As the Middle-East convulses in yet another bloody war, and with no end in sight to the barbarity, we're all looking for a way to understand the horrors unfolding. So I went searching in the past. What set the seeds of today's conflict and was there any way to prevent it? This is a dispassionate and, it has to be said, dry look at how the British intelligence agencies operated in the region during the aftermath of the 2nd world war. The books makes the compelling case that the UK's obsession …
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Imagine a world with inter-city rockets, where tourists still use film cameras. Where self-driving trucks sport a wide array of sensor apparatus and record all their data onto miles of magnetic tape. Where the latest Androids are life-like and can perfectly clone a dead man's speech, yet are powered by punch-cards. People make video calls from public booths which eagerly accept coins as payment. At the heart of nearly every story is paranoia and poor mental health. Perhaps I am a robot? Or…
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This book is outstanding. It's the mid 1980s, you're administrating a nascent fleet of UNIX boxen, and you are tasked with accounting for a 75¢ billing discrepancy. Naturally that eventually leads into an international conspiracy involving the FBI, NSA, and an excellent recipe for chocolate chip cookies. It is a fast paced, high-tension, page turner. There's also a sweet moral core to the story - as well as the somewhat saddening death of naïvety. It's hard to overstate just how fun this book …
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What if the heroine in a Jane Austen novel had visions of the future and the past? That's the rather compelling premise of Time Squared. But, ultimately, it doesn't really fulfil the promise. It starts as a fairly standard regency-style novel - which of the two dashing brothers will our orphaned heroine marry?!? Our protagonist sometimes has headaches which lead her to see glimpses of a future she cannot understand. And then... nothing. The story meanders along with the occasional twists and …
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Everyone smokes in the future. It is such an obvious truism that sci-fi writers can predict faster-than-light travel, yet fail to see that manly men won't be smoking pipes on board their spaceships. Someone recommended that I read "Autofac" which is the sci-fi version of "The Magic Porridge Pot". But the story was surprisingly hard to find. Originally published in a magazine in 1955, it was subsequently republished in a collection called "The Variable Man" in 1957. It is impossible to find a …
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I was saddened to hear of Kris Nóva's untimely death a few weeks ago. I had her book "Hacking Capitalism" on my eReader for several months, but hadn't got around to reading it yet. Never put these things off. The book is a complicated but fitting legacy. It absolutely showcases Nóva's ideas, ideals, and potential. Perhaps a little overwrought in places, and a little underpowered in others. It's clear that her heart was in the right place and she was making a huge impact in the world. The s…
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This is beloved firebrand Cory doing what he does best. Rallying the rebellion with righteous indignation and a no-nonsense approach to fixing technology's ills. If you've read any of his fiction, or listened to him talk, you'll know what to expect. An overview of how big tech has screwed us over and the consequences of those machinations. Unlike other writers, Doctorow provides eminently practical solutions. Now, some of the solutions you'll be unable to implement unless you're an elected…
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The first section of this book are, frankly, dull. It's the sort of sneering, middle-class soap opera which leaves me cold. Entitled twats ignoring the world around them. It's a stultifying atmosphere which nearly made me stop after a few chapters. And then... It's amazing just how well that cloying sense of safety is gradually shattered beyond repair. I knew very little about Biafran War. It is a harrowing period of history. Told through the eyes of ambiguous and unsympathetic characters,…
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It occurs to me that I mostly read modern books. But sometimes I dip into the classics to see what modern literature is built upon. Quentin Crisp was - depending on how you read his autobiography - famous for being infamous, notorious for being Proud before Pride, or an uncompromising icon of studied awfulness. The book veers wildly between achingly painful prose and unimaginably bitchy barbs. Every page is stuffed with acid-drops of social commentary. About my immortal soul I did not…
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This is a sickly sweet and somewhat preposterous book - but it is a lot of fun. Fifties feminism and cooking go together like bangers and mash. Chemistry and gender politics are the garnish on top. I loved the way it told the story from multiple points of view - even the pet dog gets in on the act. I've no idea if the science was accurate, but it was delightful to be swept away by something so charming. It is an excellent story - it's all wish fulfilment and unlikely co-incidence. But isn't…
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Computers, eh? Leave them for five minutes and they become obsolete. Leave them for five years and they become legacy infrastructure. How do we deal with a tower of "quick fixes" which are older than Moses? What strategies do we need to stop teams going mad as they try to upgrade a Spitfire into a 747 while in flight? This is Marianne Bellotti's attempt to explain how we get there and - just maybe - how we stop legacy cruft from building up in the first place. I found myself highlighting…
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I'm a little behind on my reading - I've been busy, OK! This is a collection of tales from 2014. Which means it isn't in the shadow of a damned pandemic, lunatic president, or any of the other modern horrors which have caused shockwaves to authors' psyches. I love short stories. There's absolutely no commitment. I'm not going to be tricked into buying endless sequels of declining quality. There's no vast universe for me to get invested in. And if one's a bit disappointing, never mind; turn…
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