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Book review of Slow Lightning by Jack McDevitt

This review of Slow Lightning by Jack McDevitt was written in 2000 for the website Infinity Plus.

Voyager, 2000, £10.99, 435pp, ISBN 0-00-224735-6

A certain Mr S. King from Maine, USA, has taken up almost the entire back (and some of the front) dust jacket of Slow Lightning with burnished praise for it. So much so that the back blurb has had to be slashed to just a few basic expositional lines.

Book review of Hidden Empire (Book one of The Saga of Seven Suns) by Kevin J. Anderson

This review of Hidden Empire (Book one of The Saga of Seven Suns) by Kevin J. Anderson was written in 2002 for the website Infinity Plus.

Earthlight, 2002, £17.99, 679pp, ISBN 0-7342-2045-5

If by some amazing chance you’ve just arrived at the Infinity Plus review pages as an sf virgin looking for a book to really turn you on to reading sf then skip this review. Hidden Empire, book one of The…

Book review of The End Of Science Fiction by Sam Smith

This review of The End Of Science Fiction by Sam Smith, was written in 2004 for the website SFSite.com.

BeWrite Books, 2004, £8.00, 207pp, ISBN 1-904492-70-3

See also my review of We Need Madmen, also by Sam Smith.

As a title The End Of Science Fictionmight seem a tad self-obsessed for a novel about the end of the universe. Yes, the end of the universe will sadly mean the end of science…

Book review of You’re My Favorite Reader by Chris Federico

This review of You’re My Favorite Reader by Chris Federico was written in 2003 for the website Infinity Plus.

iUniverse, 2003, £9.49, 118pp, ISBN 0-595-26597-9

If you appreciate the title You’re My Favorite Readerthen you’ll almost certainly enjoy the rest of the book, since it exactly captures the spirit of New Mexican Chris Federico’s first collection of very short stories, vignettes and odd…

Book review of The Killing Of Worlds (Book Two of Succession) by Scott Westerfeld

This book review of The Killing Of Worlds (Book Two of Succession) by Scott Westerfeld was written in 2003 for the British Science Fiction Association‘s magazine, Vector.

See also my review of book one, The Risen Empire

Tor Hardcover, 2003, Hardback, 336pp, $25.95, ISBN 0-765-30850-9

First up, a warning: if you haven’t read Book One of Succession, The Risen Empire, then you need to stop reading…

Book review of Mockymen by Ian Watson

This review of Mockymen by Ian Watson was written in 2005 for the website Infinity Plus.

Immanion Press, 2004, £12.99, 330pp, ISBN 1-9048-5312-9

Ian Watson has been regularly writing books (and, more importantly, getting them published) since before I was born, so I was faintly surprised not to have come across any of them before. Having read MockymenI now feel slightly guilty about this fact:…

Book review of PeaceMaker by Dan Ronco

  This review of PeaceMaker by Dan Ronco was written in 2004 for the website Infinity Plus.

Winterwolf Publishing, 2004, £?.??, 280pp, ISBN 0-97527-114-8

Having read Dan Ronco’s PeaceMaker I’ve come to the conclusion that geeks and guns don’t really mix. They’re like oil and water – geeks (computer geeks, to be specific) aren’t easily imaginable as action heroes or gun-toting ruthless killers.

T…

Book review of On by Adam Roberts

This book review of On by Adam Roberts was written in 2001 for the British Science Fiction Association‘s magazine, Vector.

Victor Gollancz, 2001, Paperback, 388pp, £10.99, ISBN 1-575-07177-x

Adam Roberts’ first novel, Salt, which came out last year, was a very fine start to any career. Onis only his second novel and raised two important questions for me: one, will his titles continue to shorten…

Generally, as a rule, I dislike using the term “miraculous” to describe something; mainly because of the religious connotations surrounding the word, and particularly when talking about Millie, where people are already inclined to cast their reason out the window (me included) to describe her entry into the world, her subsequent survival and, well, just when talking at all about how wonderful…

No news is good news. And nerd news.

No Millie news today – I had to do the “socialising with work” thing last night so I’ve barely seen her for 24 hours. 😦

Still, the Lovely Melanie’s off out on the piss on Wednesday so it’s just me and the girl in that night, and we can do a bit of father-daughter bonding. I’ll let you know how that goes.

The thing is, you can never really predict whether it’s going to end up with beautiful…

Back to Lewisham Hospital

We had to go back to the hospital with Millie on Friday evening, which was very strange. The same dreadfully familiar train journey from work, the same short walk to Lewisham Hospital, just a different ward this time.

First of all, Millie’s fine.

I’ll just repeat that: Millie’s perfectly all right. We were told to go to A&E by our GP but onlyas a sensible precaution and because it was the…

Clarke Award news. And nappies

More exciting news about the Sir Arthur C. Clarke Award (which, you may recall, I’m one of the 2006 judges for).

I should probably put some kind of read-o-meter on this site to show how much reading still remains to be done before the 28th January (when we meet to pick a shortlist). Currently there’s about two-thirds of a meter of bookage still to be read.

Two-thirds of a meter.And I’ve got…

A cold and fireworks

Millie currently has a cold.

It’s officially not bird flu, and she’s taking it remarkably well, considering how badly she ordinarily takes things that you or I wouldn’t bat an eyelid at (e.g. being laid on her back, having dinner brought late orearly, not having her chair rocked for more than seven seconds, baths, being dried after a bath, having her nappy changed, not having her nappy…

You know you live in a “nicer” area…when you get four trick or treaters call at your house on Halloween.

I’ve never had them come round in my previous enclaves of domestic bliss. Last night we had four groups.

Although, one was a single young lad – about 10? – all on his lonesome. The fool! Has he never read the Daily Mail?? Doesn’t he know that Rohypnol-doping, asylum seeking,…

Slippery things, genes…

Indeed they are – very slippery customers.

Take Millie, for instance, our brown-eyed girl – or so we thought! Now it would appear that the last vestiges of her mother’s DNA have been overcome and her eyes are turning the same colour as those of her dad: a grey-blue colour.

Fearsome stuff, the old Carter DNA – it assimilates everything it touches. Just by reading this website you’re…