Goodreads

I've updated the profile links to show several new services I've joined recently, including identi.ca and Goodreads. For those of you unfamiliar with Goodreads, it's basically a social network that allows you to record what you're reading and post reviews of books you've read.
I myself have just finished Charles Stross's excellent new novel Saturn's Children and have posted a review there (although I can't find the cover for the UK version). I really love this book, and highly recommend it to anyone with a liking for SF of any kind. For more details, please see my review.
I'm now reading Stephen Baxter's Flood, about a future where sea levels begin to rise, and don't stop. Ever. Once I've finished it (which probably won't be long as I don't have Internet acces at my house in Norwich so I have little to do, and it's so far been a very enjoyable book), I'll do another review. In the meantime, why not check Goodreads out? It's a great service.

A tragic loss...

The wonderfully gifted Arthur C Clarke has died. As an SF fan, I enjoyed Clarke's work, and also appreciated many of the younger authors who cited him as an influence, such as Stephen Baxter (who is in many ways the spiritual successor to Clarke and worked with him on the Time's Odyssey sequence), Alastair Reynolds, and Charles Stross. His direct and indirect contribution to science fiction is incalculable.

I'd like to quote the final few words of my personal favourite Clarke novel, The Songs of Distant Earth:

His grief, though piercing, would slowly pass. The light of a new sun filled the sky ahead; and soon there would be another birth, on the world that was already drawing the starship Magellan into its final orbit.

One day the pain would be gone; but never the memory.

Goodbye, and thank you for the wonderful stories you brought us.