What I'm Reading 1
Finished Provender Gleed by James Lovegrove. Mildly disappointing. On the plus side it's easy to read with very short bite-sized chapters, is a lot cosier than most of his books. It calls itself an alternate history: has a world that's been dominated by aristocratic Families since the Borgias merged with the Medicis. Britain's most powerful family are the Gleeds, whose son is kidnapped at the start.

It's a nice idea, but one problem is that modern worlds dominated by aristocratic families are hardly unusual in F & SF: in fact they're pretty much the default. The Gleeds are not very impressive in their extravagance, their plotting or their decadence. Especially so soon after re-reading "A Song of Ice and Fire", Lovegrove's Families seem bland, staid and dull by comparison.

In the past Lovegrove has done pretty well with baroque, decaying, stratified societies as in "Days" and "The Hope", but you don't get to see very much of this one: one house, one sink estate, one party and that's about it: the book seems underpopulated. The plot's also pretty predictable, and there's not much doubt whodunnit. The Anagrammatic Detectives, who solve crimes by rearranging names are a nice touch though.

Also, while serious sociopoliticoeconomic extrapolation isn't really his bag, baby, I think you could have more interesting realistic novel on the same topic. There seems to be a lot of talk nowadays about how the modern corporation (that is: a publically-traded, limited-liability company operating in competition) is psychotic. So, it would be interesting to have a alternate-world novel where this relatively modern and rather strange institution had never been invented. If so, economic power would probably still reside where it did before: in the hands of merchant families, since it would be pretty hard for anyone else to raise capital.

Lovegrove doesn't take that route at all though. In fact he seems to mention the existence of stock markets, which seems a little pointless if it's the Families that own everything. Why don't they just trade privately between themselves? Who are they raising capital from if they own all the wealth? In fact, it's hard to see how the Families maintain their power at all, given that there is non-Family private enterprise, a seeming democracy, and nation-state governments with the large power and scope that we're used to today. (Wouldn't it be easier for the Families to control city-states?)

The book was apparently written very quickly, which might explain the poor world building: Lovegrove seems to be assuming everything will work like today, without really thinking through how. The other bugbear I had was with the private tram system that covers England and is exclusively for Gleed family use. OK, so they're stupendously rich (somehow), but why not let other vehicles use the lines and just give Gleed trams priority? And why do these super-rich people want to hang around on a platform waiting for a tram to turn up rather than just keep a chauffeur-driven limo parked outside? (Though I suppose that's not as dumb as Neal Stephenson having that happen in cyberspace.)

So anyway, it's not bad light reading if you like Lovegrove, but not his best. If you haven't read him before, better off starting with the superb "Days" or "Untied Kingdom".

Extract, review.

What I'm Reading 2
Against my better judgment, got the new Asterix book Asterix and the Falling Sky by the aging Uderzo. Didn't find it as bad as the Amazonians suggest: not up to the Goscinny books but not really worse than Uderzo's other solo efforts. Plot concerns to rival aliens who turn up after the magic potion. Oddly, one seems to be based after Disney comics and seem to be American (eating hot dogs), the other whose name is an anagram of `manga` seemingly Japanese.

Some of the alien rays look distinctly photoshoppy; with no pencil lines, and continuous shadings of colour rather than solid fill. Not sure how much assistance Uderzo had drawing it, though most of it looks like the traditional comics. And there are some impressive panels, like the alien robots brought down with an air-to-air menhir.

Anyway, amused me briefly, but there's no real reason to buy it other than completism or morbid curiosity.

What I'm Watching
Watched that HBO/BBC "Rome" thing, for once waiting until it arrived legitimately on my Analogue Terrestrial Television-receiving equipment. Thought it was pretty awful, poorly put together. Also, while I've nothing against gratuitous sex scenes, in UK TV drama they do tend to be a warning sign that the programme-makers consider the subject to be intrinsically boring; so the four or so in 50 minutes weren't an encouraging sign.

Turns out though that the BBC have re-edited the series from the US version to compress it, cut out the politics and emphasize the rumpy-pumpy.

Now the best TV drama in the US (from HBO in particular) has been streets ahead of the UK for a while now, though the odd gem somehow tunnels through the worthy UK system. But it's a bit annoying that they now have to dumb down US TV shows to try to get UK viewers to tune in.

Museums
Went to see the Rubens exhibition at the National Gallery. Not bad: they've got a lot of sketches and rough-and-ready "oil sketches" so you get to see his work almost in progress. Also gives you a good idea of how his career progressed. The early paintings are cartoonishly crude by comparison with his later paintings, with some of the least realistic breasts I've seen other than on toilet cubicle walls; but then after a lot of anatomical studies and sketches he seems to get the hang of things.

Was relatively quiet when I was there; but I arrived very early, it was raining, and there were tube problems: it might get busier later. Low child count: just one sleeping baby. Maybe everyone's at the Rousseau exhibition at Tate which seems to be getting much more attention: will get around to than one sometime.

Review.