The Concrete Jungle

This is a story that was also in the Atrocity Archives book by Charles Stross – I didn’t actually realise it wasn’t all one story as it contains the same people and is based in the same world and is somewhat foreshadowed in The Atrocity Archives.

And I think for anyone who has lived, worked or had to just visit Milton Keynes it is a must!

What was really interesting for me though was the other chunks of writing at the back of the book – there were discussions on thrillers and horrors as he swapped authors and genres of those classic texts that had inspired him. I have my own theory that setting and type of book are seperate and that ‘genres’ don’t really exist. What we would think of as a genre are end points on phase diagrams etc…

To be I’m not even sure if Science Fiction as such exists anymore becuase any story set in say two three years or decades down the line will have to include technological developments that would have frazzeled the brains of authors 50 years ago and been the realm of pure scifi. Fiction that contains science – hmmmm.

This has also lead me to question some things about the Punk stories but I’ll not go into them here.

Anyway basically I really liked this story – no where near as dark as the Atrocity Archives but conveys alot about the governance of this country as far as I’m concerned.

Posted: Monday, December 28th, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
Categories: Uncategorized.
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