When I was last sitting under the shade of the tree enjoying a good book, I expressed my fear that I was becoming a China Miéville fanboy. My stated reason was that excepting one book, every time I finished reading one of his I would "review" (I use sarcastic quotation marks on myself because I would hardly regard these as professional reviews) the book. This trend is apparently continuing with Peter F. Hamilton, as with the exception of Mindstar Rising, the first Greg Mandel novel, I've reviewed every book of his I've read. Continuing today with my "review" of his latest offering, the 1086 page tome Great North Road.
Great North Road is the first standalone Peter F. Hamilton book I've read, as he has a habit of writing trilogies it seems. This particular book is set in 2143, kicking off in the not-so-exotic location of Newcastle-upon-Tyne with discovery of the body of a prominent person. Well, sort of. The body belongs to a member of the North family, a family of all-male clones. The body has been stripped of all features that would permit identification, presenting investigating officer Detective Sidney Hurst with the first of many, many mysterious stumbling blocks.
The one identifying trait is the murder weapon/method, which is the same as a murder on the exotic planet of St Libra (linked to Newcastle by a trans-spatial gateway permitting instantaneous travel from one planet to the next) that occurred in 2121. Where the victims were Bartram North, patriarch of one of the three branches of the North family. The second hitch...Angela Tramelo, one of Bartram North's "girlfriends" who survived the massacre on St Libra, was convicted of the crime and has been languishing in Holloway prison all the while.
Things rapidly spiral out of control from there - all through her trial, Tramelo had insisted that she didn't murder Bartram or his household...an alien did. With the implication that this "alien" was involved in a fresh murder in 2143, the Human Defence Alliance descends on the investigation. From there, both Sidney Hurst and Angela Tramelo are dragged into the HDA's hunt for the truth - is there another alien race out to get humanity, or did Tramelo have an accomplice on St Libra?
Now to run away from the plot so I don't post any spoilers and talk about...well, pretty much any damn thing. We'll start with the brief verdict - I thoroughly enjoyed it. There are some damn compelling characters, from the pretty uncomplicated, down-to-earth but incredibly shrewd Detective Sidney Hurst to the incredibly complicated Angela Tramelo. Sprinkled in with the main characters I've mentioned before are some pretty neat supporting characters - HDA officer Colonel Vance Elston, who is convinced Tramelo is hiding the truth behind the events on St Libra, Sidney Hurst's through-and-through Geordie partner Detective Ian Lanagin and the occasional perspective character of surf-shop owner Saul Howard. I could go on, but I might say too much.
So moving over to one of my other favourite topics - setting. I mentioned the gateway concept briefly. In this particular future, Earth is connected to a whole ton of planets by these gateways. We get to "see" a couple of them, but by and large our primary settings are Earth and St Libra. And St Libra is fascinating planet - it has absolutely no indigenous animal life and has what is called "zebra" botany, which are plants that produce both carbon dioxide AND oxygen, making the uninhabited planet a perfectly habitable tropical jungle paradise. St Libra is, if memory serves, slightly bigger than Earth and the star it orbits is younger than our own. All these elements combine to make a strange, unpredictable tropical world...that even has its own rings, akin to those of Saturn's. Though the rocks from these rings have a nasty habit of falling through the atmosphere in an area called "The Fall Zone". But apart from that, the presence of the rings sounds awesome. Especially as St Libra doesn't have any moons. Which is kind of sad. No planet should be without a moon.
I feel should take a moment to talk about the actual writing. You know, style, flow, stuff like that. Now Hamilton is defined, I believe, as Hard Science-Fiction. That means lots of amazing technology (epitomised in Great North Road by the trans-spatial gateways and a funky load of tech called smartcells) and good chunks of description about...well, planets, spaceships, space stations, things like that. And it doesn't detract from a quite gripping narrative. I wouldn't say it's nail-biting, but...it gnaws at you. All those little hints and clues, chewing away at the back of your brain, calling you back to the book so you can find out just what the frak is actually going on. In my eyes, just as good as a book you can't put down. But like I say, fair amounts of description of tech, people and locations. Which is also good, because you get a pretty damn good picture of this twenty-second century world Hamilton has created.
I've reached the point of babbling entropy, so I'm going to wrap things up. Great North Road was pretty damn good, a thoroughly enjoyable yarn. Well worth picking up and devoting a good chunk of time to sitting under that tree and reading it.
Showing posts with label Peter F Hamilton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter F Hamilton. Show all posts
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Curled Up Next to the Fire: The Nano Flower
As usual, there's been a slightly lengthy period of silence between my last bout of squeeing (my gushings on the legend that is Peter V. Brett), but it can be argued that this entry is very tangentially linked to that event. For this is, as the title suggests, the literary segment. And this entry in the literary segment concerns the third book in the Greg Mandel Series, authored by Peter F. Hamilton. In addition to sharing the same first name, I had the pleasure to meet both men at the same bookshop.
Anyway, enough random blabbering. Time to get on with the literary critique babbling.
I have previously rambled about the Greg Mandel Series here, talking about the second book, A Quantum Murder. Given that A Quantum Murder took place not too long after the first instalment, Mindstar Rising, I was expecting a similar length of time between the second and third books. To my pleasant surprise, The Nano Flower takes place some seventeen years after the events of A Quantum Murder, placing it circa 2061.
So, some in-universe context. Julia Evans is no longer a tempestuous yet shrewd teenager at the helm of one of the largest companies on the planet. She is a shrewd, level-headed mother of two, whose husband mysteriously disappeared eight months previously. Greg Mandel has long since retired from the private detective game and has four kids of his own, with number five on the way. Now a humble orange farmer, he and his wife Eleanor are quite happy to stay out of Julia's complicated world of corporate espionage.
Until Julia's errant husband manages to have a strange flower delivered to his wife. In the space of one strange delivery, Greg finds himself dragged back into the world he had hoped to have left behind.
Classic premise for the trilogy finale, eh? The quest to follow the breadcrumbs left by Julia's husband bring the old team back together for one last glorious fling, in which they chase down not only the errant husband, but also an astounding new technology that could change the face of humanity's future.
By far, The Nano Flower has the largest scale of all the Greg Mandel novels. It finds our erstwhile hero jetting around the world and even out of this world, to the Crown Colony of New London - an asteroid painstakingly placed in Earth's orbit by Julia's company, Event Horizon. And compared to the previous two books, The Nano Flower is a lot grander in scope. It knows it's the finale and it's pulling out all the stops. For one thing, tekmercs. It's a phrase that had been bandied about since Mindstar Rising and I'll be brutally honest, it had never been fully explained to my satisfaction until the third book, when one of the main characters, Suzi (a friend of Greg Mandel's from his years fighting PSP oppression in Peterborough), turns out to be a tekmerc. Through her and her encounters with rival tekmercs, we finally get a neatly rounded picture of who these people are and what they do.
We also get to see Greg pull off a lot more stunts with his psi abilities. At least I'm fairly certain we were never introduced to the use of eidolonics in Mindstar Rising. Either way, The Nano Flower was the big finish. Even if I hadn't known it was the last of the Greg Mandels, even if I had read at the time of its first release in 1995 (when I was six and so could not have had any hope of grasping a single one of the novel's concepts), the feel of it screams the last hoorah before the curtain drops. And it's a very enjoyable and quite satisfying end to the series. There's no obvious doors being left open, it feels pretty much solidly, 100% resolved. In part this is also reflected by my pet favourite subject of novels, setting. The United Kingdom of the Greg Mandel Series is a broken tropical country, recovering from the brutality of a classically misguided socialist government. And now, circa 2061, it feels more...together. Even with a political backdrop of Welsh secessionism, it feels that Great Britain has adjusted to the effects of the Warming. They've recovered from the PSP and they're dealing with the fact that they're a tropical country. As well as being the big finish, The Nano Flower leaves the reader with the distinct impression that this future Britain, once so battered and fractured, is a whole nation again. And as a wise maiden said in the movie A Knight's Tale, all things should end with hope.
So there we have it. Final verdict summation - The Nano Flower is an enjoyable and satisfying, albeit on occasion a tad outlandish, conclusion to the Greg Mandel Series. The next Peter F. Hamilton offerings in my reading list are Great North Road and The Reality Dysfunction. Two daunting looking tomes. Might take me a good few months to get through them. You'll all just have to stay tuned, dear readers.
Anyway, enough random blabbering. Time to get on with the literary critique babbling.
I have previously rambled about the Greg Mandel Series here, talking about the second book, A Quantum Murder. Given that A Quantum Murder took place not too long after the first instalment, Mindstar Rising, I was expecting a similar length of time between the second and third books. To my pleasant surprise, The Nano Flower takes place some seventeen years after the events of A Quantum Murder, placing it circa 2061.
So, some in-universe context. Julia Evans is no longer a tempestuous yet shrewd teenager at the helm of one of the largest companies on the planet. She is a shrewd, level-headed mother of two, whose husband mysteriously disappeared eight months previously. Greg Mandel has long since retired from the private detective game and has four kids of his own, with number five on the way. Now a humble orange farmer, he and his wife Eleanor are quite happy to stay out of Julia's complicated world of corporate espionage.
Until Julia's errant husband manages to have a strange flower delivered to his wife. In the space of one strange delivery, Greg finds himself dragged back into the world he had hoped to have left behind.
Classic premise for the trilogy finale, eh? The quest to follow the breadcrumbs left by Julia's husband bring the old team back together for one last glorious fling, in which they chase down not only the errant husband, but also an astounding new technology that could change the face of humanity's future.
By far, The Nano Flower has the largest scale of all the Greg Mandel novels. It finds our erstwhile hero jetting around the world and even out of this world, to the Crown Colony of New London - an asteroid painstakingly placed in Earth's orbit by Julia's company, Event Horizon. And compared to the previous two books, The Nano Flower is a lot grander in scope. It knows it's the finale and it's pulling out all the stops. For one thing, tekmercs. It's a phrase that had been bandied about since Mindstar Rising and I'll be brutally honest, it had never been fully explained to my satisfaction until the third book, when one of the main characters, Suzi (a friend of Greg Mandel's from his years fighting PSP oppression in Peterborough), turns out to be a tekmerc. Through her and her encounters with rival tekmercs, we finally get a neatly rounded picture of who these people are and what they do.
We also get to see Greg pull off a lot more stunts with his psi abilities. At least I'm fairly certain we were never introduced to the use of eidolonics in Mindstar Rising. Either way, The Nano Flower was the big finish. Even if I hadn't known it was the last of the Greg Mandels, even if I had read at the time of its first release in 1995 (when I was six and so could not have had any hope of grasping a single one of the novel's concepts), the feel of it screams the last hoorah before the curtain drops. And it's a very enjoyable and quite satisfying end to the series. There's no obvious doors being left open, it feels pretty much solidly, 100% resolved. In part this is also reflected by my pet favourite subject of novels, setting. The United Kingdom of the Greg Mandel Series is a broken tropical country, recovering from the brutality of a classically misguided socialist government. And now, circa 2061, it feels more...together. Even with a political backdrop of Welsh secessionism, it feels that Great Britain has adjusted to the effects of the Warming. They've recovered from the PSP and they're dealing with the fact that they're a tropical country. As well as being the big finish, The Nano Flower leaves the reader with the distinct impression that this future Britain, once so battered and fractured, is a whole nation again. And as a wise maiden said in the movie A Knight's Tale, all things should end with hope.
So there we have it. Final verdict summation - The Nano Flower is an enjoyable and satisfying, albeit on occasion a tad outlandish, conclusion to the Greg Mandel Series. The next Peter F. Hamilton offerings in my reading list are Great North Road and The Reality Dysfunction. Two daunting looking tomes. Might take me a good few months to get through them. You'll all just have to stay tuned, dear readers.
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
I was an adventurer once, until I took an arrow to the knee
I was a blogger once, until Skyrim came along and put a twisted, game-addiction version of Cupid's infamous arrows into me. Probably not my knee as I can still walk...when I'm not sitting at my computer and playing the aforementioned computer game.
It goes largely without saying that I've been neglecting my updating of this blog for a good long while. Mostly Skyrim, but that pesky little bastard known as Life also shares some blame here. Strangely enough, Life is going to be something of the running theme of this post. Well, Life in the context of the events of 2012.
That's right, kids. It's the Year in Review blog entry. It had to be done.
Well, I wanted to one. So there.
Of course, a lot of 2012's major events have been thoroughly catalogued in the thirty-four preceding entries. But I'm going to ramble on anyway, maybe filling in some gaps that I left. But we'll see about that.
Logically, we start at the beginning January 2012. The landmark of January, aside from starting up this blog, was seeing The Artist. Anyone paying attention to film news and the Oscars, etc., knows that The Artist received many accolades. And in my humble opinion, quite rightly so.
Being, I hope, dear and loyal readers of this blog, you might not think that The Artist was my kind of movie. If you take a look at the cinema tickets stuck to my wall...well, this year's rogues gallery includes Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, Avengers (obviously), The Dark Knight Rises (again with the obvious), Brave and Skyfall. I'm also half-watching the 2009 Star Trek movie as I'm writing this and Spock just said "Set phasers to stun." I felt this required comment.
Moving on...
So, The Artist doesn't seem like my usual thing. But I absolutely loved it. It was a beautiful, brilliantly realised work of cinema and quite deserving of all its praise. But I will say (and Phoenix, my friend I went to see the movie with, agrees), it's a movie to watch as a group and preferably in a cinema/cinema-like environment. It's just...it's a necessary part of the experience.
Staying on the track of movies, this year has seen some brilliant gems. In spite of the opinions of the readers of The LA Times, I don't feel Avengers was overrated. I had this conversation with a colleague and he drew comparison to The Shawshank Redemption. I'll admit, I have not seen this movie. I imagine that is some kind of cinematic atrocity, given the high regard it is held in. And while I have no illusions that you could compare Shawshank Redemption and Avengers and come out smelling of roses. I will simply state that I love Avengers. It's my favourite movie of the year and probably in my top ten/top five movies of all time.
Looking to future with movies and backtracking to the mention of Star Trek, I am very, very much looking forward to the cinematic year. We have Star Trek: Into Darkness, where we can finally find out just who the Seven Hells Benedict Cumberbatch is playing! Smart money so far is on either Khan or Gary Mitchell. I'm not betting on either of them just yet. Merely looking very forward to the movie.
Then...Iron Man 3.
I've been thinking a lot about movie trilogies lately. Generally the trend is that the first or second movies are the best, the third often falls down a bit. But this is Marvel. This is Iron Man. The first was awesome. The second was awesome. And I have every confidence that Robert Downey Jr will make the third instalment just as amazing as one and two.
On the subject of trilogies, The World's End, the finale in the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy from Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost will be coming out this year. I'll be honest, it's taken them long enough! But nonetheless, I am looking forward to this as well as. So far, Hot Fuzz trumps Shaun of the Dead as my favourite of those movies. We'll see what happens with movie number three.
Still on the subject of trilogies, I finally watched all three Lord of the Rings movies. Yes, I know, being a twenty-four year old self-professed geek having not seen these movies up until now is pretty much tantamount to treason in geek circles. But better late than never. Overwhelmingly, The Two Towers is my favourite. I fully intend to acquire these movies on DVD, but so far the 'Verse is spurning me, hiking the prices of the boxset of the Extended Editions wherever I look. So it may be a while. But as I've shown, I get there in the end.
Onwards (well, more backwards really) to other events in 2012. Or one event in particular. Well, now that I think about it, I can make this a ramble about a tenuously interconnected series of events that can be brought under the same heading. It's the subject of friendship. Now this is going to be the shamefully sentimental part of things.
First of all, there's my dearest Oracle. She started out as one of my regular customers at work and has grown into being one of my closest and dearest friends. She's a fellow Marvel nerd, but her knowledge of the comics far exceeds mine. Which makes for some interesting discussions as I remain blissfully ignorant of the things that aren't quite right with the movies. But nonetheless, she has become very dear to me and, in keeping with her callsign, possesses much wisdom that she is more often than not called upon to impart.
Secondly, there's Kraken. Again, someone I met through work. A charming American girl with intriguing tattoos and a bag with a steampunk-y octopus on it. Hence her callsign became Kraken. That and she resides in an area of the United States where she is surrounded by water. It was a curious friendship that developed...I innocently commented on the awesomeness of her tattoos and her bag, she was sufficiently impressed by our conversations that day that Facebook connections were established and a brilliant trans-Atlantic friendship has developed.
Finally, but in no way an afterthought, there is Thief. The Rhaegar Targaryen to my Lyanna Stark. Because it has been firmly established that I am the girl in our dynamic. I have no shame in this. It's a complicated tango we dance and I do not regret a second of it. Thief, so named for her desire to steal my replica of Malcolm Reynolds' pistol, is an exceptionally brilliant and beautiful lady. I'm just a gushing, sentimental fool. Nonetheless...I met her on the same day I met someone else awesome - the GRRM Reaper, George R.R. Martin. Though, in true sentimental fool style, meeting her was much more awesome. For one thing, she's stuck around and said more than three words to me!
I'm getting so much more than an arrow to the knee for this. Regardless, these three are just the latest addition to my rogues gallery of amazing friends. I love you all, you incredible, complicated and beautiful people.
On the subject of meeting authors, this year I had the privilege to meet British science-fiction author Peter F. Hamilton. Whenever I go into a bookshop, I inevitably gravitate towards the science-fiction section. In fact, whenever I meet up with my friend Phoenix, our usual meeting point is the sci-fi section. So naturally, I'm always browsing the books and, as I mentioned when I reviewed A Quantum Murder, my eyes continually rested upon Hamilton's books. In honour of the release of his latest book, Great North Road, he came to Bath to do a talk and book signing. So in addition to buying the tome-like Great North Road, I brought along the Greg Mandel Series and had them all signed.
But the most brilliant thing for me was getting to talk to Hamilton. When meeting the GRRM Reaper...well, it was a packed-out church with an estimated...three hundred people in attendance. The event for Peter F. Hamilton was a lot smaller, allowing for more books to be signed and a little more idle chit-chat. During his talk, Hamilton mentioned an incident where he was in a taxi with his friends (while he was writing Great North Road, set in Newcastle) and idly noted that he needed to go to Newcastle to find somewhere he could dump a body in the Tyne. His friends had to assure the taxi driver that he wasn't a murderer, just a writer. Very much similar to incident with me. I was on the bus back from uni, discussing my novel with one of my classmates. At one point, I was talking about blowing up a research facility with orbital railguns, potentially killing hundreds. I turned to the girl sitting next to my classmate and sheepishly explained that I was just a writer. It was...well, somewhat comforting to find that I'm not the only writer this has happened to. Odds probably always said I wouldn't be the only one, but it's nice to have proof.
By and large, what is there to say about 2012? It's been an incredibly intriguing year. Complicated, like all things in life. But it's been one of those years that has shown how much I have to learn about the worlds. I've learned much about myself, the most important thing being a revelation I had about happiness. It's put me on a long road, a road under the glare of an unforgiving sun, where each step lasts an eternity. The horizon shimmers, my destination shrouded in heat haze, but one way or another, it is there. But by all the gods in Asgard and Olympus, there isn't a power in this 'Verse that can stop me from getting there.
Yikes. I do seem to get carried away when being all crazy and emotional. But oh well. Sometimes you just need to.
As for 2013, it's started off...well, mixed really. I discovered that my PayPal account was hacked and £600 spent, which was pretty annoying and forced a major overhaul of my passwords, but I still have hope for this year. Thirteen is a greatly misunderstood number, but I have hope for it. Come 2014, I hope to be posting another one of these reflections. Hopefully a great deal more....positive. Not that this isn't positive. Like all things in the worlds, it's complicated. But complicated isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I feel there's so many more things to say, but I think I'm running out of space and this may just be the longest entry I've ever posted. And the most dangerous. But that remains to be seen. But there we have it. 2012. You were a good, complicated year. Here's hoping for a frakking great, Tyrionically complicated year for 2013.
It goes largely without saying that I've been neglecting my updating of this blog for a good long while. Mostly Skyrim, but that pesky little bastard known as Life also shares some blame here. Strangely enough, Life is going to be something of the running theme of this post. Well, Life in the context of the events of 2012.
That's right, kids. It's the Year in Review blog entry. It had to be done.
Well, I wanted to one. So there.
Of course, a lot of 2012's major events have been thoroughly catalogued in the thirty-four preceding entries. But I'm going to ramble on anyway, maybe filling in some gaps that I left. But we'll see about that.
Logically, we start at the beginning January 2012. The landmark of January, aside from starting up this blog, was seeing The Artist. Anyone paying attention to film news and the Oscars, etc., knows that The Artist received many accolades. And in my humble opinion, quite rightly so.
Being, I hope, dear and loyal readers of this blog, you might not think that The Artist was my kind of movie. If you take a look at the cinema tickets stuck to my wall...well, this year's rogues gallery includes Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, Avengers (obviously), The Dark Knight Rises (again with the obvious), Brave and Skyfall. I'm also half-watching the 2009 Star Trek movie as I'm writing this and Spock just said "Set phasers to stun." I felt this required comment.
Moving on...
So, The Artist doesn't seem like my usual thing. But I absolutely loved it. It was a beautiful, brilliantly realised work of cinema and quite deserving of all its praise. But I will say (and Phoenix, my friend I went to see the movie with, agrees), it's a movie to watch as a group and preferably in a cinema/cinema-like environment. It's just...it's a necessary part of the experience.
Staying on the track of movies, this year has seen some brilliant gems. In spite of the opinions of the readers of The LA Times, I don't feel Avengers was overrated. I had this conversation with a colleague and he drew comparison to The Shawshank Redemption. I'll admit, I have not seen this movie. I imagine that is some kind of cinematic atrocity, given the high regard it is held in. And while I have no illusions that you could compare Shawshank Redemption and Avengers and come out smelling of roses. I will simply state that I love Avengers. It's my favourite movie of the year and probably in my top ten/top five movies of all time.
Looking to future with movies and backtracking to the mention of Star Trek, I am very, very much looking forward to the cinematic year. We have Star Trek: Into Darkness, where we can finally find out just who the Seven Hells Benedict Cumberbatch is playing! Smart money so far is on either Khan or Gary Mitchell. I'm not betting on either of them just yet. Merely looking very forward to the movie.
Then...Iron Man 3.
I've been thinking a lot about movie trilogies lately. Generally the trend is that the first or second movies are the best, the third often falls down a bit. But this is Marvel. This is Iron Man. The first was awesome. The second was awesome. And I have every confidence that Robert Downey Jr will make the third instalment just as amazing as one and two.
On the subject of trilogies, The World's End, the finale in the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy from Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost will be coming out this year. I'll be honest, it's taken them long enough! But nonetheless, I am looking forward to this as well as. So far, Hot Fuzz trumps Shaun of the Dead as my favourite of those movies. We'll see what happens with movie number three.
Still on the subject of trilogies, I finally watched all three Lord of the Rings movies. Yes, I know, being a twenty-four year old self-professed geek having not seen these movies up until now is pretty much tantamount to treason in geek circles. But better late than never. Overwhelmingly, The Two Towers is my favourite. I fully intend to acquire these movies on DVD, but so far the 'Verse is spurning me, hiking the prices of the boxset of the Extended Editions wherever I look. So it may be a while. But as I've shown, I get there in the end.
Onwards (well, more backwards really) to other events in 2012. Or one event in particular. Well, now that I think about it, I can make this a ramble about a tenuously interconnected series of events that can be brought under the same heading. It's the subject of friendship. Now this is going to be the shamefully sentimental part of things.
First of all, there's my dearest Oracle. She started out as one of my regular customers at work and has grown into being one of my closest and dearest friends. She's a fellow Marvel nerd, but her knowledge of the comics far exceeds mine. Which makes for some interesting discussions as I remain blissfully ignorant of the things that aren't quite right with the movies. But nonetheless, she has become very dear to me and, in keeping with her callsign, possesses much wisdom that she is more often than not called upon to impart.
Secondly, there's Kraken. Again, someone I met through work. A charming American girl with intriguing tattoos and a bag with a steampunk-y octopus on it. Hence her callsign became Kraken. That and she resides in an area of the United States where she is surrounded by water. It was a curious friendship that developed...I innocently commented on the awesomeness of her tattoos and her bag, she was sufficiently impressed by our conversations that day that Facebook connections were established and a brilliant trans-Atlantic friendship has developed.
Finally, but in no way an afterthought, there is Thief. The Rhaegar Targaryen to my Lyanna Stark. Because it has been firmly established that I am the girl in our dynamic. I have no shame in this. It's a complicated tango we dance and I do not regret a second of it. Thief, so named for her desire to steal my replica of Malcolm Reynolds' pistol, is an exceptionally brilliant and beautiful lady. I'm just a gushing, sentimental fool. Nonetheless...I met her on the same day I met someone else awesome - the GRRM Reaper, George R.R. Martin. Though, in true sentimental fool style, meeting her was much more awesome. For one thing, she's stuck around and said more than three words to me!
I'm getting so much more than an arrow to the knee for this. Regardless, these three are just the latest addition to my rogues gallery of amazing friends. I love you all, you incredible, complicated and beautiful people.
On the subject of meeting authors, this year I had the privilege to meet British science-fiction author Peter F. Hamilton. Whenever I go into a bookshop, I inevitably gravitate towards the science-fiction section. In fact, whenever I meet up with my friend Phoenix, our usual meeting point is the sci-fi section. So naturally, I'm always browsing the books and, as I mentioned when I reviewed A Quantum Murder, my eyes continually rested upon Hamilton's books. In honour of the release of his latest book, Great North Road, he came to Bath to do a talk and book signing. So in addition to buying the tome-like Great North Road, I brought along the Greg Mandel Series and had them all signed.
But the most brilliant thing for me was getting to talk to Hamilton. When meeting the GRRM Reaper...well, it was a packed-out church with an estimated...three hundred people in attendance. The event for Peter F. Hamilton was a lot smaller, allowing for more books to be signed and a little more idle chit-chat. During his talk, Hamilton mentioned an incident where he was in a taxi with his friends (while he was writing Great North Road, set in Newcastle) and idly noted that he needed to go to Newcastle to find somewhere he could dump a body in the Tyne. His friends had to assure the taxi driver that he wasn't a murderer, just a writer. Very much similar to incident with me. I was on the bus back from uni, discussing my novel with one of my classmates. At one point, I was talking about blowing up a research facility with orbital railguns, potentially killing hundreds. I turned to the girl sitting next to my classmate and sheepishly explained that I was just a writer. It was...well, somewhat comforting to find that I'm not the only writer this has happened to. Odds probably always said I wouldn't be the only one, but it's nice to have proof.
By and large, what is there to say about 2012? It's been an incredibly intriguing year. Complicated, like all things in life. But it's been one of those years that has shown how much I have to learn about the worlds. I've learned much about myself, the most important thing being a revelation I had about happiness. It's put me on a long road, a road under the glare of an unforgiving sun, where each step lasts an eternity. The horizon shimmers, my destination shrouded in heat haze, but one way or another, it is there. But by all the gods in Asgard and Olympus, there isn't a power in this 'Verse that can stop me from getting there.
Yikes. I do seem to get carried away when being all crazy and emotional. But oh well. Sometimes you just need to.
As for 2013, it's started off...well, mixed really. I discovered that my PayPal account was hacked and £600 spent, which was pretty annoying and forced a major overhaul of my passwords, but I still have hope for this year. Thirteen is a greatly misunderstood number, but I have hope for it. Come 2014, I hope to be posting another one of these reflections. Hopefully a great deal more....positive. Not that this isn't positive. Like all things in the worlds, it's complicated. But complicated isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I feel there's so many more things to say, but I think I'm running out of space and this may just be the longest entry I've ever posted. And the most dangerous. But that remains to be seen. But there we have it. 2012. You were a good, complicated year. Here's hoping for a frakking great, Tyrionically complicated year for 2013.
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