[books 2012] Ken Macleod

11. Learning the World: A Novel of First Contact by Ken Macleod

A spaceship whose purpose is to travel the galaxy and plant new colonies finds a sign of life, for the first time in thousands of years of colonisation.  The "aliens" are a sort of bat people at a level of development that roughly parallels the eve of World War I.

The story is told alternately by the point of view of each people.  The title is from a teenager on the spaceship - until now, they have assumed they are alone in the galaxy.  The discovery of alien life means that they have to re-learn everything they thought they knew about the universe.

It doesn't end the way you think it will.

By Macleod's standards, there's hardly any difficult political or philosophical ideas to wrestle with, and it's an easy and quick read.  I highly recommend it - I don't love it the way I did The Night Sessions, but it's very good indeed.  And a stand-alone, so you're not committed to reading a whole series.

No, you can't borrow it - I got it from the library.

Incidentally he's got a new book out next week, and I haven't even read the last one yet.

[books 2012] Vanished Kingdoms

12.  Vanished Kingdoms - The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies

Potted histories of a tiny number of the states in Europe which no longer exist.  Some really helpful - while I wouldn't say I thoroughly understand Burgundy, Savoy or Prussia, a lot of puzzle pieces have popped into place for me.  Some kind of odd - the way Ireland evolved into the ROI from the Free State, is mainly a vehicle t Davies to speculate on the way that the UK will eventually die (because all states eventually do).

nwhyte reviewed this a while ago and found more mistakes than I did, but he does know more about just about everything than I do!  The one howler I spotted was such an outdated assessment of the Macpherson/Ossian gaelic poetry controversy that I had to look it up on Wikipedia to make sure the position hadn't changed since I was last studying that kind of thing.

Enormous, but well worth while.  I just wish that I hadn't had to read the whole thing in three weeks, but there's a waiting list at the library so it couldn't be renewed.  What I really wanted was more time with the bibliography, but on balance it's probably a good thing that I didn't come away with a bigger list of Things To Read.