Karsa Orlong

The Pineapple Thief - Kid Chameleon

3000 Days by The Pineapple Thief

Gone Baby Gone. Ben Affleck should stick to directing. Brilliant film.

Watched 6x17 last night ...

Yeah, that's exactly it. Last night I watched Forbidden Planet on blu-ray. Now that's a perfect example of how to release a classic movie in hi-def

Amplifier - The Wave

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds Tanner Mirabel was a security specialist who never made a mistake - until the day a woman in his care was blown away by Argent Reivich, a vengeful young postmortal. Tanner's pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone. But Chasm City is not what it was. The one-time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city's inhabitants as thoroughly as it has the buildings and machines. Before the chase is done, Tanner will have to confront truths which reach back centuries, towards deep space and an atrocity history barely remembers. I was casting my mind back trying to remember why I bought this book. Several years ago I read a book called Revelation Space by the same author, and remember finding it quite heavy going, and I'd never gone back to any of his other novels. But now I remember that it was the Amazon blurb, above, that made me want this book. Even then, it had been sitting on the shelf for quite a while, unread. It's quite a daunting looking tome, big and black and heavy, and Reynolds' reputation for hard SF had me on the backfoot a little. But discussing him on this board a week or so back made me pick it up and, lo and behold, once I started reading it was impossible to put down. Chasm City is a very different book to Revelation Space, even though it is set in the same universe. Told mostly in the first person, it is a science fiction thriller, rather than space opera, and the structure of the novel is brilliant. There are, effectively, three storylines. The main one, that is happening as you read, is that of Tanner Mirabel's pursuit of Argent Reivich, the man he believes responsible for the murders of his former employer and that man's wife. The novel begins with a thrilling sequence set on an orbital elevator above the planet Sky's Edge, and then shifts forward fifteen years, as Tanner comes out of reefersleep with short-term memory loss, having travelled to another system on Reivich's trail, where lies the Chasm City of the title. It is here that the second tale kicks in, as Tanner, infected with a techno-virus, experiences - through dreams - the life of a man called Schuyler Haussman, who had travelled on the original flotilla, a group of generational ships that carried mankind to Sky's Edge centuries ago. On top of this, Tanner's memories of what happened to his former employer, Cahuella, and his wife, Gitta, begin to haunt him, and various colourful and crazy characters try to help or thwart him as he continues his hunt for Reivich. The way Reynolds interweaves these three stories is quite brilliant, and lends the novel a thrilling pace that rarely - if ever - lets up for the entirety of its 600+ pages. In Chasm City he has created an intriguing and scary place. In some ways, it seems like a cross between the future LA seen in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and the steampunk-ish environs of China Mieville's New Crobuzon. Both the city and its denizens are well-realised, and the gap between the classes within the city come across really well. In some ways, I wish he'd done more with it, because it's such an impressive creation that you can't help but feel there is much more to tell about it, but it easily serves its purpose. Anyway, I finished this novel and immediately went out and bought three more by the same author, including Revelation Space, which I am now determined to re-read and see if I was wrong about it last time around. In the meantime, if you're looking for a futuristic thriller, I can't recommend Chasm City highly enough. 9/10

Mwaaaah! I've never had any trouble finding three books in their offers

Well I was getting ready to buy the original Star Wars trilogy on blu-ray this month, but now I see that Mr George 'I'm an idiot' Lucas has been tinkering with them again, making yet more pointless changes, so I won't be bothering. See: http://forum.blu-ray.com/united-kingdom/149750-star-wars-blu-ray-50.html My folks took me to Leicester Square to see the first movie on my 12th birthday back in 1978, and I've loved those original movies ever since. At least I've got the unaltered versions on dvd Sorry, just felt the need to rant

Yeah, I'd imagine so. I just went with the ones I've read It's so built up around here now - hard to imagine it being any other way. When reading the C J Sansom novels I was finding it impossible not to imagine the streest as they are today, complete with buses and taxis And of course, it's literally a two minute walk from the office to Gough Square, where Samuel Johnson lived, complete with a statue of his cat, Hodge

Finished Alastair Reynolds' Chasm City and started Matthew Glass's End Game - read 10% of it and have already decided to give up on it - it's very sterile and uninvolving, and is more politic/economic based than the Clancy-esque military thriller the cover and blurb advertise it to be. Can't be bothered to waste my time with it. Still, it only cost me 99p when I got it, so not much of a loss.

30 days to go - there's a countdown towards the top of the page - it's all very sf

I work in Fleet Street, at the end of Shoe Lane, just near Ludgate Hill and St Paul's, which is where some of C J Sansom's Shardlake novels are set. It's quite strange trying to visualise how the area would have looked around 1540, as our office would effectively have been outside the walls of London. The Fleet River gets mentioned a lot in the novels, but of course it's buried underneath the roads now.

Muse - The Resistance Tour Live in Seattle 2010

The Dresdencrack - it calls ...

Thanks Kylie A brief word on a couple of others I've read recently: The Hanging Shed by Gordon Ferris Set in Glasgow shortly after World War II, this story gave me the impression of a Scottish answer to Lee Child's Jack Reacher. You know the story: ex-military guy comes into town, gets involved with disreputable types, falls into the arms of the nearest beautiful woman etc etc. The time and setting should probably have had more bearing on the story than they actually did, and some of the situations Brodie gets himself into are almost a 7 on the 'Reacher-scale-of-the-far-fetched'. But, the start of the story, where Brodie travels home after a cry for help from an old ex-friend who had betrayed Brodie in an earlier life is interesting enough. I did get a little fed up with everything being described as 'wee' (as in 'small', not as ... well, you know) and characters saying things like "Ah ken, ah ken". Yes, I know you're Scottish - get on with it! I think my major complaint, though, is that the bad guys are never fleshed out - they are two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs who enter the fray too late in proceedings to really have any effect. 6/10 Fool Moon (Dresden Files 2) by Jim Butcher Business has been slow. Okay, business has been dead. And not even of the undead variety. You would think Chicago would have a little more action for the only professional wizard in the phone book. But lately, Harry Dresden hasn’t been able to dredge up any kind of work - magical or mundane.But just when it looks like he can’t afford his next meal, a murder comes along that requires his particular brand of supernatural expertise.A brutally mutilated corpse. Strange-looking paw prints. A full moon. Take three guesses - and the first two don’t count … Okay, yes, it's obviously about werewolves. But what I liked about this was the number of variations on the myth that Butcher throws at you. I had no idea there could be so many different types! And it's all handled with a clarity of thought and action that leaves you in no doubt as to which type can do what and why. Much of that is down to the straightforward simplicity of the plot, which wouldn't win any awards, but Butcher handles it with such pace, energy and wit that I couldn't help being carried along. Recurring characters from the first book are handled very well, and their developing relationships with Dresden are believable, which is good. He also wraps things up very nicely, with some tantalising hints that the plots of the first two books might be linked after all, and a wonderful throwaway line - that explains the nature of one of the characters - that made me grin from ear to ear. Looking forward to book three. 8/10

Ooh, thank you! I know she's got Gone With The Wind (that's one that's still on her shelf), but the C L Skelton, Kate Morton and Natasha Solomons ones sound just her kind of thing Has anyone read anything by Christie Dickason or Gabrielle Kimm?

Damn Waterstones and their '3 for 2' on pretty much all fiction paperbacks - I went in intending to buy one book and ended up with, well, three Anyway, they're all by Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (which I've read before, got rid of and now want to read again ), House of Suns and Terminal World. And I just got Perdido Street Station by China Mieville for Kindle, which is also one I've read before, got rid of and want to read again

Hi all I have a problem. Yes, apart from the obvious one(s) It's my mum's birthday coming up soon, and I always buy her some books because she loves to read. Unfortunately, I'm running out of ideas, and I'm hoping someone here could point me in the right direction. She tends to like novels that are about family, and/or multiple generations of said families. She tends to like stories set in the past, rather than modern day. At the moment she is into Phillipa Gregory, and has enjoyed her Wideacre trilogy and The Other Boleyn Girl, and has The White Queen waiting to be read (all of which I bought for her ). In the past she has read the likes of Catherine Cookson, Jean Plaidy, Maeve Binchey. Nothing too raunchy or sweary. There are other authors she has tried, but I can't remember them at the moment, and - apart from anything else - it's becoming impossible to recall what she has or hasn't read, as she hasn't kept all her books for me to check. Pretty inconsiderate, I'm sure you'd agree So I think my only alternative is to try an author who is something like one of the above, and who she hasn't read before. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Yay, go me! I'm currently 490 pages into Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds, and I am getting the inclination to go to Waterstones at lunchtime and buy more of his books