Tags: stories

Chimes at Midnight—Asterisk

It’s been an idea for over three decades. How did the clock that will run for 10,000 years become a reality?

Software Folklore ― Andreas Zwinkau

Detective stories and tales of bughunting in software and hardware.

Sometimes bugs have symptoms beyond belief. This is a collection of such stories from around the web.

I’ve been keeping track of the books I’m reading for about seven years now. I do that here on my own website, as well as on bookshop.org.

It has become something of a tradition for me to post an end-of-year summary of the books I’ve read in the previous twelve months. Maybe I should be posting my thoughts on each book right after I finish it instead. Then again, I quite like the act of thinking about a book again after letting it sit and stew for a while.

I should probably stop including stars with these little reviews. They’re fairly pointless—pretty much everything I read is right down the middle in the “good” category. But to recap, here’s how I allocate my scores:

• One star means a book is meh.
• Two stars means a book is perfectly fine.
• Three stars means a book is a good—consider it recommended.
• Four stars means a book is exceptional.
• Five stars is pretty much unheard of.

No five-star books this year, but also no one-star books.

This year I read about 29 books. A bit of an increase on previous years, but the numbers can be deceptive—not every book is equal in length.

Fiction outnumbered non-fiction by quite a margin. I’m okay with that.

The Wager by David Grann

“A tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder” is promised on the cover and this book delivers. What’s astonishing is that it’s a true story. If it were fiction it would be dismissed as too far-fetched. It’s well told, and it’s surely only a matter of time before an ambitious film-maker takes on its Rashomon-like narrative.

★★★☆☆

Bridge by Lauren Beukes

I think this might be Lauren’s best book since Zoo City. The many-worlds hypothesis has been mined to depletion in recent years but Bridge still manages to have a fresh take on it. The well-rounded characters ensure that you’re invested in the outcome.

★★★☆☆

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Part of my ongoing kick of reading retellings of Greek myths, this one focuses on a particularly cruel detail of Odysseus’s return.

★★★☆☆

Elektra by Jennifer Saint

Keeping with the Greek retellings, this was the year that I read most of Jennifer Saint’s books. All good stuff, though I must admit that in my memory it’s all starting to blend together with other books like Costanza Casati’s Clytemnestra.

★★★☆☆

Children Of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The final book in the trilogy, this doesn’t have the same wham-bam page-turning breathlessness as Children Of Time, but I have to say it’s really stuck with me. Whereas the previous books looked at the possibilities of biological intelligence (in spiders and octopuses), this one focuses inwards.

I don’t want to say anymore because I don’t want to spoil the culmination. I’ll just say that I think that by the end it posits a proposition that I don’t recall any other sci-fi work doing before.

Y’know what? Just because of how this one has lodged in my mind I’m going to give it an extra star.

★★★★☆

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes

I think this is my favourite Natalie Haynes book so far. It also makes a great companion piece to another book I read later in the year…

★★★☆☆

The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh

I picked up this little volume of poems when I was in Amsterdam—they go down surprisingly well with some strong beer and bitterballen. I was kind of blown away by how funny some of these vignettes were. There’s plenty of hardship too, but that’s the human condition for you.

★★★★☆

Europe In Autumn, Europe At Midnight, Europe In Winter, and Europe At Dawn by Dave Hutchinson

I read the Fractured Europe series throughout the year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ll readily admit that I didn’t always follow what was going on but that’s part of the appeal. The world-building is terrific. It’s an alternative version of a Brexity Europe that by the end of the first book starts to go in an unexpected direction. Jonathan Strange meets George Smiley.

★★★☆☆

The Odyssey by Homer translated by Robert Fagles

Seeing as I’m reading all the modern retellings, it’s only fair that I have the source material to hand. This is my coffee table book that I dip into sporadically. I’ve got a copy of the prequel too.

I am not going to assign stars to this.

Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan

Fairly navel-gazing stuff, and you get the impression that Nick Cave thinks so too. Just as Neil Young would rather talk about his model trains, Nick Cave would rather discuss his pottery. The music stands on its own, but this is still better than most books about music.

★★☆☆☆

Julia by Sandra Newman

Now this is an audacious move! Retelling 1984 from Julia’s perspective. Not only does it work, it also shines a light on some flaws in Orwell’s original (and I say that as someone who’s read everything Orwell ever wrote). I’m happy to say that the execution of this book matches its ambition.

★★★☆☆

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

So if I’ve been reading alternative perspectives on Homer and Orwell, why not Shakespeare too? This is beautifully evocative and rich in detail. It’s also heartbreaking. A gorgeous work.

★★★★☆

Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes

I didn’t enjoy this as much as I enjoyed Natalie Hayne’s novels. It’s all good informative stuff, but it feels a bit like a collection of separate essays rather than a coherent piece.

★★☆☆☆

Best Of British Science Fiction 2023 edited by Donna Scott

I was lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of this from one of the authors. I love a good short story collection and this one is very good indeed.

★★★☆☆

Ithaca and House Of Odysseus by Claire North

Remember how I said that some of the Greek retellings started to blend together? Well, no fear of that with this terrific series. Like Margaret Atwood’s retelling, Penelope is the main character here. Each book is narrated by a different deity, and yet there is little to no supernatural intervention. I’m really looking forward to reading the third and final book in the series.

★★★☆☆

The Shadow Of Perseus by Claire Heywood

This is the one I was hinting at above that makes a great companion piece to Natalie Hayne’s Stone Blind. Two different—but equally sympathetic—takes on Medusa. This one is grittily earthbound—no gods here—and it’s a horrifying examination of toxic masculinity. And don’t expect any natural justice here.

★★★☆☆

Dogs Of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky has a real knack for getting inside the animal mind. This story is smaller in scale than his Children Of Time series but it succeeds in telling its provocative tale snappily.

★★★☆☆

Reading 84K by Claire North

I described Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe series as Brexity, but this Claire North’s book is one that pushes Tory austerity to its dystopian logical conclusion. It’s all-too believable, if maybe a little over-long. Grim’n’good.

★★★☆☆

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

The first of Jennifer Saint’s books is also my favourite. There’s a fantasically vivid description of the arrival of Dionysus into the narrative.

★★★☆☆

The Female Man by Joanna Russ

I’ve been meaning to read this one for years, but in the end I didn’t end up finishing it. That’s no slight on the book; I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for it. I’m actually kind of proud of myself for putting a book down—I’m usually stubbornly completionist, which is stupid because life is too short. I hope to return to this at some future time.

Atalanta by Jennifer Saint

Another vividly-written tale by Jennifer Saint, but maybe suffers from trying to cram in all the varied accounts of Atalanta’s deeds and trials—the character’s motivations are hard to reconcile at different points.

★★★☆☆

Polostan by Neal Stephenson

This was …fine. It’s the first in a series called Bomb Light. Maybe I’ll appreciate it more in its final context. As a standalone work, there’s not quite enough there to carry it (including the cutesiness of making a young Richard Feynman a side character).

★★☆☆☆

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

This too was …fine. I know some people really love this, and maybe that raised my expectations, but in the end it was a perfectly good if unremarkable novel.

★★★☆☆

The Fates by Rosie Garland

Pairs nicely with Jennifer Saint’s Atalanta. A decent yarn.

★★★☆☆

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

I’ve just started this post-apocalyptic classic from 1949. Tune in next year to find out if I end up enjoying it.

Okay, so that was my reading for 2024. Nothing that completely blew me away but nothing that thoroughly disappointed me either. Plenty of good solid books. If I had to pick a favourite it would probably be Maggie Farrell’s Hamnet. And that Patrick Kavanagh collection of poems.

If you fancy going back in time, here are my previous round-ups:

• Books I read in 2023,
• Books I read in 2022,
• Books I read in 2021,
• Books I read in 2020,
• Books I read in 2019,
• Books I read in 2018, and
• Books I read in 2017.

I read Madeline Miller’s Circe last year. I loved it. It was my favourite fiction book I read that year.

Reading Circe kicked off a bit of a reading spree for me. I sought out other retellings of Greek myths. There’s no shortage of good books out there from Pat Barker, Natalie Haynes, Jennifer Saint, Claire Heywood, Claire North, and more.

The obvious difference between these retellings and the older accounts by Homer, Ovid and the lads is to re-centre the women in these stories. There’s a rich seam of narratives to be mined between the lines of the Greek myths.

But what’s fascinating to me is to see how these modern interpretations differ from one another. Sometimes I’ll finish one book, then pick up another that tells the same story from a very different angle.

The biggest difference I’ve noticed is the presence or absence of supernatural intervention. Some of these writers tell their stories with gods and goddesses front and centre. Others tell the very same stories as realistic accounts without any magic.

Take Perseus. Please.

The excellent Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes tells the story of Medusa. There’s magic a-plenty. In fact, Perseus himself is little more than a clueless bumbler who wouldn’t last a minute without divine interventation.

The Shadow Of Perseus by Claire Heywood also tells Medusa’s story. But this time there’s no magic whatsoever. The narrative is driven not by gods and goddesses, but by the force of toxic masculinity.

Pat Barker tells the story of the Trojan war in her Women Of Troy series. She keeps it grounded and gritty. When Natalie Haynes tells the same story in A Thousand Ships, the people in it are little more than playthings of the gods.

Then there are the books with just a light touch of the supernatural. While Madeline Miller’s Circe was necessarily imbued with magic, her first novel The Song Of Achilles keeps it mostly under wraps. The supernatural is there, but it doesn’t propel the narrative.

Claire North has a trilogy of books called the Songs of Penelope, retelling the Odyssey from Penelope’s perspective (like Margaret Atwood did in The Penelopiad). On the face of it, these seem to fall on the supernatural side; each book is narrated by a different deity. But the gods are strangely powerless. Everyone believes in them, but they themselves behave in a non-interventionist way. As though they didn’t exist at all.

It makes me wonder what it would be like to have other shared myths retold with or without magic.

How would the Marvel universe look if it were grounded in reality? Can you retell Harry Potter as the goings-on at a cult school for the delusional? What would Star Wars be like without the Force? (although I guess Andor already answers that one)

Anyway, if you’re interested in reading some modern takes on Greek myths, here’s a list of books for you:

• Madeline Miller
  1. The Song Of Achilles
  2. Circe
• Natalie Haynes
  1. A Thousand Ships
  2. Stone Blind
• Pat Barker
  1. The Silence Of The Girls
  2. The Women Of Troy
  3. The Voyage Home
• Claire North
  1. Ithica
  2. House Of Odysseus
  3. The Last Song Of Penelope
• Jennifer Saint
  1. Ariadne
  2. Elektra
  3. Atalanta
• Claire Heywood
  1. The Shadow Of Perseus
  2. Daughters Of Sparta
• Costanza Casati
  1. Clytemnestra
• Margaret Atwood
  1. The Penelopiad

On Opening Essays, Conference Talks, and Jam Jars

Great stuff from Maggie—reminds of the storyforming workshop I did with Ellen years ago.

Mind you, I disagree with Maggie about giving a talk’s outline at the beginning—that’s like showing the trailer of the movie you’re about to watch.

Climate Optimism · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer

Humans are allergic to change. And, as Jeremy impressively demonstrated, we tend to overlook the changes that happen more gradually. We want the Big Bang, the sudden change, the headline that reads, “successful nuclear fusion solves climate change for good.” But that’s (usually) not how change works. Change often happens gradually, first very slowly, and then, once it reaches a certain threshold, it can happen overnight.

Tales Of The Algorithm – Terence Eden’s Blog

I’m really enjoying these sci-fi short stories that Terence is publishing on his site—one for every day of the month.

Stories | daverupert.com

Dave’s short’n’sweet sci-fi stories, collected in one place.

Speaking at UX London 2023 · Paul Robert Lloyd

I’ve managed to convince Paul to come out of the shadows for one last heist—it’s gonna be good!

(And Paul shares a discount for 20% off your UX London ticket!)

There are two kinds of time-travel stories.

There are time-travel stories that explore the many-worlds hypothesis. Going back in time and making a change forks the universe. But the universe is constantly forking anyway. So effectively the time travel is a kind of universe-hopping (there’s a big crossover here with the alternative history subgenre).

The problem with multiverse stories is that there’s always a reset available. No matter how bad things get, there’s a parallel universe where everything is hunky dory.

The other kind of time travel story explores the idea of a block universe. There is one single timeline.

This is what you’ll find in Tenet, for example, or for a beautiful reduced test case, the Ted Chiang short story What’s Expected Of Us. That gets straight to the heart of the biggest implication of a block universe—the lack of free will.

There’s no changing what has happened or what will happen. In fact, the very act of trying to change the past often turns out to be the cause of what you’re trying to prevent in the present (like in Twelve Monkeys).

I’ve often referred to these single-timeline stories as being like Greek tragedies. But only recently—as I’ve been reading quite a bit of Greek mythology—have I realised that the reverse is also true:

Greek tragedies are time-travel stories.

Hear me out…

Time-travel stories aren’t actually about physically travelling in time. That’s just a convenience for the important part—information travelling in time. That’s at the heart of most time-travel stories; informaton from the future travelling back to the past.

William Gibson’s The Peripheral—very much a many-worlds story with its alternate universe “stubs”—takes this to its extreme. Nothing phyiscal ever travels in time. But in an age of telecommuting, nothing has to. Our time travellers are remote workers.

That book also highlights the power dynamics inherent in information wealth. Knowledge of the future gives you an advantage that you can exploit in the past. This is what Mark Twain’s Connecticut yankee does in King Arthur’s court.

This power dynamic is brilliantly inverted in Octavia Butler’s brilliant Kindred. No amount of information can help you if your place in society is determined by the colour of your skin.

Anyway, the point is that information flow is what matters in time-travel stories. Therefore any story where information travels backwards in time is a time-travel story.

That includes any story with a prophecy. A prophecy is information about the future, like:

Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother.

You can try to change your fate, but you’ll just end up triggering it instead.

Greek tragedies are time-travel stories.

Smoke screen | A Working Library

The story that “artificial intelligence” tells is a smoke screen. But smoke offers only temporary cover. It fades if it isn’t replenished.

Shift Happens

Marcin’s book is coming along nicely—you just know it’ll be a labour of love.

You’ve never seen a book on technology like this. Shift Happens is full of stories – some never before told – interleaved with 1,000+ beautiful full-color photos across two volumes.

The Kickstarter project launches in February. In the meantime, there are some keyboard-based games here for you to enjoy.

99 Good News Stories From 2022

A look at back at what wasn’t in the headlines this year.

How to Imagine Climate Futures - Long Now

The best climate fiction can do more than spur us to action to save the world we have — it can help us conceptualize the worlds, both beautiful and dire, that may lie ahead. These stories can be maps to the future, tools for understanding the complex systems that intertwine with the changing climates to come.

Winnie Lim » this website as a learning and reflection tool

I love reading about how—and why—people tinker with their personal sites. This resonates a lot.

This website is essentially a repository of my memories, lessons I’ve learnt, insights I’ve discovered, a changelog of my previous selves. Most people build a map of things they have learnt, I am building a map of how I have come to be, in case I may get lost again. Maybe someone else interested in a similar lonely path will feel less alone with my documented footprints. Maybe that someone else would be me in the future.

Oh, and Winnie, I can testify that having an “on this day” page is well worth it!

Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors | Fix

Twelve short stories of solarpunk cli-fi “envisioning the next 180 years of equitable climate progress.”

Whether built on abundance or adaptation, reform or a new understanding of survival, these stories provide flickers of hope, even joy, and serve as a springboard for exploring how fiction can help create a better reality.

Vonnegut’s Story Shapes | Extraordinary Facility

The next best thing to having Kurt Vonnegut at the blackboard.

Why William Gibson Is a Literary Genius | The Walrus

On the detail and world-building in 40 years of William Gibson’s work.

RFC 8752 - Report from the IAB Workshop on Exploring Synergy between Content Aggregation and the Publisher Ecosystem (ESCAPE)

During the workshop, several online publishers indicated that if it weren’t for the privileged position in the Google Search carousel given to AMP content, they would not publish in that format.

I’ve been watching The Right Stuff on Disney Plus. It’s a modern remake of the ’80s film of the ’70s Tom Wolfe book of ’60s events.

It’s okay. The main challenge, as a viewer, is keeping track of which of the seven homogenous white guys is which. It’s like Merry, Pippin, Ant, Dec, and then some.

It’s kind of fun watching it after watching For All Mankind which has some of the same characters following a different counterfactual history.

The story being told is interesting enough (although Tom has pointed out that removing the Chuck Yeager angle really diminishes the narrative). But ultimately the tension is manufactured around a single event—the launch of Freedom 7—that was very much in the shadow of Gargarin’s historic Vostok 1 flight.

There are juicier stories to be told, but those stories come from Russia.

Some of these stories have been told in film. The Spacewalker told the amazing story of Alexei Leonov’s mission, though it messes with the truth about what happened with the landing and recovery—a real shame, considering that the true story is remarkable enough.

Imagine an alternative to The Right Stuff that relayed the drama of Soyuz 1—it’s got everything: friendship, rivalries, politics, tragedy…

I’d watch the heck out of that.