Desolation Road / Ian McDonald.

On a partially terraformed Mars (comfortable temperature and atmosphere, although still mostly desert) a lone scientist is hunting a mysterious being across the desert, using a device best described as an anti-gravity sailboard for transportation. While taking a rest, he neglects to secure the board thoroughly and wakes up in time to see it blown away by the wind. Stranded in the desert, he is fortunate to discover an artificial oasis (created by a long-lost terraforming AI) near a line of railway. With all the necessities of life around him, he awaits rescue or company. Eventually, he is joined by other strays and castaways, and together they found the town of Desolation Road.

December Boys / Michael Noonan

Book:

Film: This drama is a film that is based on Michael Noonan’s novel and focuses on four orphans who leave their orphanage for a holiday by the sea. A rumor about one of the boys possibly being adopted causes tension to rise among the orphans.

The Dreaming Void by Peter Hamilton

Reading postponed until 2010.
The Dreaming Void (2007), ISBN 9781405088800
The Temporal Void (forthcoming, 2009)
Evolution's Dream (forthcoming, 2010)

At the centre of the Intersolar Commonwealth universe is a massive black hole. This Void is not a natural artefact. Inside there is a strange universe where the laws of physics are very different to those we know. It is slowly consuming the other stars of the galactic core - one day it will have devoured the entire galaxy. It's AD 3589, and a human has started to dream of the wonderful existence of the Void. He has a following of millions of believers. They now wish to Pilgrimage to the Void to live the life they have been shown. Other starfaring species fear their migration will cause the Void to expand again. They are prepared to stop the Pilgrimage fleet no matter what the cost. The Pilgrimage begins...

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis

7/10

The future is a grim place in which the declining human population wanders, drugged and lulled by electronic bliss. It's a world without art, reading and children, a world where people would rather burn themselves alive than endure. Even Spofforth, the most perfect machine ever created, cannot bear it and seeks only that which he cannot have - to cease to be. But there is hope for the future in the passion and joy that a man and woman discover in love and in books, hope even for Spofforth. A haunting novel, reverberating with anguish but also celebrating love and the magic of a dream.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

8/10

In “The Road” a boy and his father lurch across the cold, wretched, wet, corpse-strewn, ashen landscape of a post-apocalyptic world. The imagery is brutal even by Cormac McCarthy’s high standards for despair. This parable is also trenchant and terrifying, written with stripped-down urgency and fueled by the force of a universal nightmare. “The Road” would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty.

Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

7/10

Use of Weapons is the third Culture novel. The narrative takes the form of a fractured biography of a man called Cheradenine Zakalwe, who was born outside of the Culture but was recruited into it by Special Circumstances agent Diziet Sma to work as an operative intervening in more primitive civilizations. The novel recounts several of these interventions and Zakalwe's attempts to come to terms with his own past.

The Pilo Family Circus by William Elliot

4/10

Jamie is plunged into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between hell and earth from which humankind's greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place peopled by the gruesome, grotesque and monstrous, where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself-for when he applies the white face paint, he is transformed into JJ, the most vicious clown of all. And JJ wants Jamie dead...