also terribly inconsistent. One moment he's telling us that the Vikings were uncivilised because (amongst other things) they didn't have books, the next he's going on about how the Icelandic Sagas are some of the greatest works to ever be written. And after slagging off Islam for being anti-artistic, he then goes on to compare Celtic illuminated manuscripts to ... Islamic art. Wrongly. Apparently, Celtic art is better because the lines were closer together or something. It's odd that Bronowski's series was not about art, but did a better job of at least explaining the complexities, constraints, passion and feeling of Islamic art than this expert ever did. I wonder what other stupid errors and contradictions he's going to spout in his horribly annoying voice.
Clark was apparently "one of the best-known art historians of his generation". No wonder the arts are treated with such disdain by modernity if he's the best scholar and spokesman they can come up with.
Update: in episode 2 he calls science a religion. I shall now file him under "wilful idiots", along with creationists and Labour voters.
Update, episode 3: did you know that the Romans didn't know love? Clark thought so. Catullus would have disagreed, but what would he know, he was only a man from a fallen civilisation.
Update: in episode 6 when decrying Protestantism and the Reformation, he goes on at length about "the northern spirit" and compares Protestants to the nomadic barbarians he so incorrectly calumnied earlier. "One can't point to a single piece of specifically protestant architecture or sculpture, which shows just how much these expressions of civilisation depended on the catholic church". Just plain wrong. There's nothing inherently Catholic about, eg, Chartres cathedral, which he raves about so much, any more than there is anything inherently Protestant about the new Coventry cathedral. Likewise all Catholic sculpture (aside from perhaps some sculptures of popes) can be found a place in Protestant churches and societies. He also, in passing, says that Luther was the sort of leader figure that the Germans so love. What an appalling little man.
Update: Half way through watching episode 7 I had all kinds of rude things to write - about it being a paean to catholicism, that it sneered so at the arts and civilisation of the Reformation, and so on. But then Clark redeemed himself by also rubbishing catholic baroque, pointing out that it was mostly the product of personal greed and vanity, and that "no good ever came from thoughts in enormous rooms". He's still a bloody Philistine, of course, especially because of his ridiculous statements about film being an inferior medium, but even so - bravo!
Posted at 21:49:23
by David Cantrell keywords: culture | review
As well as whisky tastings, I go to similar events for other drinks too. This one being for an Armagnac house. Armagnac is "the other brandy", that shouldn't be confused with cognac. Darroze mature and bottle armagnacs from lots of small vineyards and distillers in the Bas Armagnac region, but generally release them as seperate bottlings per vineyard and vintage.
I didn't know much about armagnac before tonight. I feel not only somewhat refreshed but also edumacated. Hurrah! Even so, my tasting notes are somewhat incomplete, because not being much of a brandy drinker, I don't really have the vocabulary to describe the drink that I have for whisky. I wasn't the only person present to make that observation.
Réserve Darroze, 10yo, 43%: this blended armagnac is their cheapest offering, but even so it's still around 50 quid. The nose was orange liqueur and honey. My reaction to this - as indeed was that of lots of other people - was that it wasn't anything special. It's a good pub brandy, apart from the price.
Domaine de Rieston, 1992, 52%: roses in the nose, caramel and peppermint taste.
Domaine au Martin, 1987, 48.4%: despite being 22 years old (all the armagnacs tasted were bottled in 2009), this was still described as a young armagnac! The nose was golden syrup, citrus and a touch of soap. The taste peppery and white port, although without the sweetness of white port.
Domaine de Busquet, 1979, 50%: caramel nose, the taste is licquorice with a long soft finish. Very easy to drink, and would go well with a Montecristo. At this point we're starting to get into pretty special territory.
Domaine de Pounon, 1969, 40%: this was really very good, the nose slightly meaty, mushrooms, paper and pencil shavings, the taste dry, developing into sandalwood with a decently long finish.
Château de Gaube, 1959, 44%: my favourite of the lot, but it was a tough call deciding between it and the previous one. The nose had light coffee and wood shavings and again some orange. The taste was umami, fudge and nuts. Unfortunately this chateau no longer exists, so the only spirit that's available is that which is now in Darroze's cellars. Which explains the rather eye-watering price. A price that I thought was worth paying, incidentally, as I bought a bottle.
Une Larme d'Armagnac, 42%: this is another blend, but one aimed at footballers' wives, nouveaux riches Russians, and other tasteless conspicuous consumers. It's very nice, with a toffee and blackcurrant nose, spice, wood and nuts taste, and a looooong finish, but by blending something like 15 different spirits together it lacks individual character. That alone puts it below the Pounon and Gaube in my opinion, but it's over 700 quid, and comes in a horrible chavvy bottle.
Posted at 23:51:54
by David Cantrell keywords: drinking | review
This book could have been so much better. It is apparently the beginning of a series of fictionalised accounts of the peopling of the Americas, this first volume covering the arrival of the first humans. There's even a kernel of a good story in here. Unfortunately, it's just hopelessly incompetently written. Let's start with the handy map right at the beginning. It bears so little resemblance to what actually happens in the story that it's just confusing. Then there's a brief modern-day chapter about some archaeologists finding an appropriately ancient burial - which bears no resemblance to anything that happens in the story. More confusion and wasted pages. But even ignoring those flaws, the main bulk of the story is let down by the characters having really fucking stupid names which make it hard to keep track of who's who. Opening it at a random page and picking the first name on it, you can't even tell whether "Moss Stalker" is a man or a woman, or which of the opposing tribes he (or she) is from! For fuck's sake, even that old hack Jean Auel does better than this! And worst of all, the whole damned book is full of pseudo-religious mystical crap. I paid a penny plus postage to get this book second-hand. Never mind the postage, even the penny alone would have been too much.
On a well-fleshed-out world, we have reasonably strong characters - including most of the non-human ones - and an imaginative plot that gallops along at a nice pace. It's only really let down by two things, one at the very beginning and one right at the end. At the beginning the book is dedicated to, amongst others, "the men and women of Greenpeace". And the end wraps the story up rather too quickly and in an utterly ridiculous and implausible manner. "It's all down to alien mind control" just doesn't work, and gives the impression that the author didn't actually know how the story was going to finish when he started writing it. Normally that would put me off recommending it, but the rest is so good that I'm going to command you to read it anyway.
In previous installments I have touched briefly on the App Store and on multi-tasking. I shall now criticise in more depth.
In the past, I have criticised attempts to put Linux (for example) on phones, saying that for the sort of limited user interface that is possible on such a small device, a full-blown multi-user OS like Linux is pointless overkill. I now realise that I was - at least a little bit - wrong. While multi-user is indeed pointless, with multi-user comes multi-tasking, which is far from pointless. Yes, a small screen means you can only realistically expect to see one app at a time, but that doesn't mean you don't want to have more than one running at a time. On the iPhone, some of the built-in apps can run in the background, demonstrating that it can indeed multi-task*. And this is useful. I can, for example, start a large web page downloading, then switch to another app for a bit, and then when I later switch back to Safari, the page has loaded. Most apps wouldn't benefit from this. There is, for example, nothing for my to-do list to get on with when I'm not interacting with it. But some apps really would benefit from being able to run in the background. An ssh client, for example, for those times when I want to switch to another app to look up a password.
There is no good reason for Apple to prevent third-party applications from being backgrounded. Oh, people might talk about there being insufficient memory to run lots of applications at once, or how much battery it would suck, but those are bogus arguments. Safari will let you have as many complex web pages open as you like, sucking up all the memory, and you can run the battery-hungry iPod application in the background. And if resource constraints really were a problem, it could always notify the user when he asked his phone to do something it couldn't.
Onto other matters for which there is no good reason for Apple to behave the way it does. The App Store. Unless you jailbreak your phone, the only way to get applications onto it is via Apple's online "App Store". And to get your app onto the App Store, you need to pay Apple an up-front fee, let them vet your application, and - if you charge for the application - pay Apple a percentage. Of these, only the third one is entirely justified.
First of all, the up-front fee: this supposedly acts as a barrier to keep free crap off the phones. But it doesn't. There are lots of crappy applications, both free and payware. And in any case, that's what Apple's application vetting procedures are meant to be all about. All the fee does is prevent people from giving away really good apps. On PalmOS, there were loads of really good free apps, often very specialised. One of my favourites was Tide Tool, which I used to figure out when would be a good time to go to the beach. I know that if I had a similarly cool app that I wanted to give away, I wouldn't pay USD100 for the privelege.
Second, their vetting of applications: this would be a good idea if done right. For example, someone's first application should be vetted rigourously for spyware and bugs, and it's reasonable to expect this to take a certain amount of time - even several weeks. Second and subsequent apps should likewise be vetted for obvious bugs. But Apple also take several weeks to approve of bug fixes. Within the first week of me getting my iPhone, I reported serious bugs in two applications. One crashed and lost data under certain circumstances, the other is a public transport route-planner that contained out-of-date routing data. That was two months ago. Both application authors thanked me for the bug reports. Both apps are still buggy, because the fixed versions are still awaiting Apple's blessing. So because of Apple's disfunctional "quality control" vetting procedure, Apple's users are at danger of losing their data and being sent to the wrong places. They really need to sort that out.
But notwithstanding all those criticisms, there are some very good applications available. I'll list just a few of them that I think you might find useful:
To-do list. Shouldn't need to exist because this functionality should be built-in to the phone, but it's very well done and integrates very well with the same company's online service;
Route planner for London public transport. Not just for buses, although it has special features for them, it also works for tubes and trains, looking at timetables to find the quickest route for your chosen departure/arrival time;
Live scorecards from internationals and English domestic first-class games. I'm really surprised that Cricinfo don't have something like this, but their app is rubbish, only covering internationals;
There are also loads of good games. I found this quite surprising, but the iPhone turns out to be a very good video games platform. This is mostly because it is so resource-constrained - a small screen, limited controls, limited CPU - that game designers are concentrating on game play again, and not just on who can shit out the most pixels per second in yet another tiresome sub-standard overly-complex Doom-clone with eleventy-million controls. I'm particularly fond of Flight Control, Harbor (sic) Master, Geared, Tower Bloxx, and Brick Breaker, all of which are dirt cheap and I encourage you to visit the EVIL BROKEN HATEFUL App Store and check them out.
* if you jailbreak your phone, other apps can be made to do this too
Posted at 14:50:17
by David Cantrell keywords: iphone | phone | review
Over all, the user interface is good. It's uncluttered, and navigation is easy, but some features are rather poorly implemented.
Managing settings could be better organised. Apple provide a way for applications to drop their own "preference panes" into the global Settings application. Unfortunately, not all apps actually do this - some have it as a seperate screen inside the app - so unless you remember which app works which way, you have to guess which is which. I can see why Apple let apps stuff their preferences into the Settings app, but if that's what they want developers to do then they should enforce it. That sort of quality control is what their acting as gatekeeper to the App Store should be all about. My own preference, however, would be for apps to not do that. Given that third-party apps can't run in the background, then changing settings inside the app is most sensible, as when you realise you need to change a setting, you wouldn't have to quit the app, go elsewhere to fiddle with it, then start the app again.
Those poorly implemented bits of the user interface are many, and I'll just mention a couple of them. Most of them are simply to do with features being entirely undocumented, with no visual cues that they might exist. For example, if you want to type é, it's easy, you just hold your finger down on e on the on-screen keyboard until a little menu pops up, then slide your finger to the right letter. This is so useful, but I only discovered it by accident.
And then there's the terrible implementation of copy and paste. The much-vaunted cut-n-paste that Apple unaccountably left out of earlier versions but now trumpet as being a reason to buy from them (as if no-one else offered it!) relies on you double-tapping the screen very precisely. Given that you have to use the fleshy part of your fingertip and not a stylus, this is almost impossible, and so it's a lottery whether you get the cut/copy/paste popup, or the select all popup, or whether it selects some random blob of text and gives you the cut/copy/paste popup. Madness. What's wrong with having a drop-down menu at the top of the screen and mandating that applications leave that area alone? That area normally contains a clock, battery level indicator, and signal strength indicator, so that's Useful Information that should be left alone anyway.
Posted at 19:39:28
by David Cantrell keywords: iphone | phone | review
Turn your brain off, because there's no art here, precious little story, some really bad effects (and some really good ones, which make the bad ones even worse), so-so acting. That sounds exactly like a review of Starship Troopers doesn't it. I loved starship Troopers. And I loved Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus too. In amongst all the cinematic gourmet meals on my DVD shelves, this is a gigantic burger with loads of gherkins, and both ketchup and mustard. And I don't care that it's bad for me.
Update: 2 Sep 2009: it has been brought to my attention that I may have to add a disclaimer that my review of this film was influenced by drugs. Namely two bottles of wine.
Posted at 23:34:22
by David Cantrell keywords: film | review
Despite the date on this journal entry, I'm actually writing it nearly a month later, because I'm a goddamned slacker. However, in the middle of August I went to an Amrut tasting. Amrut, as you will of course know, and so I don't really need to explain this to you, are a whisky distiller from India - Bangalore specifically. They make a damned fine dram, which I was introduced to in a pub in Northshire a few years ago. I was keen to try some of their other bottlings.
We had eight drams in a blind tasting, plus a sample of Amrut's new make spirit. Of the eight, only six were Amruts.
Amrut new make spirit: this isn't something that you'll ever find in the shops, or even particularly want to drink, but it's interesting to compare it to the actual products that come from it. The nose was overwhelmingly acetone.
Amrut single malt, 46%: the nose is lubricating oil, the taste reminded me of good cider brandy / calvados. A very short, almost non-existent finish. Benefits from adding a little water, and is very drinkable indeed but nothing special. 6/10. This is almost the same as that first Amrut I had Way Back, although they've tweaked the strength slightly which can make a difference.
Glenfarclas 10yo: nothing really stood out in the nose, although with water there's some coal smoke. The taste included eucalyptus. The finish was salty, although not too much, and had something of a dentist's surgery about it. Only 4/10.
Amrut cask strengh, 61.9%: the nose is honey, violets, perhaps some brandy. The taste, coal, salt, hot spices. The finish very long. Slightly meaty without water, but with water like a sweet n sour takeaway - from a good takeaway. 7/10.
Amrut Fusion, 50%: this uses a mixture of Indian and a peated Scottish barley. The taste was of the sea and spice, the finish huge, with smoked eel. 8/10.
Amrut peated, 46%: this is made with Scottish barley, in India. Their other expressions use Indian barley. The nose was currants and heather. The taste dry, with pervasive light smoke, and mint. With water the smoke became rather over-powering and slightly bitter - thankfully it's at a reasonable strength so there's no need to water it. 9/10.
Bowmore Legend: carbolic soap and a slightly acrid nose. The taste smoke, bacon, cocoa nibs. 7/10.
Amrut peated, cask strength 62.8%: great on the nose with rum and spice, but so strong it needs water. And unfortunately when you add water it just goes to shit. 5/10.
Amrut Two Continents, 46%: this gimicky whisky is matured first in India, then shipped to "a secret location" in Europe for more maturing. The nose is floral, the taste fresh and summery, perhaps slightly barbecuey. Unfortunately only 4/10, and my notes have a gigantic "MEH" scribbled on them.
Those of you paying attention will have noticed that the one I rated the best was a peated Amrut, which I rated higher than the Bowmore. And I'm pleased to see that my original high regard for Amrut didn't subconsciously include marking it higher just because I wasn't expecting an Indian whisky to be any good.
The nice people at AntibodyMX said they'd de-spamify my email for me for free provided I wrote a review. They didn't say it had to be a good review :-) so I took them up on it.
I've previously been rather sceptical about such services. There are obvious concerns about privacy from having all your mail go through someone elses systems instead of going - as far as is possible - straight from the sender to you. If you use TLS (and you should) then even if your mail transits someone elses network, they won't be able to read it. With an outsourced service like AntibodyMX's, they can, because mail is sent to them and they then forward it on to me. That they can see the plain-text of my email is, however, necessary for the filtering to work. And in practice, it's not a significant concern at least for individuals, because my mail just isn't that interesting.
My other source for scepticism was that they probably couldn't do a better job than I could. Indeed, because their service has to work for everyone there are ways in which they can only possibly do a worse job at filtering mail than I can. For example, I can throw away all mail in Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Hebrew, because all mail in those languages is unreadable so even if it's not spam (yeah right) I still don't lose out by ignoring it. They can't do that, because I'm sure they have some customers who get some legitimate mail in weird languages that aren't written right. Without tools like that, then surely they can't do a better job than me - after all, the software they use is the same that's availabe to me, and I've been successfully de-spammifying my email for years.
So why did I switch? Simply because I got fed up maintaining my anti-spam systems. They eat valuable memory and CPU - and eat more by the day as I have to keep adding more filters to combat spammers' evil imaginations. Maintaining all that takes time. Due to having more interesting things to do, I was beginning to fall behind on keeping my filters up to date, and more spam was sneaking through. When I got the offer to use their services for free, I decided to take them up on it. After all, there's no real downside. If it doesn't work as well as advertised, I can trivially switch back to doing the job myself.
But I won't be switching back to doing the job myself. The AntibodyMX service Just Works.
That, however, is with the service being free. It's a different matter entirely if you have to pay for it. According to their website, prices start at £115 a year. When you think about how much time your company's sysadmins put in to spam control, it's a no-brainer and is easily worth paying. It's only really worth thinking about if privacy is particularly important to you. I wouldn't want, for example, my doctor or solicitor or MP to use any such service. Not because they can't trust the service providers, but because they shouldn't trust anybody. Doubly so if using a service provider in another country.
For personal use I think £115 would be a bit steep. It is worth paying for, I'm just not sure how much I'd shell out.
Posted at 16:44:20
by David Cantrell keywords: geeky | review | spam
I was surprised when I realised that I hadn't actually read this. I wish I still hadn't. It is tediously repetitive - for example, at the beginning of chapter 10 he says " This book is mainly about evolution as the solution of the complex 'design' problem; evolution as the true explanation for the phenomena that [William] Paley thought proved the existence of a divine watchmaker. This is why I keep going on about eyes and echo-location. " We already knew from the first few pages what the book was about! But not only does each chapter repeat stuff from previous chapters, each chapter also repeats stuff from earlier in the chapter. The editor was obviously asleep when this manuscript came in. Thankfully, it's not a very important book so you don't have to read it. The same author's "Climbing Mount Improbable" is a much better-written exposition of the same subject matter.
2. Utopia, by Thomas More (trans from the Latin by Paul Turnet)
This short story is, depending on who you ask, an early Communist manifesto, or a Catholic apology, or a veiled criticism of domestic English politics, or ... well, just about anything really. Arguments for and against some of these are well-covered in the very accessible introduction, along with a brief portrait of the man himself - he looks like a jolly interesting (if occasionally barking mad) chap, so I shall have to look for a full biography.
The work itself was influential enough to give its name (which means "No [such] place") to a genre - utopian works these days are those that purport to describe a perfect happy society. They are sometimes self-contradictory, usually fanciful, often ridiculous, and always betray the author's prejudices. The grandfather of them all has all of these flaws in spades.
It's particularly interesting that while More was executed for opposing Henry VIII's split with Rome, and was even declared a martyr and saint by the Roman church, that quite early in the book there are some strident condemnations of Catholic practice - " most of [Christ's] teaching is far more at variance with modern conventions than anything I suggested, except in so far as his doctrines have been modified by ingenious teachers, doubtless on [the church hierarchy's] recommendation " for example. Or when analysing who actually does the work that keeps society running, he lists amongst the lazy " all the priests and members of religious orders ", who do nothing to produce what is needed for a comfortable life. And that last clause is Saint Thomas More speaking, not me.
In his description of the physical and political setup of Utopia, who does what work, the Utopians relations with their neighbours and so on, More's vision is, if admittedly ridiculous and putting (just like most socialist and christian writers) far too much faith in human nature, but it is at least fairly consistent.
But the Utopians' social structure and religious outlook are contradictory. Much is made of their placing high value on human life and that all people are equal. But on the other hand, women are subservient to men and must confess their sins to their husbands. And More makes the very surprising mistake (surprising in that such an obviously intelligent person would make it even though it was a common fallacy of his time and indeed still is among certain contemporary morons) of assuming that atheists have no incentive to behave like decent people. According to him, because they lack the fear of eternal damnation, atheists will look out solely for themselves and ruthlessly exploit everyone else for their own pleasure, and that this is a Bad Thing. This is obviously false. Being nice to people is pleasurable even when the recipient of your grace is a stranger. Additionally, being nice to people means that people will be kindly disposed to you and behave decently towards you in turn - being a nice person generates its own worldly reward.
Of course, in all that I'm sure I'm just as guilty as those I mentioned in the first paragraph, and have simply read my own prejudices into More's words. I invite you to do the same and commend this book to you.
Let me also commend this book as an instruction manual to the scoundrels who lurk in Parliament and the Inns of Court. More's ideal society believes that the entire set of laws and regulations of a society must be short and clear enough to be readable and comprehensible in toto to a normal person, and that normal people should represent themselves in court. In fact, there are no lawyers at all.
This is a delightfully silly romp, much as one would expect from Turtledove. The premise is absurd, but once that's over and done with the tale is enjoyable, if also lacking in any merit whatsoever. But who cares? I certainly don't.
Not as well-formed as the previous work, this doesn't feel like a single novel, and while I am sure it makes a good bridge from the previous to the next volume in the series, it certainly doesn't work at all well on its own. And that's despite the short "What has gone before" at the beginning. That's something that more authors of series should write.
PIM stands for Personal Information Management, one of the key features of any smart-phone. I am perhaps rather spoiled by coming from the Palm world, which is generally very highly regarded for the quality of its PIM applications. But even so, the iPhone is supposed to be better than the Palm, and it certainly competes with Palm - even if Palm haven't released a new smart-phone in years - and so I think it's fair to compare the two.
There are three main categories of data that a PIM needs to handle: a diary, a list of contacts, and to-do lists. A modern smart-phone also normally adds email. Of those, to-do lists are completely missing from the iPhone. The list of contacts is done well, and integrates nicely with the phone side of things and with email. The diary is adequate, although with problems, and the email client is just awful.
Thankfully, you can fix one of those problems by downloading one of many third-party to-do list applications from the App Store. I chose Toodle-do, mostly because it's about the cheapest you can find that has the crucial feature of notifying me when one of my tasks is overdue.
The diary works, but has one fairly serious problem compared to the Palm. Namely, it isn't possible to add an alarm to all new events by default - you have to remember to add them by hand; and when you do add an alarm, you are restricted in when you can have them. In the Palm world, you can set an alarm for anything between 1 and 99 minutes, or 1 and 99 hours, or even 1 and 99 days before an event. On the iPhone you are restricted to 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, one or two hours, or one or two days. Ludicrous! It's especially ludicrous when the iPhone does in fact support other alarm times, you just have to set them using iCal on your desktop. How hard could it have been to let the user set them on the phone too?
The email application is just terrible. And it could be fixed so easily. When you configure it to use an IMAP mail server, the first thing it does is scan all the folders it can find, and build up a tree of what's available so that you can then subscribe to those mailboxes you want to have on your phone. Trouble is, if like me you have a lot of mailboxes (and things it thinks are mailboxes but aren't, they're just stored alongside them) it takes a long time to build that tree, and sometimes the app crashes. Worse, if it does successfully build the tree, it then displays it with everything fully expanded. This is obviously unusable when there are several thousand items in the tree it has erroneously built! A simple solution, one used by other clients such as Thunderbird, would be to only scan the level of the tree that is currently selected. This would save memory (which is in short supply on the iPhone) as well as improving the user experience by making it appear faster and be easier to navigate. Thankfully, it can cope with a Gmail account. And while I would never use Gmail to receive mail - what? give a company that might lose interest in the service, in a foreign country which has no effective privacy laws, access to all my personal mail? I think not! - it's usable for sending the occasional message.
Posted at 14:00:36
by David Cantrell keywords: iphone | phone | review
Fed up with waiting for Palm to release their shiny new phone which has been promised for ages but doesn't actually exist yet, and being impressed by some of the apps available, I decided to get myself an iPhone 3GS. Over the next few days and weeks I'll post several short reviews of various bits of its functionality.
First up, the "iPod" functionality. Apple claim that the iPhone is also an iPod - "it's a phone, an iPod and an internet device in one". I suppose this is the first and most obvious lie I've found in all their blurb about it. It quite clearly can not be used as an iPod, because it doesn't have the capacity to store all my music (unlike an iPod) and has no "shuffle albums" feature. So I'll need to carry an iPod as well. Not that that's a problem, I knew I'd have to do that because of the very small storage capacity, but having no album shuffle is a serious design flaw. I'm sure that the sort of achingly hip people who work at Apple don't realise this, because they only listen to "hip-hop", and so 99% of their songs sound exactly the same. But it's kinda important for those of us who listen to actual music. It is important to listen to a symphony from start to finish before automatically moving on to the next work.
But good news on the ipod front, having an ipod-like device with a big screen has made me realise what podcasts are all about. My journeys to work for the next few days are going to be enlivened by Mr. Deity.
Carrying on from where the first book in the series left off, this is really the second half of the story that the previous volume started. As such, it makes some things rather clearer which were just confusing in the first installment, although not all - but then, there are more sequels to come. Overall, this and its predecessor combine to make one satisfying story which I have no hesitation in recommending to you.
But that's a recommendation for the two books together. This one won't work well in isolation.
Number three in the series, this book really takes its time to get going, but after a hundred pages of meh it picks up and is back to the pace and quality of its pre-decessor. Again, like The Hidden Family this is the first half of a larger story that got split for some reason, but the split is handled better this time, ending on a nice cliff-hanger but without too many loose ends. As the third installment in a large series, there is of course the problem of how to bring a new reader up to speed who hasn't read the earlier volumes, but this is done without the repetition being too irritating for someone who has started at the beginning. My only niggle is that some exposition is handled somewhat maladroitly as "transcripts" of bugged conversations, but these transcripts (and the organisations and people making them) aren't obviously used. Perhaps they'll show up in a later volume. But I can forgive this, as to a large extent these solve the problem I noted in The Family Trade, that the plots and schemes within plots and schemes are too opaque to the reader. These serve to remove the veils somewhat. Again, I recommend it, but with the proviso that it will work a lot better if you've read the previous two books.
Starting at the moment the previous volume left off, there's not much to say about this volume other than that it's full of juicy goodness, and again ends on something of a cliff-hanger. It was great fun to read, suffering from the well-known problem good books have of keeping me awake until sunrise as I compulsively turned the pages. BAD AUTHOR, NO BIKKIT! But I don't think it'll work at all in isolation. Recommended if you've read the previous books, but not otherwise.
This second book in what is so far a thoroughly enjoyable series is perhaps even better than the first. The protagonist is an utter bastard, who knows full well that what he does is morally questionable, but does it anyway for the greater good. His character is reinforced by the writing style - the story is told in the first person in a very matter-of-fact voice.
The story moves along well at a good pace, with with lots of action to back up "Jack"'s thorough investigation of his targets, and this should appeal both to lovers of scifi/fantasy and to fans of action heroes such as James Bond. Two thumbs up!
Having recently read The Iliad it's only sensible to move on to the Odyssey. The Odyssey is a much more approaching book for a modern reader. Of the flaws I noted in the Iliad, all are either absent or minimised in the Odyssey. There is still some waffle, although nowhere near as much, and characters are prone to speechifying when a simple "thankyou" would suffice.
The only real criticisms I have are that there is a ridiculous amount of gift-giving; that Odysseus is a pathological liar; and that the end is very abrupt.
On the first point: yes, I am aware that the story is set in a radically different society to that which we are now blessed with, and that people often demonstrate their wealth by ostentatious generosity. However, I think this goes too far. For example, while staying with the Phaeacian king, he is not only given gifts by the king, butthe king commands everyone else present to also give him equally generous gifts.
The second, while playing a legitimate part in the story, as it is through guile and deceit that Odysseus gains admittance to his own home as it is being despoiled by yahoos, is taken too far and shows the hero in a poor light. In particular, when he is finally reunited with his father, Odysseus tells outrageous lies, putting his father in some distress. I'm afraid I'm with the Romans on this, Odysseus was a really rather obnoxious and dishonorable fellow.
The second installment in Weber's "Safehold" series is just as enjoyable as the first. As I expected, he has rather condensed real-world history, combining the Henrician reformation and the beginning of the industrial revolution into one movement. The story moves along at a surprisingly swift pace, given that there is little of the action that permeated the first volume.
There are also very obvious parallels with some of the author's "Honorverse" series. But this does not detract from the story - the concepts are re-worked to fit in with the different background, and the very well done world-building means that those parts still feel fresh.
The only real criticisms I had are that it finishes on a very annoying cliff-hanger, unlike the previous book, and so can't be read in isolation. And another barrier to reading it in isolation in that there is precious little background information on "Merlin" and the society's technological proscriptions, until quite a way in.
Definitely worth reading, but you should read the previous volume first.
Predictably for Turtledove, this is an enjoyable "alternate history" of little literary merit. The premise is that the Spanish Armada succeeded, England has been ruled by Spanish puppets for a decade, and now plotters are scheming to put Elizabeth I back on the throne, using Shakespeare's plays to stir up the mob. The book is therefore replete with puns and lines lifted straight from Shakespeare's oeuvre - Turtledove has clearly done his research, and judging by his notes at the end I probably missed quite a bit that he lifted from lesser-known Elizabethan sources. Those borrowings will definitely raise a chuckle from the literate reader, at least to start with. However, that reader will end up irritated by the dialogue, which is almost entirely rendered in faux-Elizabethan stage-English. It doesn't detract much from the story though so if you can grit your teeth and carry on, this is worth a read. Once.
I bought this as a present for a friend's sprog, mostly on the recommendation of another author, David Weber, who raved about it in some notes at the end of one of his books. In the end, I didn't give it, as I thought, having read the first few pages, that the book was, at the time, a little advanced for the kiddy in question. But now a coupla years later I've finished reading it myself. As it's a childrens' book, it is of course a very simple tale. But it is charmingly told, in plain simple English, and was a pleasant diversion for a couple of hours even for cynical old me. Worth buying.
Very much a product of its time (it was published in 1964), this is nevertheless a good read. That's despite the heroic spaceman being ever so heroic and resourceful, capable of arguing ethics, wielding a broadsword, fixing a steam engine and familiar with all branches of primitive science. There are continuity errors, and even obviously ridiculous points such as people speaking Esperanto, but at its core there is a story of human ingenuity and relationships being used to surmount technological difficulties. Which is what good sci-fi always boils down to.
Yes, that William Morris. This is his attempt at writing a Utopia. The world he describes is a rural "idyll" which doesn't look particularly idyllic to me, in which private property has been abolished. As a window into Morris's mind, it's really quite good - his naivety, scorn of science, worship of those who work the land, and his extreme Luddism come through loud and clear. But as a novel it's really not very good. It consists mostly of rather stilted expository dialogue, all the major characters speaking with the same voice and agreeing strongly with each other. Apart from lots of jawing, little happens. It is worth reading as a way of getting to know the man behind the artworks, but I'm really glad that it's so short.
If ever you needed proof that you can judge a book by its cover, this is it. Certainly if I'd seen the cover before buying it second-hand I'd not have wasted my money on this rubbish - the cover art is a map of Europe superimposed on a swastika, surrounded by candles, and impaled with a dagger. And it's all about how Hitler's invasion of the UK was thwarted by witches. Oh dear. So, the author starts with a stupid idea for a plot, and then it gets worse. Relationships between characters are not clear, the most ridiculous conspiracies are only found out when convenient, and the reader does not feel the slightest bit of sympathy for the characters no matter how hard they wail.
I'm on my way to Oop North, and decided to take a rather round-about route via the Lake District. This was partly because driving over Wrynose and Hardknott passes is Fun, and partly Just Because.
After coming over those passes, I arrived at the Woolpack Inn, and the western end of Hardknott pass, in the late afternoon, gagging for a pint, and after ascertaining that there was a room available for the night I went to the bar. Now, one of the reasons that I stopped at the Woolpack instead of carrying on into the village of Boot was that the Woolpack has its own brewery - the Hardknott Brewery - advertised in big black letters on the pub and easily visible from the road. Surprisingly, they only had two of their own beers on tap, although there's one more in bottles. Of the two I tried, the Mild was somewhat disappointing, but the "Wooly Fusion" I tried next was really very special indeed. It's a light hoppy bitter with a bit of ginger in it - very nice indeed to drink outside in the sun. Unfortunately it's not available in bottles. If it had been, I'd have got a crate of the stuff to take home with me.
The bar has ten hand pumps, all of which were selling beers I'd not seen elsewhere, from local breweries, and those others that I tried were all very good. In particular the "Stout Ollie" from the Ulverston Brewery is excellent. While there are three lager taps, they're all tolerably decent lagers - none of the usual Fosters/Carling swill here. The soft drinks are also somewhat unusual - Fentimans lemonade, for example, instead of the usual carbonated sugar-water, and there's Dandelion and Burdock.
There's also a fairly extensive whisky menu. None of the bottlings are particularly unusual - although it's good to see a non-Scottish malt on the list (Connemara, from Ireland) and the only recently available Ben Riach - but there are a lot of them. 29 of them.
And finally the food. The menu was short and sweet, concentrating on local produce served in imaginative ways. For example, as a starter I had smoked trout with a herby sorbet. Yes, sorbet. It was very nice, and I shall try to replicate it when I get home. For dessert I had a Thing which had a biscuit base, with a generous helping of a local mild blue cheese on top, all coated in dark chocolate. That's another that I shall try to replicate, and will also see if I can figure out a way of serving it with the cheese hot. I knew I'd find a way of using a soldering iron in the kitchen! You may notice that I don't have much to say about the main course - it was competently done and well-presented, but not as special as the others. That's not to say that it was bad, merely that it was only good compared with the very good starter and dessert.
Can you tell that I liked it? I commend this pub to you!
There's not much to say about this, other than that it's a very accessible book, and a delight to read, unlike most autobiographies. Lee tells the tale of his life simply and with a gentle wit. Perhaps my only little complaint is that this is an expanded version of an earlier edition of his autobiography (previously sold as Tall, Dark and Gruesome) and the new material, largely concerning his roles as Count Dooku in Star Wars and Saruman in The Lord of the Rings lack warmth, appearing to be more like a third-party account of what happened, than a first-person view.
2. The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter
This is rightly hailed as a classic, being one of the clearest accounts of day-to-day Roman life for those outside the nobility and political and military elite during the Empire. And of course it is a fine example of political satire, with many subtle and not-so-subtle digs at public figures and writers of the era. All of this makes it a great academic read. And as such, I enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, it's a lousy novel. That's not the author's fault, but is simply because large chunks of the text have been lost over the last 1900 years so there are jarring gaps. While we can, to a limited extent, reconstruct parts of it, all that tells us is what the broad arc of the story might have been. It does not restore the text. You could cut chunks out of any good story, and then largely rebuild the tale, but if you were to read it with those chunks missing (which is the case with my copy of the Satyricon, which lacks even the briefest of inline notes about the missing sections) it would still not be a good read. It's almost a pity that the practice of translators/editors filling in the blanks themselves, making them up out of whole cloth, hasn't taken off, at least for mass-market paperbacks. But then, I suppose, there isn't a mass-market because it's not about some ghastly footballer or pig-faced slag from Essex.
One only for those with an academic interest in the era.
The cover of my copy says it's a fantasy, despite the crucial points all stemming from technological differences between worlds, demonstrating once again that there's no real difference between sci-fi and fantasy. Those differences, and restricted travel between worlds, lead to what I'm sure will be an excellent story in a well-developed universe with sympathetic fleshed-out characters. But it is let down by two things. First, the plots and schemes within plots and schemes are terribly opaque. Second, they're not made clearer by the book stopping so abruptly without a firm conclusion. This seems to be an editorial decision - apparently The Family Trade and its sequel "The Hidden Family" were originally written as one novel, but were published seperately. I hope that once I've read The Hidden Family things will be made much clearer.
Despite those reservations, I still enjoyed reading this, and recommend it.
Wolfram Alpha is the shiny new knowledge search thing from the makers of the excellent (if mis-spelled) Mathworld. It claims to be a "computational knowledge engine".
It fails.
The first three things I tried searching for it got hopelessly wrong.
First, my name. Apparently "David" is a surname. So it displayed some basic stats for the David and Cantrell surnames, although uselessly limited to some far-off foreign land. What it should have done is say "that's not something I can use in computation".
Second, my date of birth. It correctly parsed 1973-11-28 as the 28th of November 1973 (I was expecting it to calculate 1973 minus 11 minus 28, which would have also been correct) but then let itself down terribly in the date formats department. It displayed the stupid middle-endian 11/28/1973 (it should have detected my preferred language, which my browser told them was en-gb, and so displayed 28/11/1973) but that's not too bad an error. However, in the "more formats" section it has all kinds of ridiculous calendars and formats, it even has the "star sign" (something that is the very antithesis of knowledge coming from a "computational knowledge engine" - nice!), but it doesn't display the date normally anywhere on the page. Predictably it also ignores my preferred language when I ask it about 10/7/2000. But this time it does at least acknowledge that I might mean the 10th of July. However, it should have picked that up automatically, or at least displayed both interpretations. And it is amusingly inconsistent that it acknowledges the existence of DD/MM/YYYY in one place but not others. Internationalisation fail.
Finally, my parents' home town. It picks the right Bexhill out of its database unlike Google which, until quite recently, thought I meant a town in New South Wales even when I used google.co.uk. But it thinks it's a city. FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL. Not only does it not have a Charter, but it also lacks all the other attributes that are popularly and traditionally associated with cities - namely a cathedral, a large population, and a university. It gets even stupider if I ask it about my home town. It thinks that both Thornton and Heath are surnames, and the link to "use as a city instead" provides data about a town (called Thornton) and a village (called Heath) in Foreignistan. The closest it can get to what I meant is the villages of Thornton (in Fife) and Heath (in Foreignistan). EPIC FAIL. Again, what it should have done is say "that's not something I can use in computation".
Posted at 11:06:07
by David Cantrell keywords: review
This evening I went to a Nikka tasting at The Whisky Exchange in Vinopolis. Nikka being a Japanese whisky distillery company. I realise that some people will be horrified at the idea of me drinking whisky from anywhere but Scotland, but, I'll have you know, the Japanese make some crackers. As do the Irish, Welsh and Indians. I've heard good things about a Swedish whisky too, and am very much looking forward to trying something from the St. George's Distillery in a few years time.
[update: I've been asked to mention that the Uppity Colonials also make good whiskey. Unlike the less uppity northern Colonials.]
But on to my rather brief tasting notes.
From the Barrel: this blended whisky (Nikka own two malt whisky distilleries and one grain distillery; this uses all three) is a little beauty. The nose is all honey, but the taste is fire and salt, with sap and resin in the finish. A fairly strong 51.4%, but would make a good whisky to spend several hours drinking and chatting.
Pure malt "black label": a rather uninspiring nose that smelt of, well, whisky. I didn't really get anything else from it, so was prepared to be disappointed. It had a little peat, with the dominant flavours being salt and sweet. With water, it became sweeter and less salty. Quite a delicate dram, and quite different from the robust whiskies I normally go for, but I liked this a lot.
Pure malt "white label": the nose was hard to describe - eventually we decided it was soap, hospitals and bandages. The taste, however, was utterly different. The whole mouth fills with violets and roses, like having a boozy liquid Turkish delight. This is an awesome whisky.
Finally two ten year old single malts, one from Nikka's Miyagikyo distillery, the other from Yoichi. After having three out of four of the "impure" whiskies turn out to be stunners, I was expecting these to be really very good indeed, especially given how highly I know others rate Yoichi. But I was disappointed. Neither was particularly special, the Yoichi edging slightly ahead with a nice loooooong sweet finish.
This first-hand account of the battle of El Alamein by a tank commander who was also a well-regarded poet is well worth reading. While it is rather more gung-ho, the closest parallel I can think of is some of Wilfred Owen's poetry from the Western Front of the previous round of Unpleasantness. I was particularly struck by something that is very common in real military memoirs but almost entirely absent from fictional ones: that soldiers - even officers - rarely know what's going on, are frequently confused, spend far more time waiting around than they do fighting, and that their biggest enemy is often the environment as opposed to the other side's soldiers. Some of the confusion seeps through to the pages. In a very short book, it is sometimes hard to keep track of who is who in Douglas's squadron, but whereas in a work of fiction that would be terribly important, in this true account it really doesn't matter - the overall impression is what counts. In short, this is one of the few books that I can whole-heartedly recommend to absolutely everyone, no matter whether your normal diet is great literature or formulaic pot-boiler thrillers. Buy it. Now.
This is the third time I've read this. Well, the third time I've started reading it, and the second time I've finished it. The first was when I was at school, when we had to translate the first book from Latin into English. I hated it because I resented "wasting my time" on Latin - something that I deeply regret now. The second was an English prose translation, and I hated it, for reasons that I shall enumerate later. This time was, again, an English prose translation (the Project Gutenberg edition, translated by Samuel Butler) and this time the things that I hated previously were merely irritating, although Butler introduces a new irritation.
That new irritation is that although he's translating a Greek tale from Greek into English - not going via an intermediate Latin rendering - he uses Roman names for the gods, whereas I'm more familiar and comfortable with Greek names. And worse, Jupiter is rendered in the English familiar form Jove. Grrr. But perhaps his late-Victorian audience preferred his way. 'Tis a very minor quibble.
But on to the work itself. It is a story of a small part of the final stages of a war in antiquity between the peoples of Greece (confusingly called by three different interchangeable names none of which is "Greeks" - irritation number one) and the Trojans, who are these days thought to be Hittites living in what is now Turkey. This took place (and there is some archaeological evidence for the war of the story being at least partially based on real history) in the late 1100s BC, when bronze was still the metal of choice with iron being rare and valuable - at one point a noble defeated in combat says "take me alive ... and you shall have a ransom ... of gold, bronze and wrought iron". There are no iron weapons. The story concentrates on relationships between people, interspersed with bloody combat, the most important relationship being between Agamemnom, leader of the Greek army, and Achilles, his mightiest warrior. Agamemnon dishonours Achilles, who then instead of fighting goes and sulks in his tent. His absence allows the Trojans, lead on the field by Hector, to almost drive the Greeks into the sea, while the Greek leaders spend at least as much time sulking, arguing, and trying in vain to patch up Agamemnon and Achilles' relationship. Eventually, Achilles permits his close friend Patroclus to fight wearing Achilles' armour. Hector kills Patroclus and so Achilles' desire for personal revenge overcomes his hatred of Agamemnon, so he rejoins the fight, which immediately swings back in the Greeks' favour, and kills Hector. The story ends not with the famous wooden horse and the sacking of Troy (that is covered in other Homeric-era works), but with the funeral of Patroclus and the ransoming and funeral of Hector's body, and the hitherto cold-hearted Achilles thawing somewhat. While the details are obviously archaic, the broad outline - a war serving as background for a study in human weaknesses and stupidity, punctuated by colourful battle scenes - wouldn't be out of place in the ouevre of many a modern writer.
Another strand throughout - less important, but it still adds depth to the tale - is the human players' petty jealousies and bickering being mirrored amongst the gods. They aren't the wise all-knowing beings that modern readers might expect, they are mirrors of humanity, subject to all their faults and while powerful they are still limited by Fate. While they do interfere in the affairs of men, they cannot, when someone is fated to die, do anything about it.
But on to the irritations. There are three major ones. First, characters are not referred to by consistent names. Sometimes Achilles is Achilles, but at others he is "the son of Peleus", for example. This makes it harder for the reader - or in Homer's time the listener - to keep track of who's doing what to who, at least at first. Perhaps this was done to maintain the poet's desired meter in the original, but no modern writer would do it.
The second is that some of the battle scenes degenerate into something similar to the Bible's Book of Begats. These are often of the form X slew Y son of Z, who [biographical note, sometimes quite lengthy], and his armour rang rattling around him. Then X slew P son of Q, who [another biographical note], and his armour rang rattling around him. Then X slew A son of B and C, who [oh god, another biographical note about a minor character whose only appearance is when he gets killed here], and his armour rang rattling around him. If some bard was to narrate that part of the tale at one of my feasts, I'd be shouting "Get on with it!". Again, no modern writer would expect to get away with this - if he tried it, his editor would slap him down.
And finally, there's so much waffle. As the poem was originally delivered orally, I presume that the bard was paid by the hour, and repetitive waffle served to fill his wallet without much work, while also serving to make the story seem comfortable and familiar to the audience. But even so, some of the waffle is really over the top. For example, at one point Hector is looking for his wife Andromache, so asks his women-servants "women, tell me, and tell me true, where did Andromache go when she left the house? Was it to my sisters, or to my brothers' wives? or is she at the temple of Minerva where the other women are propitiating the awful goddess?". Of course, if this episode ever happened, what Hector actually said was "do you know where my wife is?". At another point, Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon, after pausing during the battle to take his freshly dead victim's armour (valuable booty! - remember, bronze, while being a useful substance for armour and weapons was also highly valued), he hangs around for even longer to make a great speech, wittering on for almost a page before rejoining the fray. In reality, he would have said "Hah!". But silliest of all, at a few points, someone will be going on and on and on about how he just killed someone, or how he's about to kill someone, and one of his colleagues will shout "Get on with it!" - only his version of "Get on with it" will be more like "Meriones, hero though you be, you should not speak thus; taunting speeches, my good friend, will not make the Trojans draw away [blah blah long speech blah]".
But those are just irritations. Since the last time I read it, I have gained a greater appreciation for the era and the text, so they no longer really spoil it for me. I can ignore them, skipping over the most tedious bits. I commend this work to you.
In some ways this is an improvement on its predecessor - the minor quibbles I had are largely absent from this sequel and the scene is set solely by action and conversation, not by also adding irritating linguistic tricks. That's not to say that it's great literature though. Far from it in fact. But it's a thoroughly enjoyable light-hearted read.
As you would expect from reading Weber's other books, the world that he constructs to host his tale is very large, and with few exceptions is consistent and logical. And also as you would expect there's plenty of naval action and people clewing in the top-gallants on the focs'l yards and whatnot. It's a fantasy, but being by Weber it has a sci-fi back-story - one that isn't particularly important to the story itself. The theme for the whole series is fairly obvious - it's going to follow its world through an *ever* so close analogue of our Reformation and Enlightenment, although I suspect that this world will go from galleons to exploring the galaxy in only a coupla hundred years at most. This, the first installment in the series (there's one other volume already published, and the third is due out later this year) was enjoyable. I do worry, however, that he's going to shadow real history rather too closely. The politics and theology we've already seen certainly does. If that's the case, then he's going to try to cram a hell of a lot of material into the books, and in this and in a couple of his Honorverse books he has shown something of a tendency for expository rambling and too much political intrigue. But hey, I enjoyed it anyway, and have already ordered the next book.
But I do have one request for Mr. Weber. Yes, I know you want to show that your story isn't really happening here on Earth and that there's been umpty-hundred years of linguistic drift. But really, changing "Eric" to "Erayk" and "Harold" to "Haarahld" just SUCKS. Please, drop it.
After reading Haggard's other well-known work, She, a few months ago, I thought I ought to read this as well. It's better. There's less waffle (still, admittedly, some waffle, but not much) and its less jarring for modern sensibilities. Instead of the white men being obviously vastly superior to the evil black men, he paints both as being equally capable of greatness. Much of the language is of course not what we would use today (black characters are all kaffirs, for example) but this won't detract from the enjoyment unless you're one of those ultra-sensitive idiots who don't deserve to enjoy anything anyway. Strongly recommended, and available for free online.
Yes, that's really the author's name, and also his title, having had it bestowed on him by Mike Moore, who was (very briefly) prime minister of New Zealand. The Wizard is a great example of the British Eccentric, and this autobiography is a refreshing, and all too brief, read.
USB memory sticks are normally touted as being small and convenient, despite not being so at all. Most are quite large. This one, however, is just half the size of an SD card and easily fits in your wallet. And if The Man is breaking down your door, it's small enough to swallow. It's definitely worth paying a bit extra for something this small.
Posted at 22:38:55
by David Cantrell keywords: geeky | review
I have recently replaced all the external drives on my file server. Previously I was using four Lacie 1TB jobbies (each of which was really four 250GB disks internally), but wanted to replace them because they're noisy and draw a lot of power. So I ended up with two Western Digital Mybook Studio II 2TB devices, which I've been using for 3 months (one of them) and one and a half months (the other).
I've got the same amount of storage as before, but it's now pretty much silent, drawing a lot less power. They were easy to install - as is expected these days with a modern operating system they're "plug n' play". They even came out of the box pre-formatted with HFS+ instead of something retarded but PC-compatible, although if you are lumbered with a legacy Windows machine reformatting them should be trivial. Speed is ... not something I care much about, as all my access to them is over a nyetwork that is slower than the bus connecting the disks to the host machine, but they're not noticeably slow.
I chose those disks because they were the ony ones I could find that were the right capacity and had both USB 2 and Firewire 400 ports. I need FW400 because the machine hosting them is old enough to have that and to have Ye Olde Slowe USBe. I want USB 2 for future compatibility. Turns out that they also have FW800 (which I'll probably never use) and eSATA, which may be useful one day.
They're also upgradable. The old Lacies I had aren't - they're sealed units. With these WD units, you're supposed to be able to lift the lid and replace the disks. And there's the only small niggle I have with 'em. On both the drives, the lid feels really cheap and plasticky, and wouldn't open properly. Yes, I did read the manual. I ended up levering them open with a screwdriver, and now they won't close properly.
But that's a small gripe. I might care if I had to carry them around with me, but I don't. I might care if I was the sort of shallow fool who cares what his disks look like, but I'm not. I reckon they're damned good value for money.
Posted at 22:33:15
by David Cantrell keywords: geeky | review
In February 2009, I only completed reading one book. I have been terribly slack:
1. Flash!, by L.E.Modesitt
This is poorly structured and poorly written. Every single one of the characters is a flat cardboard cut-out, the world they inhabit isn't at all well-explained, and so the resulting story is mostly confusing and hard to follow.
So having watched Richard Dawkins's "The Root of All Evil?", I decided to watch another of his series. This time I chose "The Genius of Charles Darwin", hoping that it would be rather better than the previous programme. I was hoping for a clear explanation of Darwin's theory and why it is correct. Sadly, the explanations were dumbed down, the arguments simplistic and hence full of holes, and - surprise surprise - he spent at least as much time talking about religion as he did about Charles Darwin's genius. Bleah.
This time, unlike previously, there's no choice as to who gets the Punch In The Face award. It's Dawkins. Not for being smug and propagandistic this time, but for doing such a piss-poor job of presenting a fascinating subject. And again, the person I'd want to have a drink with is a CofE bishop, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. He has a lovely voice and a beard that is clearly designed for filtering twigs out of proper cider.
Anyway, that's the last review of Dawkins.TV. Writing bad reviews is no fun.
Update: one last brief observation - David Attenborough's programme "Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life" is the programme that Dawkins should have made. Watch it. It's great.
Posted at 20:45:41
by David Cantrell keywords: media | review
I recently watched Richard Dawkins's two-part series from a couple of years ago "The Root Of All Evil?" about religion and its place in society.
I'm afraid that, while I think Dawkins was right about just about everything, it wasn't very satisfying. There was very much a feeling of "preaching to the choir". There's no way that it would convince a critical viewer who wasn't already an atheist. Dawkins made sure that except for one brief segment all (and I mean all) the religious people he interviewed were from the, umm, lunatic fringe of their faiths, and really obviously so. None of them tried (presumably because they couldn't) to justify why they reject various bits of the scriptures - eg, the ones who thought killing doctors and adulterers and shunning homosexuals was good obviously rejected "love your neighbour", but didn't say why. That one brief segment was mostly Dawkins agreeing with the bishop of Oxford, while still legitimately pointing out that the bishop was rejecting scripture selectively, and not giving the bishop much time to expand on his thoughts about why he rejected the bits of scripture about stoning unbelievers while keeping "love your neighbour".
Without fair interviews with main-stream thinkers in proper churches, the piece comes across as being in places smug, and in others a strident propagandist attack, and I'm afraid that people these days are far too cynical to simply swallow propaganda from a smug bastard. If Dawkins is so sure of himself, presumably he thinks he can out-argue the mainstream, so why didn't he? The obvious answer, of course, is that it wouldn't be as visceral as the loonies - it would be more Open University than Channel 4.
Of all the people in the programme, the one I'd most want to have a drink with is the bishop of Oxford. It's a toss-up which one I'd most want to punch in the face, whether it's Dawkins or Ted Haggard.
Update: on further reflection, it would be Haggard. Dawkins is an old man and it would be about as much of a challenge as mugging a five year old, whereas Haggard could fight back with those teeth.
I've decided to post book reviews every month instead of every quarter this year. Most of these reviews can also be found on Amazon.
In January 2009, I read the following books:
1. Island in the Sea of Time, by S. M. Stirling
This is one of those books that is often said to define its sub-genre (modern people thrown back in time to live amongst savages - it's a surprisingly common theme in bad scifi/fantasy), by an author who is a giant in his genre (alternate history). And it was pretty much what I expected. It has no literary merit whatsoever. The people in it have such oh-so-conveniently chosen skills and attitudes, the heroes are suitably heroic, the good guys are ever-so-good, the bad guys are particularly nasty and traditionally one-dimensional, and the fools are especially foolish. The plot is broadly predictable. And it was thoroughly enjoyable. It could have done with a bit of trimming, perhaps - a few scenes are completely unnecessary - but I recommend this book.
However, it has Sequels. I'm going to read them, but I'm not expecting them to be anywhere near as much fun.
2. Snowbrother, by S. M. Stirling
Oh dear. There are so many things wrong with this post-Nuclear-Apocalypse fantasy. Let's start with the cover art, which features a buxom wench in armour waving a sword about. In the book, she's wearing a helmet in that scene, but she's drawn without one so we can see her long hair and tell that she's definitely a woman. Because the breasts on her cuirass aren't obvious enough. Then let's look at the two cultures that this fantasy throws together. The good guys are oh so very good, being basically mediaeval hippies in tune with nature; the bad guys are oh so very bad - they're descended from the survivors of the Apocalypse's "strategic high command", they live solely for glory and war, they rape their slaves, and their shamen are cannibals. Ugh. What utterly unimaginative stereotypes. Then there are all kinds of other little bits that niggle at me: the made-up languages and names abound with apostrophes, scattered at random to make them seem alien. Technologies are explained which can't possibly exist (the repeating crossbow described would break the first law of thermodynamics) or are utterly implausible (people with an early mediaeval level of technology also have fibreglass-reinforced plastic). And then there's magic, in a story set quite obviously in the future of our world.
About the only thing that's any good about this train-wreck is that the bad guys win at the end.
3. Against the Tide of Years, by S. M. Stirling
This first sequel to Island in the Sea of Time was pleasantly surprising. It's basically the same as the earlier work, suffering from all the same flaws, but instead of disappearing up its own arse as so many sequels do, it's still enjoyable and the author introduces new people, places and things to keep one's interest.
4. On the Oceans of Eternity, by S. M. Stirling
This second (and final - so far) sequel to Island in the Sea of Time was unfortunately rather what I was expecting. There was no invention here, and secondary characters brought in to this volume were two-dimensional and lacked motive. The end felt rather inconclusive too. I was also irritated by the way the story skipped about. It is broken into chapters, but they seem to be fairly arbitrary. Each chapter is preceded by a short list of the places in which the action happens, and then within the chapter those jumps happen with no warning whatsoever. I found it quite jarring - there should be a sub-heading at the jump. Stirling might have done this in the earlier books too, but if he did I don't remember, so he must have done it better than in this one. So I'm rather disappointed. Still worth reading if you enjoyed the previous two books, but only to tie up the loose ends.
5. The Magic Christian, by Terry Southern
This is supposed to be a novel. It's not. At best, it's a collection of very short stories, linked by the theme of an incredibly rich prankster's cruel practical jokes. Some attempt at continuity is made, generally in a few paragraphs at the beginning of each prank, but it doesn't work. A couple of the short stories are very good, and actually worth reading, but the rest aren't. They're just too cruel to be funny. Don't bother with this book.
I was most pleased to recently find out that Monster Munch still exists. I bought a bag of twelve packs in my most recent order from Ocado.
Unfortunately I am somewhat disappointed. The "Flamin' Hot" and "Roast Beef" flavours are pretty good. But my old favourite, the Pickled Onion flavour, is but a pale imitation of what it used to be. It used to have real bite to it back when I were a lad. But now it has a hint of sourness and sweetness, and that's it.
Posted at 22:21:46
by David Cantrell keywords: review
Most of these reviews can also be found on Amazon.
In the fourth quarter of 2008, I read the following books:
1. War For The Oaks, by Emma Bull
I knew this wasn't going to be good after reading the overblown similes in the first two sentences - "By day, the Nicollet Mall winds through Minneapolis like a paved canal. People flow between its banks, eddying at the doors of office towers and department stores". Thankfully, it's not all like that - much more and I'd have just had to stop like I did with Moby Dick. Even so, it's a pretty piss-poor effort. The story doesn't hang together very well, characters' motivations are poorly explained and they feel flat, and the world is just nowhere near convincing. And yes, I did remember to flick my suspension of disbelief switch for a story about fucking fairies, elves and a rock band, but even with that it was not well-realised. But the worst bit of all is the "duel" at the end is to an extent recycled from the story told much better in Walter Hill's film "Crossroads". Yawn. Watch Crossroads instead.
2. Dogland, by Will Shetterly
This fantasy is apparently semi-autobiographical. It's told from the point of view of a young boy - at the start of the book he's four, it ends when he's eight - albeit filtered through the adult writer's hindsight. He also admits early on that he's not sure whether he's writing what really happened or merely what he remembers. The author has woven in some "real fantasy" too which can't possibly have happened - the Norse world-tree Yggdrasil grows outside his home, the Christian Devil is a local businessman, and no doubt there are others I missed. But even if you're not versed in weird mythology, it doesn't matter. The child's wonder at what goes on around him and his odd (by adult standards) take on things is splendidly refreshing. There's enough magic in the mundane world as he sees it to satisfy the fluffiest of fantasists. My only niggle is with the last few pages where the delicate balance between what is clearly real and what might just be the child's imagination breaks down rather unpleasantly, which left me rather unsatisfied. But even so, I can strongly recommend this book.
3. The Last Battle, by C.S.Lewis
It was with some relief that I reached the last book in the Narnia series. Books five and six (chronologically) were very disappointing. This one is somewhat better than its two pre-decessors. It would even be worth reading, if only it wasn't so damned preachy. The overt christianity is just sickening. If I wanted to read that drivel, I'd read the bible.
Literary crossovers are almost invariably bad. They are the dregs of fan-fic. This being a cross-over involving H.P.Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos makes that only more likely. But in fact it's really very good. It's written much in the style of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" - indeed, there are a few references to that book having just been published - and is told in the first person by Kerouac himself. Kerouac sees R'lyeh rising from the sea and ends up travelling across the US in company with Neal Cassady and William "Naked Lunch" Burroughs to save the world. Much of what happens is, as you would expect with a Kerrouac/Cthulhu cross-over, inexplicable, but even so, it's an enjoyable read. Recommended reading, provided you have at least a passing familiarity with the Cthulhu Mythos; familiarity with Kerouac's work isn't so important.
5. A Shadow In Summer, by Daniel Abraham
There's a lot that I want to like about this book - the fantasy world it's set in is very well-described, and the people in it behave as, well, people and not ideals or caricatures, with all their weaknesses. And, despite it being the first part of a tetralogy, it stands reasonably well on its own. Unfortunately, the author has tried to weave too complex a story. There is too much plotting, scheming and indirection. I'm sure that it all makes perfect sense to someone reading it several times, but I'm afraid it lost me a few times. This is one to get from the library.
6. Plague Zone, by David Wellington
Wellington has published most of his books online in serial format, one chapter every few days, and got a publishing deal out of it (ha! take that Howard Hendrix). This background as a serial shows through, as the book is filled with cliff-hanger after cliff-hanger and resolution after resolution. This makes it ideal for reading on the journey to work, as it breaks down into conveniently sized chunks. He specialises in horror novels - at least he always seems to be writing about zombies and vampires and werewolves - but this is really an action thriller. The wheels fall off and things get a bit silly a couple of times, but that's OK, you expect that in both horror and action thrillers. I was left wanting a sequel. Wellington has done sequels before, so my wish might be granted. This ain't a great work of literature by any means, but it's an enjoyable read, would be so even for those who don't like horror, and I recommend it.
7. In the Garden of Iden, by Kage Baker
At its heart, this is a historical romance, wrapped in a sci-fi secret history layer of time-travelling cyborg conspirators - none of which is particularly promising. But it works. There are just enough tiny details to make the setting and characters come alive - only a couple of very minor bit-parts are the sort of lazy caricature that usually plagues these genres, and the players are observed with a healthy degree of cynicism. There are only two things that really grate - some (but not all) of the dialogue is in mock-Tudor, when that just isn't needed because the real-English descriptions are good enough to set the scene; and the last half-dozen pages don't fit well although they may well set the scene for the next book in the series. I won't know that until I read the next one. I've already ordered it.
8. In The Midnight Hour, by Patti O'Shea
I only read this because it was free. I certainly wouldn't have bothered if I'd seen it in a shop - it's another of those books where the cover artist is obviously pissed off with his employer and has decided to wreak terrible revenge. It starts off reading like bad Buffy fanfic - a fight against the undead! in a graveyard, no less! Thankfully, the unimaginative magical combat against stupid beasties stops quickly - although it rears its ugly head a couple more times later. There is a story in here. Potentially a good one. But it's terribly let down by the unnecessary and cringe-worthy sex scenes. And then let down further by some more unimaginative magical combat at the climax. Yuck. Avoid this book.
I see from her website that the author specialises in "paranormal action romance" stories. In this book, the action is scant and poorly executed, the paranormal is boring, and the romance ain't romance, it's soft-core pornography. Oh, and while you're on her website, have a laugh at all the other bad cover-art.
9. Orphans of Chaos, by John C. Wright
Oh dear, an "X of Y" book. Such titles are usually a sign of bad fantasy, and combined with the bad cover art, I'd put off reading this for quite some time after getting it as a free download from Tor. Turns out that it's actually quite good. The orphans in question are the children of Titans, held as hostages to prevent their people from going to war again and overthrowing the Olympian gods. They are kept in what is ostensibly a strict (and cruel) British residential home (the author tries hard to make the setting really British, and mostly succeeds, but his roots show through in a few places where he's left in some American idiom, and those are terribly jarring - I wish authors wouldn't try so hard to hide themselves like this. By all means write about somewhere you're not a native of, but don't try to pretend to be a native. Grrr) where the staff are all supernatural beings - drawn primarily from Classical mythology, but a handful of British myths are also touched on and I may have missed some others. The story centres around an attempt by the children to escape from their captivity and their exploration of their own suppressed supernatural powers.
The setting is imaginative and is a good compromise between the supernatural magic of mythology and a rational, mechanistic worldview, and is actually part of the story instead of just backdrop; characters have motivations and feelings. This is one I can recommend. Sci-fi fans will find it inventive and new, classicists will enjoy a different take on their chosen field.
Incidentally, the author attended St John's College in Maryland which teaches a "Great Books Program". From what I've read of this, it has some resemblances to that taught to the characters of this book. Wright says in the introduction "let it not be imagined by any reader that the ... institution depicted in this fantasy is meant to resemble the author's alma mater". Really, I don't think anyone would ever think that. St John's actually sounds like the sort of place I would love to study at.
10. Callahan's Cross-time Saloon, by Spider Robinson
This collection of short stories, connected by a theme of absolution and recovery, is just wonderful. It's not really science fiction, as technology plays only the most minuscule of parts; the stories are strongly character-driven, and should appeal to just about everyone.
11. Tales From the White Hart, by Arthur C. Clarke
Where the previous collection of shorts was all about redemption and people, these shorts almost all focus on some technological gizmo and how someone gets screwed over by it. They also feel so much like it's the same story being repeated over and over again, just changing a few details each time. Meh.
12. A Machynlleth Triad, by Jan and Tom Morris
This is my third collection of short stories in a row, this time the theme being descriptions of the Welsh town of Machynlleth in the past (a fictionalised account of events during the Glyndŵr rebellion), present, and future. There is a strong theme of Welsh nationalism throughout. And unfortunately, while the first story is entertaining and tells of momentous events, the second and third are rather more prosaic descriptions of the state of affairs, in which nothing of interest happens. The third is particularly poor, being a laughable description of a silly Welsh Utopia. This could have been so much more, but has been hijacked by the authors' politics. It's still worth reading, but only if you get it from the library or if you can find it really cheap second-hand.
My parents recently went to a performance of Karl Jenkins' Stabat Mater and bought me a CD. I have mixed emotions about it. On the one hand the music really is good, but ... and it's two really big buts ...
Jenkins mixes "ethnic" music into his compositions so often that it's beginning to get a bit hackneyed and cheap. These sections don't fit well with the rest, and give the impression of only being there to be "right on".
A far bigger "but" concerns his treatment of the text. For a meditation on the desolation of a mother at the brutal torture and execution of her son, the music is, at least in places, far too light and catchy. What is more, although the CD liner notes provide a translation, the setting doesn't seem to pay much attention to the actual meaning. For example, the verse:
Cuius animam gementem / contristatam et dolentem / pertransivit gladius.
ends with the last line repeated (fair enough, this is common and doesn't detract from the meaning) - but then the last word is repeated, and even worse is repeated in a major key in a way that makes it seem heroic and triumphant! So what's actually being sung is:
Through her weeping soul, / compassionate and grieving, / a sword passed.
a sword passed.
a sword! Hurrah!
The treatment of the very first verse ain't great either. It's as if he came up with a fantastic tune and only later tried to set the words to it instead of writing the music for the words. Because he runs out of syllables a bit early, the opening verse:
Stabat mater dolorosa / iuxta Crucem lacrimosa, / dum pendebat Filius
comes out as:
Stabat mater dolorosa / iuxta Crucem lacrimosa, / dum pendebat Filiuuu-uuuuu-uuu-uuu-uuuu-uuuus
Oh dear. 7 out of 10 for the music, but as my Latin masters used to say, "3 out of 10, must try harder". Overall, a mere 4 out of 10. The seeming ignorance of the text spoilt it terribly for me.
Last night, I went to see Lotty's War in Greenwich. Mostly because my cousin Suzie was involved in the production, but I'm glad I went as it was a really good performance of an excellent script. The reviewer for The Stage says most of what I wanted to say, but misses out a couple of minor things that I think are important. First, Michael Fenner's fake German accent is very good. It's not the parody that is more common in drama, and even better, it is consistent for the full nearly two hours. Second, he is portrayed as an honourable man, doing his duty even when it pains him - a very sympathetic character, who really stole the show.
It's such a shame that the audience was so small - the theatre wasn't even a quarter full. Now, admittedly this was a mid-week performance and things might be better at weekends, but I suppose it's an inevitable result of being a low-budget production in a small, out-of-the-way theatre, without the production having any ties to the area. The good thing about that, on the other hand, is that tickets are available, and now that you know it's worth going to, YOU WILL GO, LEST I HUNT YOU DOWN AND MAKE A BELT FROM YOUR ENTRAILS.
Here's the box office details and how to get there. It closes on the 7th of December, and you can probably just turn up on the night and get a ticket on the door.
Posted at 22:40:47
by David Cantrell keywords: culture | review
A gentleman wears a hat when outdoors. Sadly, I lost one of my hats a few months ago. I had an emergency spare hat though, so all was not lost. But now that the season has changed and I need to wear a coat instead of a jacket, I also needed to change hats so as to be wearing the right one to match. So I bought a new hat. This hat, from this interwebnet shop. The hat is of the same high standard I have come to expect from them (this is the third I've bought from them), but what really impressed me was he customer service.
When I placed the order online, including giving them my head measurement, they actually took the time to look up that I was a previous customer, and queried that the measurement I'd given them was a whole 1cm (0.2 in) different from the last time, and which one was correct, had the previous hat fitted OK? I think that I'd measured myself this time with lots of hair, but the previous time shortly after shaving my head. That they bother to do that simple check for their existing customers was a pleasant surprise - I've got far too used to faceless interweb businesses and uncaring shop drones, and it's very nice to come across a business that breaks that mould.
Anyway, after a bit of back-and-forth about hat sizes, it was shipped on Thursday last week, and arrived today. Three working days to get from a small shop in rural Australia to London. That's faster delivery than lots of stuff I've bought from people in the UK!
And it was cheap too!
Posted at 23:41:03
by David Cantrell keywords: clothes | review
I just finished watching Dead Set, the zombie version of Big Brother. I can't say much more than "it was FUCKING AWESOME".
If you didn't catch it on the telly, then you need to buy the DVD.
OK, so I lied. I can say more.
It's a modern take on the classic zombie film such as Dawn Of The Dead, in which a bunch of survivors of a zombie outbreak hole up in a make-shift fortified compound. In this case, the survivors are some of the contestantsmorons and crew of Big Brother, a voyeuristic TV series in which the contestants are locked away from the world for an extended period while perverts watch them through cameras hidden behind one-way glass. Normally, basing a high quality drama on such rubbish wouldn't work. But Big Brother deliberately provokes conflict by incarcerating people who, while they are all morons, are all different types of morons chosen specifically to piss each other off. The producers have played on that. They clearly have the right opinion of Big Brother and have accentuated the childish and irritating quirks of the inmates to make a really good zombie comedy, and one where you're glad at the end that the zombies win and kill everyone.
How terribly remiss of me! A couple of weeks ago I went with three other Daves (Dave Hodgkinson, Dave Dorward and Dave Mannsåkker) to see Burial at Thebes - a new opera, libretto by Seamus Heaney, music by Dominique Le Gendre, a Carribean composer - at the Globe. It sets to music Heaney's well-regarded translation of Sophocles's Antigone. It's splendidly tragic.
I enjoyed it. The professionalreviewersdidn't. They didn't like the music. Probably because it didn't use a vast orchestra and a hundred wailing sopranos all wobbling frantically in a doomed effort to find the right note.
If you're an actual musician, with a broad mind and catholic tastes (hell, there's even a litle bit of rapping in here, when King Creon talks about the duties of the individual and the state - so it's the good kind of rapping, as opposed to illiterate shouty shit) then you should go and see this if you get the chance. It was planned to also play in Liverpool and Oxfnord after the two London shows, but because I've been so goddamned slack, those shows have probably already been and gone. Ah well, it's bound to surface again at some point. Perhaps in twenty or so years when the fuddy-duddies currently getting paid for writing reviews have had the good manners to Fuck Off And Die.
update: It seems that the Independent's reviewer hated it a bit less than the others. He still gets it wrong though - for example, he praises the singing of the Minister of the Admiralty (who was good) but doesn't praise the singing of Creon (who was better). But particularly of note is that he says "the orchestral score was deft and atmospheric", so at least we have one reviewer with a musical Clue. This guy's main criticism is of Derek Walcott's direction. I didn't think it was too shabby myself, but I can see why he would think like he does. So, maybe just another 15 years to wait for a re-run instead of 20.
No, I haven't mis-typed the title. There's no apostrophe, and one of the characters in the book has a little grump about it. The background and the people are in many ways far more interesting than the story itself. The world that Vinge has built has a fair amount in common with some of his other work, in particular the ubiquitous networked computing that he elsewhere calls "localisers". The theme of surveillance is also something that readers of, eg, A Deepness In The Sky, will be familiar with. And what's more, a lot of the background is a reasonable extrapolation from the present day. Networked computing is becoming ubiquitous; augmented reality is in use in some industries and being played with by hackers the world over; and of course the Surveillance State is growing a-pace, all in the name of Stopping Terror - a justification that they use in this book too. Thankfully the Secure Hardware Environment that Vinge postulates doesn't yet exist, and something similar has proven to be a failure in the market so far, but I'd not be particularly surprised if something like it were to appear again soon. So the story is firmly rooted in the present.
The actors are believable too, if pushed just a little to extremes. But such is the nature of heroes and villains in all fiction. As is often the case with good fiction, I was left at the end of the story wondering what their lives would be like afterwards.
There are a few problems though. The "belief circles" - something that other reviewers have described as a blend of wikipedia, second life and augmented reality - don't make much sense to me, and while they only play a minor part in the story, serving as a distraction the bad guy manipulates to keep the "good" guys away, they could have done with more fleshing out, in particular explaining why individuals choose to put so much effort into them. But the biggest problem is that to understand all that goes on you need to understand public key encryption and authentication. And virtually no-one does. I do though, so it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the story, and with the one caveat that you should be at least on speaking terms with public-key crypto, I recommend this book. The biggest disappointment was that it was all fiction - one of the "belief circles" that Vinge invents is based on the fiction of one "Jerzy Hacek" who unfortunately doesn't exist. Shame, cos the Librarians Militant sound wonderful.
2. Taciitus's "Germania" and "Agricola", translated from the Latin by Edward Brooks
The Germania is Tacitus's description of the tribes inhabiting Germania, the area to the north of the Roman empire including modern Germany but also several other areas. It is pretty unremarkable apart from his charming description of a battle between two of the tribes: "they even gratified us with the spectacle of a battle, in which above sixty thousand Germans were slain not by Roman arms, but, what was still grander, by mutual hostilities, as it were for our pleasure and entertainment". Lovely.
The Agricola is a far more civilised work, his biography of his father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola, governor of Britannia and conqueror of Scotland. From a literary point of view it is remarkable for the stirring speech that Tacitus writes for Calgacus, one of the leaders of the northern tribes: "When I reflect on the causes of the war and the circumstances of our situation, I feel a strong persuasion that our united efforts on the present day will prove the beginning of universal liberty in Britain" - an opening that is often alluded to even in modern times. What is surprising is the frequent comparisons of life under the Roman empire to slavery, compared to the liberty of those not yet under Roman authority. Rome wasn't exactly reknowned for literary freedom and it's remarkable that he could get away with writing such sedition. Calgacus's speech also contains the even more commonly misquoted passage "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert they call it peace". Sound like any modern imperial adventures? Agricola's own speech to his troops on the eve of battle is equally stirring, and no doubt equally fictitious. The brief biography ends with another stirring passage, Tacitus's own goodbye to the man whose funeral he could not himself attend - "If there be any habitation for the shades of the virtuous; if, as philosophers suppose, exalted souls do not perish with the body; may you repose in peace and call us, your household from vain regret and [feminine] lamentations, to the contemplation of your virtues, which allow no place for mourning or complaining. Let us rather adorn your memory by our short-lived praises and, as far as our natures permit, by an imitation of your example. This is truly to honour the dead; this is the piety of every near relation". Splendid stuff. Recommended for cutting and pasting at modern funerals.
The Germania is, despite its reputation, nothing special. That reputation is deserved more as a work of historical interest than enything else. The Agricola, however, is fine stuff, an excellent example of un-critical biography verging on hagiography, with some good old-fashioned haranguing thrown in. And it's free, even in translation. I read the Project Gutenberg edition.
3. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S.Lewis
Book number two (chronologically speaking) in the Narnia series, is somewhat more patronising and irritating than The Magician's Nephew which I reviewed a few months ago. Perhaps that's understandable, given that this one was written first and was his first book written for children. While the christian crap is more evident in this one, it is still not particularly distinguishable from any other mythology. My verdict is the same as for The Magician's Nephew: you should own a copy. And your children should own copies.
4. The Horse and his Boy, by C.S.Lewis
Chronologically the third book in the Narnia series, set between the penultimate and last chapters of the previous book, but published fifth in the series, this story can stand alone, making only one passing reference to events in the previous books which might confuse young readers. It's a humourously written but fairly standard fairy tale of a journey, people growing up, and a lost prince. In this context, even ignoring the rest of the Narnia series, such fairy-tale staples as talking animals make perfect sense. And - mirabile dictu there's no preaching at all! I'm not quite so keen on this as on the previous two books in the series, but it's still worth owning.
5. Star Dragon, by Mike Brotherton
Mr. Brotherton is, I believe, another of those Real Scientists who has turned his hand to science fiction. And I'm pleased to say that he did a hell of a better job than Fred Hoyle, whose "The Black Cloud" I reviewed earlier in the year. This story is similar in concept to Blindsight, by Peter Watts - a bunch of disfunctional explorers are sent on a long, dangerous mission to investigate Something Strange, which they find to be far far more than they ever imagined. Unfortunately, none of the characters feel solid and real. And the technology is a mixture of the unbelievable (in the bad "yeah right" sense) and the superfluous (a gallery of living hunting trophies on a starship? I think not!). While I was left wanting to know more, it was more about their quarry that I wanted to know, not more about the characters and not about the changes in society during their journey or as a result of their discoveries. That said, the book is available to download for free from the author's web site, so at least I don't feel ripped off, but I am unsatisfied and glad I didn't pay for it.
6. Prince Caspian, by C.S.Lewis
Another thoroughly enjoyable tale in Lewis's Narnia series, this sees the protagonists from "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" returning to help a prince overthrow his usurping evil uncle. Predictably, good triumphs over evil. And again I wasn't offended by overt god-squadding - although there's quite a bit of Classical mythology thrown in. I can't recommend this as highly as the previous three books, partly because it's just a little too formulaic (even for a childrens' book) and because it wouldn't stand well on its own - reading The Lion the Witch and the wardrobe first is pretty much essential. Even so, worth having.
7. The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader", by C.S.Lewis
Lewis is, I'm afraid, going off the boil with this installment in the Narnia series. The story seems to be more of a selection of loosely connected episodes than a single story, it has no real beginning, nor a real end. And it's preachy, especially in the last episode. Not worth bothering with.
8. The Silver Chair, by C.S.Lewis
Despite not liking the previous book, I'm still soldiering on. This is just as poor. While the story is more of a coherent whole, it has nothing like the charm and inventiveness of the first three books in the series - which is odd, given that The Magician's Nephew and The Horse And His Boy, while being the first and third chronologically are the 5th and 6th in order of publication - and one of the key plot points is clumsily telegraphed very early on, when it should have been left as a "To Serve Man" twist in the tale. Even less worth bothering with than the previous book, although it's thankfully a little less preachy.
9. Hikaru No Go, volume 1, by Yumi Hota (in translation)
It's a Japanese comic book about a boy who is possessed by the spirit of a dead Go master. Sorry, a graphic novel. Sorry, a manga. The story is of course absurd. There's also not a lot of story - it appears to just set the scene for the remaining umpteen volumes. Even so, it was enjoyable. But probably only of interest to serious manga-heads or Go players.
10. The Jennifer Morgue, by Charles Stross
This, the second of Stross's "Laundry" novels, about a fictional occult spying agency of the British government, is more light-hearted than its pre-decessor "The Atrocity Archives". Indeed, it is presented as somewhat of a pastiche of the Bond stories - in particular the film versions. I found it thoroughly enjoyables. One potential weak point is all the geeky in-jokes. A reader who doesn't get 'em may be a little confused in a couple of places. With that proviso, go out and buy this book.
11. She, by H. Rider Haggard
I thought I'd give Victoriana another go, despite my last excursion into this genre - Moby Dick - being unreadable shite. This does indeed suffer from the same fault - the author is unnecessarily wordy in places. But to nothing like the same extent as Melville. Where Melville would go on and on for page after page, Haggard comes to his senses after maybe half a page. This makes it much easier to just skip the waffle. Much of the waffle is in the form of expository monologues where a modern writer would provide the neccessary background info differently. It grates somewhat, but more because it's unusual than because it's just crap. The story itself is a competently told exploration adventure with reassuringly stiff-upper-lipped English heroes in Tweed and stereotypically dastardly primitive natives - you could learn a lot about Victorian attitudes to race and class from it - which is set in motion through wonderfully Gothic-absurd means. Overall, I like this book. It's available for free on Project Gutenberg, and I'd probably like it less if I'd had to pay for it. Worth downloading or getting from the library, but don't pay more than 50p for a modern printing.
12. Rocheworld, by Robert L. Forward
Like Forward's other two well-known books (Dragon's Egg and Starquake) this is both scientifically literate and imaginative. Where it falls down is on characterisation. Dialogue is stilted, some characters are entirely undeveloped and so are just barely noticed scenery, and one of them is thrown away in a rather pointless and irritating episode which is entirely irrelevant to the rest of the story. This is somewhat surprising, as characterisation and dialogue work much better (as far as I remember!) in Dragon's Egg which was written after Rocheworld. I suppose I should re-read and review that soon. The work has appeared in at least four versions, of which I read the longest. I expect that the irritating sequence referred to above was one of the ones cut out in the shorter editions. I can still recommend reading Rocheworld, but only if you're a hard-core scifi nut.
Most of these reviews can also be found on Amazon.
In the second quarter of 2008, I read the following books:
1. The Outstretched Shadow, by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
This is high fantasy - magic, unicorns, knights, demons, the works. I don't normally buy such things as my experience is that the genre is overwhelmingly unimaginative and poorly written. This was yet another of my freebies from Tor though, so given that I didn't have to spend any of my hard-earned cash on it, I thought I'd give it a go. And I was mostly right, it is unimaginative. But it's well-written. The authors have made the protagonist a whiny little shit of a teenager, and he really does come across like that. Of course, the story is flimsy with far too many coincidences and superpowers that just happen to manifest themselves at the crucial time - but this is fantasy, and there's magic, so just suspend your disbelief, alright? If you like fantasy, buy this. If you don't, then it's at least worth looking for in the library. I was sufficiently impressed that I'll track down the sequel second-hand at some point.
2. Blindsight, by Peter Watts
Hard sci-fi with a dash of horror, where the tech is an integral part of the storyline instead of just being a backdrop. And there's also a wide range of characters, some likeable, some hateable, all feeling fleshy and real, and some interesting philosophical musings. The author backs it up with copiously referenced notes at the end about the science used, much of which has at least a grounding in current knowledge and research. The author has made the book available online under a creative-commons licence after not getting much distribution in physical form - why the publishers dropped the ball on this I have no idea. And by the way, since Watts put it online for free, demand has apparently soared, and it's been re-printed, so it shouldn't be too hard to track down a copy and pay money for it. Please do so.
3. Starfish, by Peter Watts
Wow, Watts has put a lot of stuff up on his website for free. Starfish explores a somewhat similar setting to Blindsight (see previous review). The characters are even more dysfunctional and hateable than in the later novel, and the first three quarters of the book are inventive. Unfortunately, the end falls into the rather tired cliché of an Evil Corporation oppressing the characters For The Good Of Humanity. A shame. Mind you, it does give him a hook on which to hang the next story in this trilogy.
4. Maelstrom, by Peter Watts
Maelstrom is the sequel to Starfish (see previous review) and carries on pretty much at the exact point that the previous book left off. I'm not entirely convinced by his technological extrapolations, but that's a hazard of reading fiction involving a subject that you're an expert in. No doubt my mother has the same problem with books whose crucial plot elements involve embroidery. Again, a good beginning and middle is let down by its ending. But again, the scene is set for the final installment in the trilogy.
5. βehemoth, by Peter Watts
The final part in the "Rifters" trilogy carries on where its predecessors left off, and in much the same style. The exception is that being the end of the trilogy there's nothing to hang off the end and so that redeeming feature that the others had is missing. The plot moves slowly and is confused. Conspiracies within conspiracies and some really quite tasteless scenes of torture only detract further from what is at best a mediocre book. And that's my conclusion about the whole series - some great ideas, but poorly executed. Not worth buying, so I'm glad I didn't.
6. Lord of the Isles, by David Drake
Extruded Fantasy Product, which very closely follows the formula of "[fantasy name 1], a young [peasant occupation] in the kingdom of [fantasy place name 1], has his world turned upside down when he discovers that he is the heir of [fantasy name 2], a legendary [heroic occupation]. This awakens incredible [powers / skills / magic] in him, which is immediately put to the test, as [fantasy name 2]'s ancient enemy [fantasy bad guy name] and his army of [fantasy monsters] converge on [fantasy place name 1] to destroy the heir and steal the throne. Can [fantasy name 1] survive a perilous journey to [fantasy place name 2] in order to find the [powerful item] that will save both him and his kingdom?" (thanks to this guy for ths summary). Worth reading? Well, the story progresses in small chunks, like it was written for serialisation in some pulp magazine. That makes it suitable for mindlessly filling a few minutes a day on a bus. So yes, worth reading. Not worth paying full price for though.
7. Crystal Rain, by Tobias Buckell
The background that Buckell uses for this story makes a refreshing change from the normal run of science fiction, most of which is derived quite clearly from western European (and by extension American, which is as near as damnit the same thing) societies. Buckell uses the Caribbean instead. The opposing societies - and the reasons that they are in opposition at all - are inventive, characters' motivations and actions make sense. All round it's a jolly well-written and well-told yarn. I suppose that the ending could be seen as being somewhat deus ex machina if you were to read a plot summary, but with all the little details scattered earlier in the book it isn't really like that. Worth paying for (although this was yet another Tor freebie), and I'll be ordering its follow-up "Ragamuffin".
8. Sun of Suns, by Karl Schroeder
A story of pirates and a desperate search for treasure, with a sub-plot of resistance by a conquered people (this isn't explored in much depth and only eally serves to make one of the main characters' backgrounds a bit more interesting). The setting is a world of a several thousand mile bubble of air floating in space, which contains several miniature suns, the control of which defines nations. There is negligible gravity and for reasons that are never made clear, electronics don't work. This leads to dramatic if somewhat silly action, with jet-powered wooden airships, sword-fights in 3D, and so on. If cut judiciously it would make a great feature-length film - probably best done as a cartoon though, as shooting a whole feature to appear to be in zero G would be very hard. There are some minor inconsistencies in the environment (another reason to film it as a cartoon - cartoon physics are somewhat more forgiving!), and minor plot threads left dangling, but over all it's great fun. Recommended, and added to my shopping list.
9. The Four Just Men, by Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace was a hack. This, the first of his very many crime novels, is at heart a reversed rip-off of Sherlock Holmes, whose adventures were entertaining Strand readers at about the same time. Instead of a brilliant detective bringing justice to criminals, we have brilliant criminals bringing their own brand of justice to those who deserve it. The criminals themselves are likeable enough. However, their characters and motivations are barely sketched out. Indeed, it is two of their victims who are, so to speak, painted in colour when everyone else is merely sketched in pencil. And where in a Sherlock Holmes story you would, by the end, know exactly what happened and how, the reader of this story has very little idea how the Four Just Men knew, for example, how their target was guarded. Even so, the very short story is an enjoyable enough read, let down by the very last page, which is a terribly inept attempt at clearing up all the loose ends. As the author died a long time ago, the book is out of copyright and available from manybooks.net to download for free in several formats. I recommend grabbing a copy.
10. The Black Cloud, by Fred Hoyle
Hoyle is most well-known as an astronomer. However, he also dabbled in writing science fiction. And, I'm sorry to say, he wasn't very good at it, at least if this, his most well-known story, is anything to go by. The story itself is actually a fairly imaginative and well thought out example of the catastrophic fiction so popular with British authors of the time - doom, gloom, a new ice age. But it's the wooden characters, the wholly implausible actions of those "off-stage", poor dialogue and over-long expository sections that consign this to the dustbin of literature. As an example of its sub-genre it's interesting, but as a story it ain't. Only recommended for collectors.
11. We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin
It's unfortunate that this tale of emancipation and discovery in a dreary ultra-totalitarian state, one far beyond what Orwell or Huxley later wrote about, is so difficult to engage with, because I really want to like it. It's beautifully written and the protagonist's anguish feels real. But I just couldn't, and have, after carrying the book around in my pocket for a good few months reading a page here and there, eventually admitted defeat. I'm not going to finish it. Even so, although it's not for me the underlying quality is obvious. I hesitate to recommend buying it, but it's worth finding in your local library. It is also available online here in an English translation.
12. Spirit Gate, by Kate Elliott
Another electronic freebie from Tor - and if it was on paper I'd have never even considered picking it up. The cover art is just terrible, almost as if it's designed to make people not read it - it's a badly drawn (and I mean *really* badly drawn picture of someone strapped to an eagle with some shitty faux-tribal ... thing in the background. Frankly, I'd be embarrassed to be seen with it. The story itself, however, isn't too bad. There's rather too many loose ends and a few concepts and events that are merely mentioned in passing yet are apparently terribly important to the characters. Maybe they'll get cleared up in the sequel, but it seems to me that a good book should stand alone. Also the geography is somewhat confused, making it hard to keep track of how one place is related to another, and the broad sweep of the story is hardly original. On the other hand, it's easy to read in small chunks on the train. Don't buy it at full price, get it second hand and if you don't like it, leave it on a train for someone else to read.
13. Ventus, by Karl Schroeder
First impressions are rather disappointing - it looks like it's going to be a hum-drum fantasy with a sci-fi explanation, and takes a long time to get going, all the while interspersed with some expository sections that make one really worry about whether the plot will be allowed to naturally develop. Thankfully, things improve about a third of the way in, and while the story still doesn't feel fully developed (to be fair it is the author's first book) it does at least become entertaining. Unfortunately you never get a feel for the main characters. In fact, it's a very minor character, one who another editor could well have insisted was cut out, who is the most interesting. The "birth" of a conscious AI and its crisis of confidence is handled deftly, and I wish it had been introduced earlier and had a bigger role to play. Overall, I'm glad I read this, but also glad it was a free download from the author. If I'd bought it based on the strength of the author's other work, I'd have felt somewhat cheated.
14. The Magician's Nephew, by C.S.Lewis
There's a new Narnia film coming out soon, and seeing the ads on the sides of buses reminded me that I'd meant to re-read the series, because of all the fuss about it being supposedly christian propaganda dressed up as childrens' entertainment. This is the first (chronologically speaking) book in the series, and is apparently the one that Lewis wanted people to read first. I didn't spot any glaring propaganda. Sure, there's a creation myth, but christians hardly have a monopoly on that. Indeed, they stole theirs, so if Aslan's creation of Narnia counts of christian propaganda, then the bible must be babylonian propaganda. Anyway, the book itself is a very short, quick read. Recommended for children, and for adults who remember reading it when they were smaller. If the rest of the series is of the same quality (and my memory from umpty years ago is that it is) then Narnia is one of the classics of childrens' literature that everyone should own, and put it on their shelves next to Winnie The Pooh. You do own Winnie The Pooh, right?
15. Butcher Bird, by Richard Kadrey
A fantasy with refreshingly little magic at least to start with, and what there is is - again, at least at the beginning - fairly original. Unfortunately the story just doesn't hang together very well. It feels like the author had several good ideas (and many of them are indeed very good), wrote a scene around that, and then glued them all together with some cut n paste mythology. As a novel it just doesn't work. Sorry.
In the first quarter of 2008, I read the following books:
1. Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
Hard to follow at first, but worth persevering with. The story itself is nothing special, and could do with the confusingly named characters and objects being explained better, but the sheer quality of the writing more than makes up for it. In places, it's more like poetry than anything else.
2. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
God that was depressing! The author does a good job of bringing her character to life and describing the bizarre circumstances, it's just a shame that the end is so rushed and that it's not really finished.
3. The World in Winter, by John Christopher
A good end-of-the-world story. It's very dated, both in the scenario and language, but remember, this is from before the worries about global warming and before calling black men Sambo and assuming they were inferior was thought to be perhaps not in the best of tastes. I refuse to judge a book badly simply because of when it was written. But unfortunately, it is let down by an unconvincing ending, in which the main character's motivations and the new life he has created for himself get turned on their head for completely incomprehensible reasons. Still worth reading though if you can find it for a few pennies second-hand.
4. Hunter's Moon, by David Devereux
I couldn't help but think of Charlie Stross's Laundry while reading this. That's a good thing. Hunter's Moon is faster-paced, and requires more suspension of disbelief. I'm looking forward to reading the next one.
5. Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
The author seems to think it far more appropriate to let us all know what a well-educated fellow he is by the use of overblown pompous classical waffling, than to tell the story. Avoid this book.
6. Prison Planet, by William C. Dietz
Trash sci-fi. The ending is telegraphed right at the start, poorly executed when we get to it, and the last third of the journey is too contrived. The first two thirds makes for a good read though. This is one to buy second-hand for pennies.
7. The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy
I was expecting this to be a load of gung-ho crap that had been accidentally turned into a pretty decent film, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't. There are far too many coincidences, but it's a spy thriller so they are to be expected. Worth reading.
8. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
I got this as a free e-book when Tor were running some promotion in February. Turns out it was good enough that I've also ordered it in paperback, and its sequel.
Another free download, this one from the author's website, and his first novel. In the introduction he talks about how hard it was to sell. I'm not surprised, because as sci-fi it doesn't really work very well - an awful lot of the story just isn't sci-fi, being far more of a comedy of Hollywood manners. But the sci-fi elements would alienate the sort who normally read such things. Even so, I liked it. Not great, but enjoyable, and certainly worth the price.
10. Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson
My second free Tor download, this book has a very interesting premise, good characterisation and moves along at a good pace - not too slow, nor so fast as to seem occasionally forced. When what's been going on is finally made clear it is perhaps a little too magical for my tastes, but that doesn't detract from the book much. I see that there's a sequel. I've added that to my Amazon wishlist.
11. Farthing, by Jo Walton
Another freebie from the nice people at Tor. This is apparently a science fiction book. I mean, it must be, it's been nominated for the Nebula and all! And it's published by Tor! Of course it's sci-fi! Well, no, it's not. While it does use the common sci-fi trope of being set in an alternate history (and a rather pedestrian one at that - peace between Britain and Germany in 1941) the story itself is just a country-house detective mystery, with political meddling. A fairly competently executed one too. While it's obvious from the start whodunnit (or at least oneofwhodunnit) the whydunnit isn't clear at first, and it's fun to see the investigation flail around a bit. On the other hand, the characters are a bit two-dimensional and stereotyped. Stupid aristocrats. Nasty aristocrats. Good copper with a hidden past. Nasty Nazis. And the Jewish hero is, of course, a banker. In summary, worth reading, but wait for the paperback. The book is apparently the first in a trilogy, I'll give the second installment a try - the excerpt Tor appended was at least interesting.
I've just had another go at reading Moby Dick. I've given up again. The following section, very near the beginning, in which the author describes an inn, is why:
It was a queer sort of place--a gable-ended old house, one side
palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp
bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse
howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon,
nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with
his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. "In judging of that
tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer--of whose
works I possess the only copy extant--"it maketh a marvellous
difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where
the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from
that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which
the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough, thought I, as
this passage occurred to my mind--old black-letter, thou reasonest
well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the
house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies
though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too
late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the
copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago.
Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for
his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might
plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and
yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon!
says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper--(he had a redder one
afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion
glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental
summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of
making my own summer with my own coals.
But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them
up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in
Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise
along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit
itself, in order to keep out this frost?
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before
the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should
be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives
like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a
president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of
orphans.
This sort of tediously obscure waffling, done solely to show off what a wonderfully well-educated man the writer is, is why I avoid most Victorian writing like the plague.
I contributed part of a chapter to this book, and so I got a free copy. I was expecting to take it home, put it on the shelf, and never use it. Today, less than 48 hours after getting the book in the post, I had to use it. The thoughtful comments and excellent description of how dump / restore work prevented me from looking like a complete tit on a public mailing list. I therefore recommend this book.
More seriously, it does look jolly good, covering just about all the backupish stuff that I've heard of and lots that I haven't. But more importantly, it devotes lots of space to restoring your backups - complete with step-by-step instructions for "bare metal" recovery - and talks about things to do when your backups are broken.
And it covers things that lots of admins don't like to think about, like Exchange and MySQL (and other databases; judging from a quick skim of the Oracle section I expect the coverage to be good).
Buy a copy of this book for your friendly local sysadmin. He will love you for ever.
This evening I went to a Nikka tasting at The Whisky Exchange in Vinopolis. Nikka being a Japanese whisky distillery company. I realise that some people will be horrified at the idea of me drinking whisky from anywhere but Scotland, but, I'll have you know, the Japanese make some crackers. As do the Irish, Welsh and Indians. I've heard good things about a Swedish whisky too, and am very much looking forward to trying something from the 
