I have the Penguin edition of Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings of George Eliot. So far unread but I did have a look at the introduction because it is by A. S. Byatt, an author I have a lot of time for. Byatt's novel Possession is one of my favourite books. Back in 2013 when I read it, I had not read any Eliot and was unaware of the debt owed to the writer of Middlemarch.

Byatt's introduction starts by quoting the letter William Hale White sent to the Athenaeum magazine in 1885. White was responding to John Walter Cross's Life of Eliot, who had died in 1880. She married Cross quite late in life and he was 21 years her junior. White was not impressed with Cross's work and his letter is a great summary of what made Eliot great.

From the Introduction, and quoting White's letter :

As I had the honour of living in the same house, 142, Strand, with George Eliot for about two years, between 1851 and 1854, I may perhaps be allowed to correct an impression which Mr Cross's book may possibly produce on its readers.

To put it very briefly, I think he has made her too 'respectable'. She was really one of the most sceptical, unusual creatures I ever knew, and it was this side of her character which was to me the most attractive. She told me that it was worthwhile to undertake all the labour of learning French if it resulted in nothing more than reading one book - Rousseau's Confessions. That saying was perfectly symbolical of her, and reveals more completely what she was, at any rate in 1851-4, than page after page of attempt on my part of critical analysis. I can see her now, with her hair over her shoulders, the easy chair half sideways to the fire, her feet over the arms, and a proof in her hands, in that dark room at the back of No. 142, and I confess I hardly recognise her in the pages of Mr Cross's - on many accounts - most interesting volumes. I do hope that in some future edition, or in some future work, the salt and spice will be restored to the records of George Eliot's entirely unconventional life. As the matter now stands she has not had full justice done to her, and she has been removed from the class - the great and noble church, if I may so call it - of the Insurgents, to one more genteel, but certainly not so interesting.

Not genteel, but insurgent.

The Celts
By Nora Chadwick

I'm interested in Iron Age and "Dark Age" history, especially British, and this means the Celts in particular. It's frustrating however because of the sparse source material. I read Ian Stewart's The Celts a few weeks ago and this rekindled an interest in reading a bit more; with this in mind, I picked up Nora Chadwick's The Celts second-hand.

Chadwick's book is quite different to Stewart's. His is fairly heavy going, with a lot of information in it and quite densely packed. More importantly, it is a "modern" history: that is, how, and by who, the "Celts" were (re)discovered and researched after the Renaissance. It contains little ancient history. It is a detailed, good overview of this modern history.

In contrast, Chadwick's The Celts was published in 1970 and is much more concise. Although it might be a little out of date in places, it is a well written and useful introduction to the ancient history of the Celts: their origins and movement through Europe, the language and culture, social conditions and religion, and also art and literature. It covers a period from the first millenium BC to medieval times. I enjoyed reading this book much more, even though it could be a little repetitive in places, especially when discussing Celtic Art. Art, literature and myth came last in the book, with a greater concentration on the Irish side, of which more writing has been preserved.

I thought the last chapter about literature was well done. She summarised the stories in a few paragraphs and related them to each other (and those of other nations e.g. Irish and Welsh). On the page, myth and folklore can sometimes be a slightly repetitive read, losing the liveliness of an oral or pictorial recitation, but she managed to describe them in an interesting way. I saw some criticism of this book (Amazon I think) regarding it as "by a scholar for scholars". I would disagree about that: for anyone with an interest and a little experience reading a popular history book, this is still a fine introduction. On that score, it is better than Stewart's book.

I've now picked up John Collis's The Celts. I read it a few years ago but am now flicking through it once again.

The Final Solution
By Michael Chabon

I loved Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union and have bought a few of his other books on the back of that. This very slim book is one of them.

First published in The Paris Review, it is a "murder mystery" with an old man (we never learn his name) helping a police detective solve a murder and the kidnap of a parrot. Taking place during the Second World War in the south of England, the parrot is a special companion to a German boy, assumed to be Jewish and in England as part of the Kindertransport. This is not clarified however. Neither is the parrot's habit of speaking long strings of numbers e.g. zwei eins sieben fünf vier sieben drei.

I picked this up to read partly because it was so slight, so not a huge investment in time. Like the last book of his I read, it is well written and has a wry humour throughout. The old man is a particularly irascible and funny character. Much is left unsaid regarding the boy's history, or the "numbers" the Parrot is repeating, as well as the "train song" it sometimes sings. This is not as good as the Yiddish Policeman, it seemed a little "light", perhaps too "lightweight". However, still an enjoyable enough read. I am glad I picked up his Yiddish Policeman's Union novel first because I know how good he can be. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; I am looking forward to reading that.

The Celts
By Ian Stewart

I saw a positive review of this book and I'm interested in iron age history in Britain (including the Celts) so bought it. It was worth reading but not quite what I expected.

It's a dense book and Stewart (an academic at the University of Edinburgh) has done an amazing job researching and describing the "modern" history of the Celts: "modern" history starts with the renewed interest they were shown from the Renaissance onwards, and the history is slowly elucidated through the people doing the (metaphorical) digging. It was back then that some started to consider who the earlier, pre-Roman, peoples of Europe really were and the old "origin" myths began to seem increasingly problematic. Having said that, the biblical fantasy about descent from Noah's grandson Gomer persisted for centuries.

What this history does not do is cover much in the way of archaeology, artifacts or genetics. On occasion we get something dug up or old monument looked at, but the book is mainly a history of the many individual researchers and historians, clubs, societies and (increasingly) academics, and their (often slow) search for the truth. This does complement many of my other books in this field.

There are some people we meet here that deserve some more recognition, including J.C. Prichard, an Anglo-Welsh ethnologist and philologist, who made some crucial advances in the 19th Century identifying where the Celtic languages came from. In particular, the fact that they were descended from the ancient Indo-European family (like German, Latin, Greek and even Sanskrit). Much of the science in the book is the science of Philology, where a language is studied and its branching off from other languages, as well as evolution over time, is investigated. Another man worthy of more note is Johan Kaspar Zeuss, a Bavarian scholar, who toiled to shed light on the origin and history of Europe's languages, eventually producing a major work Grammatica Celtica. He proved the Indo-European origin of the Celtic languages and also the mechanism of their split to the various different forms we know and that exist today (e.g. Old Irish/Irish Gaelic, Breton, Welsh etc.). All of the work he did was on the continent using sources of Old Irish hidden away in monasteries for hundreds of years. Finally, it was seen that, although it was a sibling language to Celtic on the Indo-European tree, German was not itself Celtic. This sort of question has confused matters since Caesar himself.

An interesting book that covers the huge French and (particularly) German contribution, as well as the major (and minor) work done in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and England. In the end, however much has been discovered about the ancient Celts, the core element of their presence, today and in the past, is the language. Although much diminished, they are still living languages. This book was hard work sometimes because it is quite slow and detailed, so it will not be for everyone (although that's not it's aim). It will be a worthwhile read for those that want to know how the history has been worked out over the past few centuries however.

A Science Fiction Omnibus
Edited by Brian Aldiss

Science-fiction grew as a genre via the medium of the short story as the pulps of the 1930's and later exploded in popularity. The longer form of the novel started replacing these as paperbacks became a cheap reading option, especially by the 1950's. All the well known "classic" science-fiction authors like Asimov, Clarke, Vance, van Vogt, Pohl, Dick and others began their career selling short stories. This means there are a fantastic number of these in existence and some are very good indeed. Sometimes the author expands or coalesces one or more short stories into a novel (for instance, Asimov's Foundation series); sometimes the shorter version is the superior version. A novel composed of shorts stitched together is often called a "fix-up" (such as Keith Roberts' Pavane).

I have quite a few SF short story anthologies, many being Nebula or Hugo award winner books of the year. There are some highly rated among them and it was past time I read some. Brian Aldiss has good taste so I decided to pick up an anthology edited by him: A Science Fiction Omnibus, published by Penguin in 2007 (but with a history going back to the early 1960's).

I've previous read two stories from this collection, both memorable: Swarm by Bruce Sterling and Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang.

Swarm is a story of humans discovering that intelligence is not always required for survival, and if it is needed, can be "spun up". The humans here, members of his "shaper" faction, bite off a bit more than they expect when infiltrating and attempting to exploit a huge, insectoid-like alien world. I enjoyed it again.

People might know the Chiang story Story of Your Life from the 2016 film Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve (the book has none of the exciting pyrotechnics in the film). It centers on language and the alien-ness of not just the visitors but the way they communicate. It's quite cerebral and hard to understand on occasion but this doesn't detract from the interesting premise and the writing is good.

The A.E. van Vogt story Fulfilment was quite relevant to today's concerns about "AI" and the march towards a conscious and intelligent computer. I haven't read much van Vogt but his clipped and direct style is something I grew to like. This is the tale of a "brain" (i.e. an AI) that is trying to subvert or combat another, similar "brain" it comes across. Humans might get in the way.

The last story was slightly longer and by an author I haven't read before, John Crowley. This is the "time travel" tale Great Work of Time, and concerns the difficulties keeping the world straight, even with the utmost caution, when attempting to change things to prevent "bad" outcomes. It's a very well written story with a melancholic air about it. The concept of "time travel" is full of possibilities and I doubt will be exhausted soon. I will look to read more Crowley.

I was surprised to find a story by John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath. The short tale called The Short Short Story of Mankind is a jokey take on the very rough nature of human existence from the cave onwards, perhaps towards some sort of civilisation. It's very sardonic and we might laugh at the ignorance and dysfunction but also recognise how thin the ice is to a decent life.

I was less impressed with some of the tales, perhaps the Asimov (Nightfall, Jokester), which I thought mediocre. James Tiptree, Jr was an author I've been looking forward to reading but thought And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hillside a bit disappointing. However, it is a story where thought is required: that with alien contact, humans could become merely "groupies", obsessed with chasing alien attention. I'll need to read more Tiptree, Jr to decide if I like her writing. Sometimes you need to take some time to consider what is being said: they're not always direct. Like the Tiptree, Jr., the Damon Knight story The Country of the Kind is another story I had some difficulty with; that is, understanding the point. But as James Wallace Harris discusses on his (excellent) Classics of Science Fiction blog, it is a famous and very well respected story that needs a bit of thought in order to work out meaning.

It was a great refresher to read a set of curated short stories for a change, and a wide set of authors. Yes, "entertainment" is great but that does not mean "easy" or trite; sometimes you have to be challenged as well. Science Fiction is often a very good way to do that.

Downward to the Earth
By Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg was a very prolific author, much science-fiction but also history, criticism and much else. He had a "golden" period in the late-sixties until the early-seventies, writing some of his most famous novels to a lot of critical acclaim. The first Silverberg I read was one of these, Dying Inside from 1972: a book I thought was extremely good. Downward to the Earth is another from this period, published in 1970, and another great novel I enjoyed immensely.

Using Conrad's Heart of Darkness as a template, Silverberg refashions a new version of the tale: a trip "up river" on a planet that was previously a colonial possession. Like Conrad, the journey is as much a mental one as physical. It is clear that the protagonist, Edmund Gundersen, is seeking some sort of atonement of past sins committed while he was a colonial functionary.

There are two intelligent native species inhabiting the world: the Nildoror and the Sulidoror. The Nildoror are dominant and have an elephant-like appearance but much larger. They are vegetarian, peaceable and intelligent. The Sulidoror are bipedal, fur covered with a snout and long arms with claws. They are more taciturn. The planet has been "relinquished" by the company that ran it and left to its own devices, although a few humans remain and it still receives some tourists. Gundersen travels back to make some sort of peace with the Nildoror and himself. He has done some things he is ashamed of. Other humans have also behaved badly, some much worse.

There is a lot of self-discovery as you would expect and a need to come to terms with the past, especially the treatment of the alien "people" on Belzagor, as the planet is now known. This is the crux in fact: the elephant-like Nildoror are treated like animals (beasts of burden) but they are, in fact, individual, intelligent "people". Perhaps Africans were often treated in the same way: the sin of racial colonialism. The world of Belzagor is beautifully built by Silverberg, in all its humid, sticky or foggy glory. The aliens of both main kinds are also brought to life well and we empathise with these strange, quiet alien beings. Whether or not redemption is achieved, the journey itself is a rewarding one. This is a quiet book worth reading.

Hubris
by Ray Perman

I've just finished reading Ray Perman's history of the Bank of Scotland, and in particular, its collapse in 2008. A 300 year old bank, with a reputation for probity and banking acumen, was destroyed in just a few years. It's a very sorry tale and is still relevant to us today. A good book.

I've not forgotten the 2008 financial crisis and how worrying things were. For a time, it seemed possible that the whole financial system would break. I also realised how far the Great Depression would have affected people long after things got back to "normal" (and long after the Second World War). Troubling times, and since our own banking crisis we've been flailing around in the aftermath.

In Hubris, Perman concentrates on the UK and the banking crisis here. The "Bank" (as it was known north of the border) was an extremely successful and trusted institution, founded in 1695. It was looked up to and very successful because it was conservative and boring. After all, who wants excitement in a bank?

As has been stated before, bank managers were considered boring and staid perhaps, but also the standard for honesty and decency. Think Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army. Things are very different today, both the staff, management and the branch itself. Many problems have compounded over the years but a fundamental one might be the so called "animal spirits" so beloved of some economists, leading to a dangerous concentration on growth and profit at the expense of sound money. When globalisation comes knocking (post Big Bang in the UK), you are in "competition" with financial corporations worldwide and the pressure is on to "grow" and "perform". Banking became much more complicated and risks were poorly understood. When does "too big to fail" become "to big to exist"? I hope we learned some lessons but memories fade and human nature being what it is. We couldn't afford it befor. Even less now.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union
By Michael Chabon

Man makes plans and God laughs.

This was a marvelous read and a book I found very hard to put down. Not only beautifully written but very witty, with a great dead-pan humour throughout. I actually found myself laughing aloud occasionally in fact.

I don't read police "procedurals" generally, although the recent Maigret read probably counts. Chabon's novel is decidedly different however. A murder mystery set among the diaspora Jews of Sitka, Alaska, in a world where Israel was snuffed out soon after its formation. So it is actually an alternate history novel and some subtle differences to our world are hinted at occasionally. The USA offered the Jews their new chilly far north home but the catch is that it is a temporary arrangement and that "reversion" to the US is about to take place after a fifty year run. Once again, the Jews have homelessness to look forward to.

With a hard-boiled, slovenly but dogged and capable detective protagonist, an ex-wife also in the police force and a half native Tlingit partner, the book shares many features common to the genre. However, suffused with Yiddish and Eastern European Jewishness, it is a very refreshing take on the hard-bitten crime story. I've learned a few Yiddish words here and, luckily, there was a Yiddish glossary in the back of my paperback edition. I now have a few other Chabon novels on my shelf to read sometime and this book is also one for a future re-read as well.

Take Back Plenty
By Colin Greenland

I have been trying to curate "good" books to read, so have been picking up "classics" (of whatever genre), as well as recommendations (whether BookTube, personal or otherwise). So far with a lot of success, but it can be hit or miss of course. I heard good things about Colin Greenland's Take Back Plenty (BookTube I think) so picked it up as my next read. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a miss for me.

Greenland is an academic and, according to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, did a PhD at Oxford in science-fiction (yes, I am surprised). Originally, he seemed to have some association with British New Wave science-fiction in the 1970's but this may have been tenuous with respect to his written work. This is his fourth novel, first published in 1990.

Take Back Plenty is not a bad book per se, just written in a jokey and "knowing" way I didn't always appreciate. I almost put it aside a couple of times actually, but carried on and finished it.

It's a "space opera", so expect spaceships, aliens, technology and planetary adventure; a story that could almost be described as a "romp" in times gone by. Although I'm not a fan of humorous books, I did find one or two moments in the book funny. But overall, the novel was a bit of everything, all over the place and too much going on. The central character, Tabitha Jute, had a lot of potential, but was a bit of a standard issue wise-cracking cargo ship captain, swept along by a never-ending sequence of events strung together. She seemed a bit feckless in some ways. I never felt much excitement or suspense and the "world-building" seemed a little confusing to me as well.

The novel won a few awards and also spawned a couple of followups but I will probably not bother with them.

Song of Kali
By Dan Simmons

This was not a very comfortable book to read at times. I enjoyed it, if that term is appropriate, and looked forward to sitting down and reading but it is not for the faint of heart. In fact, it was a little stomach churning in a few places! Labelled part of a "Fantasy Masterworks" series (Gollancz), it could be classified as "horror" perhaps, if one wanted to classify at all. In addition, it is unclear if there is any actual "supernatural" element here. A feeling of dread pervades the narrative.

This is a dark, bleak and unsettling story about an American writer who travels to Calcutta with his wife and baby daughter, with the aim of getting hold of a manuscript from a poet long thought to have been dead. The poet, M. Das, disappeared years previously but seems to have re-surfaced with a new work of a quite different nature. The American wants to collect the new work for publication in the USA and also meet Das but he is elusive. On finally reading this manuscript, it may not be something the world should see.

The city is a major character in Simmons' tale and can be a grim backdrop. This is not an India the Ministry of Tourism will like (although the book is set decades ago now).

Left: A depiction of Kali from wikipedia.

As Wikipedia says, she is the "embodiment of the grim worldly realities of blood, death and destruction". She is also the Goddess of cremation grounds. In Simmons' novel, she is all of these things.

There are many horrific elements to this novel but it is well written and fast paced. You continue to read but know things are probably not going to end well, at least for some. I loved a re-read of the Hyperion books last year and I am glad to have a few more of his novels on my shelf waiting for a read (or indeed a re-read).

My Friend Maigret
By George Simenon

I found three Maigret books in a Free Library near me. I've heard very good things about Simenon and his detective so I picked them up and have now read one. My first Simenon went very well.

My Friend Maigret is a short and incisive crime mystery set on a French island off the Riviera. A small cast of characters are in focus after a murder, with Maigret accompanied by Mr Pyke, an observer of his methods from Scotland Yard. There is humour with the wry interaction of Maigret and his quite taciturn colleague, who he seems to slightly resent but also admire, and also great local colour. This all takes place in the Fifties, and shows its age in some ways of course (telegrams, for instance). However, it is extremely readable and I found the prose sharp and quite witty. Human behaviour, and the types you might find in a place like this, are timeless though, and crime will always be familiar. Very well done novel and I look forward to the next one.

Helix Wars
By Eric Brown

Helix Wars is Eric Brown's followup to his Helix novel, a book I liked a lot. Whilst I would not rate this as quite as highly, it is a very worthy sequel.

Taking place about two hundred years after the first, the human colony has made its home on the Helix and been assigned a "peacekeeper" role by the Helix Builders. When one of the alien races on the Helix decides to wage a war of conquest on another, a human inter-world pilot is shot down and dropped into the midst of the terror and ravages of the war.

What we end up with is a great action and adventure story, with a chase, a rescue attempt, an alien partner, high technology and a brutal foe. Like the first book, Brown is good on the interaction and relationship between people, here alien people. We empathise with the alien point of view completely, and the morality of killing is explored as the characters debate and argue about what sort tactics to use and how justified killing is. It is an excellent science-fiction thriller: easy to read and pacy like the first book.

I will say that I don't particularly like the cover of the paperback I have though. It makes the book look like a video game, or some sort of "role-playing" fiction! Getting past that though, a straightforward action book I enjoyed reading a lot. Now to find the next Brown book to pick up: they are not all in print anymore I think.

The Chrysalids
By John Wyndham

This is my third Wyndham novel, and it is one some people consider his best. Another great adventure story, this time told from the point of view of an adolescent boy.

The story takes place in a much changed world after some sort of cataclysm (called the "Tribulation"), almost certainly nuclear given the descriptions of the state of nature and fear of mutation. We open with humans living in very basic circumstances in a farming community run under extremely strict religious law. David's father is the tyrannical and brutal leader of the farm clan, obsessed with rooting out any "deviation" from the True Image. In the Bible, Man is created in the image of God. God does not have six toes on a foot. Outside "civilisation" is a very different society, populated by people banished or born to live on the fringes and eke out a much harsher existence. Here, there is no "true" image and existence is very mean. In the world of the farm we encounter a child, then a few more, who have an extra ability of telepathy, more easily hidden than, say, a sixth toe. Until it is noticed.

David and his friends communicate long distances through their minds, and from an early age are aware of the danger they would be in if their difference is discovered. The books leads inevitably to this and their escape attempt. It turns out that being able to communicate in this way imparts some advantages.

A short book, it tells a well known story of the evils of persecution and the need for tolerance of difference. A shared humanity. But also considers what sort of "improved" human evolution might produce: perhaps even a "superior variant" of Homo Sapiens. I thought that the conclusion was a little quick and perhaps a bit pat. It also lapses into some polemic regarding evolution and change near the end, with Wyndham getting up on the podium to lecture. With this said, I enjoyed it, even though I would place it slightly below the The Day of the Triffids in my estimation. Many more good books and short stories of his to try next.

Adam Bede
By George Eliot

It was that moment in summer when the sound of the scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the flower-sprinked tresses of the meadows.

I found Adam Bede, George Eliot's first full length novel, extremely moving. Yes, perhaps a bit romantic and sentimental, but nevertheless, a strong emotional response. Some chapters were almost unbearably difficult to get through because of the strength of feeling it brought forth.

It is easy to begin reading and get wrapped up in the world of the small English village of Hayslope at the turn of the 19th Century. Eliot has such beautiful prose, the countryside and people come to life and you are swept away to "Loamshire", her fictional English county.

There is a lot of sympathy for the lot of the common workers she pictures in her books. She has sympathy but also a sharp eye and the world she describes is not always one of dappled sunlight and radiant meadow. People might be grey faced and pinched as well as rosy cheeked and dimpled. The story itself is a well known and time-worn one, as the author, publisher and reader knew: the central event is based on a story Eliot heard from her aunt when she was young. A squire falling for a farm girl was a tale commonly melodramatic but here made fresh, immediate and more realistic.

It is a slow book and infused with Christian thought and speech, with strong moral sentiment. There is also a huge amount of empathy, love, respect and humour; there are some very funny observations by Eliot (as an occasional narrator) and her characters. Mrs Poyser has a sharp and witty tongue, not sparing anyone, not her husband or even her landlord, the old squire. The scene where she gives him a piece of her mind when he tries to push her into an unwanted business arrangement is a real gem. When Hetty Sorrel, her beautiful but very vane niece, lets her imagination run and struts in front of her bedroom mirror "with a pigeon-like stateliness", we see it and laugh, but it also becomes heart-breaking later. I felt for Hetty even though Eliot does a lot to expose her vacuity, thoughtlessness and vanity.

The book is not without faults, Adam himself is perhaps a little too unblemished after all, but the novel is one of the greatest I've had the pleasure of reading.

Dying Inside
By Robert Silverberg

I have not read any Silverberg and he is a giant of the science-fiction genre, so it is time I rectified that. I think Dying Inside was an excellent book to start with.

First published in 1972, Dying Inside concerns a man born with the ability to read people's minds. Imagine how great that would be? Well, not so fast! Set in mid-seventies New York, David Selig is now in his forties and has lived a decade or so with the realisation his powers are waning. This causes him much anxiety, to say the least, but the "gift" he was born with has been a blessing as well as a huge curse in his life. What might a life be like if you had this ability? Would you always want to know what people really thought of you?

Selig is not a particularly likeable man. He is cynical, unhappy with his station in life and full of guilt about his power. In fact, ignoring the telepathic ability, he exhibits many of the traits of the stereotypical New Yorker, and a Jewish one at that. I have not read much Roth, but perhaps he would be at home in a Roth novel. Or think of Woody Allen, minus the jokes, but plenty of black humour. Dying Inside is sometimes called "literary" science-fiction (descriptive terms like this can be fuzzy); in fact it is barely "science-fiction" at all. At least so far as most people would think science-fiction is (consider: Orwell's Nineteen Eight Four is science-fiction).

Perhaps "literary" because of this. Silverberg is a well read and erudite man and he has spent time polishing his prose here, inserting clever and thoughtful literary and philosophical references. He also conjures up the atmosphere of the New York of the times, especially the Seventies, post JFK and King assassinations, and the cultural, social and educational milieu (and dysfunction).

Not a long book, I found it quite a pleasure to read.

Greybeard
By Brian Aldiss

I was between books, picking new ones up wondering what to to go for, read the first few paragraphs of this and didn't want to stop. I liked the prose and seemed to be in just the right mood.

Greybeard is the story of people thrown together by circumstances and travelling down a river to the sea. Unfortunately, the "circumstances" are the end of the world, or at least the end of the human component to the world. A few decades ago, an "accident" has rendered humanity and some animals sterile : children have vanished and people are getting old. With the general collapse, nature is now rapidly reclaiming the world and what people survive exist in small isolated pockets, aging and some reverting to an existence informed by rumour, myth and fable. Forests reassert themselves and the nights are dark.

Greybeard is a melancholic story told in a beautifully lyrical style. Aldiss has a way with words in a sometimes spartan way. Great descriptions of the new natural world taking shape as Man diminishes; mist, water, oak and badger come into focus now. The characters, especially Algernon Timberlane ("Greybeard") and his wife Martha, come to life in a special way I think and their love is beautifully described. Martha has a great wit.

I hesitate to call the novel "gentle", it is a story of the end of the world after all and there is certainly some violence depicted. But this is not dwelt upon and no brutality. There is always a background possibility of danger of course. I've seen it described as "pastoral", and I think this fits and what makes the book so good. I've read three great novels from Aldiss now: Non-Stop, Hothouse and now this. I think Greybeard might be my favourite.

The Time Machine
By H.G. Wells

I am embarrassed to say I have never read any H. G. Wells. I have rectified this recently however by reading his first novel, The Time Machine.

I should have done this years ago, perhaps as a teenager, because it was such a great book. I can understand why it was such a big success on publication in 1895: people were introduced to an author with a huge imagination and perhaps the first true science-fiction story. I enjoyed reading this immensely.

Not only an exciting adventure but thought provoking in a way that must have been quite unsettling to the readership back then. We not only travel to an almost unimaginably distant future of 802,701 AD but come to see what human evolution might mean; Darwin's theory being only a few decades old and still troubling to many. Wells was certainly not one to predict a heroic future progress of humanity. This might be one reason some critics and readers found him difficult. From Brian Aldiss' Billion Year Spree :

His audience is accustomed to powerful heroes with whom they can unthinkingly identify. A mass audience expects to be pandered to. Wells never pandered.

Perhaps a quote more applicable as his output increased, but a story where the human species can split into two, with one predating upon the other and all thought of science or art banished must have been hard to take. Even the idea of a deep "geological" time was fairly new (With Lyell's Principles of Geology published in 1830).

Wells' novel is brilliant. Now for The War of the Worlds I think.

The Kings of Eternity
By Eric Brown

Having read Eric Brown's Helix and loved it, I thought I'd read some more of his work.

The Kings of Eternity is a good science-fiction story that switches between the modern day and the 1930's. Three friends encounter an otherworldly portal that opens in the woods, and then an alien contact. This changes their lives, as you would expect, and over the years they have to come to terms with this and what it entails.

Brown manages to convey the protagonists well as men of the earlier 20th Century: their language and understanding of the situation is of that time. Luckily, the scientific advances at that point mean they have some sort of framework within which to place the strange events. The book is always very readable and engaging, even with a bit of a slow start. It is not an action packed story, although there is some action, but it gets into its stride quickly. What they encountered years ago endowed them with a gift and each has to come to terms with this. In fact, the novel is as much about relationships as "science" (or adventure), and in the end, a love story. So, a "scientific romance".

Well written and quite lyrical in parts, there is a lot to like about this book. In some ways, old fashioned (in an H.G. Wells way), but it is an uplifting and positive read.

Across Realtime
By Vernor Vinge

This is the omnibus edition containing the novels "The Peace War" and "Marooned in Realtime".

Warning: perhaps minor spoilers.

The Peace War

What price would you pay for peace? What would it cost you? And what about costs to society? These are some of the things Vinge considers in his 1984 novel "The Peace War".

In the book, peace is imposed through a "Peace Authority", a world-wide government that has a monopoly on a powerful weapon: a weapon that can enforce and isolate threats, small or large. Through this, they keep society at a "safer", lower level of technological sophistication. The USA and other sovereign states do not exist anymore.

The weapon is a "bobble": an impenetrable force-field bubble around a space (and it turns out, a time). This can be used to completely isolate and neutralise a threat, whether people or missiles.

There is a resistance of course: a mix of clans, tribes, gangs and technology devotees Vinge called "tinkerers": or tinkers. The novel describes how the ungoverned and tinkers fight back against the "Peacers". Vinge is obvious about where his sympathies lie but he give the Peace Authority its due as well.

I thought this was a great adventure novel. Exciting and full of good extrapolations of the new technologies coming online in the 1990's and early 2000's.

Marooned in Realtime

In the sequel, Vinge shows us a consequence of having such "bobbling" capability. The story is sets millions of years in the future: because (in effect) these things act as a one-way time machine. This book is a murder mystery story and quite different to the first novel. I found it just as enjoyable though.

Vinge, who died earlier this year, had an abiding interest in and sympathy with the quest for knowledge and scientific progress. A Professor of Maths and Computer Science at San Diego State University in California, in many ways he epitomised the Californian techno-optimism of the 1980's and 1990's. The era of the early internet, the birth of the Electronic Freedom Foundation and magazines like Wired (founded 1991). I definitely sympathised with this vision, and still do, even though it can seem naive today and has been overtaken by the reality of the modern world (and everything this entails). We are less optimistic about technology today, sadly.

Science-fiction is a great genre for exploring all the different ways science and technology can change the world, and ourselves. I like Vinge's books: this is the second time I've read these novels. I liked them before and this time I think I liked them even more. If you're in the right mood for a book then it makes all the difference. I am sure I'll come back to them in the future again.

Chocky
By John Wyndham

John Wyndham's 1963 novella (it's a slight book) is about a twelve year old boy, Matthew, who has a friend he talks to: however, this conversation is only inside his head. The friend is called Chocky.

Not completely unusual in a child (the imaginary friend) but Chocky is unusual. Leaving aside the indeterminate sex (Matthew settles on "she"), Chocky asks some very strange questions, such as why are there two sexes? "She" also has some very odd views of the world. Matthew's parents become very concerned but are not sure what to do exactly. In situations like this, you can do a lot of harm trying to do the right thing.

This is a short read but a good one. The family (two parents and two children) are perfectly normal other than the fact of this strange unwanted interloper to Matthew's head. This is a long way from a story of a "demon" child or one of "possession" and it is all the better for that. Another worthwhile Wyndham read.