Ninety percent of SF is shite, but that's because ninety percent of *everything* is shite.

The title of this blog was, of course, a simply hilarious reference to the fact that me and young Stripey are a tad on the indolent side.

Great stuff.

The problem being that me and young Stripey are a tad on the indolent side, which has tended to mean that this blog has been on the quiet side.

However! This all changes today! I have a new job and am all fired up and fizzing with energy.

I thought I'd get things going with some nonsense about good old Science Fiction.

I have, over the last few months, been indulging my love of SF possibly a little more than is really healthy. I've taken in literary SF, audio plays, TV SF and SF-infused gaming.

There was a point, a few years ago, where I'd kinda stopped reading new SF books. That was a mistake, I missed out on some excellent stuff, which I'm only just catching up on just now. Ian R. Macleod was someone that I hadn't read until recently, but I'm a convert now. The Light Ages is excellent and his recent Song of Time is as worthy of praise as any vapid and enervating so-called “literary fiction;” this isn't to suggest that lit fic is inherently bad, far from it. It's just that I do tend to feel that it is as much a genre as SF, crime or romance and is far more self-regarding than any of those mentioned and, much in the way of American indie films, it can produce hollow and tedious art. Anyway: my other discovery (or rather, rediscovery) has been the excellent Paul McAuley. I had actually read 400 Billion Stars in my beard-free days and not, in truth, really enjoyed it. I also read Fairyland about a year or so ago. Again my response was a little “meh.” However, I finally decided to give him another go as The Quiet War had been the subject of much positive spluh on the web (mostly from authors opinions that I trusted) and, wow, can that man write. Fantastic prose, believable, rounded characters and (haha, as with all good SF) some nice commentary about how we choose to live our lives.

I've also been watching a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now disclaimer: I am far from a Trekkie. My interest is pretty dilettantish, in truth. In spite of (because of?) that, I feel that I can safely say that TNG is a far superior beast to the original series and Picard pwns Kirk every time. Yes, yes, there's no Spock and there are far fewer orange swirly blob episodes than the original run, but it doesn't have that slightly embarrassing campy feel to it that the original series had. Although I did like the one where Kirk had to fight Gorn.

My other recent(ish) discovery has been the Doctor Who audiobooks, featuring the 5^th, 6^th, 7^th and 8^th Doctors. In fairness, part of my good disposition to these is based on the fact that Peter Davison was my first Doctor and hearing the theme music from then does have the usual reminder of more carefree childhood days. That said, the standard is generally pretty decent. They get a chance to do some stuff that probably would be hard to do for telly. I like the character of Evelyn Smythe, she seems to be a bit more of a match for the Doctor, intellectually and emotionally, which one tends not to find with the youngsters that usually trail around after him.

And finally, "SF gaming?" you say? Indeed, yes! Dead Space is as much as part of the SF quilt (hmm...I want one of them) as a book or a film, I say (actually, so do lots of people). Multi-platform geekery got even better when I heard the excellent news that Richard Morgan is involved in writing for some games just now.

Listening:

Agitation Free – Malesch