Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

An engrossing and heartbreaking book.  It's in the SF Masterworks series, but it doesn't feel like science fiction.

I already knew the plot when I went in (and, of course, I'd seen Lawnmower Man) but if anything the knowledge of how it would end made it all the more powerful.  Things unfold as they should, and there's no cheap twists.

It's a series of journal entries by Charlie, a mentally disabled man living in the US in the 60s.  He's encouraged to write down his thoughts by a team of scientists who're experimenting on his brain to make him smarter.  It starts off with childlike spelling and a limited understanding of what's going on around him.  As the process starts to work, you notice the spelling and thought processes start to improve even before Charlie does.

Eventually he becomes the smartest guy in the book - smart enough to realise the experiment is doomed and he'll end up just as he started.  Mercifully for Charlie - and the reader - the decline is more rapid.  In the meantime he gets laid, falls in love, realises that his friends have been mocking him all his life and becomes a right royal pain in the arse as he learns that mo' intelligence means mo' problems.

There are a few pitfalls this book manages to avoid.  Low IQ Charlie is a good hearted soul, but it doesn't paint him as a Noble Savage, who's worse off for having glimpsed over the horizon.  He's convincingly portrayed throughout as his intelligence ebbs and wanes.  He does learn that people aren't as nice as he always thought, but there aren't any villains here.  Also, he doesn't become an insane evil genius like in the Lawnmower Man.

I polished this off in under a day.  I can see why it's a popular book to make kids read in school, which is kind of a pity.  And yeah, I choked up at the end.  Doubly embarrasing because I was on a plane sitting next to a stranger.  Blub.

Death's Head: Volume 2

When I was about ten or eleven, Death's Head was about as cool as it got.  He started off life as a robotic bounty hun.....wait, no - freelance peacekeeping operative - in the wonderful Transformers comic of the time.  Before Michael Bay ruined everything.  He wasn't a Transformer himself and so was gloriously amoral in the manichean world of Autobots and Decepticons.  He had a shiny metal tusked skull for a face, an array of medieval weapons instead of a right hand, and a bizarre speech pattern possibly modelled on the Australian interrogative intonation, yes?  Death's Head was a total badass and I loved him.

Perhaps predictably this collection is a big disappointment.  And I can't really blame the rose tinted spectacles of nostalgia, because Death's Head still rocks hard when portrayed by his Transformers co-creators Geoff Senior and Simon Furman.  But in too many of the stories here, he's been shoehorned in as a unwelcome and pointless special guest.  I rather liked his first non-Transformers appearance, which was with Doctor Who.  He's a Marvel UK creation, so it keeps the British thing going, plus it's such an unlikely combination it kind of works.  But She Hulk?  The Fantastic Four?  Iron Man of 2020?  You can feel a once beloved antihero become increasingly pointless as this volume progresses.  It's also a sad reflection on the state of Marvel in the 90s.  These comics for the most part are pretty damn shoddy.

Obviously, he's been killed off and brought back several times, but no-one really cares any more.  Back in the day this robot was a legend.  He killed Shockwave for heaven's sake - possibly the single coolest Transformer ever.  In his defence he was being mind controlled at the time, which meant he wasn't even paid.  Bad for business, yes?

Here's an amusing rundown of his various adventures for the very geekiest among you http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Death%27s_Head_%28G1%29

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

More humourism from this guy.  This collection's largely about the absurdities of domestic life, kicking cigarettes in Japan , buying a skeleton and annoying airplane passengers.

It's another top notch series of essays which are funny, perceptive and best when the author reads to a live audience so you really appreciate his sense of comic timing.  There just wouldn't seem much point reading this on paper.  It's been a few weeks since I've finished this, but I remember a good essay about his pet spider, another one about putting album covers over the windows to keep songbirds away and a great story about a nasty old woman he somehow befriends.  Coming through many of the pieces though is the clear and very sweet adoration he has for his boyfriend Hugh.  They way he tells it, Hugh could do a lot better.....

Anyway, not much else to say.  I guess if you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you'll like.  This must be why critics look down on comedy.  I did have a look on google to see if I could jog my memory, but instead I found this review -

"Well it is descriptional tail of False and total obscure Faults and fancy's of a psycotic gay man of the world. It despicates a abscure seen of the Gay population that is quite obtrusive to the adverage viewer."

Now, if understand correctly, this is just unfair.  Me Talk Pretty One Day is much more focused on Sedaris' sexuality. If anything, this collection shows just how domesticated and sexually unadventurous he is.  Definitely a one guy gay guy.  Unless this very fact is the "abscure seen" referred to.  The description of him as a "psycotic gay man of the world" is admittedly a little more accurate, especially if you're an annoying air passenger.

Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries

With his faux innocence and deadpan reactions to his often deeply weird subject matter, it's hard not to think of Jon Ronson as the Louis Theroux of the written word.  A comparison which is brought up in this collection of essays by pop pervert Jonathan King, who probably wishes Theroux had done a programme on him instead, just so he'd have been back on telly...

The man who brought us Paloma Blanca is just one of a dizzying array of freaks and (a few) normal people Ronson meets in this book.  It starts strongly with a look at the cult-like phenonenon of Deal or No Deal.  His interactions with Noel Edmonds and the contestants are hilarious - especially one man compared by Noel to a "funeral director" who becomes desperate to show the host that he really is positive and happy, and so deserving of the blessings of the cosmos.  They're all deeply paranoid that "the banker" is keeping a close watch on them all.  The truth is predictable, but still faintly sinister.

There's a priceless interview with the Insane Clown Posse, who managed to keep the fact they were secret evangelical Christians from their fans for years.  It seems they managed this by being complete idiots.  And no, they still don't know how magnets work.  He visits an alien abduction convention with none other than Robbie Williams, who seems relatively sane in this company.  And there's a fascinating look through the archives of Stanley Kubrick, whose attention to detail was even more bonkers than I'd ever thought.

I also loved the seminar retreat with Paul McKenna and his mentor, the crazy father of neurolinguistic programming Richard Bandler, who comes across as pretty scary and genuinely unhinged.  Despite that, Ronson says the NPL McKenna did on him actually worked - something of a first in the long line of cults and pseudosciences he's spent years looking into.  More typical is the deeply unpleasant and cynical "psychic" Sylvia Browne, who's made a fortune making up stories for parents whose children have been abducted, and who appears to hand out good or bad news from beyond the veil depending on her mercurial mood swings.  Nasty piece of work.

I really rate Ronson as a journalist.  He's got an eye for the bizarre story no-one else has spotted, he's not afraid to do the legwork and the truth really does seem to be more important than the story.  Yes, he can stitch up his subjects, but (as with Theroux) he merely gives them enough rope to hang themselves.  Also, he's very likeable.  He reads the audiobook himself, and on more than one occassion clearly has to stop himself laughing.  Most of all, there's his sense of humanity.  Ronson's always looking for the good in people, and he's certainly not judgemental, but even in his choice of subject matter it's obvious that, under that diffident Welsh Mr Muscle demeanour, there's a keen sense of right and wrong.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

An all time favourite of mine, and just as enjoyable and immersive on what I think is my fourth time round the block (a book on tape this time, narrated wonderfully by Simon Prebble.)

It's set in the early nineteenth century in a similar England to the one history remembers - Wellington fighting Napoleon, George III tormented by madness, Lord Byron being insufferable.  It's the history in the book which is very different, detailing a past tied up with magic, magicians and faeries.  At the start of the novel magic has been gone from England for several hundred years, but one man - Mr Norrell - intends to bring it back.

Neither of the eponymous heroes are particularly heroic, but Gilbert Norrell is a real piece of work.  He's paranoid, selfish, vindictive, pompous, deathly dull, bordering on autistic and a tremendously poor judge of character.  And yet he's an amazingly realised and even likeable character.  His pupil, friend and rival Strange is much more in the romantic mold, but even he's a pain in the neck at times.  Their relationship is difficult, exhilarating and surprisingly touching.

But even more so than the characters, it's the world building which is the biggest triumph here.  The best part of 200 footnotes scattered throughout the book teach us - nugget by nugget - about the magicians of the past, the untrustworthiness of faeries, different forms of spells and - most enigmatic and fascinating of all - the Raven King John Uskglass who ruled the North of England for hundreds of years.  By the end it's like the reader has taken a course in magical history - you know your Martin Pale from your Ralph Stokesey and the relative usefulness of Belasis compared to Lanchester's Language of Birds.  It feels like there's a whole world in here.

I love Clarke's writing as well, with a beautiful sense of irony, wit, humanity and clarity.  It's a joy to read.  All the supporting characters are drawn so convincingly too - from Norrell's loyal, capable but sinister servant Childermass, to the deeply unpleasant Drawlight and Lascelles.  Best of all is the real villain of the piece, whose name we never learn.  Norrell tells Strange at one point (probably quoting from one of the books he guards so jealously) that faeries and men both have reason and magic in them.  Faeries are very strong in magic, but in human terms they're practically insane.  The Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair is a terrifying example of this.  And yet, in his kind and generous treatment of the black servant Stephen (unwanted as it may be) it comments on the insanity and cruelty of English society at the time.

As you can see - I can talk all day about this amazing book.  It's everything a fantasy novel should be.  Somehow, and I don't know how, the magic seems real.  It's a decade old now, and Clarke has published some short stories set in the same world (The Ladies of Grace Adieu) which are well worth a read, even if they sometimes feel like a collection of footnotes which didn't make the final cut of this book.  We are promised a sequel, but it's going to be a tough act to follow.

The Colour out of Space by HP Lovecraft

A very good place to start with HP Lovecraft this.  Quite often with this cultiest of authors, unspeakable horror comes with unpronounceable names and a mythos you need non-Euclidean geometry to work out.  This is pretty straight up for Howard Phillips, but no less effective for that.

It's set on a blasted heath - the classic gothic horror setting.  But it's being flooded with a new reservoir.  The narrator's an engineer who tries to find out why the locals shun it; why the plants don't grow and why the water's tainted.  He soon learns it started with a meteorite a few decades back.  Weirdness, madness, and - yes - unspeakable horror ensue.

So it's right on the cusp of traditional horror and science fiction.  There's something threatening and unfathomable, but instead of townspeople cowering from werewolves, it's scientists expressing bafflement as to why the substance in the meteorite doesn't cool down, and why it shines with a colour never seen before.  Fair enough, Lovecraft's misinterpreted the idea that there are colours on the spectrum we can't see, but it's a modern scientific concept which has clearly rattled him and which he uses with skill.  I also love the allusion to pollution - what kind of chemicals has the industrial revolution put in the soil?  Do scientists have any idea how we're changing our environment?  Very modern fears from the best part of a century ago.

There's not much in the way of characterisation (it's little more than a long short story) but the mood is - as you'd expect from Lovecrcaft - perfectly judged.  It's also really well paced, with a nice big climax.  And the creepiest part to me is the engineer going ahead with the reservoir, so the cursed place will be lost, but vowing never to drink from the water himself.  Classy move.

This is one movie I think the HP Lovecraft Historical Society could definitely have a stab at.  Do it in black and white, but handpaint the colour from space.  A nice eerie greeny red would work I think.

Pandora's Star by Peter F Hamilton

I should have known...I try and start F Hamilton's Commonwealth saga from the start, only to find out there's yet another book set hundreds of years earlier called Misspent Youth.  At least unlike the Void trilogy I could mostly figure out what was going on, or perhaps that's just getting to know the universe better.  Even if it has been ass-backwards.

There's a great opening scene - the first manned mission to Mars.  They land with suitable pomp and circumstance, only to be greeted by Nigel Sheldon and Ozzie Isaacs., who've just mastered wormhole technology.  In the later books set thousands of years later these two crop up again and they've effectively become gods, so it's nice to see how it all starts.  Well, kind of...

The main bulk of the book is set some time after this - dozens of planets at least have been colonised and there's been some contact with alien life.  The most important seem to be the Silfen, who are basically fairies.  There are silfen paths which you can walk along and get from one world to another.  Nobody knows how and the Silfen don't make a lot of sense.  Great use of folklore in a science fiction setting, and it works well.

This book really benefits from a strong, forward driven plot.  A new kind of spaceship (using wormhole technology) is sent to a star which an astronomer's found has been contained by a Dyson Sphere in an instant.  How and why are the big questions.  In the other plotline, there's a bunch of terrorists who think an alien entity called the Starflyer has been infiltrating human society, and they think this alien's the driving force behind the mission.  You've also got superspacedetective Paula Myo (also from The Demon Trap) investigating all this.  There are plenty more strands of course, but it felt a little easier to digest than in the Void books.

It's also got the best aspects of F Hamilton's books - great action scenes, interesting female characters and a real feel for how societies work in the future.  If you want a book to start with from this guy, though, I'd recommend The Great North Road.  It's got a lot of the same ideas as the Commonwealth books - wormholes, longevity etc - but in a more manageable form.  This is pretty damn good though - looking forward to the follow up Judas Unchained.

Once again, I had planned to take an SF comfort break, but bad news from both Iain Banks and Iain M Banks has compelled me to start reading what will now be the last Culture book.  Where's that singularity when you need it?