Involution OceanisBruce Sterling's first published Novel – and I very nearly threw it back on the 'read sometimes later' pile after reading the blurb on the back: "The only habitable portion of Nullaqua is a handful of islands at the bottom of an immense crater. Surrounding the islands is a sea of the finest dust. And in the sea live the dust whales whose bodies yield Flare, a potent, exhilarating drug."
What does this sound like? Cheap Dune rip-off, anyone? But fear not Dear Reader, it isn't … except in the very brief summary/blurb there are no similarities with Dune; this story has it's very own scenario and storyline.
The story takes place in the crater mentioned in the blurb – one heck of a crater it is; 70 miles deep, 500 miles across, and is filled with near-mono-atomic dust. As the only part of Nullaqua (now there's a descriptive name for you) that has breathable air and is thus inhabitable, it has some rather interesting flora, fauna, and of course history. The area just outside the crater sports the ruins of two Elder Culture Outposts, which makes the main human industry (Dust Whaling on the surface of the Dust lake of indeterminate depth) a rather interesting one if you think about it for a while. The story follows the steps of one John Newhouse, connaisseur of the drug Flare, who ventures onto a Dust Whaler (Lunglance, captained by Nils Desperandum) to secure future provisioning of the drug, made from Dustwhale oil. On the Luglance he meets Dalusa, a winged, surgically beautiful alien, and embarks on a rather unusual relationship with her (Dalusa is allergic to physical contact with him).
Marcus Chown is the 'Cosmology Consultant' (whatever that is) for the New Scientist, and The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead is booked as 'Dispatches from the Front Line of Science". It contains a number of loosely aligned essays on a wide variety of topics of cutting edge/fashionable/speculative (delete as inclined) science, mainly around cosmology and large/general scale concepts; i.e. very little in terms of application, or even applicability.
The contents, at least for me, fell into three distinct categories. On the one hand there is, for want of a better term, 'classic advanced science' like General and Specific Relativity, parts of Quantum Theory and similar things. These are well written, informative (if a tad too dumbed down from my point of knowledge), and frequently entertaining. A good read.
The Throne of Madness is the second book in Somtow Sucharitkul's Inquestor series. Two comments before we get going – firstly, despite the title of book & series (and the hideous covers, IMHO) – this is SF. Large, sweeping Space Opera. And it's a grand tale, and, within the boundaries of what I've read so far in my life, my preferred series. So, be warned, possible gushing ahead.
The story picks up shortly after the point where the first book in the series, The Light on the Sound, left off. Kelver (or Ton Keverell n'Davaren Toth, as he is now known with honorific, full name and clan) is now on Uran s'Varek, the heart of the dispersal of man and inquestral homeworld, to be trained as an Inquestor, and face the long pilgrimage and aloneness that precedes attainment of the rank. Uran s'Varek sits at the centre of man's dispersal - both figuratively as the Inquest's homeworld, but also literally at the heart of the galaxy that man has spread across. It's a construct, pre-dating humanity (never mind the Inquest), 446 million km wide, with a black hole at its centre, and 1.8 million stars in its cubic parsec. It has an atmosphere thousands of km thick to scatter the light of all those stars. And once every century or so one of those stars falls, guided by the Thinkhives, through one of the open poles of Uran s'Varek and into the black hole at its heart. The power of the inquest stems from these 'Lightfalls' – and the simile of the black hole at the heart of the Inquest is heavily played upon.
This is Charles Stross' first published novel – and to start, let's just make clear that it's a cracker. 'The Atrocity Archives' is a Secret Service/Spy story, with a heavily occult slant (it's all science, of course. But you knew that.), populated by math & IT geeks (as in the ones that will inherit the earth). One of those geeks is Robert 'Bob' Howard, who works for the 'Laundry'. Now, the Laundry is a secret organization, which is why you haven't heard of it. It's secret under the Official Secrets Act (of which you might have heard), Section 3 (which is secret under the previous two sections, which is why you've never heard of it). The Laundry specializes in Bureaucracy like any good Civil Service, and in Black Ops style field work, with a focus on the Occult dangers to our world, and especially the United Kingdom (most of these dangers have to do with applied advanced mathematics. No, really). Bob qualified himself for the Laundry (he was, like most members,forcibly recruited), as he worked out 'the geometry curve iteration method for invoking Nyarlathotep' – or, in the words of his boss, a way of 'landscaping Birmingham without planning permit'. Owing to the blessings of Matrix-management he has two lines of responsibility – firstly to the mysterious Angleton, who seems to know and be able to affect more than is his share, and to Harriet (and thus her boss Bridget) who are the classic bean-counter-play-it-by-the-rules careerists (and thus a pain in some posterior body parts) that every civil service needs, and attracts in droves. This provides as much plot as it provides comical relief, especially at not being the person caught up in this matrix.
Nation is a stand-alone novel byTerry Pratchett, written, I presume, for Young Adults market, but just as enjoyable for any adult young at heart.
Mau is on his way back from the Island of Boys. He will receive his tattoos, his soul, and be a man when he returns to the Nation on the main island. But on the way back a huge wall of water overtakes his canoe (can you spell Tsunami?) and when he reaches the island he finds everybody dead, the village destroyed – he is all that remains of the proud Nation. And don't get me wrong – the Nation is old, very old. With its own creation myth and pantheon of gods; and with old myths, including the story of the sailors who sailed so far that they came home again.
Daphne (real name: Ermintrude. But don't tell anyone, she hates it) is on her way to join her father, who is Governor of the Crown in Port Mercia. And, as his domineering mothers likes to point out, only 139th in line to the throne. But her ship, the Sweet Judy, is caught up in the same wave, and is shipwrecked on the Nation. Everybody on board is dead – Daphne survives by having wrapped herself in her mattress, which was not really an option for the sailors.
The Sky Road is the forth and final instalment in Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution Series – a fitting end to the series (although there's always scope to write more into the gaps in the history) if not the best book in it in my opinion. The book starts with what comes across as pseudo-fantasy and a sex scene (no, come back, it's of survivable quality as such things go), set in a culture/community set on the Scottish West coast which is, on behalf the world at large, bootstrapping its way back into space (see Cosmonaut Keep for a re-visit of that idea). There is quite some history to that world – "The Americans fell, but their Empire lived on as the Possession, until the Deliverer roles in the East and struck it down", to give a key quote. Key protagonist are Clovis colha Gree, a student of History (a slightly suspect occupation) and Merrial, a Tinker/Engineer, both working on the 'ship' which his being built to re-start humanity's path into space after centuries of being Earth-bound,again.
Involution Ocean 
The Throne of Madness
Nation
The Sky Road
