Tangled Mind

The real problem is that a species that lives inside its own fictions can no longer imagine a healthy fiction to live inside, and this failure of the imagination stops us from steering towards the better versions of our potential futures. [p. 19]

The Future Starts Here: An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next is a cultural analysis of how we view the future, focussing very much on the positive. The book ranges from an overview of why colonising Mars is a daft idea to explorations of the Knebb rewilding project, of natural versus artificial intelligence (and why Higgs feels his cat is smarter than Alexa), and of the ways in which virtual reality can be more than just entertainment. ( Read more... )

There had always been Puttis -- round and soft, made for children. She had kept hers because it was the last thing her mother had made... Puttis were four-legged and tailed. Their heads were round, with shining eyes made of buttons or beads, upstanding ears, whiskers above the small mouth. Puttis were loved, played with, adored in the child world; their origin was those brought by children on the First Ships. [loc. 2219]

This was the first science fiction book I remember reading, from Rochford Library, probably pre-1975. I don't think I've read it since, though I did briefly own a paperback copy. Apparently the blurbs of newer editions mention 'university complex' and 'epidemic virus': aged <10, I was hooked by the cat on the front.

There are many Turks who believe that the capture of Constantinople was a just vengeance for the fall of Troy. The Greeks were at last made to pay for their perfidy. [loc. 2376]

Reread: my review from 2010 is here. I remembered nothing at all about this novel! Apparently I purchased a paperback copy in 2007: as with almost all of his other novels, no Kindle edition is available.

Ackroyd bases his novel on the life of Heinrich Schliemann, who first excavated Troy, and his marriage to a much younger woman, a Greek (famously chosen on the basis of a photograph and 'Homeric spirit'). Ackroyd's fictional archaeologist is named Heinrich Obermann, and he has all of Schliemann's flaws and more:( Read more... )

I’m a grown woman now, and it’s about time I heard the truth. Because I know that whatever the imagination is, it isn’t just inventing things. Making things up and pretending they’re real is not enough. [loc. 4915]

Twenty-five years ago, in Oxford in August 2000, I interviewed a best-selling fantasy author, who said (among many more interesting things) that he shared an editor with J K Rowling and that this editor had claimed not to be able to contact Rowling. (I suggested that this might explain the length of the fourth HP novel.) That author was Philip Pullman, and I can't help wondering whether his current editor is having a similar issue with Pullman himself. I found this novel overlong, self-contradictory, sprawling, and ultimately unsatisfying.

Which is not to say it's awful: ( Read more... )

The stela was clear evidence for the existence of a previously unknown Mesoamerican culture… and Ellie had the map to the heart of it tucked into her corset. [p. 178]

London, 1898: archivist Eleanor Mallory finds herself unemployed after a suffragette protest. ("Just one little arrest, which they aren’t even pressing charges for!") Awaiting her dismissal, she finds an ancient map concealed by her supervisor.( Read more... )

Even in Deptford, you can’t carry bodies far in daylight... [loc. 1402]

In which William Shakespeare is suspected of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, and makes common cause with Marlowe's sister Ann (formerly Will's lover) to find out who really killed Marlowe, and why. Well-researched, witty historical whodunnit with a credible denouement and some excellent dialogue (Jenkin is an award-winning scriptwriter) and lots of period detail. Also, set in my neck of the woods...

The premise sounded excellent, but didn't quite ring true for me.( Read more... )

One girl each year. Two hundred and six bones times a thousand years. More than enough calcium to keep this house standing until the stars ate themselves clean, picked the sinew from their own shining bones. [loc. 238]

Talia has always wanted to get married in a haunted house: when she announces her marriage to Faiz, their wealthy friend Phillip flies the couple and their friends -- Cat the narrator and Lin her ex -- to Japan, and sets up a sleepover in an abandoned mansion. They have "“booze, food, sleeping bags, a youthful compulsion to do stupid shit... and a hunger for a good ghost story”" [loc. 202]. And they have a setting rich with stories about dancing girls buried in the walls, and a legend of an aborted wedding where the groom died en route.

...fans are connecting based on affinity and instinct and participating in hyperconnected networks that they built for one purpose but can use for many others. [p. 270]

The subtitle, 'How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It', is somewhat misleading. The Archive of Our Own -- built by (mostly female) fans, currently hosting over 16 million fanworks, proudly cost-free and independent since 2007 -- gets a single sentence. In contrast Tumblr (owned by a succession of big tech companies) is repeatedly lauded as an archive as well as a medium for sharing and communicating. 

The book's focus is very much on One Direction (1D) fandom, and the author's personal experience is part of the story. She explores how fandom can be a coping mechanism, a creative outlet, a way of life: and she doesn't shy away from some of the more troubling aspects of fandom,( Read more... )

I don't want to be a sentient empathy-filament-abomination, so I only eat human food. [loc. 65]

Paul Cattaneo is dead: to begin with. He's been replaced by a Mirror Person who wears a 'skinsuit' replica of Paul Cattaneo's body. His friend 'John O'Malley' (formerly Noonie) is another Mirror Person. 'We are forty-something blue-collar human men. We aren't fuckin' bugs.' ( Read more... )

Perhaps it was not the blind malignancy of fate making my life so complicated. Perhaps it was me. [Whiskeyjack, loc. 4159]

Rereads to sustain me through a bad cold and the aftermath of my birthday celebrations: I can think of few better remedies.

Whiskeyjack (original review here) introduces layers of complication, curses, several people who are not who they say they are, and Mr Dart's magic becoming more obvious to those around him. After reading Olive and the Dragon, Jemis' mother's letter has new poignancy.

Blackcurrant Fool (original review here) is the one where they all go to Tara: there are highwaymen, kittens, dens of iniquity, and Jemis' toxic ex-girlfriend. Also a devastating denouement, and some healthy post-colonialism. In some respects this is my least favourite of the novels, though it can't be because of the setting...

Love-in-a-Mist (original review here) is a country-house murder mystery, with a unicorn, the revelation of the Hunter in Green's identity, coded messages in the personal ads, and a missing heiress. I think this might be my favourite so far.

Even just rereading my old reviews is making me want to plunge on to the currently-final novel, and the novellas... but I will save those for especially awful days between now and Bubble and Squeak.