Fated by S. G. Browne

Book Club's January 2012 choice

Synopsis

Over the past few thousand years, Fabio has come to hate his job. As Fate, he's in charge of assigning the fortunes and misfortunes that befall most of the human race - the 83 per cent who keep screwing things up. And with the steady rise in population since the first Neanderthal set himself on fire, he can't exactly take a vacation. Frustrated with his endless parade of drug addicts and career politicians, it doesn't help watching Destiny guide her people to Nobel Peace Prizes. To make matters worse, he has a five-hundred-year-old feud with Death, and his best friends are Sloth and Gluttony. And worst of all? He's just fallen in love with a human. Sara Griffen might be on Destiny's path, but Fabio keeps bumping into her - by accident at first, and then on purpose. Getting involved with her breaks Rule No. 1 - and about ten others - setting off some cosmic-sized repercussions that could strip him of his immortality...or lead to a fate worse than death.

NEW EVENT: Adam Roberts Evening

Hi all,

Remember when I started out with the book club and I moaned about the lack of genre-events we were getting as a store? Well that seems to be turning around at a good pace and the latest author to enter our store is Adam Roberts. We read his Yellow Blue Tibia back in July and it got largely impressive comments and a very healthy score of 8/10. He's also written the introduction for books like The Inverted World, as well as reviews and academic papers and books on a plethora of other science fiction and fantasy titles and topics.

He's in Liverpool for the academic conference I've organised (full details here if you're interested enough to pay the £30 fee), and was gracious enough to agree to do an event in store the night before. Here are the details:

An Evening With Adam Roberts

Friday 17th June, 6-7.30pm

Waterstone's Liverpool One

Tickets £2, redeemable against any Adam Roberts book bought on the night

Official facebook event (for those who can)

Hope to see plenty of you there!

The Brentford Triangle by Robert Rankin

Synopsis

'Omally groaned. "It is the end of mankind as we know it. I should never have got up so early today" and all over Brentford electrical appliances were beginning to fail…' Could it be that Pooley and Omally, whilst engaged on a round of allotment golf, mistook laser-operated gravitational landing beams for the malignant work of Brentford Council? Does the Captain Laser Alien Attack machine in the bar of the Swan possess more sinister force than its magnetic appeal for youths with green hair? Is Brentford the first base in an alien onslaught on planet Earth?

A sequel to "The Antipope", this is the second novel in "The Brentford Trilogy".

What Did We Think?

(notes to follow)

Preamble for The Brentford Triangle by Robert Rankin

It's been a while since I've had the time to write a preamble for one of our books. To be honest, I don't really have the time now, it's just that when I found the link to China Miéville talking about The City and The City, which you can find a  link to at the bottom of my summary of our discussion, it inspired me to look for something similar regarding next month's book Robert Rankin's The Brentford Triangle.

I failed.


I did, however, find a video of him reading from the first book in the series, The Antipope, and you can watch that video here. I've been assured that although The Brentford Triangle follows on from The Antipope, you need not have read the first in the sequence to read Triangle. I certainly hope this is the case because I myself have only ever read Retromancer which is the current new paperback.

Regardless, in this 2009 interview with the British Fantasy Society Rankin himself says that he considers Triangle to be the best he's written.

Rankin's newest release is The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions which is a sequel of sorts to H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds.

There have been some supply issues with The Brentford Triangle as all of Rankin's books are currently undergoing a reissuing into new colourful covers. I've done my best to try and order some in though and should I fail you are all aware of the other retail options open to you *shudder*.

That's all from me, hope you noticed and liked the new logo at the top of the page. Countless minutes were spent colouring it in on Paint! See you next month.

Oh - and should the urge take you. Robert Rankin's official fan club is called Sproutlore and can be found here.