Tag: book

Pegasus (Part 93)

I sat down on what I hoped was a clean surface. Tabitha did likewise but rubbed it with her hand before looking at me with a frown.

A burly, bald man with a sliver of grey hair and a woman wafer thin sat down opposite us at the round table. Both were in torn, shabby clothes, with black smut on their faces.

The man spoke first.

“Your ship is being loaded with the merchandise. You must bring it to Magellan four, five, niner to receive payment. On the approach to the station, you must say “Deontay” to get past security. You don’t have much time. A heatwave will be upon us imminently.”

I just had to ask.

“What is the merchandise?”

He blinked and then stared straight into my eyes. Then he pulled his bottom lip back before continuing.

“It’s Ezine 126 in tablet form.”

Fuck me, that’s the most proscribed drug there is. Ten times stronger than fentanyl, and much more addictive. And I had thought or perhaps hoped it was a relic from the past. The devastation this was going to cause to the people in the habitat is unfathomable, not to mention the automatic death sentence if caught.

Tabitha held her hand up to her mouth, but I tried to show no emotion.

“Let’s go Tabitha, no time to waste.”

Pegasus (Part 92)

The two Scottish men led us round the rear of the closest semi-standing building to an old manhole. They lifted it open and started climbing down a ladder. Tabitha followed them first, then me. I pulled the manhole close and immediately felt much cooler.

They were waiting for me at the bottom, lit by torches at the side walls.

“Ye shud take some of dis, don wanna ya dying before we even get to no yous,” the blonde one spoke as he showed a flask in his hand.

“What is it?” Tabitha asked.

“Water.”

She slowly gulped it down, before handing it to me. I did likewise. It tasted like the best thing I had ever drank.

“Dis used to be a sewer.”

I stopped drinking to laughter from both men.

“Don worry, the water is from elsewhere. Follow us dis way.”

We walked along the tunnel for a few minutes. It was dry and dusty, and there was little evidence of its previous use. We heard chattering in the distance, then reached a large cavern full of people, tables, and their body odor.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“The East End,” came the reply.

We were then led through the throng of people to an enclosed area with chairs and a table.

Pegasus (Part 91)

“Where are we? Near the coordinates?” Tabitha asked excitedly as she opened the overhead hatch.

Spotting a clearance amongst all the rubble, I set the spacecraft down.

“Not too far from here,” I replied confidently.

Hit by a wave of heat as we exited the craft, unlike anything I’d experienced before., I struggled to get out.

“Just as well, we came during a cold spell.” I looked back to see Tabitha was already sweating. There were crumbling buildings all around us, and little signs of life. It smelled of death. Humanity had really messed this place up.

“We better get moving,” Tabitha added anxiously.

“Yeah, let go. It’s just a hundred meters this way. I’m sure we’ve been monitored, and there waiting for us.”

I was growing anxious, and the heat was not helping.

The short distance we had to walk over the dusty surface was unpleasant. Then, just as I expected two men appeared from before, and I was started by what I think was a thick Scottish accent. That in itself, could have been considered an archaeological find. They were tall in white robes like ancient Roman Emperors, and with flowing black and blond hair.

“Wha brings ya ere?”

“Five, four, six, one, niner,” I replied. The password had been one of the first things I noted on the leaflet.

“Aye, follow me.”

Pegasus (Part 89)

I slowed down the craft. We needed to arrive during the cold front, preferably in the night. Only then, would the temperatures be just about bearable on the surface. Any inhabitants at that latitude lived underground.

Taking out the leaflet, I flicked through the pages.

“So, who are we meeting anyway?” Tabitha asked.

“”We’re to go the coordinates and ask to speak to a Harold Stoker. Only, then will we find out more about what we need to do?” I replied.

“I don’t know about this. Going to Earth doesn’t seem like a great idea.”

“I know but that’s where we’re at. I’ll put the craft on autopilot, we should rest.” I raised my hand and moved it over my shoulder and we briefly held hands.

After what must have been several hours, I opened my eyes. the Earth was larger now. It was possible to make out distinctive features. The seas were mostly a dull purple, but patches were also green. There were the continents, brown with a reddish tint. I could just make out the island that was our destination.

A few minutes later, the craft began to shake.

“”What’s happening?”

Tabitha’s voice was sharp.

“We’re about to enter the Earth’s atmosphere.”

Review of “War Bodies” by Neal Asher

First of all, one very big Happy Christmas to all my readers! I just love this time of year and hope you got lots of presents. If you haven’t already done so, please don’t forget to subscribe.

This novel is a real gem for sci-fi lovers. It is set in the Polity Universe. Piper has grown up in Founder’s World. It was created by a faction that rejected AI and left the rest of humanity many thousands of years ago. Still, they idolize machines and like to replace their body parts with machine parts. Many of them have only a few human parts left. They are ruled by a despot called Castron and as a people, they have somewhat stagnated having a much lower level of advancement and population than would otherwise be expected.

However, recently the Polity have made contact. They are made up of the humans who remained on Earth. AI was totally embraced, and now they even count AIs among their citizens. They are much more advanced and numerous in the Universe. They are also fighting against a great enemy called the Prador who threatens all of humanity.

Piper suffers a work accident that almost costs him his life. However, it unleashes a series of events that come thick and fast. You see, Piper has been created as a weapon using technology beyond even that of the Polity. He never knew but his parents were rebels. What follows is great science fiction and a journey through the entire Polity Universe. The story unfolds beautifully and you’re never really sure who can truly trusted until right up near the end.

The descriptions of space and land battles playing out are brilliant. It also makes you ask interesting questions like whether should AIs be counted as war dead. I’d strongly recommend you give this a read with four stars out of five.

Have you read anything by this author?

Let me know in the comments section below.

Review of “My Left foot” by Christie Brown

This is a book I have always wanted to read. Most of you have probably already seen the eponymous film it later inspired. For those who have not, Brown was the tenth of twenty-two children (thirteen of whom survived). Back then, child mortality was very high, especially in the urban areas of Ireland. Brown was diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy and his parents were told that they should put him into an institution and forget about him because he would be a “mental defective”. From what we know now, this would have been a death sentence. This novel was published in 1954, when Brown was still just twenty two years, so most of it is set in 1930’s and 1940’s Dublin. This was a very different time and place to modern Ireland.

Brown relies on his family for all of his basic needs and his speech in his early years is intelligible to all, but his family. That is why it is such a breakthrough when they realize that he is able to communicate by writing with his left foot. At first, it is just a letter, but with perseverance especially from his mother he improves over time. His mother is the other central character in the novel. She is the one who didn’t give up on him and got him to make the most of what he had. Later Brown also uses his left foot to paint. It turns out that he is very good and this is what brings him to wider public attention in his teenage years, when he wins a competition.

In a way, he was fortunate to be from such a large family as his brothers brought him out and about them with them. However, as happens with many people with disabilities, as one grows older growing awareness of one being somewhat different leads to many isolating themselves. Alas, this is what happened to him, and it appears he rarely left the house from the age of eight or nine.

There were people who cared about his plight though. A young nurse who visited him and encouraged his writing. Then later, a doctor who believes that he can be cured by “physiotherapy”. In a way, I found this part of the book quite interesting as Brown has perhaps inadvertently given a fascinating insight into the early beginnings of Disability Support Services and treatments.

At the time, the cause of cerebral palsy was unknown. It appears that the doctors told him with the required effort, he could become “normal”. They even told him to stop using his left foot as this would hold his recovery back (thankfully, he eventually ignores them). Alas, the benefits of physio were oversold. However, it does make a difference and has benefited many people with disabilities, including myself to this day. They have to rent rooms in which to carry out their activities. There is no Central Remedial Clinic, no IWA, nothing and there wouldn’t be for another decade or so.

Browns writing is quite funny at times, despite the dark content of basically being trapped inside a body that mostly doesn’t function. He originally thought of putting “mental defective” in the title of book, to show how wrong the doctors were. Perhaps, he should have.

The film seems to include many things that are not in this book. There is no fight in a pub for a start! In fact, alcohol is not consumed at all in the book. In reality, Brown is an alcoholic. Also, there’s no mention of his sister becoming pregnant out of wedlock, like in the film, which leads him to shouting at his father to leave her alone. I learned that there is a later novel he writes, which is darker that he never admits to being autobiographical, which maybe is where these scenes came from.

Or maybe they are just pure fiction. The novel ends fairly abruptly at a ceremony to raise funds for cerebral palsy, but he’s still only 22. The film ends with news that Brown married the love of his life before choking to death at the age of 49. In reality, according to his family he married a former prostitutes who neglected him. It does seem that he loved her though, so who are we to judge?

In any event, he will always be one of my heroes. He triumphed against great adversity, and played a role in highlighting disability in the Irish mainstream. It may come as no surprise that it gets five stars out of five from me.