The first trailer for the adaptation of The Road has just been released. I’ve been cautious about this as it’s one of the most haunting novels I’ve read and I couldn’t imagine how they could bring it to life on screen. I don’t mean it wouldn’t make a good film – I just can’t see how they can do it justice as it’s such a bleak novel and wasn’t written for the screen.

But the trailer looks good. They’ve changed some things; Charlize Theron looks like she has a bigger role, and there’s more of a focus on the apocalypse, at least in the trailer. They’ve captured the tone perfectly, though. The world seems to drip with tension and bleakness. It’s like reading McCarthy’s words.

If it lives up to its potential it could do well at next year’s Oscars. And Esquire is already calling The Road the most important film of the year. There’s something about the casting that seems perfect as well. Viggo Mortensen really inhabits his roles.

I like John Hillcoat as well; The Proposition was excellent and has a similar tone to The Road. I’ll try to see it when comes out in October.

I’ve been thinking about changing the blog to a more general review blog. I’m not sure if it will be long term or not but I mentioned on my main blog I’d post a review of the new Star Trek film, so I thought that would be a good start.

One warning: as it’s been out for a week now I’ve included spoilers, so red alert! You have been warned.

“It speaks to some basic human needs, that there is a tomorrow – it’s not all going to be over in a big flash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient astronauts did not build the Pyramids – human beings built them because they’re clever and they work hard. And Star Trek is about those things.” – Gene Roddenberry

In many ways Star Trek has always been a creature of different extremes. Star Trek itself was created as a mix of moral parable and adventure, a wagon train to the stars promising fun, excitement and a better tomorrow. Likewise Star Trek is often either loved or hated – it inspires the devotion of fans but equally leaves other people cold. Even so everyone is aware of the franchise; its success has permeated the public consciousness, so much so that the references have become ubiquitous. Everyone knows who Spock is or has heard of a Klingon.

While Star Trek has survived for over forty years, it has lost something in that time. It has ceased to be relevant; worse, it has lost its sense of fun. From its inception Star Trek has been a reflection of the issues of its time; racism, sexism, war, communism, moving through to later series like Deep Space 9 which paralleled the Bosnian and Israeli and Palestinian conflicts. But the end of Voyager, and then the maligned Enterprise, saw Star Trek lose its relevance as the franchise went for style over substance, alienating both new viewers and its core audience. The sense of adventure and optimism was gone; the characters were not so much boldly going as being weighed down by their history. Finally the failure of the last film, Nemesis, and the cancellation of Enterprise seemed to signal the death knell for Star Trek.

But then JJ Abrams took over the franchise. Approached by Paramount to resurrect Star Trek for a new generation, Abrams brings a new sensibility to Star Trek. A casual fan who claimed the series had long disconnected for him, Abrams has done what many people had thought was impossible. He has not only made Star Trek relevant again, he has also managed to make it more accessible. This is arguably the best Star Trek film so far; it is also, in my opinion, the best prequel that’s been made.

The new crew of the starship Enterprise

The reason it works is due in large part to Abrams and his writers (Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman) bringing Star Trek back to its core essence. Star Trek was always meant to be fun, sexy and uninhibited and gone is any mention of confusing technobabble; gone are the speeches and monologues that bog down the plot. Instead everything is streamlined – the technology just works, we don’t need to know how – and the urgency of the story makes it believable and immediate. They have also updated the look of Star Trek, treating it with a more realistic approach. Weapons, for instance, behave in a much more realistic way; torpedoes can be shot down, using phasers as a countermeasure, and ships seem to move in three dimensions. Likewise the bridge of the Enterprise is a hub of activity and the bridge itself is sleek and modern, a functional, futuristic command center. This is a more believable world, with all the details filled in.

Perhaps what makes this new Star Trek more accessible, however, is that it respects continuity without being beholden to it. By going back to Kirk and Spock it allows audiences to be reintroduced to the more iconic characters from Star Trek – but it’s done in an unpredictable way. Other prequels become predictable because you know how the story has to end but that isn’t true for Star Trek. While it respects the previous history to a point, you don’t need to know it to follow what’s going on. It is essentially a new beginning.

Primarily Star Trek acts as an origin story for Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto). We see them first as children; a rebellious Kirk growing up in Iowa following the death of his father; a teenage Spock struggling to gain full control of his emotions on Vulcan. Years pass and eventually both find their way into Starfleet; Kirk as a headstrong cadet, Spock as a tutor at the academy and one of the most promising officers in Starfleet. Soon they clash and Kirk is suspended after being accused of cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test that Spock designed. But when a distress call is received from Spock’s homeworld of Vulcan, all cadets are called to active duty and Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban) smuggles Kirk onto the Enterprise as they depart to face the threat.

That threat is Nero, played by Eric Bana, a Romulan from the future hellbent on revenge. To say much more about the immediate plot would be a disservice but the main bulk of the film follows the evolution of Kirk and Spock as they become the Kirk and Spock from the series, finally learning to trust each other and the value of their friendship. Along the way we are introduced to the other characters from the series but we primarily see them through Kirk’s eyes, so it’s as if we are seeing them for the first time. Or at least seeing them anew.

Chris Pine’s Kirk is different but still James T. Kirk

For JJ Abrams potentially the biggest challenge in reintroducing Star Trek to audiences must have been to convince us that these were still the same characters; that this was still Star Trek. To that end the casting is excellent. Chris Pine, virtually unknown before this role, is a perfect fit for James Kirk. It’s hard to describe what he does in his performance; it’s not Shatner but there’s an authority, a command to his performance that is definitely Kirk. Zachary Quinto is also good as Spock; although at times he comes across as a little too human, this is a Spock still struggling with his emotions and his inflection and stillness is close to Nimoy’s while still being his own.

The rest of the cast is good as well, although some have little more than cameos and could have been developed more fully. Zoe Saldana plays a strong, sexy and thoughtful Uhura who becomes one of the main characters in the film; Karl Urban almost channels Deforest Kelley as McCoy; John Cho plays a sword-wielding Sulu and Anton Yelchin a young Chekov, while Simon Pegg appears as Scotty in the last third of the film. They’re all quite good, particularly Karl Urban as McCoy, who should have had more screen time, and Zoe Saldana is excellent as Uhura in a greatly expanded role. Eric Bana is the main surprise as Nero. Not that Bana isn’t an excellent actor, simply that he portrays Nero as a quiet, brooding villain and is not what you’d expect. Leonard Nimoy also appears in a cameo as an older Spock and slips back into the role comfortably after eighteen years.

What’s most interesting about this new Star Trek is its scope. It’s on a scale unlike previous films; unlike many other science fiction films. Past Star Trek films have suffered from low budgets and directors that didn’t understand the material but Abrams is one of those rare directors who can capture both action and intimacy on screen and it shows. There is one scene in particular early on in the film where the USS Kelvin is attacked by Nero; lights flash everywhere, sirens sound, and there’s a frantic rush as officers man their posts. For a moment the screen settles on a single woman running through a corridor, and then a torpedo detonates. There’s a whoosh of air, she screams and is sucked out into space – and silence. It is a sudden silence and incredibly effective; we’re left to watch her body floating as the camera follows her and then slowly returns to the chaos of battle. It is one small, intimate moment against a much larger backdrop but incredibly well done; it shows that it’s still a human story, even amidst the most epic of scenes.

The special effects in Star Trek are spectacular

As you would expect for a film of this scale the special effects are incredibly well done. It seems like special effects improve yearly but some of the effects in Star Trek are also surprisingly subtle; like the woman being sucked into space, or the shots of the Vulcan skyline, which seem somehow familiar but alien. The ships look stunning as well, as you would expect from ILM; the Enterprise is sleek and beautiful, while Nero’s Narada is eerie and almost alive. Something else that is an interesting effect is the use of lens flares, giving the impression that there’s frequent activity happening off-screen. At first it’s distracting and overused but when you get to the Enterprise it gives the illusion that there are actually more people on the bridge, making it a chaotic hub of activity, particularly in battle.

It’s this kind of scale that makes Star Trek very different from any of the previous films. But at its heart it’s still the same Star Trek. In broadening the film’s scope Abrams has actually brought the film closer to Roddenberry’s vision than many of the recent incarnations. Brimming with optimism, this Star Trek has humour, sex appeal and a much faster pace, features more women on the Enterprise (something the network wouldn’t allow in the 60s), a focus on a much stronger Uhura, and even features the beginning of a romance between Spock and Uhura, something Roddenberry alluded to but knew would never get past the censors. Their romance is actually one of the more interesting aspects of the film, particularly as Spock is already conflicted and trying to restrain his emotions.

Just as importantly the film also returns to the themes that have made the franchise relevant in the past. Just as Roddenberry made the Klingons an allegory for the cold war Soviet Union, Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman have taken the Romulans and made them a reflection of an issue for our times: terrorism. It’s not overt but the parallel is there: Nero and the Romulans can be seen as a band of terrorists utilising a weapon of mass destruction, one that threatens the entire Federation. The destruction of Vulcan is a devastating act and one that reflects the devastation of 9/11.

In a post 9/11 world it makes sense that this is what Star Trek needs to do to be relevant again. It is the destruction of Vulcan that shapes the new Star Trek universe; it changes history, creating a new timeline where the noble Vulcans are reduced to a race of refugees. It is the defining moment for this new incarnation of Star Trek, setting the tone for what is to come… just as 9/11 ushered in a new era for our world. Yet for all that Star Trek never loses its sense of optimism or hope. The film is about adventure and friendship and the fun of the film lies in discovering the characters and how they all come together to become the crew of the Enterprise audiences know. It’s new and fresh and its message that we can overcome our differences is one that seems just as relevant today as it ever did.

Zachary Quinto as Spock brings something new but familiar to the role

Of course it has its flaws. No film is perfect and the main problem with this Star Trek lies with its script. I suspect many of the problems were caused by the Writers Strike but there are still some plotholes and inconsistencies that should have been addressed. By far the biggest is the feeling of coincidence in the film; for instance, that Kirk is marooned on Delta Vega after disobeying orders where he just happens to meet not only Leonard Nimoy’s elder Spock, but also Pegg’s Scotty, on what is supposed to be a near-deserted planet. It stretches credibility – and that’s not even mentioning why Kirk wasn’t just thrown in the brig instead. There are similar coincidences throughout the film, most notably in how quickly the characters are promoted. To keep passing these off as coincidence seems lazy; perhaps it’s meant to reflect the alterations to the timeline, history trying to right the damage Nero has caused, but if that is the case it should have been better explained.

As far as the script goes there is also a problem with Nero. Although he is one of the more unsettling villains, much of this is due to Eric Bana’s excellent performance, who plays Nero as a quiet, dangerous adversary. The problem is that you never really get a sense of his motivations or backstory beyond that; we understand that his world was destroyed and his wife died, driving him to seek revenge, but beyond that it is hard to feel anything for him. There were several scenes with Nero cut from the final film; we’ll have to wait for the DVD to see whether they add anything to his character. As I mentioned earlier I also would have liked to have seen more of Karl Urban as McCoy, particularly as Kirk’s conscience. Anton Yelchin didn’t really work for me as Chekov either, with his heavy accent becoming something of a parody.

One thing that also needs mentioning is that much of the science in Star Trek is inaccurate. While Star Trek is known to take liberties with its science, this goes further and I found that disappointing. Some of the details are good – like the lack of sound in space, the alternate timeline – but overall the science stretches believability, particularly the supernova. I grant that the filmmakers didn’t want to slow the movie down with more science but they could have just left it unexplained, like with the technology, rather than have it be so inaccurate. For a franchise which tries to base itself in fact, it’s somewhat disappointing.

The other problem is with Michael Giacchino’s score. Giacchino is mostly known for his television work and has collaborated with Abrams frequently in the past. It’s not a bad score but it never quite reaches its potential. There is a sweeping main theme for Kirk that forms the bulk of the score, which at first sounds rather ominous before it builds into a beautiful, soaring fanfare later in the film. Spock’s theme is a more elegant motif, a haunting and restrained piece featuring an ehru (a Chinese violin) which gives it an otherworldly quality and hints at the contrasting sides of Spock’s personality. But the rest of the music is fairly generic, featuring Giacchino’s penchant for blaring horns and screeching strings. If you’re familiar with his work on Alias or Lost then you’ll know what to expect and whether you enjoy the score will likely depend on how you feel about the main theme, which is relied on very heavily. The end credits, though, offer a magnificent reprise of Alexander Courage’s original theme and it’s never sounded better.

The USS Enterprise in action once again

But these are mostly small details. Overall this new Star Trek achieves more than anyone could have expected; it’s exciting and contemporary, taking the spirit of everything that has made Star Trek what it is and making it fresh again. But more than that it’s just a good, fun movie, something Star Trek has not been in a long time. By going back to Kirk and Spock the filmmakers have made the franchise accessible and familiar again, but they have also made it unpredictable which is the key to its success. Anything is possible in this new universe and for a series based around exploration, it makes the future look even brighter.

It’s a film both fans and new audiences can enjoy and what’s more it has made Star Trek relevant again at time when we needed it, when the world is ready to look to the future again. There’s no better scene than when Captain Kirk finally takes command of the Enterprise, Spock at his side. We realise we’ve finally come full circle and as the Enterprise begins to boldly go where no one has gone before, we know the adventure is just beginning.

Score: 4.2 out of 5

I thought if I was doing that I’d revisit my original review as well as it was one of the first I wrote and there were several points I wanted to elaborate on. I’ll post several others soon as well, including one of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

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The Golden Age by John C. Wright was originally published in 2002 and was Wright’s first novel. Since then he’s gone on to write two sequels to The Golden Age, as well as the Orphans of Chaos series, nominated for the 2005 Nebula Award. I’m a little slow catching up with the new wave of SF authors but The Golden Age was worth the wait.

Wright’s story is set in a future Utopian society so advanced that no one can die; advanced nanotechnology and cybernetics allow people to create unlimited copies of themselves, cheating death. Humanity has reached the pinnacle of its evolution but has now begun to stagnate; if people can live forever, then why should anyone look to break the status quo? Phaethon has lived this way for all of his life… or so he thinks. But when a stranger accuses him of being an imposter Phaethon begins a journey to discover who he truly is – and risks losing his very place in modern society.

TGA echoes the work and themes of Clarke, Vance and other authors, as well as the Greek myth it is partially based on (the protagonist’s name references Phaethon, who stole Helios’s chariot and rode it too close to the earth), but at its heart it is a story of identity and exploration. Phaethon’s journey of self-discovery leads him to the heart of the Golden Ocrumene itself and to a secret he had agreed to forget in order for their society to remain at peace.

What Wright is really asking is, how much of our identity makes us human? Can Phaethon truly be whole when so much of his life has been taken away? Is it better to go on in ignorance than to risk discovering something about yourself or your society you cannot take back? Is he even the same person, without those memories, and what would he become if he got them back? Wright handles these thoughts carefully, a counterbalance to the science.

What’s really striking about TGA, however, is the kaleidoscope of Wright’s future society. It’s a vivid world he has created, beautiful and terrifying all at once; at times it echoes something William Gibson might have written (or perhaps  the Matrix), with the Manorials travelling and communicating more as “projections” than something “real” in the physical world. It’s a complex and structured world, with a detailed hierarchy that makes it decidedly real.

Equally impressive is how Wright’s work sparkles with new ideas on every page – at one point we’re told Jupiter has even been converted into a second sun, something other writers would have made a whole novel out of. His prose is attractive as well, almost lyrical. He uses humour and irony to underscore his themes and nothing feels forced even in the most preposterous of situations (like a talking penguin).

I can’t recommended The Golden Age highly enough. It’s a throwback to the science fiction of Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke, filled with grand and thought-provoking ideas. I still find it hard to believe this was Wright’s first novel; it’s one of the best debuts I’ve read.

Wright asks his readers to follow him without making presumptions about their intelligence, and while it might not be for everyone, if you like science fiction that makes you think and is highly literate, I’d definitely recommend you check it out.

Final Thoughts: Ambitious science fiction with big concepts and a decidedly philosophical bent. A must read for fans of intellectual SF.

I got a few nice books for Christmas this year that I can’t wait to read. My parents gave me the new Stephen King collection, Just After Sunset, and the new Greg Bear, City At The End of Time. I love Bear but unfortunately they didn’t know I’d already got it from Amazon; it’s the thought that counts though, right?

My aunt also gave me a copy of Rick Warren’s A Purpose Driven Life. I’m perplexed by that. I’m a strict agnostic and it feels like she’s trying to tell me something. I’m not sure what to do with it yet – I don’t care for Warren’s ideology at all to be honest. I was very surprised when Obama announced Warren would be giving the invocation at his inauguration.

Anyway, these are some of the books I’ll be reading over the New Year; I’ll post some reviews later on now that I have some free time and I’m blogging again.

Just After Sunset
Stephen King
First Impressions: A collection of stories where King focuses on the fears of ordinary people in extraordinary situations. It’s more of a mature King, without the gore and violence of many of his other works.

Mindscan
Robert J. Sawyer
First Impressions: I enjoy Sawyer’s standalone novels; Mindscan won the John W. Campbell Award, a kind of immortality and mystery story set in the future. Looks interesting.

Axis
Robert Charles Wilson
First Impressions: Wilson is one of my favourite writers and I’ve been looking forward to reading this. It’s a sequel to the award-winning Spin, which was excellent, one of the few literate SF novels in recent years.

The Last Magician
Janette Turner Hospital
First Impressions: I’m not sure about this one. I liked Orpheus Lost and Due Preparations but this seems more convoluted, a tale of conflicting personalities and obsessions. We’ll see.

Wishful Drinking
Carrie Fisher
First Impressions: Carrie Fisher’s memoir is partially based on material from her one-woman show and traces her life from Star Wars, through depression and through the other stories of her life. Got this one as an audiobook.

The Pleasure of My Company
Steve Martin
First Impressions: A follow-up to the excellent Shopgirl, this looks like a classic Martin comedy – the quirky neurotic hero suddenly finding himself in over his head. Should be a fun read.

The Charge of the Light Brigade ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

If ~ Rudyard Kipling

My Blogs & Writing

Have you heard of Wordle? It’s a fun site a lot of bloggers are talking about at the moment. It generates a tag cloud out of the most frequent words used in a piece of text. You can control the appearance of the cloud and it looks very artistic when it’s done.

What a lot of people haven’t thought of, though, is that it’s a useful tool for writers as well. Ever written a story and been worried that you’ve used too many common words? Well, copy the text into Wordle and you’ll get an idea of if you’re overusing certain words.

It’s also an excellent tool for analysing poetry. If you have a favourite poem you can copy it into Wordle and get a better idea of the poem’s structure; the most common words used, whether the common words are long or short, etc.

These are some of the Wordles I’ve made. The first two are of my favourite poems, Kipling’s If and Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade; the smaller ones are of my blogs and writing. Most of my writing is of a similar size, so perhaps I don’t reuse words as often as I thought. My old English teachers will be happy.

Do you know any poems you’d like to see Wordlised? Some of Joyce’s would be interesting… they’d certainly be easier to read.

I love a good Best Of list. There’s nothing more fun than reading through a list of the best novels or films of all time and then debating the order with a friend. Over the years there have been quite a few of these Best Novels lists, most notably Modern Library’s list in 1998 which was met with all kinds of criticism.

Well, yesterday I was researching a post for my other blog and I stumbled across this site, which has a different take on the Best Novels list. It’s of the best 100 novels and like many lists it’s voted for by readers (not critics) but unlike the others, it’s updated every few months and the voting is continual, so the chance of a non-deserving book being inflated is lessened.

I’ve had a good look and it’s not bad. Most of the books you’d expect are listed. The main ones missing are The Scarlet Letter, Midnight’s Children, The Call of the Wild and Mrs Dalloway, and there’s nothing by Henry James. And I wouldn’t have The Time Traveler’s Wife or The Da Vinci Code on the list, let alone above James Joyce and Cormac McCarthy.

But if you take the whole 100, it’s not bad for one of these lists (even Time Magazine left off John Irving) and the idea that it’s continually updated is kind of neat. It should keep evolving and while I’m not sure about the order of the top 10 (who is?), at least this time I could vote! So I did and I thought I’d include it below. I wonder what your top 10 would be?

I love to read but one thing I hate is the price of books these days. The average price of a paperback is $20 in Australia and hardcovers cost between $35 and $45; it’s actually cheaper to buy books direct from the US. With living costs rising it makes reading very difficult, particularly when you think that a book falls to pieces after a couple of reads.

Like most people I love my local library but it rarely has all of the books I want. So what to do then? Well, I found this article earlier about several book rental sites and it sounds like a good idea. There’s one in Australia and several in the US for anyone interested; there might be others in other countries as well.

The best one in the US is Book Swim, which has over 200,000 titles and plans starting at $14.99 a month. Another is Books Free with over 140,000 titles and plans at $9.99 a month. Both feature unlimited rentals and prepaid postage and you can purchase the book for a discount if you want to keep it.

The Australian site is Slim Ink and is similar, although doesn’t have quite as many books. They have most new releases (like the new Tim Winton) and the plans are about the same as in the US. I was quite impressed and it seems like a good way of getting new books without having to pay a fortune for them.

Would you consider renting books? I know some people won’t like the idea but personally I don’t mind it; it’s not that different to a library and you’re only limited by your reading habits. One of the reasons reading is dying is because people can’t justify buying books when they need to put food on the table; anything that makes reading affordable and fun again seems like it’s worth trying.

I’m not sure if it’s for me as much – I buy most books secondhand anyway – but I’ll be interested to see how it goes.

I found this quiz earlier. It’s a bit different to the others I’ve seen; it has 6 questions and 64 different outcomes, with each question taking you in a different direction. Seems to know me pretty well: strong-willed but deeply confused, I signify nothing… that’s me.

Spin starts with three children, twins Diane and Jason Lawton and their friend Tyler Dupree, who one night see the stars go out. At first they don’t know what’s happened, but soon the world realises that a shield has mysteriously appeared around the Earth. The “Spin” still allows life to continue, but outside the Spin time seems to be accelerating – so much so that for the next 30-odd years, 300 billion years will pass in the outside universe. Spin follows Tyler, Jason and Diane through these 30 years, showing the human reaction to the Spin, a mix of panic, hope, awe and fundamentalism that creates a very different world when the Spin finally drops.

I was impressed reading Spin. Wilson isn’t an author that I’m overly familiar with but I can see in Spin why so many people enjoy his work. Wilson’s ideas have a huge scope, from the Spin itself to terraforming Mars and a drug that elevates a person’s intelligence; yet for how epic his ideas are, Wilson never loses sight of his characters either. At its heart Spin is a very human story, one that creates human situations out of scientific events. Tyler, Jason and Diane spend the novel trying to find ways of understanding what has happened to their world. Jason escapes into science, creating projects to explore the limitations of the Spin, while Diane finds religion and meaning in an otherwise bleak life. Tyler hovers somewhere between them both, using their friendship as his anchor against the Spin. And beyond them the world itself struggles to find understanding. At first people ignore the Spin before panic and fear set in, giving rise to numerous cults and violence. It’s this sense of reality in the novel that transcends Spin beyond ordinary science fiction; it’s as much a psychological novel, focusing on the human condition.

Spin is beautifully written as well. Wilson’s prose is easily accessible, yet expertly crafted; it flows even while describing the science that makes the Spin possible (no easy feat) and some of the narrative is so graceful, so subtle, that it lingers at the back of your mind. There’s one passage in particular where Tyler watches the Lawtons’ lawn being trimmed, thinking how the blades had “arisen over centuries” whilst outside the Spin “empires rose and fell”; that passage stayed with me for the rest of the novel. The way Wilson depicts religion is interesting as well. The fundamentalists Diane becomes involved with are very much a cult but despite their Ekstasis, they’re not some completely bizarre extremist sect; rather, they’re trying to make sense of the changes in the world, finding contentment in their faith. Again it feels realistic, showing belief and the politics behind faith rather than just blind fanaticism; it makes Diane’s storyline much more than just a counterbalance to Jason’s scientific pursuit of the Spin.

To say that I was impressed by Spin isn’t to say that it’s perfect, though. On the whole I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the novel more than the last third; the tone of the novel changes slightly, the world getting stranger as more time passes within the Spin. One thing I wondered about as well was why Wun Ngo Wen would have brought photos with him from Mars; they’re supposed to be digitized, but the Martians are many millennia advanced from humans – that they would have any technology that could still interface with our own seems a stretch. Also some of the politics between Jason and his father, fighting for control of Perihelion, feel more stretched-out than necessary.

Still, Spin is a much greater (and more ambitious) novel than its flaws. It’s a novel as much about people as science and that’s something there isn’t much of in science fiction. It’s also a timely examination of human reaction and fear (some could see the Spin as an allegory for 9/11, an event that changes the world forever in only a moment) and with so many layers it’s easy to see why Spin won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

I can’t recommend Spin more highly. It’s a novel for SF and non-SF readers alike and one of the few novels that made me want to run out and buy the author’s other novels. Check it out – you won’t be disappointed.

The books I plan to read over the next few months; a couple I’ve just bought, the others I’ve had lying around. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has to be the best title I’ve heard in a long time.

Duma Key
Stephen King
First Impressions: King’s latest. Not sure what to make of it yet; I like King’s supernatural novels more than his straight horror, but the characterisations are some of his best.

Orpheus Lost
Janette Turner Hospital
First Impressions: An ambitious post-9/11 reworking of the Orpheus myth. Might be a little too ambitious but Turner Hospital is a good author. Should be interesting.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon
First Impressions: Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year in 2003, the novel was Haddon’s début, a mystery told from the perspective of a 15 year autistic boy. Hope it lives up to the hype.

Winterbirth
Brian Ruckley
First Impressions: Scottish author Ruckley’s début, the first of the Godless World trilogy. The reviews have been good but it sounds a little like another Wheel of Time series to me.

Them
Nathan McCall
First Impressions: McCall wrote for The Washington Post for many years; Them is his first novel, focusing on gentrification and racism. I like what I’ve read so far.