I was saving Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series of Belfast noir novels for a longer post. However. Fighting sleep. Must do something. Just spent 31 hours airport to airport Sydney to Amsterdam. Had #4 in the series, Gun Street Girl with me. The only complaint was that I finished it before Hong Kong. There’s a […]
I have not read the Booker prize winning Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, but why should that stop me … from commenting on another book completely, The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. The main connection between him and the Booker which springs to mind is that blurbs on books […]
There’s sex and too much religion. This one is hard to judge as it’s hard to “get”. Thank you ABC Australia for your ever so incisive assessment of Emily Fridlund’s “History of Wolves”*. There’s “sex”, is there? That’s unusual. Some “sex” in a modern novel, hmmm. But not too much, apparently. Nor not enough. Just “sex”. […]
In centuries to come, when literary experts comment upon my oeuvre, as they no doubt shall, they will remark of my Dutch period that my characters spend much of their time climbing up or down stairs, and complaining about aches in their legs. In the words of Dr Zachary Smith, the pain, the pain … […]
Dear Mr Kim Newman, I am very glad at all the Anno Dracula books, even though years ago I had to work hard to track down the original so now I have two, and I keep telling myself no, you don’t have to have the paperback of Johnny Alucard to go with the others just […]
Great news – At the Edge, a wonderful anthology of speculative fiction by New Zealand (New Zealandian?) and Australian writers, won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collected Work. And you will immediately see my self interest at work when I congratulate editors Lee Murray and Dan Rabarts for their win, and thank them […]
Watched: The Dressmaker – how had I not seen it before? It was compulsory viewing for all Australians, but I must have been on shrimp-tossing duties that day. It made me want Kate Winslet to love me, the way she automatically and effortlessly fell in love with Liam Hemsworth. A bonus was that I have […]
Aurealis, a much loved and very entertaining science fiction and fantasy magazine that also happens to be Australian*, has released its 100th edition. In the world of genre periodicals, this is an excellent achievement. Congratulations to all involved, well played! *And just happened once upon a time, way back in edition #68, to include […]
Of course, anticipation is usually sweeter, but it remains that (not unexpectedly, but wouldn’t it have been noice, yes, noice!) “Eat, Pray, Wait” by yours truly shall not grace the pages of the next edition of Year’s Best Weird Fiction. However, it is available here for your reading pleasure, sandwiched with other morsels between the […]
Goodness, I haven’t blogged this warning for quite a while. The most excellent Jared Diamond has warned us of the dangers of ecological collapse, but perhaps there is a more pertinent warning of the dangers of … well, of the dangers of sweets: In 1849, hungry gold miners crossing the Nevada desert noticed some glistening […]
Nobody is looking 