I know, I know. In most hands you would get a huge novel (or perhaps a trilogy) wherein a brave band of companions overcome huge perils as they go up against the might of the evil enchanter and finally defeat him and live happily ever after. Well in this novel, all that stuff happens in a half a dozen pages in the prologue and the novel itself is concerned with the efforts of a playwright/producer to stage a re-creation of the events as a drama in the ruins of the original castle. By turns witty and thought-provoking, this is a detective story (there is a murder to solve), a travelogue, a philosophical discourse and a treatise on the difficulties of staging a play. I loved it.

One of the major characters is a vampire called Genevieve. She also appears in Anno Dracula and is the eponymous heroine of Genevieve Undead a collection of novellas also by Jack Yeovil. I should point out that Jack Yeovil has also written a novel called Orgy of the Blood Parasites. Now who could resist a title like that? Certainly not me. I've read that one too and it is just the sort of book you would expect it to be. I particularly liked the scene with the carrot. Kim Newman/Jack Yeovil is definitely a writer to watch.

Then, at very short notice, I got a trip to Sydney, so it was back to the life of an expense account again. While I gloomily watched my waistline expanding under the influence of free food and drink, I went shopping for books and I found Yours, Isaac Asimov -- A Life in Letters edited by Stanley Asimov. This is a collection culled from Asimov's voluminous correspondence with fans and editors and authors and friends (often the same people!). It is edited by his brother Stanley who, most unfortunately, died shortly before the book was published.

He did a wonderful editing job. Isaac Asimov's unique voice shouts out of every page. Here, with his hair let down, are his opinions on this and that and the other. Stanley has divided the book into chapters on topics as various as "Typewriters, Word Processors and Computers", "Editors and Publishers", "Limericks and Oddities", "Being Jewish", "Being an Atheist". Isaac Asimov had opinions on all of these things and many more besides. This book is a most moving and beautiful memorial to both the Asimov brothers.

I also managed to pick up some books by Peter F. Hamilton, a new English writer. Mindstar Rising, and A Quantum Murder are set in a future England where the greenhouse effect and global warming have got completely out of control. The rising sea levels have flooded the lower lying areas of the country like the fens and in the chaos the Peoples Socialist Party (PSP) have taken over the reins of government in a totalitarian and corrupt regime that is hated by the people. The first novel opens shortly after the PSP has been overthrown in a bloody revolution. The hero, Greg Mandel, is an ex-member of the Mindstar Brigade. He has a psi-enhancing gland in his brain and can read emotions and has an enhanced intuition. He has seen active service with the army in Turkey and was one of the leaders of the resistance against the PSP. Both novels concern his investigation, as a sort of private detective, of industrial sabotage with alarming social implications. Hamilton handles the multiple threads of these novels with enviable skill and gives us a classical "whodunit" (and to an extent, a "whydunit") in a very convincing future world. I highly recommend the books. There is a third novel, The Nano-Flower, but I have not yet read it. Perhaps next month.

Back in New Zealand and back to normality, I relaxed with The Garden of Unearthly Delights, the new novel by Robert Rankin. Like all his novels, it is almost indescribable (but I'll try) and full of terrible jokes and puns. The novel introduces a news crumpet. A news crumpet is the woman who sits beside the (male) news reader and reads the silly stories that are beneath his dignity. All major news broadcasts have a news crumpet, you must have noticed. This particular news crumpet is called Miss Talier. Miss Jenny Talier.

See what I mean?

The Earth has entered a new age, a time of legend and heroes, romance, wizardry and wonder. Max Karrien (aka Max Carrion) is an imagineer and that is the last logical thing that happens in the book. The rest is indescribable (like most of Rankin's novels, come to think of it) which probably explains why the blurb has virtually nothing at all to do with the plot. Mind you, very little has anything to do with the plot. Even the plot has very little to do with the plot. I think it ends happily. I think it ends. I think.

It was definitely time for Roger Zelazny. Forever After was the last book he worked on before his death. It is a fantasy. The scenario posits a time when the forces of evil have been thoroughly defeated by the forces of good, with the help, of course, of four magical artefacts. Now that their purpose is accomplished, the artefacts must be returned from whence they came. Four novelettes by Robert Asprin, David Drake, Jane Lindskold and Mike Stackpole describe the adventures of the heroes and heroines as they struggle to accomplish their mission. These stories are joined by linking material written by Roger Zelazny himself. He maintained very firm editorial control over the project and insisted that the fantasy elements of the stories be strongly leavened by humour and the same sardonic wit that was peculiarly his shines through all the material. I loved it. Even the artefacts are funny -- I particularly liked the magical ring Sombrisio, which farts a lot and insults everybody.

I'll finish up this month with the new novel by Jack McDevitt. Of whom you may well say who? Well he has written two rather good novels, The Hercules Text and A Talent for War. Now comes his third, The Engines of God and it is his best yet. It is an archeological thriller -- not a common genre, I'll grant you. Scattered across various planets in the galaxy are artefacts left by an ancient race. Statues and cities and inscriptions. They are majestic and puzzling at the same time. Why does a planet have a city on its moon when the inhabitants of the planet never developed space travel? Why does the city consist of solid blocks of stone? Each building is solid all the way through. Why is the city partially destroyed as if by fire?

I'm not going to tell you why, that would be a spoiler of massive proportions and most unfair. Suffice it to say that there is a good reason. The further into the book you get, the more puzzling the mysteries become. Strangeness piles upon strangeness, (and also insight upon insight). There is tragedy and splendour here and a truly satisfying climax made even more so by the light it sheds retrospectively over the book as a whole. It makes you want to go back and read it again immediately with the benefit of your new understanding. This is quintessential science fiction and the sense of wonder tingle in the spine is absolutely authentic. Books like this one are the reason we all started reading this stuff in the first place.