Michael J. Ritchie's Blog, page 22

“Eunoia” by Christian Bök (2001)

“Awkward grammar appals a craftsman.”

Seeking out books with constrained writing seems to be a vaguely recurring theme on my reading list. There’s books that limit what words can begin with, those that entirely remove a certain letter, and one that limits where its sentences can come from. Eunoia is on a whole other level.

Bök has penned here five univocalic poems, each one only able to use one vowel in turn. He believes that this shows each vowel with its own personality, as well as exploring...

“The Long Utopia” by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter (2015)

“In February 2052, in the remote Long Earth…”

Back to the Long Earth for the fourth time. Spoilers ahead if you’ve not read the first three.

It’s now the 2050s, and Joshua Valienté has just turned fifty, celebrating his birthday with a trip back to Datum Earth to find out more about the father he never knew. With sentient AI Lobsang now, for all intents and purposes, dead, he wanders with fewer goals, watching as humanity evolves on these new worlds, developing new societies.

However, on a far-d...

“The Lido” by Libby Page (2018)

“Step out of Brixton underground station and it is a carnival of steel drums, the white noise of traffic and that man on the corner shouting ‘God loves you’, even to the unlovable.”

Along with the loss of pubs, live theatre, a regular social life, holidays and a sense of calm and optimism, one of the things I’ve really missed this year is swimming. I’m not a brilliant swimmer but I enjoy it and love being submerged in the water. I haven’t swum in a lido since I was a child, th...

“Dreams Before The Start Of Time” by Anne Charnock (2017)

“This year’s crop of apples is so poor that Betty Matheson counts the overnight windfalls when she opens her bedroom shutters each morning.”

The nuclear family still exists for many people, but there are more varieties of family than that, and there always have been. Single parents, gay parents, those who choose to adopt or have no children at all, those made up of friends or grandparents or foster parents – there’s no set way to define a family. As we progress into the future and science marche...

“From The Depths” edited by Mike Ashley (2018)

“Because this is a true story, there is no ending…”

A while ago I read a collection from the British Library that was ghost and horror stories set on trains. I’m back now with a collection set at sea. Why do ghost ships and missing boats continue to entertain us? Perhaps it’s because the sea remains a particularly mysterious part of the world, and seems loathe to share up its secrets. Here are a few more of them.

Much as I enjoy spending time in and near bodies of water of all sizes, I can’t say...

“Voyage Of The Basilisk” by Marie Brennan (2015)

“At no point did I form the conscious intention of founding an ad hoc university in my sitting room.”

This year, I’ve found that reading remains the greatest way to escape the horrors of reality. I can hunker down in a fictional world for a while, and although this has always been the case, this year it seems more important and necessary than ever. And where’s more strange and wonderful to hide than a world filled with dragons?

It’s been six years since Isabella Camherst, Lady Trent, explored Er...

“Murder Most Unladylike” by Robin Stevens (2014)

“This is the first murder that the Wells & Wong Detective Agency has ever investigated, so it was a good thing Daisy bought me a new casebook.”

There’s always someone ready to come along and give a new twist on a genre or subject, and it’s even better if they do it without stepping on the toes of anything that’s come before. Sometimes all you need to do is simply change the location and the main characters. What happens if you take the novels of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, substitute th...

“Finn Family Moomintroll” by Tove Jansson (1948)

“One grey morning the first snow began to fall in the Valley of the Moomins.”

The Moomins have long been part of the background radiation of my knowledge of children’s literature. I’d watched the TV show as a kid, but had never taken the time to dip into any of the books. I’ve changed all that, though, and what a wonderful change it was.

After hibernating all winter, the Moomins and their friends wake up and on their first adventure discover the Hobgoblin’s Hat, a magical piece of headwear that ...

“My Hero” by Tom Holt (1996)

“Against the background of a green sky, the two champions circled warily.”

As the world continues to be unpleasant, confusing and altogether too much, there’s one place we can always hide – fiction.

Jane Armitage is a writer of not-brilliant fantasy novels, sending her hero Regalian on all sorts of fantastic adventures. She’s unfortunately reached a stalemate with the latest novel, and is worried the only way out of it is to kill him. However, when her book starts writing back at her, she finds ...

“Uncommon Knowledge” edited by Tom Standage (2019)

“‘Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination,’ wrote Joseph Addison, an English essayist and poet.”

If Twitter has taught us anything (other than that many people, once given anonymity, become abusive and racist) it’s that everyone has an opinion. Most of the time, however, those opinions are ill-informed or spit directly in the face of direct evidence. How else does one explain Flat Earthers, or people who think the pandemic was caused by 5G? Really, if people just ...