spaziolibero

I re-read Good Omens , ten years after the first time, to get ready for the upcoming series on Prime Video (and I will start the first episode the second I finish writing this) and just a few pages in I realized something: I terribly miss Terry Pratchett. I discovered him way too late in life, just a decade ago or so, but he became one of my favourite writers, both for what he wrote, and for how he wrote it, and this book is one of the best things ever to come out of his imagination. Not only his, of course - and in some pages the dreamy wickedness of Neil Gaiman, who, by the way, is another one of my favourite writers, is unmistakable - but I think the general tone of Good Omens is more Pratchett-esque than Gaiman-esque; and since it was the first novel by Sir Terry I read since The Shepherd's Crown , in 2015, it had all the nostalgic beauty of a meeting with an old friend. The book is, quite simply, a masterpiece. It's a tale about the Armageddon and th...

Quello nella fotografia lì a destra, scattata questa mattina, è il mio polso, e quello al mio polso è il mio Moonwatch ; questo significa che l' Operazione Speedmaster , annunciata qui sul blog quasi dieci anni fa , e iniziata davvero quasi nove , è felicemente conclusa. Nove anni di raccolta certosina di tutte le Euro-monete non italiane transitate nelle mie tasche mi hanno permesso di mettere insieme un discreto malloppo, sufficiente per l'acquisto di un buon usato. Una graditissima e, trattandosi di me, incredibilmente tempestiva botta di culo mi ha invece permesso di comprare* allo stesso prezzo e forse anche qualcosa meno, uno Speedmaster nuovo, con corredo completo e garanzia. Come è facile immaginare, ne sono felicissimo. In parte perché, pur avendolo maneggiato solo per una settimana scarsa, me ne sono già innamorato: anche senza considerare l'inevitabile suggestione che il Moonwatch si porta dietro per qualunque appassionato di spazio e di astronautica, lo trov...

I read quite a lot of sci-fi, and the name of Harlan Ellison always loomed large above the genre as one of its giants. I had never read a single line by him before this anthology of award-winning stories, and now that I did, I can say this: a giant he was, but of much more than just sci-fi. He was erudite and versatile, both in style and topics, he wrote in an amazing English (if, at times, a little too self-satisfied), and, most importantly, he wrote stunning tales. I don't know if the short stories in this book are a good sample of his work, but they are one hell of a reading; just to name three: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is one of the bleakest, most distressing ones I have ever read, Jeffty Is Five one of the saddest and most nostalgic, Djinn, No Chaser one of the darkest and funniest (yes, both). I don't think I will deal again with Ellison shortly: he's not an easy reading, and my to-read list is starting to tend to infinite, but I...

A friend of mine (well, I call him a friend even if we never met in the flesh, but we hung around the same virtual plazas for more than twenty years) recommended me this book, describing it as "Pure Epic". He has a point, there is a strong classical epic component, even with Gods messing with the lives of simple mortals, but I think this is more like The Iliad meets Hunger Games meets Harry Potter , on Mars. The start is a little slow, but from the "resurrection" onward this is one of the most captivating and original sci-fi books I read in a long time. And as all good sci-fi, behind its bio-manipulation and anti-gravity tech façade, it deals with timeless themes such as social justice, revenge, identity, leadership, loyalty. It is the first book of a trilogy, and I will definitely read the other two, so I will write more, and more in depth, at the end of the whole story. // Un amico (lo chiamo "amico" anche se non ci siamo mai in...