Paul Kincaid

Among the interesting things he said this evening was that what had given The Separation, by Christopher Priest, the edge over M John Harrison's Light in the Clarke Awards was the view that you would always enjoy reading the latter as the same book, but that Priest's novel was a different book every time you returned to it.

And I see what he means, and that that can be an attraction. Certainly, I love Priest's books (though I would rate The Glamour far above The Separation).

But Light continues to spill around me in umpteen different ways; Nova Swing has made it the more difficult to read it even from that (singular) point of view. I'd always thought that was the point of them.

With Harrison, I find myself going back again and again into the short stories: Egnaro and Gifco particularly enrage me. He won't agree, but I think the best work is in them and Climbers, and, of course, in The Course of the Heart. But the Viriconium fans have me outnumbered.

Future Classics

Nice Gollancz have sent me seven paperbacks (though they list eight in this series) with very snazzy covers. I've got them all already. I've read them all already, except for Paul McAuley's (I beg your pardon - having been declared a future classic, he's now Paul J McAuley) Fairyland. I'm ashamed of that, because Mr McAuley is a very nice man indeed, who has bought me several pints. The least I can do is read his books. His very good new book is called Cowboy Angels. Multidimensional Americas. But I will review it properly. So now I will read Fairyland.

But from the standard of the other titles, Gollancz may be on to something with this rebranding exercise. Evolution features a flock wallpaper ape. The Separation has classy brown paper aeroplanes (if you've got the original Scribner paperback, you'd be horrified at how much it's worth; they only printed about five of them, being bastards and idiots. Mr Priest got the last laugh there). I don't understand the Dan Simmonds cover, but it's one of the most in your face first sentences in sf. Revelation Space is appropriately shiny. And so on.

My doubt is Altered Carbon. Entertaining, yes. Successful, undoubtedly. Classic... well, maybe. Perhaps Ryman and Harrison and Banks and Mieville and Grimwood and Roberts and MacLeod and lots of those other folk don't need pushing as future classics. The list is (in no order):

Hyperion, Dan Simmonds
Evolution, Stephen Baxter
Fairyland, Paul J McAuley
Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds
The Separation, Christopher Priest
Blood Music, Greg Bear
Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan

The missing one - listed inside - is Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan. He has strong views on quotations on book jackets (he's agin the idea), and I wonder if that has caused some difficulty with it. I will ask people who might know.