Second paragraph of third chapter: From the window of his study he had a panoramic view of the city's various districts - residential, commercial, industrial, administrative - as they sifted down to the Borann river and on the far bank gave way to the parklands surrounding the five palaces. The families headed by the Lord Philosopher had been ( Read more... )

One of the classic Big Dumb Object novels of the 1970s, which won the BSFA Award for 1975 (other nominees not recorded; also got third place in the 1976 John W Campbell Award, Silverberg's The Stochastic Man coming second and no award made for the top spot; this was the year that The Forever War won Hugo and Nebula). It's rather of its time, which ( Read more... )

A 1968 anthology of stories (and one factual piece about meteor strikes) from Analog magazine. Some of these were irritating one-nifty-idea tales, but most were at least decent. The standout piece is Bob Shaw's "Light of Other Days", also the only one I was already familiar with. The best known of the other stories is Gordon Dickson's "Call Him ( Read more... )

7) A Load of Old BoSh: serious scientific talks by Bob Shaw

As a fan of Shaw's writing who never actually met him, I remember reading David Langford's obituary back in 1996 with sadness, but also with considerable curiosity; I deeply regretted never having heard him give one of his "Serious Scientific Talks". It's good that the then Eastercon got ( Read more... )

Walt Willis on Bob Shaw: They reached a position of great wealth and influence during the famines of the 1840's, attaining a prestige in Ireland comparable with that of the Campbells in Glencoe, and ranking second only to Cromwell in the esteem of the Irish people. Even today their name can occasionally be seen scrawled by simple peasants on the ( Read more... )

12) Emerald Eye: The Best Irish Imaginative Fiction, ed. Frank Ludlow & Roelof Goudriaan ( Read more... )

Got around to reading this at last, partly because tnh mentioned it in a recent piece on, of all things, technorati (which I use religiously), partly because it is of course the joint production of the only two Irish Hugo winners to date. It is of course based on the concept best known from Bunyan, and even if it's true that the authors had not read ( Read more... )