What's the 'Matter'?

Iain M. Banks' latest Culture novel, "Matter", is quite different from his other Culture books. But then, they're all quite different from each other, so in that respect it's quite similar to his earlier works...

The concepts that he comes up with (layered worlds, intelligent clouds, hierarchies of meta-civilisatrions) always dazzle, and never get in the way of interesting stories, never drown out the three dimensional characters that inhabit the worlds (and things other than worlds) where his tales take place.

It's a nice break having just recovered from reading American Psycho... Am stunned from the comment that Matt left me, about having read it when he was 16. It was a good book, but just too grisly for me in places.

I wrote some haiku down at the weekend, and will put them up tomorrow. I'm also very close to completing my other main Scrabble challenge; final turns of a game with a friend over Scrabulous, and technically I can't not score over 350 now, but just want to hold off until it's finalised!

I'm going to hold off on entering the SFX Pulp Idol competition this year, and work on some stories (along with the other flash fiction I'll be writing) over the next year and enter then. I just realised that I really didn't have time to commit to an entry for this year, and thought it would be rushed if I did send anything in. Next year SFX, next year!

It's exam invigilation time, so along with reading through my thesis to prepare for my viva, I'll be reading some novels... "Matter" starts the week, followed by either "The Children of Húrin" or "Wuthering Heights"...