Adam Roberts is a science fiction diva, and Bete is one of his greatest conceptual arias yet. This is a fantastic novel, built around a thoughtfully eAdam Roberts is a science fiction diva, and Bete is one of his greatest conceptual arias yet. This is a fantastic novel, built around a thoughtfully explored idea - what if all the animals we slaughter, our pets, even the wild beasts of the forest gained enough intelligence to talk, to reason, to work together against us?
Roberts has written many books, most of them based on fascinating concepts, but sometimes the story around the concept is flawed, such as in his novels On and Polystom. Bete suffers from no such flaws.
Bete begins with a cattle farmer, Graham Penhaglion, arguing with a cow he is about to slaughter, an animal that enrages him when it has the temerity to quote Morrissey. Environmental activists have implanted a chip into the beast (and tens of thousands of others) that has given it both intelligence, and wireless access to the internet. Cows, cats, dogs, birds, deer, foxes, even rats have been upgraded in this way, elevating them to reason and sparking fierce debates about animal rights and farming in general.
Graham refuses to believe that these talking beasts, these 'canny cows' or bêtes as they are now known, are truly aware, preferring to see them as nothing more than talking computers, toasters with voices. He has no compunction in killing them, but the law sees differently, and his actions in his cowshed carry consequences that will follow him throughout the rest of his life.
Graham loses both his farm and his marriage and becomes an embittered, impoverished itinerant butcher, roaming the English countryside and killing animals for the fewer and fewer people in society who still want to eat real meat. We follow Graham on his journey, seeing the new world of intelligent animals through his (often angry) eyes.
England isn't what it once was. Shortages of fuel and the economic disruption generated by the collapse of farming (much of it now run by bêtes) have given the UK a post-apocalyptic feel, where cars are rare, the countryside is near empty and vast masses of the unemployed desperately competing for a handful of jobs in the cities. As Graham travels through this worsening dystopia it becomes clear that despite his many flaws he may play a larger role in this new world than that of wandering butcher-tramp, regardless of whether he wants to or not.
Graham's hatred of bêtes, his self-destructive hair-trigger temper and his loneliness all make for a character whose head is a strange, but interesting place for a reader to be immersed in. Around this dislikeable character Roberts explores numerous philosophical ideas- when is a creature truly sapient? If you augment intelligence with computing power, is the resulting hybrid a machine, or something more? Would intelligent animals be able to look past humanity's long history of treating them as disposable chattels?
Roberts usually writes really well, but this is the first of his novels where I have been struck by the beauty of some of his phrases, and the elegance with which he expresses some very thoughtful ideas.
Stone is still my favourite Roberts novel - it's an absolutely brilliant, instant SF classic in my opinion - but Bete comes a very close second. Bete is the full package, giving readers a heady blend of high-concept, often genuinely original ideas mixed with properly interesting and flawed characters, whose interactions make for engrossing reading.
Damn, it's a great time to be a reader of Science Fiction. Authors like Ada Palmer and books like Seven Surrenders make me genuinely excited about SF Damn, it's a great time to be a reader of Science Fiction. Authors like Ada Palmer and books like Seven Surrenders make me genuinely excited about SF and where the genre is going.
From the first page in her new novel Ada Palmer continues the story she began in the scintillating Too Like the Lightning, and the two books can be read as one story split into two halves. (I'm guessing they were written as one story, but would be too large if left as one book).
Mycroft Canner, indentured servant, friend to the powerful and one-time sadistic mass-murderer is once again our narrator, reporting on the meetings of world leaders, their secret dalliances, their power struggles, their betrayals. Through Mycroft's eyes, and occasionally the eyes of someone he has invited into his story, we see events that threaten to shatter the utopia that earth has become- a world with no war, no hunger, no want.
The characters introduced in the first novel- The Saneer-Weeksbooths, Bridger, the god-child who can bring any inanimate object to life, J.E.D.D Mason, the strange youth who can see a person's deepest secrets at a glance and appears to be the heir apparent to many of the world's leaders, Carlyle foster the Sensayer, and others continue their machinations as the revelation of a centuries old murderous plot (A plot used to keep the world from war) threatens to spark a civil war of unimaginable, epoch defining brutality.
Around this fascinating plot Palmer continues to explore ideas of gender and faith, bringing new insight and ideas to the old trope of the near genderless future where everyone gets around in androgynous robes and uses 'theys' instead of 'his' and 'hers'. one of the most fascinating ideas she presents is the impact that old gendered forms of sexuality could have in a society only a few hundred years distant from the sort of gender roles we have in 2017. Could sexuality and gendered behavior be used as a weapon in such a society? Could people unused to gendered behavior be vulnerable to seducers using old forms of behaviour? And should they succumb, could they become addicted to illicitly partaking in socially frowned upon gendered behaviour, and then be manipulated by their unprincipled seducers?
This is a novel unafraid to play with ideas like this, in an interesting and convincingly constructed future, an interlinked world where nation states have been overtaken by voluntarily joined Hives, societies formed by millions of like-minded individuals. It's a fascinating, tightly constructed work that left me in awe of Palmer's imagination and writing skills.
Palmer has a gift for interesting characters and convincing conversation- it's a rare book that can hold my interest through pages and pages of meetings and keep me coming back for more, but Palmer does this. She makes political machinations sexy, and nails the tensions and undercurrents that run beneath the conversations of the powerful, making these sections addictively entertaining.
That's not to say there's no action, no high-stakes physical threat in Seven Surrenders. There is engagingly depicted action here, but it is not the book's focus, and if you're looking for a kinetic, 'splosions-heavy story I would look elsewhere.
If however you're looking for a thoughtful SF story with intrigue, betrayal, regret and intellectual heft then this is the book for you. Seven Surrenders isn't perfect, but it's damn close to it, and I've already ordered my copy of The Will to Battle, book three in Palmer's series.
Ada Palmer is to my mind one of the bright new talents in SF, and this book cements that reputation. She has written only two books so far, and both of them deserve to be included on SF book-of-the-year lists. If this is what she can do at the start of her career I'm very much looking forward to the work she will produce when she really hits her stride....more
Would you like to visit 2047 and see the high-tech powerhouse that India could become? Ian McDonald’s Cyberabad Days will take you to the subcontinentWould you like to visit 2047 and see the high-tech powerhouse that India could become? Ian McDonald’s Cyberabad Days will take you to the subcontinental future, from the hot, crowded streets of Varanasi to the cool mountain lakes of Kashmir, via a series of stories that are some of the best in Science Fiction.
McDonald has already shown us that he can blend SF and developing world culture in scintillating ways with Brasyl and River of Gods and he does so again to tremendous effect here, delivering futuristic short stories and novellas with an Indian flavor as pungent and memorable as the spice markets of Old Delhi. Like its predecessor, Cyberabad Days is a seething ants-nest of SF concepts, vibrant color and subcontinental perspectives.
McDonald's India of 2047 has fractured into numerous competing states, New Delhi having finally lost control of its myriad peoples and cultures. Military assault drones patrol borders and cut down insurgents with flechette launchers and nano-edged blades. Varanasi, capital of the new state of Bharat, is the epicentre of an industry producing dangerously high-level artificial intelligences, some of which are the cast of India's best-rating daytime soap. Krishna cops, armed with both physical and virtual weaponry, hunt rogue AIs, enforcing international anti-AI pacts pushed by a faraway conservative US government. Meanwhile, underlying all of this, decades of sex-selective abortion has reduced the number of women in India to a destabilizing twenty percent of the population, upending centuries of marriage traditions and leading some to abandon the mating-race altogether, voluntarily becoming a strange, sexless third gender.
Amongst this chaos ordinary and not-so-ordinary people are working, looking for love, fighting against the encroachment of technology into every aspect of existence and trying to find their place in life. McDonald explores the lives of both the powerful and the weak, from a pizza stall boy to the girl-child embodiment of a Hindu God to a genetically enhanced 'Brahmin' whose lifespan will be measured in centuries. Each story is consistently engrossing, inventive and thought provoking- exactly what I want from my SF.
As with any story collection there are works that shine brighter than others, but on the whole Cyberabad Days is top quality stuff. McDonald is a master of genuinely exciting SF and his nano-edge sharp writing skills constantly delighted me.
I traveled to the subcontinent earlier this year and McDonald took me right back to the crowds of Delhi and the mountains of the Himalaya, but with the addition of sundry layers of futuristic SF awesomeness and thought-provoking questions of technology, humanity and culture. What more could you ask of a book than it not only entertain you, but also transport you to faraway physical, temporal and intellectual places?
The Disestablishment of Paradise centres around the most fascinating alien world I've encountered since China Mieville's Embassytown.
Imagine a botanicThe Disestablishment of Paradise centres around the most fascinating alien world I've encountered since China Mieville's Embassytown.
Imagine a botanical Eden, a world where every evolutionary niche is filled by plants, from moss to flowers to titanic, elephant-dwarfing tree-creatures that uproot themselves and crash about looking for mates. Imagine a world that earns it's name - Paradise - with it's intoxicating fruits, crystal clear water and a natural beauty that draws people from around the galaxy. Then imagine this Eden slowly, inexplicably becoming hostile to human life. The fruits becoming toxic, the plant life more invasive, more aggressive, the soil itself rejecting everything that humanity has introduced. This is the mystery at the heart of the novel- a story that begins as Paradise is being abandoned, its colony 'Disestablished'.
This is a mellow, in parts dreamlike story, told by a third person character (a writer) who dots the narrative with interviews with her subject Hera Melhuish, a researcher and the last person left on Paradise, whose story this is.
TDOP stands out in a crowded genre- This isn't laser-cannons and starship battles (although I loves me some starship battles), it's something different, something more gentle, and it warms my jaded old reader's heart. Days after finishing the book I still find myself imagining the flavours of the paradise plum- the most sought after of the mind-altering fruits in the novel- which Mann describes vividly and convincingly. The only criticism I can make is that occasionally the dialogue clunked a little bit for me, although I could barely hear the false notes over the roar of TDOP's vibrant, living world.
You could shoe-horn Mann's book into something like 'Eco sci-fi' as it contains a powerful, but not preachy, ecological message, but that would be doing it a disservice. This is an often subtle, smart and intriguing novel that is a blend of allegory, love story and adventure. Even the appendices are worth reading. Seriously, the appendices. It's that good.
Wow. Clear an evening, take a day off, do whatever you need to do to carve out some serious reading time because the The Scar is good. Very, very goodWow. Clear an evening, take a day off, do whatever you need to do to carve out some serious reading time because the The Scar is good. Very, very good.
This is the sort of book you put down for a second just to exclaim aloud how good it is, the sort you push on friends and family with evangelical fervor. I stayed up late with this one, suffering in a fug of fatigue at work the next day, yet hanging out for when I could crack the covers and read into the wee hours all over again.
If you've read any Mieville you know just how engrossing he can be. I rate Embassytown as one of the most inventive SF works I've read, and The Scar is on the same level - a wild riot of amazing, completely engrossing ideas.
The Scar centers around Bellis Coldwine, a linguist who has been forced to flee the great city of New Crobuzon after the events described in Perdido Street Station. Enroute to exile she finds herself abducted and effectively imprisoned in the floating city of Armada- a collection of hundreds of ships, all lashed together and made into a mobile, piratical metropolis atop the ocean. From here she is drawn into machinations that could make Armada a serious world power, and into the dangerous and supernatural factions that compete for power in the floating city.
I don't want to give too much away so won't elaborate much more about the plot, but suffice to say this book is an absolute frenzy of awesome ideas and I was continually gobsmacked at the breadth and depth of China Mieville's imagination. Every element of the story, from the vast floating pirate city of Armada, to the unique creatures of Bas-Lag (lobster/human hybrid 'crays' for example), to the steampunk techno-magick that drives Mieville's world is seamlessly slotted into a vast and detailed story that I did not want to leave.
As someone who has mild aspirations to write Mieville's talent is both awe inspiring and appalling - how did he get so good? What does the man have in his head to create beautiful, intricate worlds like Bas-Lag and Embassytown? Which daemonic entity did he bargain with in order to write like he does?
This is Fantasy of another level- as far above your average swords and elves saga as the airship that flies above Mieville's floating city. This is fantasy so good, that in all my hours with it I didn't once feel like I was reading fantasy....more
Have you ever been on a first date and suddenly had the sweet realisation that not only are you going to have a great night, but that you're at the beHave you ever been on a first date and suddenly had the sweet realisation that not only are you going to have a great night, but that you're at the beginning of something special, something that could be lasting?
That's how I felt a couple of chapters into Embassytown.
I had no idea what to expect when I began this book, and it blew me away. An embassy district in a vast city on a faraway world. An alien race whose unique language limits their ability to think and entirely prevents them from lying. A compelling wannabe slacker main character whose day job is guiding starships through a parallel dimension called The Immer. Mieville sews all this into a story that is a riot of color and inventiveness. This is high concept stuff, bristling with ideas, many of which would be worthy of their own novellas, and I ate it up, killing a full winters day in a Japanese hotel room with this book and loving every minute.
It's been a while since I've felt the frission of discovery that comes from finding a great new author to read, an author whose back catalogue offers tens of hours of pure reading pleasure (The last author to send a similar shiver up my sci-fi loving spine was Paolo Bacigalupi back in 2014). It's a genuinely exciting sensation, heady with premonitions of lazy, book-filled afternoons and Embassytown has set me off on an urgent quest to read all of Mievilles work. Judging from Embassytown, I'm going to have a shitload of fun doing it.
(Oh- and big love to Mieville from me for breaking a three star book drought that was five titles long and starting to kill my reading vibe. This book is exactly what I needed!)...more
In a previous life, I was a comedian. I told jokes to crowds of people for (occasionally) money and (more often) beer. During my brief career I read mIn a previous life, I was a comedian. I told jokes to crowds of people for (occasionally) money and (more often) beer. During my brief career I read many comedy how-tos, and numerous biographies of performers like Richard Pryor (Pryor Convictions) and Steve Martin (Born Standing up).
How I escaped My Certain Fate is the best book on comedy, or the life of a comedian, that I have read, written by a man who is in my opinion one of the best and most interesting voices in contemporary stand-up.
Stewart Lee's book is both hilarious and genuinely insightful, and is a book of two parts. Lee firstly tells the story of his comedy career, its near death and the eventual resuscitation that allowed him to become the performer he is now- a scathing, fierce and hilarious performer at the top of his industry, with several seasons of his own show. This story is entertaining and told with flair, but is only part of the book.
Beyond his own personal story Lee includes the full scripts for three of his critically acclaimed shows, and breaks them down into what is effectively the story of their creation combined with a penetrating dissection of what worked, what didn't and why. In doing this Lee gives readers a unique insight into the gargantuan amount of artistic work that goes into creating a stand-up stage show, and the thought processes of a comedian engaged in such a task.
If you've ever wondered how comedians do what they do, how they come up with their ideas, and how they work them into a seamless hour of entertainment then read this book. Lee pulls the curtain back, points out the cogs in the machine, and gives you an hilarious demonstration of how they all work together.
How I escaped My Certain Fate is funny, scathing, insightful, filled with reflection, analysis of what makes comedy work or fail and more. Stewart Lee writes in an hilarious, flowing, page turning style and I found myself up late with this one, and laughing out loud on the tram too. If you want to perform stand up, used to perform stand up, or are interested in the world of stand up you must read this book- it's worth ten hackneyed how-to guides and self serving comic memoirs. This is comedy as art, damned funny art....more
In the t'T, the utopian future society of Adam Roberts’ Stone, there is no crime. There are no criminals and no-one is capable of committing murder. EIn the t'T, the utopian future society of Adam Roberts’ Stone, there is no crime. There are no criminals and no-one is capable of committing murder. Except for one man, a man locked in an inescapable prison. This man expects to die in gaol, until he receives an offer: we will free you, but you must commit a crime for us. You must murder an entire world. Your freedom for the lives of sixty million people.
This is the setup for Roberts' book, and it's a fantastic start to a thought-provoking story. Roberts is a brilliant builder of high-concept SF worlds, and his work in On, Gradisil and Salt has been impressive, if a little inconsistent. This inconsistency is not present in Stone, and this novel is the perfect marriage of a great story with another of Roberts' vivid and convincing scenarios.
The central character, Ae (a man at the books beginning, although he has at times also been a woman) confesses his life and his crimes to the inanimate stone he holds in his hand. His story is of a man at extreme odds with the society he is part of. In the t’T’s post-scarcity society nanotechnology (know as dotTech) has eliminated ageing and illness, while conditioning and genetics have almost entirely eliminated crime. In this society Ae is the rarest of deviants- a true criminal, a multiple murderer with a taste for killing. As his nonviolent society cannot execute him they strip him of his nanotech, condemning him to the slow death by natural causes any non-augmented human would face, and imprison him to live out his remaining years.
The stone Ae is confessing to resembles the prison he was incarcerated in, a grassed-and-rivered miniature world inside an insulated ball of rock, suspended within the searing corona of a star. Inside this gaol he slowly ages, enduring the heretofore unknown sufferings of a baseline human body and waiting for his own death, until his mysterious employer contacts him. What follows is an engaging, and sometimes harrowing, journey through Ae’s society as he slowly travels towards the planet he is meant to destroy, staying ahead of the few police that still exist while trying to understand the nature of his employer and their genocidal bargain.
The broader t’T society is fascinating, and the dotTech-less Ae struggles to blend into a culture where nanotech underpins everything, and the machines populating peoples blood allow them to change their sex and resculpt their bodies at will. In this post-frailty world people do not experience sickness involuntarily and Ae’s eventual sniffles and pains are seen as odd, edgy style affectations. Ae's loneliness and lack of connection is profound, and as the story develops he seems to have moved from a physical prison to a mental one constructed from his deviance from the t'T norm.
Stone is a fascinating portrayal of criminality in a world that has forgotten crime, and a gripping exploration of where nanotech could eventually take human society. Ae’s story is a great SF tale with moments of real horror (one particular murder resembles a scene from John Carpenter's The Thing) and his struggles elicit genuine pathos. All this, combined with the mystery of who Ae’s benefactor is, drew me through the novel at a page-tearing pace towards a shocking conclusion that is both original and satisfying.
Stone is smart, sensitive high-concept SF done very well. If you’re interested in good Science Fiction, Adam Roberts should be on your reading list....more
If you have in interest in the Vietnam war, or in strategy, insurgencies and counter-insurgent techniques this book should be on your reading list. StIf you have in interest in the Vietnam war, or in strategy, insurgencies and counter-insurgent techniques this book should be on your reading list. Street Without Joy tells the fascinating story of the post WW2 French in Indochina, their failures to understand or counter Vietnamese Communist forces and the eventual continuance of the same errors by the United States.
Essentially, Fall posits that French (and later US) forces failed to understand the nature of the Vietnamese Communists' revolutionary war, their support among the local population and their ability to use neighboring countries (and eventually North Vietnam) as refuges. Western forces tried to counter these advantages with technology- fast strike mobile helicopter and armor groups, more and better surveillance, agent orange, etc. but this was a losing battle and they lacked the foresight to see it as such.
Beyond the incisive and illuminating discussion of strategies and tactics, this is a story of heartbreaking death and suffering on a grand scale over a protracted time period. Time and again French soldiers were told to hold posts to the last man against advancing Viet Minh forces. Time and again they were slaughtered, with maybe a handful escaping into the jungle to trek for days or weeks back to the French lines, their adversaries in pursuit. When they eventually reached safety their ordeals had broken them to the point that to their rescuers they resembled 'Christ on the cross'. When Dien Bien Phu fell captured French soldiers, wounded or not, were cruelly forced marched five and even six hundred kilometers through the jungle, dying where they fell from exhaustion.
Neither brave sacrifices nor horrific suffering were not restricted to the French military.
Indochinese Soldiers and civilians suffered terribly, with the former making near-superhuman efforts to defeat their foreign enemies. Viet Minh and VC soldiers carried heavy weapons hundreds of kilometers through the mountains on their bleeding backs, living only on handfuls of rice and dying in droves under French artillery attacks with only primitive medical care available to them. The French also committed war crimes of their own, and Fall details how a Vietnamese village and its residents were napalmed by French aircraft for no reason other than to make a point.
Fall writes well, and tells a compelling story of savagery and screw-ups, arrogance and last-stand bravery. I've heard this book is studied at defense academies around the world, and I can see why. Street Without Joy is one of the best books I've read on counterinsurgency and the mistakes a large high-tech army can make when fighting less sophisticated guerrilla forces.
I finished this book with a heavy heart. So much wasted life and, judging by the US entry into Vietnam (and later Afghanistan and Iraq), so many lessons unlearned.
On a final sad note, no one in this story escapes the horrors of this war, not even Fall himself. Six years after this book's publication Fall was on patrol in Vietnam with a group of U.S soldiers when he stepped on a landmine and was fatally hurt....more
Sausages. Rotisserie chicken. Lamb chops. Bratwurst. Roast Beef. These words marked out the evenings of I write this review from a place of some bias.
Sausages. Rotisserie chicken. Lamb chops. Bratwurst. Roast Beef. These words marked out the evenings of my childhood. We ate meat twice a day, and on holidays thrice, moving through the day from a bacon fry-up to a ham-sandwich to a steak with mushroom sauce. A meal without meat was considered incomplete, and vegetarianism was a scorned and alien disease that infected no-one among my family or friends.
I was no supermarket meat-eater, hiding from the realities of the slaughterhouse. My father took me into faraway mountains and across deep seas where we wielded rifle, rod and spear in anticipation of the evening's cook-pot while never contemplating the lives ended at our hands.
And yet, I became a Vego. A tofu-muncher. A salad-scarer. The scourge of the suburban B-B-Q.
Seventeen years ago, when I first considered becoming a vegetarian, this book, Peter Singer's Animal Liberation was the catalyst that pushed me over the line. As a result, this book holds a special place in my heart as a road-marker on the trail of my own personal philosophy.
My bias aside, Animal Liberation is a powerful work by a renowned ethicist and a fantastic introduction to the ethical arguments for cessation (or at least reduction) of animal slaughter and animal experimentation.
Singer is no mung-bean guzzling hippy blowhard. He is a serious (currently working at Princeton) and often controversial thinker and he brings rigour to his arguments against the way we treat animals. He argues strongly and effectively that to treat sentient beings more poorly than we do our fellow humans is simply speciesism (a neologism that has stuck with me since I encountered it).
I personally find his arguments convincing, and his conclusions sound. Of course, I'm a long time vegetarian, so depending on your views of how red-in-claw nature is, or where exactly you like to see yourself in the hierarchy of the food chain, you may not get the mileage I do from a tankful of Singer.
For the weak of stomach, be aware that some of what is discussed in Animal Liberation is pretty damn disturbing. Horrible animal experiments, cruel slaughter and cruelty in general all share the page here, but hey, using animal products and products tested on animals makes us all culpable for these abuses, so the least we can do is bear witness and acknowledge that we have caused great pain to our fellow earthlings.
Anyway, if you're at all interested in this topic, or ethics in general, read this book. Animal Liberation was one of the first mainstream books on the ethics of our treatment of animals when it was published in 1975, and you've probably encountered its literary and ethical children already, but the old warhorse is still worth a look, and bears its heavy burdens well.
Postscript: This book includes recipes, so if you're so fired up by Singer's arguments that you immediately swear off animal products you can flick to the back and make yourself a vego meal (A seventies-style vego meal if you have an older edition)....more
Every conversation I have ever had about this book:
Me: "Really? You haven't read Watership Down?!' You: "Nope" Me: "Read it! It's beautiful! A work of tEvery conversation I have ever had about this book:
Me: "Really? You haven't read Watership Down?!' You: "Nope" Me: "Read it! It's beautiful! A work of touching, thoughtful genius!" You: "What's it about?" Me: "Never mind that, it's a stunning book. Just read it. You'll love it." You: "So it's a naval theme then? Like a Das Boot-y book? Or a Titanic style story?" Me: "Well... no, its more, well, it's based on land. In England. Seriously though, Richard Adams is a hell of a storyteller." You: "Oh! OK, so a ship runs aground and it's like a survival film? Alive in Essex, yeah?" Me: "Ahhh, no, the name refers to a down - a kind of parky meadow in England - and this one is called Watership Down. You: "So it's environmental? Silent Spring in the UK?" Me: "No, it's fiction, with a great story and compelling characters you'll be rooting for, whose struggles might just make you mist up." You: "It sounds great, but what's it about?" Me: "Well.. I don't want to make it sound lame..." You: "Come on. I'm not reading a book I know nothing about." Me: :"OK... it's.... it's about Rabbits." You: "Rabbits." Me: "Yes, and they talk, and struggle and love and..." You: "Talking Rabbits". Me: "Yes! But they're realistic! Adams captures something of their soul! He invents a stunning, moving mythology for them, an entire religion based on their Rabbit-ness! The film made me cry when I was a child, and the book is even better!" You: "Realistic talking religious rabbits." Me: "Yes, but it's so beauti... ah, fuck it. It's one of the best books I've ever read."...more
If beer was a religion Randy Mosher would be a modern prophet, prayed to over offerings of hops in breweries across the world. His book, Radical BrewiIf beer was a religion Randy Mosher would be a modern prophet, prayed to over offerings of hops in breweries across the world. His book, Radical Brewing, would be a holy text taught in pubs, bars and craft beer joints.
I exaggerate a little, but perhaps not as much as you might think. Radical Brewing is, in my opinion, a foundational text for any aspiring homebrewer.
Radical Brewing is an essential guide to making your own beer, but it isn’t a boring technical manual- it’s a cheery, ale-infused jaunt through the culture, history, deliciousness and creation of the amber liquid. Mosher combines serious knowledge with a genuine passion for his subject and takes his readers on a fascinating tour through beer.
This book will show you how to make beer, but more importantly, it will show you why you should make beer- you will be part of a great tradition and a modern movement, you can make unique beers for you and your friends and you can subvert the actions of the massive beer companies that largely produce tasteless slop. Many books will show you how to brew, not many will fire you with the passion to do so. Mosher’s book is one of the latter.
Along with guidance on the creation of beer, Mosher also includes many interesting and tasty beer recipes. Having made a number of these recipes I can attest to their tastiness. His ‘Saison Buffoon’ was one of the first beers I ever brewed- a delicious, dry farmhouse style ale made with Indian jaggery and infused with lemon peel and grains of paradise. Mosher’s book, and his saison, expanded my beery horizons beyond pale ales, lagers and IPAs.
Mosher’s book is copiously illustrated and full of humor, making it a rare thing among brewing books- an easy and entertaining read. You’re not going to get the hard math and ratios that you’ll learn in a book like Ray Daniels’ Designing Great Beers, but Mosher’s book will entertain you in ways that more textbook style brewing guides won’t.
I’ve been brewing for years and this book remains a go-to reference text for me. If you’re a homebrewer, would like to be a homebrewer, or know a homebrewer, buy this book. Radical Brewing is genuinely inspiring in its breadth, depth and dismissal of any and all limits in the pursuit of great beer. ...more
Permanent Midnight sets its tone in the first few pages, beginning with its author - Jerry Stahl - wearing a diaper to soak up the blood from his bleePermanent Midnight sets its tone in the first few pages, beginning with its author - Jerry Stahl - wearing a diaper to soak up the blood from his bleeding, post-op testicles. From there it descends into a story of debasement and self-loathing that is one of the finest and most enjoyable memoirs I’ve read.
Permanent Midnight is a crazy, strung-out taxi ride though a life where a near unquenchable addiction met a salary almost big enough to slake it. This is no rock’n’roll I-took-lots-of-drugs-and-went-a-bit-far memoir. This is a dirty, life ruining, career ruining story where the profoundly negative impact of Stahl’s substance use on his life is never far from the reader’s mind.
This is a fascinating tale of a motivated man who combined a powerful work ethic with self-hatred and drug abuse. Jerry Stahl is a guy who would go for regular jogs, but would blast himself with a dose of speed beforehand so he could run faster. He regularly got into work early so he could prepare an intravenous breakfast speedball and sterilise his needle with the office bottle of photocopier cleaner. This is a guy who started out writing for adult magazines and on porn films and became a successful screenwriter in the eighties, pulling down five large a week at his peak. Remember ALF? Stahl wrote for that show. Moonlighting? That one too. And he hated all of it, with a self-loathing passion that fueled his habit.
We see Stahl (who is Jewish) befriending a neo-nazi drug dealer (complete with Swastika tattoos), taking his baby daughter along to heroin deals, flaking out in a toilet during an important production meeting, and explaining the strange, perma-long-sleeved life of the injecting drug user. He lives a tightrope double life of public success and secret squalor, blowing his relationships and opportunities for genuine, meaningful work while he pumps out dross for the shows that employ him. There’s no happy ending here. Stahl doesn’t cheat his readers with false redemption, rather he records his descent in full, and gives us the full trajectory of his dissolution.
The bestselling story of a drug addict’s fall from the top to rock bottom (and back up again after the publication of said bestseller) is a publishing cliché, but Stahl’s story transcends the genre. What separates Permanent Midnight from the masses of such stories is Stahl’s ever-present dark humour. Stahl possesses a sharp wit, an eye for his own absurdities and the writing chops to bring seriously funny moments into an otherwise grim tale - I was genuinely appalled by his story almost as often as I laughed aloud, and I laughed aloud a lot.
This book is a real ride, and I’ve not read a more memorable story of addiction and its consequences. Permanent Midnight, is an important work in the drugs-ruined-my-life genre, right up there with Burroughs’ Junky. ...more
Iain Banks was a genius and The Bridge is one of his greatest works. Few would disagree with the first statement, but some might disagree with the lasIain Banks was a genius and The Bridge is one of his greatest works. Few would disagree with the first statement, but some might disagree with the last.
Why? Because this novel utilizes a pretty cheesy central plot device – (view spoiler)[ that the events occurring are the dreams of a man in a coma.
If this puts you off I understand - usually any novel using the 'It was all a dream' premise sounds as appealing to me as Days of our Lives in book form - but trust me: this novel is worth your time. (hide spoiler)] If you can look past this cliched premise you will find yourself immersed in one of the best books I've read in the last decade.
If you've read any Banks you'll know that he was as comfortable with literary fiction as he was with Science Fiction, writing many books in both genres during his career. The Bridge falls into the litfic section of his output, but contains enough weird and speculative elements to appeal to those (like me) whose tastes tend towards genre.
The story is split three ways.
The first character, Alex, wakes on a bridge. However, this is no ordinary bridge. This bridge is a world, a vast, many-levelled structure that spans a seemingly endless sea, stretching off into infinity in either direction, an entire civilization existing within its steel stanchions and concrete buttresses.
Alex lives in this strange world, unsure how he came to be there exploring his new home and meeting with a psychiatrist to discuss his disturbing dreams. In particular he is enduring a series of sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying nightmares where he is making his way across a strange and magical world as The Barbarian- a sword-swinging Scottish-brogue wielding warrior who is the second major character in the narrative.
While Alex explores his own mind and his environs we also follow the life of a young man, James Orr, who is making his way in our world (There are some parallels with Banks' character Adrian Cubbish in Transition, although Adrian is a bit more of a chancer than James).
James finds success, with all its trappings, but finds his wealthy life empty. Throughout his rise to success and ennui the common thread in his life is his love for a woman named Andrea Crammond, whom he reluctantly has to share with her other lover, a distant Frenchman.
Across these three narratives we begin to grasp what the bridge could be, explore the reasons Alex is there and discover the significance of both The Barbarian and the life that John Orr has lived.
What makes The Bridge so great is the inventiveness of Bank’s narratives. Each of his books is a unique riot of imagination and The Bridge is funny, poignant and awe-inspiring, sometimes all at once on one page.
For those of us who love The Culture novels The Bridge also gives us a hint of Banks’ famed space opera series years before Consider Phlebas was written, with hints of an interstellar civilization and advanced technologies sneaking into one of the narrative threads. If you’re as obsessed with The Culture as I am this glimpse of the seed that would grow into ten of the best novels in SF is tasty indeed.
It’s totally heady stuff, and I was shamelessly addicted, pawing over pages late at night, my eyes bleary with fatigue, ignoring my partner, my cat and any food unable to be eaten with one hand.
For some readers the founding premise of the novel may seem trite. For me however, the brilliance of the story and Bank's regular volcanic eruptions of narrative inventiveness massively overshadow the slightly clichéd premise beneath it all....more
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