A first cut of vol 1 of my SF novel can be downloaded here. Comments welcome! If for any reason you’re having problems downloading this, let me know offline and I shall send you the file.
I should add, because I know that some people are squeamish about such things, that the book contains explicit, graphic and full-frontal references to religion.
There’s also quite a lot of violence, sex and rude words, so if you are easily embarrassed, don’t show this book to your parents. And did I mention the sex?
Despite all that, I don’t there is any mention of drug use whatsoever. So I’m OK on that score.
Henry –
This is where I really wish I had one of those electronic reader jobbies. As an SF devotee I’d love to read it, but I can’t cope with the thought of ploughing through 148 pages on the screen, and I’m too tight (I mean, poor) to print them off.
You say ‘comments welcome’ – do you want feedback here or offline? I’ll give one quick bit straight away – I can see why you are doing it, but I still find the NAMES in CAPITALS in the prologue more than a little IRRITATING.
As an SF devotee I’d love to read it, but I can’t cope with the thought of ploughing through 148 pages on the screen
All I can do is sympathize. What I usually do in this situation is reformat the text into a smallish font and print it out double-sided, two pages per side. That usually works for me.
You say ‘comments welcome’ – do you want feedback here or offline?
Whatever works for you. Getting any feedback at all, even about CAPITALS, is good.
I found a typo.
Can’t remember where, though.
Richard, that reminds me of a field trip – literally, a trip to a field – where me and some other Ice-Age specialists were looking at a hole in the ground dug by an earthmover.
Me and another vertebrate palaeontologist were teasing the palynologist (no, you look it up) by picking over the huge pile of removed topsoil and remarking in loud, excited tones, “Ooh, look! Here’s a pollen grain! And – get this – here’s another one!”
The field was near Clacton. Honestly, we British Pleistocene specialists had all the romantic locations. Not for us Olduvai Gorge, or Big Bone Lick, but (and I kid you not), Seven Kings Railway Station, and the Tennessee Pancake House Channel Infill, Trafalgar Square.
A fellow graduate student who worked on the dashing Devonian and referred to the prosaic Pleistocene as ‘topsoil’, came up with a generic title to any paper on the British Pleistocene:
The Middle Pleistocene locality at Tesco’s Car Park, Bletchley, being the first record in Britain of Kellogg’s Shrew (Branflakesorex crunchii): correlations with the Scandinavian Findus Glaciation.
I’m guessing you really had to be there, Henry.
What, Tesco’s Car Park? Well, someone has to.
OK, in pedantry mode: no comma in “Benedictus benedicat”.
Just off to sing in Switzerland (OK, how many of you know the Swiss national Anthem?). Comments later.
Bon voyage, David. I’d guess that it is long on watches and chocolate and short on naval victories, no?
Ah, you can do a lot of damage on those lakes even with a frigate!
Mind you, I think it’s reminiscent of FDR’s supposed comment on pre-war Hungary:
“Let me get this straight. Hungary is a monarchy without a king, that is ruled by a regent who is an Admiral without a navy?”