Neuromancer by William Gibson

Imagine a world where computer hackers can directly link their consciousness to the Internet through wires.  Henry Case is such a hacker, or used to be.  Case, addicted to cocaine and uppers, embezzled money from his criminal employers to finance his addiction.  They repaid him by damaging his nervous system so he could never hack again.  On the brink of suicide, Case is made an offer too good to refuse: a benefactor will pay to have his nervous system repaired through radical surgery if, in return, Case pulls off a very dangerous and illegal assignment.  He can't even begin to suspect the trouble he is about to experience.

Gibson's tale is told in the best noir fiction style, but with a twist.  The seedy hotels and the even seedier characters that inhabit them exist in an indeterminate future of bionic implants and orbiting space colonies. The action takes place in the dark urban underbellies of Japan and America and moves, seemingly naturally, to outer space and back again.  There is death, deception and double-crosses as the plot unfolds and mysteries are revealed.

Some novels are of their time, some are timeless.  Neuromancer belongs to the former category.  It was new and startling when it appeared in 1984, winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards for that year.  In many ways it was visionary, anticipating the rise of the Internet and popularising the term 'cyberspace'.  Thirty years on, it seems quite dated.  The Internet and cyberspace are old hat now, and it is hard for the 21st century reader to get excited about the idea of an extra 3MBs of RAM (back in the 80s we would have been selling our grannies for that).

Neuromancer can be enjoyed in its own right as an action thriller, and quite a solid and engaging one at that.  It is certainly an interesting historical document in the annals of speculative fiction.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

I have to admit my ignorance.  Until now I had never heard of Josephine Tey or any of her books.  I was surprised to find out that The Daughter of Time was voted #1 on the list of the 100 Top Crime Novels of All Time by the U.K. Crime Writers Association, and #4 on a similar list compiled by the Mystery Writers of America.

I am not widely read in crime fiction, so I cannot really comment on the relative merits of this book compared with hundreds of others in the genre.  I can say it is a cracking good read.  The Daughter of Time is a modern cold case investigation into a 500 year old mystery regarding Richard III.

Although popular in his own time, Richard III has gone down in history as a villain who possibly murdered his wife, one of his brothers, his two nephews and Henry VI.  How much of this is fact, and how much of it is Tudor propaganda?  Did he really murder his nephews - Edward V and Richard of York - better known as the Princes in the Tower?  These are the questions The Daughter of Time seeks to answer. 

The novel is set shortly after the Second World War.  Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard has been severely injured in a fall and is now bed-ridden in hospital.  A friend suggests he should try to solve a historical mystery in order to exercise his analytic skills and to stave off boredom.  Grant finally decides on Richard III and the Princes in the Tower, a subject with which he is only slightly acquainted.  Through his friends and colleagues who come to visit him, Grant begins to amass evidence about the case and comes to a startling conclusion.

The Daughter of Time is remarkable in several ways.  First, all the action takes place in the one hospital room - Grant can't get out of bed.  Second, the narrative consists mostly of conversations, inner dialogue and snippets from books and letters.  Despite these limitations, the story is fresh and gripping.  Of necessity, there is a lot of exposition and analysis of history, but this is so skillfully woven into the dialogue between sharp-witted and likeable characters that it avoids seeming like a history lesson  Instead, the story comes across as an instructive and intriguing unravelling of a true mystery. No opium ink on a leaden page here: Tey is a great stylist who makes the reader want to find out what happens next at every turn.

I place The Daughter of Time at the top of my meagre list of mystery novels, secure in the knowledge that the U.K. Crime Writers Association would approve of my choice.

Sourcery by Terry Pratchett

This above all- to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

     - Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3

In Equal Rites it was established that to be a wizard on the Discworld one had to be the eighth son of an eighth son.  Why then were wizards forbidden to father children?  Because the eighth son of a wizard is a sourcerer, a source of magic in an already magical world.  History shows this spells trouble; and when Ipslore the Red decides to become a father for the eighth time, history is just about to repeat with disastrous consequences.

Sourcery marks the return of the cowardly and inept wizard Rincewind.  As usual, he seems to be human lightning rod, attracting all sorts of magical misfortune.  This time it appears to be the end of wizardry and Unseen University.  Despite his best efforts to stay true to his nature (and this involves a lot of running away), Rincewind is just about to have greatness thrust upon him.

Sourcery is a watershed installment in the Discworld series.  It marks the end of Pratchett's initial conception of Unseen University. Prior to this book, the wizards had been organised into eight different orders, each with eight levels of prowess and prestige.  The characters state repeatedly that the events of the novel are going to end all that.  And end it they do, but the reader is going to have to wait until the tenth discworld novel, Moving Pictures, before they find out what changes have been made at the University.  

Let's just say the dissolving of the orders ends the emphasis on parody in the Discworld novels and replaces it with satire.  To my mind, this is a most welcome change, and from this point onwards the Discworld becomes a wonderful mirror in which our own world is reflected, powerfully, poignantly and hilariously.

As for Sourcery itself, the book investigates the problems of being true to oneself.  Rincewind's companions are, variously and improbably, a barbarian who wants to be a hairdresser, a clerk who wants to be a barbarian, and a sybaritic oriental despot who just wants to drink and be told stories.  The wizards of Unseen University, when handed unlimited magical power, revert to their true wizardly nature and engage in catastrophic behaviour.  As for Rincewind, circumstances force him to transcend his own nature at a very high price.

Sourcery is not among the best of Terry Pratchett's books.  It is a solid, well-crafted tale that serves its purpose - it is a scene-setter for subsequent books.  Still, it contains Pratchett's wonderful humour and word-play, and these nicely balance the serious events in the story.  Perhaps not as satisfying as its two immediate predecessors, Equal Rites and Mort, but well worth the time.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

It's no secret that I loved Marvel Comics when I was a kid.  I spent a lot of  the 60s and 70s reading them.  Apart from a brief dalliance with the Walt Simonson reboot of Thor in the mid-80s, I have been a comic-free zone for the past thirty years.

Keeping up with the goings-on in the Marvel universe used to be an expensive business - there were so many titles to buy and so little money to spare.  The lovely thing nowadays is that one can dip back into the Marvel universe via their movies.  For the cost of a couple cinema tickets every year, we can catch up with our old favourites and see where the scriptwriters' imaginations are going to take us.

Not all Marvel Studio movies are equal, and we all have our druthers.  I enjoyed the first Avengers movie.  The latest installment, Avengers: Age of Ultron, was not so much to my taste, being disappointing rather than unenjoyable.

Why is this so?  We can rule out performance.  All the actors involved bring their characters to life in a credible manner.  The various sub-plots that run through the movie allow some of them - Bruce Banner/Hulk, Natasha Romanov/Black Widow and Clint Barton/Hawkeye - to reveal more of their inner-civilians (although I will leave it to feminists to go to town on the sub-text of Nat's back-story).  We can also rule out the devilish magnitude of the bad guy's schemes: this one is about as devilish as it gets.

No, in the end (and I am sorry to say) it all boils down to the quality of the baddie.  The first episode of the franchise had the beguiling Loki, wonderfully portrayed by Tom Hiddleston.  This episode has Ultron - a self-aware robot who plays the Monster to Tony Stark/Iron Man's Dr Frankenstein.  Nice idea, but the realisation of Ultron as a potent character falls short of the mark (no fault of James Spader, who provided the voice).  I'll leave that as an assertion rather than give out spoilers to support it.  Let's just say that Ultron's female collaborator had the makings of a far more intriguing and terrifying baddie.

The special effects and design are top notch, marred only by repetitious and prolonged action sequences.  The dialogue sparkles from time to time, marred only by repetitious and prolonged action sequences.  Those who like action sequences will get their money's worth, but those of us who prefer to be thrilled by plot developments may feel a little short-changed.  Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

Avengers: Age of Ultron - go see it if you like the Marvel thang.  Not nearly the best from their stable of movies, not nearly the worst either.