So, you're Caretaker of the World (that's the Number One, the Big Boss, Head Honcho, You Know Who) and your advisers are lining up to tell you how things are out there. You listen absently ...
The Case for Geoengineering
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The Journey
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He secretly admired her but they never really clicked. Until one night when she called out-of-the-blue sounding cryptic and urgent and needing him to go to her. He had no idea how his world was about to change.— Logline. FADE IN The freezing mist oozed up the river bank and slowly filled the main street. Echoes from late night revellers lingered in eddies drifting away half heard. He...
The Field
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What started out as an intended moonlight encounter ended up as a close encounter.« — Logline. Eerie. Haunting. Secret. Until now. I have to tell. It’s been gnawing at my soul on still evenings; evenings which conjure the memory of that night, that place. Ugh, it makes me nauseous even now. What happened? You really want to know? OK, but it’s really no big thing, it’s just...
Legion: Skin Deep
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Episode 2 in the Legion series expands the back story a little and drops our protagonist into a new mystery on the fringes of science. Shady characters, hitmen, corporate dealings, science and religion are all intertwined.
Legion
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Stephen Leeds, AKA 'Legion', is a man whose unique mental condition allows him to generate a multitude of personae: hallucinatory entities with a wide variety of personal characteristics and a vast array of highly specialised skills.
Revelation Space
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Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself.
Dune
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Dune Dune Saga, Book 12 / Dune, Book 1 Frank Herbert Science Fiction Macmillan Audio 31 Dec 2006 Audiobook 21 hrs and 2 mins Audible ☆☆☆☆☆ I enjoyed this book but it was hard going and laborious in places. Having seen the original film, it was clear to see how close the two were in many cases. My only problem with this audiobook was that it switched from being...
The Endurance of Dr Who & 007
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Dr Who. A TV series that has endured more than 50 years (albeit with a hiatus for 16 years, notwithstanding the 1996 film introducing us to the Eighth Doctor). It began in 1963 and is now in its 35th series (season). There is no other series in history that has come close to this longevity, aside from the James Bond (007) films which first screened in 1962 and now enjoying his 24th outing in...
Excession
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Excession Culture, Book 5 Iain M Banks Science Fiction Hachette Audio UK 7 March 2013 Audiobook 15 hrs and 55 mins Audible ☆☆☆☆☆ Overall the book is excellent, though the human story often feels secondary to the issues of the OCP but is relevant to put everything into context. The reading of the book by Peter Kenny is, as usual, exemplary. Two and a half millennia...
The State of the Art
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Some of these works feel like ideas from a writer’s notebook that would go on to form the basis of a fully fledged novel or part of a greater story. Each is of interest to anybody following the Culture series as they provide an excellent background to the Culture and the early work of Iain M Banks, though none are essential to the understanding and reading of the main Culture novels in my view.
