I am grateful to live in a world where we can film the thoughts of fish

The mind boggles!

I see this is Japanese research - perhaps it's designed to produce a particularly rarefied sushi where the fish's thoughts are wrapped in rice and rolled in salmon roe.

My Reading Year 2013 Part Two: Science Fiction is Dead

Dead!

This year I read just 16 books of prose. It’s a pretty disappointing number; well down on my usual efforts. I think the most books I’ve read in a year is 32, so it’s half of that, but I generally manage about 25. I haven’t had much time for writing, either. I’ve written no fiction but I did write four reviews, which I suppose is more than in either of the last couple of years.

As mentioned in part 1, it’s mostly because of my new job and the house move: if didn’t do as much reading or writing as I’d have liked, it’s because I was busily occupied on the business of getting on with life and moving on. But because I was distracted, my reading felt a bit random and purposeless this year.

I finished off my series on Necronomicon: The Best Weird Fiction of H P Lovecraft, and gradually lost interest in the early 20^th century popular gothic. Instead I got a dose of the real thing. when I found a copy of The Great Beast: The Life and Magic of Aleister Crowley by John Symonds in the basement of my new house. I read a bit of fantasy including the low fantasy novel Bringing Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel while watching the alt-historical drama A Game of Thrones on DVD, and then read World Fantasy Award winner Osama by Lavie Tidhar.

Late in the year, this now infamous review by Paul Kincaid made me ponder my own relationship to the genre because I don’t read a lot of prose SF and fantasy in comparison to my younger days and I’ve been wondering why that might be. While I’ve only just begun to investigate the question, starting with my series on Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, the early diagnosis isn’t encouraging. As far as I can tell, science fiction is dead.

NOTE: This is really long, maybe my longest post yet. You have been warned. 

My Reading Year 2013 Part One: The Year I Stopped Reading Comics

No more of this!

And so another busy year hurries into the past without even having the good manners to kiss us goodbye. This one has been busier than usual for me and so has seemed to pass quicker than ever. I’ve moved house and been busy with renovations, and had my first year in a new job. These haven’t left a lot of time for some of my usual pursuits but I’ve had a lot of fun and discovered a whole new talent for painting and decorating.

In amongst it all I’ve still found room for reading and blogging from time to time. I finished off my H P Lovecraft series and wrote series on MarvelEssential Warlock and I, Robot. I wrote a few reviews and read a few reviews elsewhere on blogs and review sites here and there on the internet. It all made me wonder where the genre was heading and while I’m not sure if I read widely enough any more to be entitled to an opinion on the matter, when I started thinking about it I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that science fiction is dead.

But that’s all coming next week!

This got quite long, so I’ve decided to split it in two, one part on comics and one on prose. This is the part about comics. I’m going to talk about 80s Marvel vs DC, a new take on Ghost Rider, and how The Invisibles and Ex Machina showed me the benefits of reading comics in trade paperback and convinced me to give up pamphlets.

If any of these topics are of interest to you, read on!

Happy Birthday, David (2013) - Where Are We Now?

I look through the window and what do I see? Holy cow, a new David Bowie single! I'm sure I'm just one of an army of bloggers embedding this one today.



It sounds a bit sad to me.

It doesn't have the immediate 'holy shit!' of something like Suffragette City or Heroes, but it's pleasingly mellow. Is it good or bad? I think Bowie's a bit beyond good and bad. A new song after 10 years from such an iconic artist becomes part of a narrative that eclipses questions or good or bad.

That's the down side of being an icon.

I, Robot - part 10: The Evitable Conflict

This story addresses the moment when the Machines take the reins of the world and mankind is rendered redundant. Within the lifetime of Gloria Weston of the first story robots have gone from her puppy-like paymate Robbie to rulers of the world in place of men.

It's not a bloody robot uprising of the the sort depicted in the terrible movie that bears this book's name. Instead, in a move that seems eerily prescient, the robots take control of Earth using the most powerful weapon in the modern arsenal: the economy.

I, Robot - part 9: Evidence

We get to the real meat of the issue here: what’s the difference between a man and robot? It’s one of the foundational questions of SF that’s been addressed by through simplistic pulp tales of vengeful servants to PK Dick and Greg Egan’s existential angst and the infinite varieties of post-singularity SF. 

Like these other writers, Asimov gives us his own take on the issue: the difference between robot and human is that they’re better than us. 

I, Robot - part 8: Escape

In this story we see the return of Donovan and Powell, reflecting the core cast of characters that Asimov has built up over the stories so far. These two and robopsychologist Susan Calvin tend to lead matters – they share the spotlight in this one – supported by mathematician Peter Bogert and director-emeritus of research Alfred Lanning. Other characters come and go but it’s these five we return to again and again.

There’s not much continuity for these characters. They seem pretty static and events from one story to the next don’t seem to make much difference to them. But while the characters don’t change or develop much, the world they exist in is changing in ways that this story highlight. The previous story, Little Lost Robotintroduced the concept for the hyperatomic drive to the robot story universe. In this story, we get one step closer.