An unrelenting bombardment of social and technological fragments from an absurd nearer-future “psychemized” society.

Masses of great throwaway ideas, with a few highly powerful ones guaranteed to stick, and the lists and lists of highly-specific mood-altering chemicals are glorious.

Much better in print, being fully immersed in the nadsat (without even a hand-holding glossary, in the edition I picked up). The final film-ignored chapter adds a lot to it. Horrorshow.

Embarrassingly dated in places, but generally solid common-sense analysis of environmental depression and what to think about it.

Dimensional geometry meets the Diary of a Nobody. Frustratingly evasive in too many places, but imaginative visualisation and horrific social comment all the same.

(Actually only read “These Were Your Father’s”, but it isn’t in Amazon, by itself.)

Always good, the poetry of Hegley. Very funny and well-crafted “and, where possible, poignant also”. Might drop in on his current UK tour after all.

Already read most of this, here and there. Picked it up to skim on the train over a weekend, having mislaid the rest of my bookpile. Good stuff on the nuts and bolts of emergence, modelling games as networks of input/output entities, and things.

Quantum electrodynamics! I’ve stalled. It’s getting a bit too heavy and abstract, half-way in. I’ll take a deep breath and come back to it.

Sticking plaster poetry.

Burgeoning ritual and imagination in a highly isolated environment. Haven’t overly enjoyed Banks’ other stuff, but this is good. Better for being so focused, perhaps.

Witty incursion of the supernatural into the mundane, two reluctant anti-heroes saving an ignorant world from alien invaders. Written back in the days when Rankin was still bothering to be sharp and original.