Another Space in Time

     I very much enjoyed this very near future speculative fiction. The book centres on a family drama, with a work obsessed and emotionally distant father, two teenage children that he generally fails to engage with, and a mum doing her best to hold diverging lives together. Contemporary drama is very much the emotional driver of this work. The other key elements revolve around a dangerous terrorist unit of anti-capitalists and robotic toys that communicate with each other rather too well, when their software is enhanced with a sort of bee hive logic-based application. Perhaps surprisingly, the diverse elements of the story bond together very well.     The book is well written, adequately edited and paced towards a suspenseful climax. In other words, Wright has produced a rewarding entertainment. As far as my very thin understanding of information technology goes, the artificial intelligence elements are plausible. I am accepting of the scientific underst...

    My copy is from the 4 th impression of the original Faber and Faber book printed by the Western Printing Services Limited, Bristol. The book was considered important enough to be first printed in 1941, when invasion of England by Hitler’s armies appeared imminent. We already had the 4 th impression by 1944, so the book was in regular demand. Its relevance at the time was extreme, as it could only help the farmers struggling against national food shortages that were threatening to bring the British nation to its knees.     The book is very general, but mostly geared to the encouragement of lea farming, as the best way of optimising fertility on many farms. The preface to the book was written by the great agriculturalist E.J. Russell, from Rothamstead Experimental Station in May 1940. Soil and Sense was deemed to be of significant war time value, though it was the Great War, (WWI), to which the written words mostly related.     The book still ha...

    This is a well written book that passes all my standards for a five-star review. However, I have to say that I didn’t particularly enjoy the fiction. This lack of engagement being in large part because I find everything relating to celebrity status intensely dull. I was seduced to read by the outstanding opening phrases of the first chapter. The nod towards the spilling of blood suggested a read I wasn’t going to get, but let me be clear, Patrick certainly didn’t set out to deceive murder/mystery lovers and thriller fans into reading. The contents are clearly written on the label if one takes the trouble to read the full blurb.     We all have expectations about the way certain people behave. In this case those expectations are largely played too. We read a strong story about the pampered celebrity elites that fill the vacant spaces in real human-interest news stories. For many entertainment industry fans this must be exactly choice bread and butter. Holl...

     What an interesting read, a novel written as imaginary documentary on a near future doctor’s career, following his path from childhood through medical school and training to eventual mixed fortunes as a robotically enhanced family practitioner. There is a depth of humanistic sentimental content, however it is future technology, not human behaviour that drives this book. The author is a retired medic who speculates the future of his profession. Gustafson brings a huge amount of personal experience of medicine and its politics to this fascinating story. His real knowledge gives real bite, a profound credibility and layered plausibility. His future ‘expectation’ is so well constructed that it is difficult at times to keep touch with the fact that we are reading of a future and not a ‘true’ life history. All the medical politics, economic constraints and technologies are already seen today in their infancy, such that very little of the science fiction seems implausib...