As resolved, I have just finished writing a piece on Kelly Link's 'The Faery Handbag'. Not my best one in the series, but good to get back into the swing of it.

Reviewed for Internationale Politik here.

My review of this year's Philip K Dick shortlisted novels is up at Strange Horizons.

It may or may not be significant that five of the seven novels are published by Bantam Spectra. It may or may not be significant that five out of the seven authors are women. It is probably not significant that five of the seven have one-word titles.

Comments turned off on this entry to encourage people to comment over there.

My review of Variable Star by Heinlein and Robinson is up at Strange Horizons. Though one of the sentences may need to be, er, varied as two versions have got confused.

At Strange Horizons. Thumbs up from me; thumbs down from swisstone.

Strange Horizons published my review of Impossible Stories by Zoran Živković on Tuesday.

Anne asks where my review of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is. I haven't yet read the book, so haven't written a review yet - though I did get it for Christmas and have firmly resolved to try and read it this year!

At Strange Horizons, here.

My review of the Amber Benson/Christopher Golden novel is now up at Strange Horizons.

rparvaaz and sugarimp, I would be particularly interested in your reactions...

Old ones from the Ethnic Conflict Review Digest, 1998-2000:

Making A New Nation, ed. by Danica Fink-Hafner & John R Robbins (about Slovenia)
Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood, by Anastasia N Karakasidou (about Greek Macedonia)
Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton, by David Chandler
Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-1999, by Sydney Elliott and W.D. Flackes with John Coulter

( full text of reviews, for my own archives )

Reviewed by me for Strange Horizons, here.

Finally, after eight months, I have done the next in my series of reviews of those works of written sf which have won both Hugo and Nebula.

Clifford D. Simak's "Grotto of the Dancing Deer".

Surprisingly little to be written about it, in the end, probably partly why it took me so long. Right, now about those other reviews I owe Keith Brooke...

I see Neil Belton's novel about Schrödinger in Dublin (which I've been hearing rumours about for some time) is now out, reviewed in the TLS, the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph. Any of you guys read it yet?

(Also posted to my website - NB the website version will be updated; this entry will not - and in abbreviated form to rasfw.)

( Very long )

Comments welcome below or on rasfw.

Checking the referrer logs for my site I found several visitors who had come via the F&SF discussion board, on foot of a discussion of what sounds like a very silly story about a same-sex marriage between President Bush and Osama Bin Laden, in which my account of a usenet discussion a while back on "macs", by Terry Bisson, was brought in as evidence.

Slightly stunned by a comment from none other than Ellen Datlow to the effect that

"Boy, the initial poster of the "macs" discussion completely missed the point--that it was against capitol punishment. Another person in the discussion had to point it out to him. I'm surprised anyone could read it as an "endorsement" of CP. I find that really depressing."

As the the initial poster of the "macs" discussion, I certainly did not read the story in that way - it is and was pretty clear to me that it was satire and an anti-capital punishment story, and I completely agree with the political message. I obviously failed to make that clear to some of the people who responded, and to Ellen Datlow.

The message of the story is, in my view, fatally weakened because of Bisson's lapse of taste in using real people from a real mass murder as the butts of his satire. Using public figures like President Bush or Osama Bin Laden is fair game, but "macs" went too far in mocking private grief. (Probably Bisson has not had any personal encounters with victims of mass murder, which explains but in my view does not excuse his insensitivity.)

I admit I have an additional cultural problem in trying to understand why there is even a debate about capital punishment in America, but that's a different matter.

Review now up at my website.

Interested by the current spate of posts on reviews, such as those by greengolux here, ninebelow here, and coalescent here (also check out coffeeandink's satirical take on it).

I do mostly positive reviews for my own website, with a few exceptions, basically because I tend to spend money on and enjoy writing about books that I actually like. Writing here, I tend not to go on and on about bad books, but I do sometimes write a lot about books I've particularly enjoyed (usually non-fiction, like this, that and the other). However, I've also done a few reviews for Infinity Plus, most of which have been negative, basically because I owe it to the editor to at least be honest once he has sent me the book, especially since I haven't paid for it and it costs him money to send them to me.

What has tended to surprise me when I google the books I don't like is that most reviews seem to be very positive. I think this basically indicates that most people prefer to write about books they liked than about books they didn't. No doubt there is also a bit of a phenomenon of authors asking their friends to write nice things about them. Night Travels of the Elven Vampire was an unusual case.

I feel that the reviewer has a duty to be honest about his or her feelings. If you are able to write about the books you don't like, it makes your opinion of the books you do like more valuable. I think.

New review of Asimov's classic The Gods Themselves on my website. Warning: contains sarcasm and negative comments.

Tolkien: Behind the Lord of the Rings. Not completely happy with it, but there we go.

10) The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov

I reread this one for my website. Full review will be published there.

Way way back four years ago I decided to compile a list of the stories which have won both Hugo and Nebula awards. Then I decided it wasn't enough to list them, I should buy them and read them again, or for the first time if I hadn't already. This took a good eight months, with Poul Anderson's "Goat Song" the last story I was able to track down. Finally, I decided that I should do something a bit more substantial, and try writing pieces of around 1000-2000 words about each story, trying to delve a bit more into the background if possible, and at least explaining their impact on one reader, ie me.

( list )

So now I have reached Poul Anderson's "Goat Song" - 23 reviews done, 32 to go. At some more significant point, like the 28th review which will be the half way mark, I shall pause to think about what if anything I have learnt from the process.

...by me, on inifity plus, of Caiseal Mór's The Meeting of the Waters.

Waiting for me this morning, to review for infinity plus:

The Holy Machine, Chris Beckett; River of Gods, Ian McDonald; Newton's Wake, Ken MacLeod; Jupiter: Ganymede Spring 2004; The Human Abstract, George Mann; Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings, Lin Carter; Beyond Infinity, Gregory Benford; and Cartomancy, Mary Gentle.

[edit: crazysoph, thanks for pointing out my typing slip!]

I've posted this on my web-site as it's very long; but if you'd like to see it in livejournal format, ( click here. )

Just up on infinity plus: my review of The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson.

On my own site:
Georgia On My Mind, by Charles Sheffield

On Infinity Plus:
Floater by Lucius Shepard
Carolan's Concerto, by Caiseal Mór

5) The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn.

Summary: Recommended. Full review on my website.

2) Claire Tomalin's Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self. Superb. I've reviewed it at greater length here.

Whew! Just finished posting my review of American Gods. A bit of a monster. I went to bed at 1 am and had to get up again at five when Bridget woke me. It's nearly eight now so I think I'll try and catch up on some sleep...