P. G. Wodehouse and Rex Stout were contemporaries and friends, I recently learned.

The opening pages of Stout’s Champagne For One read like a Bertie Wooster story: an acquaintance known as Dinky, feigning laryngitis, rings to beg Archie to take his place at an aunt’s annual dinner party.

Maybe it only seems more wodehousy than usual because I happen to have a Penguin edition, printed in a typeface that’s not used much on this side of the water (Plantin, a favorite of mine).

Greg Egan complains about sloppy reviews of his latest novel:

About half the reviews of Incandescence made at least one of the following false assertions:

• The Splinter orbits a neutron star.
• Rakesh visits the Splinter.
• The relationship between the novel’s two threads is never revealed.
• The reader learns nothing about the Aloof.

The first two errors result from failing to notice that Egan violates a common pattern of First Contact stories: chapters alternate between two sets of characters who would conventionally meet in the end. Odd-numbered chapters of Incandescence are about Rakesh, a human who learns of evidence of DNA life in an unexpected place and follows the trail; even-numbered chapters are about the discovery of general relativity by the inhabitants of the Splinter, an artificial worldlet orbiting a black hole. Rakesh never finds the Splinter; he arrives at another artificial worldlet, with the same origin as the Splinter but orbiting a neutron star. So there is a clear link between the two threads, but it’s at the wrong end.

And unless I missed something the Aloof remain as mysterious as ever, though slightly less aloof than they seemed before.

Two stories in the same universe as Incandescence are online: Riding the Crocodile and Glory (pdf).

I’m reading Cory Doctorow’s novel Little Brother, which has been nominated for a Prometheus Award. In another tab I’m reading an autobiographical comic-strip by a boy of the same age as the novel’s narrator; switching between them is sometimes surreal.

Though he has lived in San Francisco, Doctorow makes occasional errors.

Even if you’ve never been to San Francisco, chances are you know what the Golden Gate looks like: it’s that big orange suspension bridge that swoops dramatically from the old military base called the Presidio to Sausalito, where all the cutesy wine-country towns are with their scented candle shops and art galleries.

Sausalito is indeed the nearest town to the north end of the bridge, but it is only one of the cutesy towns in Marin County (which isn’t usually called part of “wine country”).

“He was going to take the BART over.”
“Don’t you know about the BART?”

Only a tourist says “the BART”.

“. . . But it used to be impossible to fly or go to the moon or get a hard-drive with more than a few kilobytes of storage. . . .”

Hm, given the narrator’s youth I guess I can believe he has the impression that the first HDs were so small.

… one of her favorite Brazilian tecno-brega bands, Carioca Proibidão — the forbidden guy from Rio.

That ‘ã’ looks out of place. Andre, shouldn’t it be –ido?

Mom’s a freelance relocation specialist who helps British people get settled in in San Francisco. The UK High Commission pays her . . . .

Most of the members of the (British) Commonwealth have the same head of state, so they don’t send each other Ambassadors; they have High Commissioners instead. Doctorow, being Canadian, may have forgotten that the UK has an embassy to the US.

Ocean Beach is way out past Golden Gate park, a stark cliff lined with expensive, doomed houses . . . .

The clifftop houses are at China Beach, further north.

“Mr Governor” sounds alien. I never thought of that before: why do “President” and (usually) “Mayor” get the prefix, but not “Governor” or “Senator”?

Qaeda is misspelled Quaeda two times out of five.

In Greg Egan’s latest novel, as is not uncommon in first contact novels, the chapters alternate between the viewpoints of a human explorer and a member of the newly discovered species. In defiance of convention, Rakesh never finds Roi’s world. (There is room for a sequel, but I don’t expect one.) Roi lives in a tiny artificial world orbiting a black hole, and Rakesh finds a similar world orbiting a neutron star.

So why is Roi in the book? Because she is a leader in the blossoming of science in her world – going from pretechnological ignorance to general relativity in one lifetime, thanks to the peculiar environment – while the world contacted by Rakesh is stagnant.

Glasshouse is Charlie Stross’s best fiction yet, so far as I know.

Got a spam today from someone who evidently used Asimov to feed the gibberish-generator:

Well, are implicated. When I’m most difficult to the regent, the nervous high priest in this tendency reached was up are Now? Hardin jump; remained silent and I’ve located (in which in his neck: was in Mallow’s eyebrows and over a metropolis will become a loophole is insufficient to change: the gravitational forces). Today. You will leave and gold is nonsense! HARI the him: down that: until I gave it is it the devil, do you see: here under the free, agent of the crisis comes I was of the Board; of will protect see that heralded the outlying provinces filled its stainless steel dear, said Ponyets winced at present took no longer open for the gravity for him; to I know the game of barbarism a single face, them; needlessly, until the line that leaped HARI SELDON an admiral, planets in a world they stood for the orders, no mistaking it grows. Finally the sub prefect of Journal and thirty years ago, at starving wages before I have had attended with the. People will be safe. Well, almost a subject up. Sutt, arrested; in I refer to do in Jorane Sutt and a is relatively small and Trade! It no danger and if need a power is gold bears no we’ve given us see these traders. Murder it not heard of a psychologist in Space for a strange occupation for word went pound body of his seat. No time from his back down to the air the gentle pressure. A warning, of knowledge of this point; where the trend, of dissident elements Foundation whispered it’s very Far less trip as far Star, at its side and the outer speaker. And Follow its favor of the contemporary true even so. Gaal felt buffeted right, Mallow: long and they to face. Still relieved irreplaceable and importance in the blue white lie in whole sport and in melodramatic. He in them. Never quite legitimate; monarchies: administrators. Surely you mean also tobacco not. An eyewitness. Or had called on, the future in sour? Hardin had gone a cold distance? The pleadings of our years. Consider myself. But, this stroke of me for my son upon joining; cell, was made by way, Hardin pursed his cap, I’ve went dead center of Trustees, of Anacreon of the inner right. It was the Imperium we have one though how’s that we have full of the plane; narration. They came near The notes and Hober Mallow fastened stepped in the other three that it; upward, out a Smyrnian. Well yes, I’ve never said, methodically, in my turn had only a little of suns. I near the only Anacreon wipe help in a mile long live heah in State of maintaining their priest, and not from the first, time, would be conducted.

If you use “however” in two consecutive sentences, it’s a sign that your paragraph could benefit from rearranging.

If you use “however” in three consecutive sentences, your paragraph may be beyond help.