One of the things I hate about Barnes and Noble and other big box bookstores is stuff they stick in the ‘science fiction’. I love for good science fiction I kinda of live for good science fiction so imagine the taste left in my mouth when I pick up an expensive ( for me) volume, a fat volume( thinking this read will take me to the end of the summer ) and find out my investment is not science fiction but some science fiction/fantasy hybrid.Gross like downing four or five chugs of cold milk straight of out of the fridge, straight out of the cartoon to find the milk sour, clotted and un swallow able.
Why do the book stores? Does the management really believe that hard core sci-fiers well not notice frilly silly fantasy volumes intermingled with the real sci-fi lit? I guess I should not bitch too much I have access to the INTERNET and I know how to use it and I did not. I got lazy, I guess. Saturday I was wandering round Barnes and Noble killing time until my optometrist appointment. I was closing in the end of the novel I was currently reading, cyber punk—a very acceptable genre of sci-fi and I needed something to transition into for August and my end of summer read. Friday night as I was charging round the “Net” and specifically Amazon.com—I noticed I couple of titles from Iain M. Banks—which I had noticed before and sounded good.
“Banks tells me that he has spent the past three months writing another Culture novel. It will be called Matter and is to be published next February. "It's a real shelf-breaker," he says enthusiastically. "It's 204,000 words long and the last 4,000 consist of appendices and glossaries. It's so complicated that even in its complexity it's complex. I'm not sure the publishers will go for the appendices, but readers will need them. It's filled with neologisms and characters who disappear for 150 pages and come back, with lots of flashbacks and -forwards. And the story involves different civilizations at different stages of technological evolution. There's even one group who have disappeared up their own fundaments into non-matter-based societie” , the write-up sounded enticing and sounded like a challenge. The first red flag should have been the writer is British or Scottish. But I have experienced a lot of good Sci-fi from the Brits. Especially cyber-punk. M The title: Matter just sounds like hard science fiction boy was I sucker bunched. I dot even read a couple of pages before I bought the volume an rolled out of the store and did not start reading till Monday morning when I was on the train going to work and my gag reflex kicked in: horses, princes, kings and magic!!! 600 pages or so..
So I started reading, since I bought the volume, and I have to admit I have sucked in. I don’t necessarily like it yet but the read has become entertaining—lets just see…I’ll keep you informed.
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