The occasional scrivener

Debut cyberpunk/technothriller from Williams, who’s running an active blog promoting it.

What can I say? I think the ideas are bigger than the novel (I think I first read about it in John Scalzi’s “The Big Idea” series). Trad cyberpunk predicts the withering of the nation state, this novel has a more realpolitik feel to it in that the nation states of the US and Russia will never give up power. The future depicted in The Mirrored Heavens is bleak from the outset and gets bleaker from there.

It’s a promising start, lets hope Williams follows it up!

It’s time for my annual summer vacation. Four weeks of… nothing much planned. We did have plans, but they fell through.

There’s plenty to do around the apartment though, and I’m looking forward to that. But I think I need some days to decompress first.

Updates will be even sparser than usual, but I doubt I’ll be able to refrain from posting to Twitter from the phone. So follow me there if you’re obsessively interested in my doings.

Have a great summer!

This old post by Carlo Longino popped up in my vanity feed today, prompting me to revisit my comments on the UK launch of the iPhone last year. It’s interesting to compare and contrast to the situation now.

I can’t help feeling the bloom has come off the iPhone rose.

For me, a quick entertaining read, but about as nourishing as a bag of crisps. I’m broadly in agreement with Jonathan McCalmont’s review.

Kapuścińsky beskriver hur Herodotos Historia följt honom på hans karriär som reporter, från de första trevande stegen i Indien och Kina till hans resor i Afrika och Mellanöstern.

Boken flätar förtjänstfullt samman både bilden av den moderne polske journalisten och hans grekiske inspiratör och i någon mening läromästare. Den är också en bra introduktion till Herodotos verk.