2017 in Review

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Anthony Gottlieb, Arthur C Clarke, Becky Chambers, Benjamin Black, books of the year, Bruce Sterling, C.J. Sansom, China Mieville, Christopher Priest, Colin Greenland, Dave Hutchinson, Edmund Crispin, Emma Chambers, Emma Newman, Gerry Canavan, Gwyneth Jones, Helen MacInnes, Iain Banks, Iain R. MacLeod, Joanna Kavenna, John Banville, John Crowley, John Kessel, John Le Carre, Judith A. Barter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Laurent Binet, Laurie Penny, Lavie Tidhar, Lily Brooks-Dalton, m john harrison, Margery Allingham, Mark Fisher, Matt Ruff, Michael Chabon, nina allan, Octavia Butler, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Paul Auster, Paul Nash, Rick Wilber, Rob Latham, Steve Erickson, Stuart Jeffries, Tade Thompson, Tricia Sullivan, Ursula K. Le Guin, Yoon Ha Lee

It’s that time of year again, when I dust off this oft-forgotten blog and post a list of my reading through the year, along with other odd comments.

2017 has been, in some respects, a very good year. My first full-length book not composed of previously published material, appeared in May. Iain M. Banks appeared in the series Modern Masters of Science Fiction from Illinois University Press, and has received some generally positive reviews, much to my relief.

Also this year I signed a contract with Gylphi to write a book about Christopher Priest, which is likely to take most if not all of the next year. In addition, I’ve put in a proposal for another volume in the Modern Masters of Science Fiction; the initial response has been quite good so I’m hoping I’ll have more to report in the new year. So, in work terms, it looks like the next couple of years are pretty much taken care of.

The Moving Toyshop

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Alfred Hitchcock, Edmund Crispin, Patricia Highsmith

‘Let’s go left,’ Cadogan suggested. ‘After all, Gollancz is publishing this book.’

I knew about this novel long before I read it, or indeed anything by Edmund Crispin. Maureen kept quoting the line about turning left at a junction because Gollancz was publishing the book. It was a knowingness that amused me. But not enough to make me pick up any of his novels and read them.

Then Maureen re-read this book, and said it might amuse me. So I read it, and there was the famous scene. But by then the self-referentiality of the book was well established. Not long before, when Fen and Cadogan had been locked inside a cupboard, Fen spends the time loudly proposing titles that Crispin might use for his next novel. Indeed, before the story even starts, there’s a note:

None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious.