October 2022

City on Fire by Walter Jon Williams

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The novel “City on Fire” by Walter Jon Williams was published for the first time in 1997. It’s the sequel to “Metropolitan”.

Aiah is considered a suspect in various alleged crimes by the Jaspeer authorities. It’s better for her to move to Caraqui, where Constantine became minister of the government formed after the revolution he helped win. She is tasked with running the Plasm Enforcement Division.

Thanks to her new position, Aiah can fight Caraqui’s mob but she finds herself entangled in the intrigues of the metropolis. The triumvirs at the head of the government have different agendas for Caraqui’s future and some nearby metropolises are fomenting a new attempted coup. Aiah finds herself helping Constantine in more ways than she thought.

Elon Musk with the sink (Image courtesy Elon Musk)

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In the end, Elon Musk managed to buy Twitter! After what had become a clash with the social network’s executives that led Musk to blow the deal last July, the deal was completed. The first act as owner was to fire several executives, starting with CEO Parag Agrawal. Last Wednesday, Musk walked into the San Francisco office with a sink joking about the pun between the English word sink and his statement “Let that sink in!”.

Chagyrskaya Cave (Photo ©Bence Viola. All rights reserved)

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports the results of a genetic study on a Neanderthal community that lived in today’s Siberia. A team of researchers including Nobel Prize winner for medicine Svante Pääbo obtained DNA from 11 individuals who lived in Chagyrskaya Cave and 2 who lived in Okladnikov Cave. It’s one of the largest genetic studies on Neanderthals ever done. The results of the genetic analysis indicate that some of the inhabitants of Chagyrskaya Cave were closely related, including a father and daughter.

The Long Cosmos by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

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The novel “The Long Cosmos” by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter was published for the first time in 2016. It’s the fifth book of The Long Earth series and follows “The Long Utopia”.

In 2070, humanity is fragmented into many groups, large and small, scattered over a lot of parallel Earths. However, all over the Long Earth comes a message which, through various means, says “Join us” and is addressed to all sentient beings. Encoded, there’s a much more sophisticated message that contains a huge blueprint that could change the Long Earth.

Joshua Valienté is on one of his solitary journeys but ends up in a situation that could cost him his life. He gets rescued by a group of trolls but the complications don’t end for him and on the contrary, extend to his son Rod.

The Laughing Gnome - Fear of the Web by Alyson Leeds

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The novel “The Laughing Gnome – Fear of the Web” by Alyson Leeds was published for the first time in 2018.

Anne Bishop had some experience with temporal anomalies and doesn’t take long to recover when she finds herself in 1969 and moreover in the body of a girl who’s not her. She realizes that she’s on the eve of the events that led her to meet Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart and she decides to intervene to prevent her father’s mind from being damaged by the Great Intelligence.

For Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart it’s no longer surprising to be in his own past. He remembers very well that period that marked his life and for that very reason, he immediately notices some inconsistencies between his memories and what’s happening. He hasn’t been urgently recalled to London which means he will not meet the Doctor.