Category Archives: Books

Massive congratulations to my extremely talented sister-in-law Dana, whose debut novel ‘The Steam Magnate’ is published any day now by Aio Publishing. Hurrah! You can read an excerpt (PDF) here, and once that has whet your appetite, you can buy … Continue reading →

Awesome! You can now read online of my favourite books EVAR – Out of Control by Kevin Kelly. I read the book when it came out and was lucky enough to get Kevin Kelly to do a reading at the … Continue reading →

In a friends-and-relative are star authors (or going to be) type double whammy, massive (and somewhat belated) congratulations to my dear sister-in-law Dana whose Science Fantasy novel The Steam Magnate, which will be published in September by Aio Publishing. Being … Continue reading →

Huge congratulations to our friend Ali Smith, who has won the Whitbread Novel Of The Year award, beating out such nonentities as Salman Rushdie and Nick Hornby, with her novel ‘The Accidental‘. I suppose you’ll be wanting that website now, … Continue reading →

I’m really enjoying Accelerando by Charles Stross, which he recently released under a creative commons licence, which means you can download it all, for free. It is ‘post-singularity‘ SF and imagines how the future might look if things (computing power, … Continue reading →

Malcolm “Tipping Point” Gladwell has a new book out in January, entitled Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking, which looks fascinating. In it, he investigates the power of the adaptive unconscious, the cognitive facility behind our ability to make … Continue reading →

I’ve just finished reading Platform by Michel Houllebecq, which was excellent. Maybe not quite as good as Atomised (which I haven’t actually finished yet) but still very thought provoking, provocative and full of sex scenes which are actually well-written and … Continue reading →

I’m reading a very interesting book by Virginia Postrel called The Substance of Style. Her central thesis is that we have entered the “Age of Aesthetics” and “look and feel” (along with design) is assuming ever-greater importance. Ms. Postrel managed … Continue reading →

Hurrah! David Foster Wallace has a new book out, entitled Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity. In honour of this momentous – for us DFW geeks, at least – occassion, I’ve decided to rename my blog ‘howling fantods!’ … Continue reading →