Solaris, 2010, 335p

My review of this book has been sent to Interzone. I’ll let you know when the issue comes out.

Curiously, while the book has a copyright date of 2010 on the title page, the introduction and the individual stories are copyright 2011.

There is one more oddity.

Take a good look at the cover illustration. To me the whole slightly resembles a cochlea.

Still, doesn’t it look a little…. odd?

I know orientation is irrelevant in space as there is no up nor down but….

The picture appears to be rotated by 90^o. Try tilting it widdershins through a right angle. It makes much more sense, then.

I’ve received another book to review from Interzone (whose webpage I note has links to the short stories on the BSFA Award ballot that they published.)

The review book is a short story collection. It’s called Engineering Infinity and is edited by Jonathan Strahan.

The review is due on January 31^st so I’ve my work cut out.

Jim Steel’s blog has confirmed that the latest issue of Interzone (no. 231) containing my review of Kurt Vonnegut’s posthumously published collection Look At The Birdie ought to be available round about now.

My review of this book has been delivered to Interzone.

For those of you who remember it the cover depicted is not the one which appeared in my “currently reading” Library Thing link. (At the time I was reading Look At The Birdie Library Thing did not have it available.)

The one on the book I received had a different encomium to that above, though. Mine read, ‘One of the master alchemists of modern American fiction,’ Sunday Times.
In addition there was a puff from Dave Eggers, ‘Relentlessly fun to read,’ New York Times.

I see from Jim Steel’s blog that Interzone 230 is out now.
This of course contains my review of Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief.

Gollancz, 2010, 267p

My review of this book has been delivered to Interzone. I’ll let you know the publication date in due course.

Btw, the cover image is arresting and ought to shift some copies.

I’ve been asked through Jim Steel to write a review for Interzone of debutant novelist Hannu Rajaniemi’s forthcoming The Quantum Thief, due in September I believe. I said yes.

This does represent something of a conflict of interest for me as Hannu is a fellow member of the Edinburgh and East Coast Writers’ Group and of course of Writers’ Bloc. But, as Jim reminded me, everybody in British SF knows just about everybody else and the book’s title suggests a Science background might be an advantage in assessing it.

I mentioned Hannu a while back when he got his writing deal. He knows string theory, though, which wasn’t around when I were a lad.

Some of my time in July will naturally be taken up with this project but the review won’t, of course, be appearing here.