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The End 30 Jun 2012 | 06:47 pm
On this day I begin my forty-eighth year. Time, beaut-i-ful friends, to bring things to a discrete conclusion at this blog, I think. Thank you to all those who've read and commented over the years;...
Steve Baxter, Terry Pratchett, The Long Earth (2012) 20 Jun 2012 | 06:47 pm
My short review of this new collaboration is over at The Guardian now.
Ian Sales, Rocket Science (2012) 24 May 2012 | 07:34 pm
Ian Sales, taking his responsibilities as editor of this collection of proper hard SF stories and non-fiction pieces seriously, put it out to a number of people to review. I was one, and being in rece...
Connie Willis, Doomsday Book (1992) 24 May 2012 | 12:13 am
This Hugo-winning time-travel novel is much better than Connie Willis's 2011 Hugo-winning time-travel novel, Blackout/All Clear; and much much better than her 1998 Hugo-winning time-travel novel To Sa...
Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011) 23 May 2012 | 03:18 am
Apologies for the sluggish tying-up-of-loose-ends going on hereabouts. But I did say (in this post, on Awards) that I would 'report back' on this Booker-winning title after I'd had the chance properly...
Arthur C Clarke Award 2012: Shortlist 19 Apr 2012 | 02:41 am
Well, things are winding down here at Punkadiddle; a couple more committments to cover a couple of titles, to which I'll try and get round as soon as I can, then it'll be time to ring down the curtain...
Gerardus Mercator 5 Apr 2012 | 08:13 pm
[The following was written last month for a certain UK broadsheet newspaper to mark the 500th anniversary of Gerardus Mercator's birthday (5th March 1512). The editor who commissioned it liked it, an...
Ben Markovits, Playing Days (Faber 2010) 31 Mar 2012 | 12:50 am
Full disclosure requires I note that Markovits is both a colleague and a friend of mine; but though 'full disclosure' is often a token gesture it seems peculiarly appropriate in this context. Playing...
Geoffrey Hill, The Orchards of Syon (2002) 19 Mar 2012 | 07:02 am
This week's Unexpected Coming Across The Name Of Connie Willis In A Book In Which I Really Did Not Expect To Find Such A Thing is Orchards of Syon by the abstruse Geoffrey Hill ('The greatest living p...
James Garner (with Jon Winokur), The Garner Files (2012) 14 Mar 2012 | 01:12 am
Browsing the public library’s new acquisitions, I picked this up on a whim. Not sure why: I’m no big Garner fan. But I’m glad I did; it’s splendidly splenetic and bad-tempered. If I didn’t want to be ...
