Because of the way that Lies Sleeping ended, Peter Grant finds himself suspended, temporarily he hopes, from the London’s Metropolitan Police. Because expenses don’t stop just because a job does, he signs up to work in the security department of one of London’s biggest and flashiest IT start-ups, the Serious Cybernetics Corporation. The founder, an …
Tag: Doug
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/05/false-value-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Sep 29 2024
Mein litauischer Führerschein by Felix Ackermann
Mein litauischer Fürherschein — My Lithuanian Driver’s License — carries the subtitle “Ausflüge zum Ende der europäischen Union,” “Excursions to the End of the European Union.” He means one of the geographic ends of course, not the demise of the Union. I’m not sure I would have chosen Lithuania as the end of the Union …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/29/mein-litauischer-fuhrerschein-by-felix-ackermann/
Sep 28 2024
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
One of the things that science fiction writers have learned how to do in the 206 years since Frankenstein was first published is how to bring their readers along with the new elements of the world that they put into their stories. Most of the time, they take care to make the fantastic elements plausible …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/28/frankenstein-by-mary-shelley-2/
Sep 26 2024
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, Pt. 3
One of the many astonishing things that Richard Rhodes does in The Making of the Atomic Bomb is to match the tone and pace of each of the major sections to their theme. It’s common enough in good novels, but uncommon in non-fiction, and vanishingly rare in a non-fiction work of this size and scope. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/26/the-making-of-the-atomic-bomb-by-richard-rhodes-pt-3/
Sep 21 2024
Das Konzert by Hartmut Lange
Everybody who’s anybody among Berlin’s dead craves an invitation to Frau Altenshul’s salon. She has devoted her afterlife — much as she had devoted her life — to beauty, whether that was beautiful music, beautiful art, or the simple beauty of conversation among like-minded people. Max Liebermann was a painter who had lived a long life, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/21/das-konzert-by-hartmut-lange/
Sep 14 2024
Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
As the fortieth anniversary of its publication approaches, I suppose it’s fair to call Shards of Honor an old-fashioned space opera, although the series it kicked off is open-ended and its most recent work appeared just six years ago. Somehow I missed the Vorkosigan saga when it was becoming a big thing in science fiction …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/14/shards-of-honor-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/11/hugo-awards-2024-best-novelette/
Aug 04 2024
The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar by Indra Das
Like many children who grow up in peculiar families, Ru does not realize just how peculiar his home life is. As he gets bigger, he starts asking questions. Who am I? Who are we? Where do we come from? The second two are particularly important in in Bowbazar, the Calcutta (the spelling that Das uses …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/04/the-last-dragoners-of-bowbazar-by-indra-das/
Aug 03 2024
Die Welt hinter Dukla by Andrzej Stasiuk
Without the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s set of 50 more great novels of the 20th century, it might have been a very long time before I heard of Andrzej Stasiuk, let alone read any of his books. Stasiuk was born in Warsaw in 1960, but he makes his home in a small town in Poland’s furthest southern …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/03/die-welt-hinter-dukla-by-andrzej-stasiuk/
Aug 02 2024
The Language of the Night by Ursula K. Le Guin
I should have read the description of The Language of the Night more closely because when it arrived I was a little irritated to discover that it’s a collection of essays mostly from the early and mid-1970s, with some footnoted and additional remarks that Le Guin added to a new edition of the book in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/02/the-language-of-the-night-by-ursula-k-le-guin/