Only fools try to predict the future. You can read my predictions for 2023, or dig deep into my archives and rate me on how foolish I am. So here are my five predictions for 2024 AI Genocide It is obvious that Large Language Models are based on stolen material. I suspect that a lawsuit […]
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OK. What the actual fuck? This starts off as a rather charming period piece - 1920s hotel will all the guests snowed in - and then gradually descends into horrifying madness. I'm used to the bizarre worlds created by Kate Mascarenhas - but this took the creepiness up to an extreme level. There's an almost […]
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One of the things I love about having a database-backed blog like WordPress is that's it opens up a delightful range of possibilities for displaying content. I've read and reviewed around 300 books over the last few years. So I wrote a scrap of code which goes through all my book reviews, grabs their cover […]
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The nice thing about short story collections is that you never waste too much time if one of them is a bit of a dud. This contains some lovely tales of madness and despair. Some are high fantasy and some innovative sci-fi. A particular stand-out is Anuja Mitra's "Plague Year" - it's an almost joyous […]
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Girl Power! Women deserve the vote and the right to a life of crime! This is the potted history of a criminal gang operating out of London. It's full of villainesses, shoplifterixen, and thievettes. A disreputable bunch of complex characters on a crime-spree fuelled by women's lib and abject poverty. Each biography could be its […]
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Food is transcendental. All cultures venerate it, a shared meal is the universal symbol of hospitality, the business of food shapes our entire planet. This book was originally written in the 1980s and updated in the 1990s - but it is a timeless classic. Visser talks us through how a simple meal came to be, […]
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Nuclear power was sold to the world as a safe, clean, and economically viable source of electricity. We were told that it would be "too cheap to meter"0. Even the most ardent proponent of nuclear power will have to admit that hasn't come to pass. Construction costs for nuclear power stations are dwarfed only by […]
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Is it possible to write a time-travel story which makes sense? Probably not - but this comes close! It's a bit of a slow-burn; not revealing its secrets until it is good and ready. If you've read a lot of time-hopping sci-fi you won't find anything too surprising; nothing can escape the long shadow of […]
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The best thing about Shakespeare is that you can endlessly redefine the stories. Romeo & Juliet works as well set in NYC to a musical score as it does set in fair Verona. The Tempest is just as good whether the action takes place on an island or an alien planet. Shakespeare can be set […]
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Was the polymath John von Neumann an alien? Did he travel back in time to help us invent the future? Or was he just a complex man with a knack for building networks of interesting people? Ananyo Bhattacharya's well-researched book presents a tangled view of the man and his legend. It leaps back and forth […]
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