(Posting this, I look through my sf posts and realise I don’t write enough on this topic. My degree thesis centred on SF, so I must be able to come up with something interesting to say on the subject. BTW, I’m not going to publish the dissertation here. The word “postmodernism” is used far too often for comfort.)

Any book with a protagonist named Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th has got to be good, especially when she knows she’s in a story.

In Ares Express, Ian McDonald returns to the rather dreamlike distant future Mars of his earlier Desolation Road (1988). This is a welcome return for all those who enjoyed DR, and AE will not disappoint, although AE is a separate work and only one character makes the crossover between the two.

It’s a fantastical romp through a richly detailed and surreal landscape, strangely believable for all its magical touches. Martian humans are little changed from ourselves, living ordinary lives beneath the barely understood gaze of the Artificial Intelligences that drove the terraforming of the planet. Sweetness is the child of railway engineers, the pilots of the vast fusion-powered trains that link together the disparate cities and communities of the planet. She’s a dissatisfied child for all the pride and arrogance of her clan, for females do not pilot the trains, instead it looks like she’s to be married off into the Stuard clan and a life in their stainless steel kitchens.

Fortunately for the reader, Sweetness isn’t likely to take to this particular destiny without some rebellion, and when she realises that she’s featuring in her very own story, she’s off at right angles to the tracks and into a series of mishaps and lucky escapes that lead her into a search for her dead twin (who lives in mirrors) and ultimately a struggle to save the very fabric of her universe…

McDonald writes vividly. His prose in itself is reason enough to read the book, bringing the strange world to life and entrancing the reader at every step. Sweetness’ own knowledge that she’s living a story might put off those who are not fond of such indulgences, but on McDonald’s Mars, where reality itself is subject to manipulation, it fits right in among all the other weird and wonderful events and beliefs and magical technologies.

Delightfully written, pure escapism – this is one of the best books I’ve read for quite some time. Go and lose yourself among the vast trains, uploaded demi-gods, reality-twisting AIs and insane Cults on McDonald’s Mars.

This disappeared from the net a while ago, but it’s now found a new home – at www.fastness.co.uk. There’s some of his older stuff there (including the version of the Salwowski cover of “The State of the Art” (pictured below) and a couple of new bits too, and he promises to keep it updated a bit more often.

His images are available in various sizes – suitable for use as desktop wallpapers – and he is fine about use of the images for personal use – details are on his front page.

Although this has been covered everywhere already, I’ll mention the publication of Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a joint online/hardcopy publication which can be downloaded here under a creative commons license. I’ve enjoyed Cory’s stuff before, not to mention Boing Boing, so I’m looking forward to getting into this over the weekend. I reckon that I’ll end up buying a copy too.  (Also available online, at scifi.com, is Jury Service, a collaboration between Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross, also worth reading.)

Hmm, what else has been going on…

Read a discussion about Palladium and the release of American Megatrends palladium BIOS on Slashdot yesterday. Don’t think I’ll be buying one for my next PC (if I have any choice , and the whole thing makes me feel a bit uneasy.

Had a laugh at dontlink.com, which I hadn’t seen before, and thoroughly approve of.

Got bored in the evenings and started on yet another minor makeover for this blog, this time trying to be a bit more XHTML and CSS orientated.

Going to try and post a couple of more original pieces that have been brewing for a little while at the weekend, too.

(via Boing Boing)