#pandemic — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Ireland @[email protected] · 2026-09-18 · 18:20 UTC

https://www.europesays.com/ie/695124/ Global Virus Network monitors spreading avian influenza in Australian mammals #AvianInfluenza #BirdFlu #Éire #flu #Genomic #H5N1 #Health #IE #Influenza #Ireland #Pandemic #pH #PublicHealth #Research #Vaccine #Virology #virus

#virus #virology #vaccine #research #publichealth #ph

Bytes Europe @[email protected] · 2026-09-18 · 17:46 UTC

Global Virus Network monitors spreading avian influenza in Australian mammals https://www.byteseu.com/2377569/ #Australia #AvianInfluenza #BirdFlu #Flu #Genomic #H5N1 #influenza #Pandemic #pH #PublicHealth #Research #vaccine #virology #virus

#virus #virology #vaccine #research #publichealth #ph

Wilfred Books @[email protected] · 2026-09-18 · 14:41 UTC

Book Reviews

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

Anthology #71

Made Things, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This relatively short novel is very much in fantasy territory [although not the same as the first story I recently read by the author, Service Model], and it is pitched somewhere between Pinocchio and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The made things are mostly puppets, which have been imbued with magic to give them sentient life, and the protagonist is a young girl, Coppelia, a name chosen as an obvious reference to the original story, although there, Coppélia is herself a doll, “a strange girl in the house of a dollmaker named Dr. Coppélius”, whereas here, Coppelia is human, regularly disparagingly referred to as The Moppet. She survives as a thief, but also enjoys making puppets and has created two, which she has been able to give life to, as regular companions & fellow thieves to assist her in these endeavours. Without wishing to spoil the plot, the story is a morality tale of the pernicious effect of great wealth, and how its unfair distribution creates an unjust society, so pretty much a tale as old as time, using magic as a catalyst; there is also a bonus self-contained short story after the main one, and it is set in the same imaginary world: it is called Precious Little Things. If you enjoyed the recent charming and delightful TV series written & acted in by Mackenzie Crook, called Small Prophets, about Homunculi [also featured in these stories] then you should enjoy these fantastical stories. The hardback I read was published in 2025 by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London [2019, Tom Doherty Associates/Tor Publishing Group], ISBN 978-1-0350-7169-2.

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

This is an intriguing story, all the more so because it is either spookily prescient, or it presents a situation which, but for the absence of a lethal, random viral mutation, could so easily have happened; or both. It is not spoiling the plot, which is central to the story, to explain that a global pandemic occurs; although the exact date of origin is not specified, but presumably it would be some time within the last fifteen years, around when the book was written [so well before Covid]. The infection is called Georgia Flu; Georgia as in the Caucasus region at the intersection of eastern Europe and west Asia; so not Georgia USA, although the action takes place partly in Toronto, Canada, and the USA, predominantly the Great Lakes area; and it eradicates the majority of the world’s population, because it takes effect so quickly that, presumably, there was no opportunity to find an affective treatment. The title of the story is that of a comic [or perhaps more appropriately, a graphic novel, as it was not intended only for children] created by the first wife of one of the main characters, Arthur Leander, who is a middle-aged actor who dies of a heart attack on stage in Toronto, while performing King Lear, immediately before the pandemic hits. The narrative is not chronological, so it does require some concentration to keep the various characters & locations in order, but the different expositions do help to explain how the characters are feeling at any given time, how they connect, and what their motivations are. Understandably, once deprived of all of the conveniences of modern life, after any available resources have been looted, people do struggle to survive, but the story is a testament, both optimistic and encouraging, to how resourceful & resilient human beings are in the face of such drastic circumstances: I understand it has been dramatised for television, so I will keep a look out for it. The paperback I read was published in 2015 [2014] by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London; 2014, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., New York, USA; Harper Avenue, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., Canada, ISBN 978-1-4472-6897-0.

Gimson’s Heroes, by Andrew Gimson

This book’s sub-title is Brief Lives from Boudicca to Churchill, which is a more specific description of the subject-matter but for me, without disclosing my own political standpoint, because the author’s background is right of centre, I have to assess this inevitably eclectic anthology with some circumspection; the affiliations of the supporters quoted on the front & back covers are quite clear, however: Jacob Rees-Mogg [front], John Rentoul and Charles Moore [back]. Interestingly, Gimson’s wife stood unsuccessfully for Labour in the 2010 general election, which must have made for some interesting discussions over the table at home! As I write above, the selection must be eclectic, and there are very few I could take issue with the author over; notwithstanding that only eleven of the fifty ‘heroes’ as designated are women, most of whom are well known. I can’t agree entirely with the author’s definition of a hero, or how we should only examine a candidate in his or her contemporary context, without reference to how moral standards have evolved over the centuries; there is a significant number of monarchs & aristocratic, imperialist and often blood-thirsty adventurers, all of whom were mainly concerned with enriching themselves & their governments in more or less equal measure, usually at the expense of the poor indigenous populations, which has been a very contentious subject of discussion in recent years. To be fair, even the worst of these have done some good, and there are several herein who have campaigned tirelessly to end the abhorrent slave trade; also, the ‘lives’ are predominantly brief, so reading about the worst, in one’s opinion, is not an onerously long task. This does make a pleasant change from fiction though. The paperback I read was published in 2026 [2025] by Constable, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, London, ISBN 978-1-4087-2170-4.

Homebound, by Portia Elan

This fantasy novel is played out over six hundred years; although as is the way such narratives are generally structured, the time periods are interspersed, to prevent the plot development becoming too readily obvious; and it concerns the lives of five connected characters. It begins in 1983, at the birth of home computing, a time I readily identify with, albeit a few years later, as this is when my interest in computers & coding began, at a very basic [pun intended] level. Becks is a teenager in Cincinnati, USA, who is full of all the normal angst, but her uncle, the only person who understood her, has recently died; his legacy to her, other than poignant memories, is a half-finished computer game, which will attain real significance as the centuries progress. Later, the feared catastrophic global warming has occurred, leaving the earth with fewer usable landmasses so, in the 26th century, two of the characters live permanently on a large yacht. They pick up 2 human travellers, accompanied by a sentient robot, a so-called AmAye [ambulant AI]. They are trying to find the landing point of a returning galactic voyager, improbaby [and somewhat cheekily] named California Solo, who is returning to save the earth, as has been foretold over the centuries. In between, we learn about the development of the Ayes, and how only one evidently developed sentience. In addition to the main storyline, there are 2 subtexts: how same-sex relationships should be completely acceptable [more relevant at the outset], and that religion seems to be surprisingly resilient; especially one particular one originating in the Middle East, to be still regularly practised by the 26th century travellers. There is also the emotional effect of the realisation of the true meaning of the computer game, which is played throughout the narrative. The narrative requires concentration, to remember how the characters are connected, but it is an interesting story, nonetheless. The hardback I read was published in 2026 by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage/Penguin Random House, London [2026, Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster LLC, USA], ISBN 978-1-7847-4616-2.

#AI #Canada #Cincinnati #Coppelia #Georgia #Homunculi #KingLear #Pandemic #Robots #Toronto #USA

#ai #canada #cincinnati #coppelia #georgia #homunculi

Wilfred Books @[email protected] · 2026-09-18 · 14:41 UTC

Book Reviews

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

Anthology #71

Made Things, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This relatively short novel is very much in fantasy territory [although not the same as the first story I recently read by the author, Service Model], and it is pitched somewhere between Pinocchio and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The made things are mostly puppets, which have been imbued with magic to give them sentient life, and the protagonist is a young girl, Coppelia, a name chosen as an obvious reference to the original story, although there, Coppélia is herself a doll, “a strange girl in the house of a dollmaker named Dr. Coppélius”, whereas here, Coppelia is human, regularly disparagingly referred to as The Moppet. She survives as a thief, but also enjoys making puppets and has created two, which she has been able to give life to, as regular companions & fellow thieves to assist her in these endeavours. Without wishing to spoil the plot, the story is a morality tale of the pernicious effect of great wealth, and how its unfair distribution creates an unjust society, so pretty much a tale as old as time, using magic as a catalyst; there is also a bonus self-contained short story after the main one, and it is set in the same imaginary world: it is called Precious Little Things. If you enjoyed the recent charming and delightful TV series written & acted in by Mackenzie Crook, called Small Prophets, about Homunculi [also featured in these stories] then you should enjoy these fantastical stories. The hardback I read was published in 2025 by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London [2019, Tom Doherty Associates/Tor Publishing Group], ISBN 978-1-0350-7169-2.

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

This is an intriguing story, all the more so because it is either spookily prescient, or it presents a situation which, but for the absence of a lethal, random viral mutation, could so easily have happened; or both. It is not spoiling the plot, which is central to the story, to explain that a global pandemic occurs; although the exact date of origin is not specified, but presumably it would be some time within the last fifteen years, around when the book was written [so well before Covid]. The infection is called Georgia Flu; Georgia as in the Caucasus region at the intersection of eastern Europe and west Asia; so not Georgia USA, although the action takes place partly in Toronto, Canada, and the USA, predominantly the Great Lakes area; and it eradicates the majority of the world’s population, because it takes effect so quickly that, presumably, there was no opportunity to find an affective treatment. The title of the story is that of a comic [or perhaps more appropriately, a graphic novel, as it was not intended only for children] created by the first wife of one of the main characters, Arthur Leander, who is a middle-aged actor who dies of a heart attack on stage in Toronto, while performing King Lear, immediately before the pandemic hits. The narrative is not chronological, so it does require some concentration to keep the various characters & locations in order, but the different expositions do help to explain how the characters are feeling at any given time, how they connect, and what their motivations are. Understandably, once deprived of all of the conveniences of modern life, after any available resources have been looted, people do struggle to survive, but the story is a testament, both optimistic and encouraging, to how resourceful & resilient human beings are in the face of such drastic circumstances: I understand it has been dramatised for television, so I will keep a look out for it. The paperback I read was published in 2015 [2014] by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London; 2014, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., New York, USA; Harper Avenue, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., Canada, ISBN 978-1-4472-6897-0.

Gimson’s Heroes, by Andrew Gimson

This book’s sub-title is Brief Lives from Boudicca to Churchill, which is a more specific description of the subject-matter but for me, without disclosing my own political standpoint, because the author’s background is right of centre, I have to assess this inevitably eclectic anthology with some circumspection; the affiliations of the supporters quoted on the front & back covers are quite clear, however: Jacob Rees-Mogg [front], John Rentoul and Charles Moore [back]. Interestingly, Gimson’s wife stood unsuccessfully for Labour in the 2010 general election, which must have made for some interesting discussions over the table at home! As I write above, the selection must be eclectic, and there are very few I could take issue with the author over; notwithstanding that only eleven of the fifty ‘heroes’ as designated are women, most of whom are well known. I can’t agree entirely with the author’s definition of a hero, or how we should only examine a candidate in his or her contemporary context, without reference to how moral standards have evolved over the centuries; there is a significant number of monarchs & aristocratic, imperialist and often blood-thirsty adventurers, all of whom were mainly concerned with enriching themselves & their governments in more or less equal measure, usually at the expense of the poor indigenous populations, which has been a very contentious subject of discussion in recent years. To be fair, even the worst of these have done some good, and there are several herein who have campaigned tirelessly to end the abhorrent slave trade; also, the ‘lives’ are predominantly brief, so reading about the worst, in one’s opinion, is not an onerously long task. This does make a pleasant change from fiction though. The paperback I read was published in 2026 [2025] by Constable, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, London, ISBN 978-1-4087-2170-4.

Homebound, by Portia Elan

This fantasy novel is played out over six hundred years; although as is the way such narratives are generally structured, the time periods are interspersed, to prevent the plot development becoming too readily obvious; and it concerns the lives of five connected characters. It begins in 1983, at the birth of home computing, a time I readily identify with, albeit a few years later, as this is when my interest in computers & coding began, at a very basic [pun intended] level. Becks is a teenager in Cincinnati, USA, who is full of all the normal angst, but her uncle, the only person who understood her, has recently died; his legacy to her, other than poignant memories, is a half-finished computer game, which will attain real significance as the centuries progress. Later, the feared catastrophic global warming has occurred, leaving the earth with fewer usable landmasses so, in the 26th century, two of the characters live permanently on a large yacht. They pick up 2 human travellers, accompanied by a sentient robot, a so-called AmAye [ambulant AI]. They are trying to find the landing point of a returning galactic voyager, improbaby [and somewhat cheekily] named California Solo, who is returning to save the earth, as has been foretold over the centuries. In between, we learn about the development of the Ayes, and how only one evidently developed sentience. In addition to the main storyline, there are 2 subtexts: how same-sex relationships should be completely acceptable [more relevant at the outset], and that religion seems to be surprisingly resilient; especially one particular one originating in the Middle East, to be still regularly practised by the 26th century travellers. There is also the emotional effect of the realisation of the true meaning of the computer game, which is played throughout the narrative. The narrative requires concentration, to remember how the characters are connected, but it is an interesting story, nonetheless. The hardback I read was published in 2026 by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage/Penguin Random House, London [2026, Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster LLC, USA], ISBN 978-1-7847-4616-2.

#AI #Canada #Cincinnati #Coppelia #Georgia #Homunculi #KingLear #Pandemic #Robots #Toronto #USA

#ai #canada #cincinnati #coppelia #georgia #homunculi

Wilfred Books @[email protected] · 2026-09-18 · 14:41 UTC

Book Reviews

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

Anthology #71

Made Things, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This relatively short novel is very much in fantasy territory [although not the same as the first story I recently read by the author, Service Model], and it is pitched somewhere between Pinocchio and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The made things are mostly puppets, which have been imbued with magic to give them sentient life, and the protagonist is a young girl, Coppelia, a name chosen as an obvious reference to the original story, although there, Coppélia is herself a doll, “a strange girl in the house of a dollmaker named Dr. Coppélius”, whereas here, Coppelia is human, regularly disparagingly referred to as The Moppet. She survives as a thief, but also enjoys making puppets and has created two, which she has been able to give life to, as regular companions & fellow thieves to assist her in these endeavours. Without wishing to spoil the plot, the story is a morality tale of the pernicious effect of great wealth, and how its unfair distribution creates an unjust society, so pretty much a tale as old as time, using magic as a catalyst; there is also a bonus self-contained short story after the main one, and it is set in the same imaginary world: it is called Precious Little Things. If you enjoyed the recent charming and delightful TV series written & acted in by Mackenzie Crook, called Small Prophets, about Homunculi [also featured in these stories] then you should enjoy these fantastical stories. The hardback I read was published in 2025 by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London [2019, Tom Doherty Associates/Tor Publishing Group], ISBN 978-1-0350-7169-2.

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

This is an intriguing story, all the more so because it is either spookily prescient, or it presents a situation which, but for the absence of a lethal, random viral mutation, could so easily have happened; or both. It is not spoiling the plot, which is central to the story, to explain that a global pandemic occurs; although the exact date of origin is not specified, but presumably it would be some time within the last fifteen years, around when the book was written [so well before Covid]. The infection is called Georgia Flu; Georgia as in the Caucasus region at the intersection of eastern Europe and west Asia; so not Georgia USA, although the action takes place partly in Toronto, Canada, and the USA, predominantly the Great Lakes area; and it eradicates the majority of the world’s population, because it takes effect so quickly that, presumably, there was no opportunity to find an affective treatment. The title of the story is that of a comic [or perhaps more appropriately, a graphic novel, as it was not intended only for children] created by the first wife of one of the main characters, Arthur Leander, who is a middle-aged actor who dies of a heart attack on stage in Toronto, while performing King Lear, immediately before the pandemic hits. The narrative is not chronological, so it does require some concentration to keep the various characters & locations in order, but the different expositions do help to explain how the characters are feeling at any given time, how they connect, and what their motivations are. Understandably, once deprived of all of the conveniences of modern life, after any available resources have been looted, people do struggle to survive, but the story is a testament, both optimistic and encouraging, to how resourceful & resilient human beings are in the face of such drastic circumstances: I understand it has been dramatised for television, so I will keep a look out for it. The paperback I read was published in 2015 [2014] by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London; 2014, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., New York, USA; Harper Avenue, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., Canada, ISBN 978-1-4472-6897-0.

Gimson’s Heroes, by Andrew Gimson

This book’s sub-title is Brief Lives from Boudicca to Churchill, which is a more specific description of the subject-matter but for me, without disclosing my own political standpoint, because the author’s background is right of centre, I have to assess this inevitably eclectic anthology with some circumspection; the affiliations of the supporters quoted on the front & back covers are quite clear, however: Jacob Rees-Mogg [front], John Rentoul and Charles Moore [back]. Interestingly, Gimson’s wife stood unsuccessfully for Labour in the 2010 general election, which must have made for some interesting discussions over the table at home! As I write above, the selection must be eclectic, and there are very few I could take issue with the author over; notwithstanding that only eleven of the fifty ‘heroes’ as designated are women, most of whom are well known. I can’t agree entirely with the author’s definition of a hero, or how we should only examine a candidate in his or her contemporary context, without reference to how moral standards have evolved over the centuries; there is a significant number of monarchs & aristocratic, imperialist and often blood-thirsty adventurers, all of whom were mainly concerned with enriching themselves & their governments in more or less equal measure, usually at the expense of the poor indigenous populations, which has been a very contentious subject of discussion in recent years. To be fair, even the worst of these have done some good, and there are several herein who have campaigned tirelessly to end the abhorrent slave trade; also, the ‘lives’ are predominantly brief, so reading about the worst, in one’s opinion, is not an onerously long task. This does make a pleasant change from fiction though. The paperback I read was published in 2026 [2025] by Constable, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, London, ISBN 978-1-4087-2170-4.

Homebound, by Portia Elan

This fantasy novel is played out over six hundred years; although as is the way such narratives are generally structured, the time periods are interspersed, to prevent the plot development becoming too readily obvious; and it concerns the lives of five connected characters. It begins in 1983, at the birth of home computing, a time I readily identify with, albeit a few years later, as this is when my interest in computers & coding began, at a very basic [pun intended] level. Becks is a teenager in Cincinnati, USA, who is full of all the normal angst, but her uncle, the only person who understood her, has recently died; his legacy to her, other than poignant memories, is a half-finished computer game, which will attain real significance as the centuries progress. Later, the feared catastrophic global warming has occurred, leaving the earth with fewer usable landmasses so, in the 26th century, two of the characters live permanently on a large yacht. They pick up 2 human travellers, accompanied by a sentient robot, a so-called AmAye [ambulant AI]. They are trying to find the landing point of a returning galactic voyager, improbaby [and somewhat cheekily] named California Solo, who is returning to save the earth, as has been foretold over the centuries. In between, we learn about the development of the Ayes, and how only one evidently developed sentience. In addition to the main storyline, there are 2 subtexts: how same-sex relationships should be completely acceptable [more relevant at the outset], and that religion seems to be surprisingly resilient; especially one particular one originating in the Middle East, to be still regularly practised by the 26th century travellers. There is also the emotional effect of the realisation of the true meaning of the computer game, which is played throughout the narrative. The narrative requires concentration, to remember how the characters are connected, but it is an interesting story, nonetheless. The hardback I read was published in 2026 by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage/Penguin Random House, London [2026, Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster LLC, USA], ISBN 978-1-7847-4616-2.

#AI #Canada #Cincinnati #Coppelia #Georgia #Homunculi #KingLear #Pandemic #Robots #Toronto #USA

#ai #canada #cincinnati #coppelia #georgia #homunculi

Wilfred Books @[email protected] · 2026-09-18 · 14:41 UTC

Book Reviews

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

Anthology #71

Made Things, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This relatively short novel is very much in fantasy territory [although not the same as the first story I recently read by the author, Service Model], and it is pitched somewhere between Pinocchio and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The made things are mostly puppets, which have been imbued with magic to give them sentient life, and the protagonist is a young girl, Coppelia, a name chosen as an obvious reference to the original story, although there, Coppélia is herself a doll, “a strange girl in the house of a dollmaker named Dr. Coppélius”, whereas here, Coppelia is human, regularly disparagingly referred to as The Moppet. She survives as a thief, but also enjoys making puppets and has created two, which she has been able to give life to, as regular companions & fellow thieves to assist her in these endeavours. Without wishing to spoil the plot, the story is a morality tale of the pernicious effect of great wealth, and how its unfair distribution creates an unjust society, so pretty much a tale as old as time, using magic as a catalyst; there is also a bonus self-contained short story after the main one, and it is set in the same imaginary world: it is called Precious Little Things. If you enjoyed the recent charming and delightful TV series written & acted in by Mackenzie Crook, called Small Prophets, about Homunculi [also featured in these stories] then you should enjoy these fantastical stories. The hardback I read was published in 2025 by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London [2019, Tom Doherty Associates/Tor Publishing Group], ISBN 978-1-0350-7169-2.

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

This is an intriguing story, all the more so because it is either spookily prescient, or it presents a situation which, but for the absence of a lethal, random viral mutation, could so easily have happened; or both. It is not spoiling the plot, which is central to the story, to explain that a global pandemic occurs; although the exact date of origin is not specified, but presumably it would be some time within the last fifteen years, around when the book was written [so well before Covid]. The infection is called Georgia Flu; Georgia as in the Caucasus region at the intersection of eastern Europe and west Asia; so not Georgia USA, although the action takes place partly in Toronto, Canada, and the USA, predominantly the Great Lakes area; and it eradicates the majority of the world’s population, because it takes effect so quickly that, presumably, there was no opportunity to find an affective treatment. The title of the story is that of a comic [or perhaps more appropriately, a graphic novel, as it was not intended only for children] created by the first wife of one of the main characters, Arthur Leander, who is a middle-aged actor who dies of a heart attack on stage in Toronto, while performing King Lear, immediately before the pandemic hits. The narrative is not chronological, so it does require some concentration to keep the various characters & locations in order, but the different expositions do help to explain how the characters are feeling at any given time, how they connect, and what their motivations are. Understandably, once deprived of all of the conveniences of modern life, after any available resources have been looted, people do struggle to survive, but the story is a testament, both optimistic and encouraging, to how resourceful & resilient human beings are in the face of such drastic circumstances: I understand it has been dramatised for television, so I will keep a look out for it. The paperback I read was published in 2015 [2014] by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London; 2014, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., New York, USA; Harper Avenue, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., Canada, ISBN 978-1-4472-6897-0.

Gimson’s Heroes, by Andrew Gimson

This book’s sub-title is Brief Lives from Boudicca to Churchill, which is a more specific description of the subject-matter but for me, without disclosing my own political standpoint, because the author’s background is right of centre, I have to assess this inevitably eclectic anthology with some circumspection; the affiliations of the supporters quoted on the front & back covers are quite clear, however: Jacob Rees-Mogg [front], John Rentoul and Charles Moore [back]. Interestingly, Gimson’s wife stood unsuccessfully for Labour in the 2010 general election, which must have made for some interesting discussions over the table at home! As I write above, the selection must be eclectic, and there are very few I could take issue with the author over; notwithstanding that only eleven of the fifty ‘heroes’ as designated are women, most of whom are well known. I can’t agree entirely with the author’s definition of a hero, or how we should only examine a candidate in his or her contemporary context, without reference to how moral standards have evolved over the centuries; there is a significant number of monarchs & aristocratic, imperialist and often blood-thirsty adventurers, all of whom were mainly concerned with enriching themselves & their governments in more or less equal measure, usually at the expense of the poor indigenous populations, which has been a very contentious subject of discussion in recent years. To be fair, even the worst of these have done some good, and there are several herein who have campaigned tirelessly to end the abhorrent slave trade; also, the ‘lives’ are predominantly brief, so reading about the worst, in one’s opinion, is not an onerously long task. This does make a pleasant change from fiction though. The paperback I read was published in 2026 [2025] by Constable, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, London, ISBN 978-1-4087-2170-4.

Homebound, by Portia Elan

This fantasy novel is played out over six hundred years; although as is the way such narratives are generally structured, the time periods are interspersed, to prevent the plot development becoming too readily obvious; and it concerns the lives of five connected characters. It begins in 1983, at the birth of home computing, a time I readily identify with, albeit a few years later, as this is when my interest in computers & coding began, at a very basic [pun intended] level. Becks is a teenager in Cincinnati, USA, who is full of all the normal angst, but her uncle, the only person who understood her, has recently died; his legacy to her, other than poignant memories, is a half-finished computer game, which will attain real significance as the centuries progress. Later, the feared catastrophic global warming has occurred, leaving the earth with fewer usable landmasses so, in the 26th century, two of the characters live permanently on a large yacht. They pick up 2 human travellers, accompanied by a sentient robot, a so-called AmAye [ambulant AI]. They are trying to find the landing point of a returning galactic voyager, improbaby [and somewhat cheekily] named California Solo, who is returning to save the earth, as has been foretold over the centuries. In between, we learn about the development of the Ayes, and how only one evidently developed sentience. In addition to the main storyline, there are 2 subtexts: how same-sex relationships should be completely acceptable [more relevant at the outset], and that religion seems to be surprisingly resilient; especially one particular one originating in the Middle East, to be still regularly practised by the 26th century travellers. There is also the emotional effect of the realisation of the true meaning of the computer game, which is played throughout the narrative. The narrative requires concentration, to remember how the characters are connected, but it is an interesting story, nonetheless. The hardback I read was published in 2026 by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage/Penguin Random House, London [2026, Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster LLC, USA], ISBN 978-1-7847-4616-2.

#AI #Canada #Cincinnati #Coppelia #Georgia #Homunculi #KingLear #Pandemic #Robots #Toronto #USA

#usa #toronto #robots #pandemic #kinglear #homunculi

Wilfred Books @[email protected] · 2026-09-18 · 14:41 UTC

Book Reviews

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

Anthology #71

Made Things, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This relatively short novel is very much in fantasy territory [although not the same as the first story I recently read by the author, Service Model], and it is pitched somewhere between Pinocchio and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The made things are mostly puppets, which have been imbued with magic to give them sentient life, and the protagonist is a young girl, Coppelia, a name chosen as an obvious reference to the original story, although there, Coppélia is herself a doll, “a strange girl in the house of a dollmaker named Dr. Coppélius”, whereas here, Coppelia is human, regularly disparagingly referred to as The Moppet. She survives as a thief, but also enjoys making puppets and has created two, which she has been able to give life to, as regular companions & fellow thieves to assist her in these endeavours. Without wishing to spoil the plot, the story is a morality tale of the pernicious effect of great wealth, and how its unfair distribution creates an unjust society, so pretty much a tale as old as time, using magic as a catalyst; there is also a bonus self-contained short story after the main one, and it is set in the same imaginary world: it is called Precious Little Things. If you enjoyed the recent charming and delightful TV series written & acted in by Mackenzie Crook, called Small Prophets, about Homunculi [also featured in these stories] then you should enjoy these fantastical stories. The hardback I read was published in 2025 by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London [2019, Tom Doherty Associates/Tor Publishing Group], ISBN 978-1-0350-7169-2.

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

This is an intriguing story, all the more so because it is either spookily prescient, or it presents a situation which, but for the absence of a lethal, random viral mutation, could so easily have happened; or both. It is not spoiling the plot, which is central to the story, to explain that a global pandemic occurs; although the exact date of origin is not specified, but presumably it would be some time within the last fifteen years, around when the book was written [so well before Covid]. The infection is called Georgia Flu; Georgia as in the Caucasus region at the intersection of eastern Europe and west Asia; so not Georgia USA, although the action takes place partly in Toronto, Canada, and the USA, predominantly the Great Lakes area; and it eradicates the majority of the world’s population, because it takes effect so quickly that, presumably, there was no opportunity to find an affective treatment. The title of the story is that of a comic [or perhaps more appropriately, a graphic novel, as it was not intended only for children] created by the first wife of one of the main characters, Arthur Leander, who is a middle-aged actor who dies of a heart attack on stage in Toronto, while performing King Lear, immediately before the pandemic hits. The narrative is not chronological, so it does require some concentration to keep the various characters & locations in order, but the different expositions do help to explain how the characters are feeling at any given time, how they connect, and what their motivations are. Understandably, once deprived of all of the conveniences of modern life, after any available resources have been looted, people do struggle to survive, but the story is a testament, both optimistic and encouraging, to how resourceful & resilient human beings are in the face of such drastic circumstances: I understand it has been dramatised for television, so I will keep a look out for it. The paperback I read was published in 2015 [2014] by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London; 2014, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., New York, USA; Harper Avenue, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., Canada, ISBN 978-1-4472-6897-0.

Gimson’s Heroes, by Andrew Gimson

This book’s sub-title is Brief Lives from Boudicca to Churchill, which is a more specific description of the subject-matter but for me, without disclosing my own political standpoint, because the author’s background is right of centre, I have to assess this inevitably eclectic anthology with some circumspection; the affiliations of the supporters quoted on the front & back covers are quite clear, however: Jacob Rees-Mogg [front], John Rentoul and Charles Moore [back]. Interestingly, Gimson’s wife stood unsuccessfully for Labour in the 2010 general election, which must have made for some interesting discussions over the table at home! As I write above, the selection must be eclectic, and there are very few I could take issue with the author over; notwithstanding that only eleven of the fifty ‘heroes’ as designated are women, most of whom are well known. I can’t agree entirely with the author’s definition of a hero, or how we should only examine a candidate in his or her contemporary context, without reference to how moral standards have evolved over the centuries; there is a significant number of monarchs & aristocratic, imperialist and often blood-thirsty adventurers, all of whom were mainly concerned with enriching themselves & their governments in more or less equal measure, usually at the expense of the poor indigenous populations, which has been a very contentious subject of discussion in recent years. To be fair, even the worst of these have done some good, and there are several herein who have campaigned tirelessly to end the abhorrent slave trade; also, the ‘lives’ are predominantly brief, so reading about the worst, in one’s opinion, is not an onerously long task. This does make a pleasant change from fiction though. The paperback I read was published in 2026 [2025] by Constable, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, London, ISBN 978-1-4087-2170-4.

Homebound, by Portia Elan

This fantasy novel is played out over six hundred years; although as is the way such narratives are generally structured, the time periods are interspersed, to prevent the plot development becoming too readily obvious; and it concerns the lives of five connected characters. It begins in 1983, at the birth of home computing, a time I readily identify with, albeit a few years later, as this is when my interest in computers & coding began, at a very basic [pun intended] level. Becks is a teenager in Cincinnati, USA, who is full of all the normal angst, but her uncle, the only person who understood her, has recently died; his legacy to her, other than poignant memories, is a half-finished computer game, which will attain real significance as the centuries progress. Later, the feared catastrophic global warming has occurred, leaving the earth with fewer usable landmasses so, in the 26th century, two of the characters live permanently on a large yacht. They pick up 2 human travellers, accompanied by a sentient robot, a so-called AmAye [ambulant AI]. They are trying to find the landing point of a returning galactic voyager, improbaby [and somewhat cheekily] named California Solo, who is returning to save the earth, as has been foretold over the centuries. In between, we learn about the development of the Ayes, and how only one evidently developed sentience. In addition to the main storyline, there are 2 subtexts: how same-sex relationships should be completely acceptable [more relevant at the outset], and that religion seems to be surprisingly resilient; especially one particular one originating in the Middle East, to be still regularly practised by the 26th century travellers. There is also the emotional effect of the realisation of the true meaning of the computer game, which is played throughout the narrative. The narrative requires concentration, to remember how the characters are connected, but it is an interesting story, nonetheless. The hardback I read was published in 2026 by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage/Penguin Random House, London [2026, Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster LLC, USA], ISBN 978-1-7847-4616-2.