This book is set in a future within which women at age 50 and men at age 60 are given two choices if childless or in a dispensible profession: euthanise yourself, or enter The Unit. In The Unit, every possible comfort is provided, but only the healthy can go in as the payment for this […]
Read more "2015 Reading Challenge, Book 23: The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist"This is a very interesting book of post-apocalyptic fiction in the Wodehousian tradition of a salty lark told in florid and often exhaustively descriptive terms. I described it on twitter as fight club on LSD meets the Expendables and sort of explodes in slow motion. It’s a little more complicated than that, after all it […]
Read more "2015 Reading Challenge, Book 15: The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway"I’m two books ahead of this, so I’m feeling pretty smug right now. Of course, these vlogs are getting less and less views, so I’m pretty sure no one else is as delighted as I am of this swathe of reading. Anyhow, my aim is to get these vlogs shorter, punchier and more fun, especially as the […]
Read more "2015 Reading Challenge, Book 5: Ack Ack Macaque by Gareth L. Powell"For the past six weeks I’ve been participating in the Clarion West write-a-thon. I’ve won two sponsors (thank you @SikesAaron and @transliterata – your flash fictions will be with you hopefully by the end of the hols) and written 36k. But how have I done in this final week? Because really, to have hit my […]
Read more "Clarion West Write-a-Thon Round-up"So, I’m participating (again) in the Clarion write-a-thon, you can find my profile here. I’ve edited it a touch since I first decided to re-register, and my new aims (not yet updated, but hopefully soon) are at least 1k a day, with aspirations of up to 3k. My over-arching goal being to finish a little […]
Read more "Clarion Write-a-thon Round-up…"Even the quiet mind, even the most disciplined, hears voices of doubt, of fear, of uncertainty. Margo’s is neither. Black rain seeps into her skin, cold as icicles. It settles in that fine space between dermis and muscle, an inner armour of darkness. Margo hasn’t asked for this, she doesn’t know why it’s happening. And […]
Read more "Umwelt: Darkness Flows Like A River Episode 31: Ontogeny"Lost. This one word has become the sum of all his thoughts. Vespesian despises it. Despises the Libraryrinth with equal ferocity, maze that is it, foul conundrum, just an unplace beneath an atrocity nested like a Cuckoo’s egg in the Veils. And, much like the changeling child world above, this wretched compilation of the unplaced […]
Read more "Umwelt: Darkness Flows Like A River Episode 27: Unclean Vessels"Bodies like machines stutter, turn, twist and, in falling, collapse to pieces under the hefted might of blades both steel and AM. But for the thud of attack to flesh and bone, the gasp of breath, the grunt of effort, there is no sound. It is a silent battle, heaving beneath a looming sky, bereft […]
Read more "Umwelt: Darkness Flows Like A River Episode 26: War Cries"The Paradoxicon lies in the grounds of Effingham Hall, somewhere out on the edge of SaxonBury EastMidlington, and is owned by the noble Partridge family. An old and esteemed branch of the Royal line, the Partridges have resided at Effingham as long as it has existed. Twelve generations of Partridges, each more apathetic than the […]
Read more "Lady Partridge in a Pair Tree"Stuttering gunfire raddles the sea air and whips into the waves, throwing up red frosted fans of black water. The deep boom and thud of cannon fire resounds through the melee as a bass note, thrumming in the chest, the bones. The Mengel warships plough the waters swift and deadly as shark fins, aiming for […]
Read more "Umwelt: Darkness Flows Like A River Episode 25: Deep Rising"
Word Bullets 