Here's a trick question: as a male (and, presumably, female, too, but I can't speak for that side) SF fan, would you walk past a book called 'Alien Sex' without picking up for a look? Thought so.
The original title for this collection of stories was 'Off limits: Sex and the Alien', which would have been much more fitting than the pulpy title the publisher replaced it with. Especially, as the book points out, 'Any sex beyond masturbation is an excursion into Alien territory', anyway.
This is a selection of stories around sex, eroticism, desire, procreation and some things which are rather hard to pigeonhole. These were collected by Ellen during her time as editor for OMNI – a good number of the stories included in this volume she turned down for the magazine for being too raunchy. Besides the Larry Niven classic 'Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex', discussing the sexuality (or, rather, sexual impossibilities and frustrations) of Clark Ken/Superman, there is very little here in terms of 'well known' authors (or am I just not well-read enough?). Most of the stories appear to have been selected on topic and merit; and well chosen they were indeed!
Pashazade (or, rather, the Arabesk Trilogy) is the book where (or would that be when?), as some of my friends put it, Jon Courtenay-Grimwood'came good', and proved that indeed he was able to write enjoyable and complex SF with a unique voice. The right place to start for me, then, no?
The book itself starts with a quote by Richard Dawkins: " However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead…". A questionable statement, some people would say…
I was rather excited when I stumbled across The House of Doctor Deeby Peter Ackroydwhilst sheltering from a downpour in a Charity Shop in Bury St Edmunds. Peter Ackroyd is a writer (of biographies, fiction, children's books, and a play) that I greatly appreciate, and Doctor Dee a historical figure that I'm interested in. What could possibly go wrong with the combination of these two? Much, I have to report, to my disappointment; and not just that this is fiction, and not the biography I hoped it would be when I saw it on the shelf (but, at least this, is not really Peter's fault).
The book nominally tells the story of Matthew Park, a researcher into historical papers, who inherits a house in Clerkenwell from his father. When he moves in to the place to escape his mother he finds that the house affects his moods, his perceptions, and his grip on reality unduly. He sets out to discover more, and learns that the house used to be belong to Dr Dee, the 16th Century mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, and Queen Elizabeth's (in)famous astrologer and consultant.
In reality this is a fictionalised account of the final years of Dr Dee, which digresses greatly from the historical records. The book follows the two strands (modern times, and 16th century) as they slowly coalesce (I kid you not), with much more weight and focus on the pseudo-historical strand. Both are told in the 1st person, but only Dr Dee really comes to life, which mainly serves to outline how repulsive, selfish, and less than human (despite his reported human foibles) the learned man was (or, at least, is displayed here). Matthew's character is sketchy, and mainly comes across as weak, confused, embarrassing, and not in any semblance of control.
Iron Sunrise, the second book in Charles Stross' Timelike Diplomacy series (as it is now known) starts with a bang. A big one. When the planet of Moscow, a happy, democratic, quite enlightened (if slightly backwards) planet is ‘Iron Bombed’ (essentially – the core of its sun was replaced by an iron crystal of equivalent mass, leading to some rather cataclysmic-catastrophic reactions in its suddenly unsupported mantle), the resulting massive radiation and plasma pulse obliterates everything in its way in the star system. This leads to the automatic deployment of its 2nd strike deterrent force – sublight speed bombers equipped with planet busters, neigh impossible to stop, or defend against. These are aimed at Moscow’s local trade competitor, New Dresden, which is 35 light years away from Moscow. And 30 years from the arrival of the bombers when we join the story. How do you evacuate a planet of 3 billion people, even over 30+ years? You do the maths – it transpires, very simply, that you don’t, not with any kind of fleet of ‘normal’ FTL space ships. And, even better, it wasn’t even New Dresden behind the bombing in the first place… This situation brings on the ‘Black Chamber’ UN diplomats from Old Earth, especially Rachel Mansour and her (now) husband Martin Springfield, the protagonists from the first book playing in the ‘Timeline Diplomacy’ universe, Singularity Sky. Their mission? Figure out who bombed Moscow and who is now killing, one after the other, its remaining Ambassadors to other worlds. Stop them. And stop the bombers running on New Dresden. It's quite a brief… But the person who knows what really happened, or who at least has access to the clues, is a displaced evacuee teenager called (ok, calls herself) Wednesday Shadowmist, who gets evacuated from Portal Station 11 (affectionately known to its inhabitants as 'Old Newfoundland Four'), 3.6 light years away from the explosion; a distance which provides enough time to evacuate, but is still way too close to the Iron Sunrise to protect human life within the station from the expanding shock wave …
Here are a few thoughts on Wireless, a collection of short stories by Charles Stross, a book a received from Little, Brown Books for review (thanks).
This is, like every other collection of short stories and novelettes that I've ever read a mixed bag, covering a wide scope of topics, writing styles, and quality of story. Overall it's entertaining if not terribly complex or deep; but then most short stories are written as test balloons, trials, and to play with ideas that didn't warrant full size novels, so that's par for the course, if not better given the case at hand.
The book contains stories written between 98 and 08; all of which (save Palimpset) were published previously, some in electronic form only. Given the above, here is a quick run through the contents:
Pashazade
Iron Sunrise
