Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts

Thursday, 28 July 2011

Discovering New Worlds

Today I went for a trip to London. ("Hang on a second, doesn't he work in London") Yes, I do but I decided that I wanted to see one or two exhibitions as well as do something I've been meaning to do for a while.

Starting in Camden
I've wanted to visit a Morrocan Tea shop which is situated in the Stables, a sort of shopping area just to the north of the Lock. I had mint tea and sat and read something appropriate:



The tea was really nice, a bit like spearmint chewing gum, although it becomes an aquired taste if it's allowed to stew. I then walked along Regents Canal and through the park:



As you can see, there are some rather nice houses down by the canal.

I had some more tea at the Royal Institute of British Architects in Portland Place. It has a rather nice cafe and an exceptional bookshop. Even the tea pots look art deco:



I also managed to take a picture of that icon the Post Office Tower, which I remember visiting as a boy when you could go inside:



Out of this World
On the advise of Matt, I went to the Out of this World exhibition at the British Library, and what a fantastic exhibit it is:



I saw a lot of rare and first editions, as you would expect, talked to an AI who explained to me how it worked and listened to both H.G. Wells and J.G. Ballard being interviewed. It's really good and I highly recommend it. Not only that, but the book that accompanies it is fantastic as well.

The Vorticists
Tate Britain currently has an exhibition about the Vorticists movement of early 20th century (doesn't it still feel weird saying that). They were a British modern art movement, roughly analogous to the Futurists in Italy at about the same time, but without the Facist leanings. They also didn't last long and fragmented pretty quickly. The artwork was very abstract, but it did produce artists that went on to do great things, such as Jacob Epstein and T.S. Eliot. The exhibition even commisioned a repoduction of Epstein's famous Rock Drill sculpture.

Saturday, 30 October 2010

Saturday: Surface Detail

Surface Detail

I finished the latest Iain M. Banks Culture novel, Surface Detail, last night. I'm afraid that it was a big disappointment and, for the first time with a Culture novel, I was looking forward to the end of the book.

The main problem is that the story is told from way, way too many perspectives. There is, essentially, a very thin story, or rather two intertwined stories, stretched to breaking point by telling it from several different perspectives in order to pad out the book to just over 600 pages. The main perspectives are:

  • A virtual person, a disembodied consciousness, fighting a never ending war;
  • Another virtual person suffering in a simulated Hell;
  • A reborn person seeking revenge for her own murder;
  • The person she's seeking revenge against;
  • A Culture agent sent to stop her.

In addition there were other perspectives, but these were simply walk-on parts, not even essential to the story, but adding to the confusion and tedium. I felt like shouting "For Christ's sake, GET ON WITH IT!" at regular intervals.

Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men

I thought I'd have a bash at this next, as it's considered to be a classic. Written in 1930, it's the history of Mankind written five million years in the future by the last man.