Would save if my house burned down: Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer #bookaday

Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer (subtitled Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of Our Time), is the book I would save if my house burned down, without a doubt. Not because it's a terrific book, although of course it is – chapter three in particular should be taught in schools - but because it is one of the first books on the first bookcase when you enter our house, on a shelf at chest height, and it sticks out from the other books on there.

Maleficent, reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

Mistress of All Evil repackaged as multidimensional heroine

Excepting the horror genre, not many films are named after a villain. Villainesses are even rarer. Moreover, it’s hard to find a fully developed hero in a contemporary special effects-heavy blockbuster.

Maleficent (2014), directed by Robert Stromberg, fills these gaps exquisitely by recasting the iconic Mistress of All Evil as a fairy born into a privileged, human-free life of gallivanting amid an idyllic forest filled with magical inhabitants. Then she meets the boy Stefan, who ultimately betrays her to assume the throne. Jilted lover Maleficent slaps a curse on King Stefan’s daughter: before her sixteenth birthday, Aurora will prick her finger on a spinning wheel needle and fall into an eternal sleep, lest she be awakened by true love’s kiss.

The one I have reread most often: The Slings & Arrows Comic Guide #bookaday

Doctor Who: The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker was my first thought here. I must have read it all a dozen times over, bit by bit. You start by looking up a transmission date, then begin reading the analysis, and next thing you know it's time to go to bed and you're wondering where the day has gone.

Other Doctor Who books were contenders too - Planet of the Daleks, The Discontinuity Guide, The Claws of Axos (which I got in exchange for some marbles at middle school), Day of the Daleks (77p at Millers), and Image of the Fendahl (borrowed from the town library three or four times and read in a single night each time).

Then I thought about novels, like Planets for Sale by A.E. van Vogt and E. Mayne Hull (which led me to read loads of tedious A.E. van Vogt books before realising I should probably have been looking for E. Mayne Hull books), The Duelling Machine by Ben Bova, The Time Trip by Rob Swigart, The Stainless Steel Rat for President by Harry Harrison, or Biggles in France by Captain W.E. Johns.

But no, it had to be the second edition of The Slings & Arrows Comic Guide, edited by Frank Plowright, a wonderful series of critical essays surveying American comics from the 1930s to the present day. The other books I've read several times, but this book I've never stopped reading. It was published in 2003, over 3800 days ago, and I'd estimate I've read from this book on at least three quarters of those days.

Bought at my fave indie bookshop: Bone and Jewel Creatures at Weightless Books #bookaday

Millers in Keighley was my favourite independent bookshop as long as I lived there. It had a great mix of new and secondhand titles at a wide range of prices. It fed my hunger for science fiction for years. I would walk into town to save my bus fare so that I could afford to buy a 15p comic or three 5p books from the discard box. I bought loads of books there – lots of Moorcock, Doctor Who, Star Trek, The Sword of Shannara. Their new books had often been sitting on the shelves a while so they still had old prices on, making them more affordable than in other shops.

Her, reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Love bytes.

The Goodies episode “2001 and a bit” (1976) is perhaps the most fantastically offbeat of all the Goodies satires, extrapolating a violent yet progressive, absurdist future from the social mores and concerns of the mid-1970s. Each Goodie plays the lookalike son of one of the others – they were equally fond of Raquel (Welch, the picture from One Million Years B.C. would suggest), so when triplets came along they guessed and took one each – and in revealing whatever it was that became of Graeme, Tim confesses that, “He was put away for having an unnatural relationship [half-pause] with his computer.” Never mind that such an affair already had been the subject of “Women’s Lib” (1971), one memorable scene of which sees Graeme and his desk-sized desktop skipping hand-in-hand through the woods. In 1976 the idea still was ludicrous enough to power a good one-liner.

Want to be one of the characters: Plague Ship by Andre Norton #bookaday

For day twenty-seven of #bookaday we are asked for a book where we would want to be one of the characters. After rolling this around for a while I came up with Plague Ship by Andre Norton, and the other books in the Solar Queen series, Sargasso of Space and Postmarked the Stars.

I bought the pictured copy of Sargasso of Space this month in a secondhand bookshop on a seaside trip, got a chapter or two into it on the way home before realising I’d read it, and carried on anyway. Not sure where my Plague Ship is (I think it’s an ex-library yellow Gollancz edition) but I’ll add a photo if it turns up.

I love stories about science fiction traders, have done ever since playing Elite for the first time on a BBC Micro and reading Robert Holdstock’s tie-in novella The Dark Wheel. (Plug: see the Black Swan series by Mitchell Edgeworth in recent issues of TQF for another fine example of the type!)

The crew of the Solar Queen are capable and hard-working, and if I was forced to live in a place as dangerous as the interior of a novel, they'd be good people to be around. They understand the importance of good training and procedures, come up with good ideas, and are always ready to take advantage of a lucky break.

I considered James White’s Hospital Station and the Sector General series for similar reasons (plus it’d be nice to live in a galaxy like that where all problems have solutions), but the Solar Queen won out. I'd struggle with the pleasant bedside manner, and no one expects that of a space trader.

Should have sold more copies: Giant Thief by David Tallerman #bookaday

In doing this series of blog posts it seems polite to avoid promoting our own work, so I won’t pick The Mercury Annual, Pilgrims at the White Horizon, Five Forgotten Stories or any of our other titles, all of which should have sold more than the handful they did, and almost certainly would have if they had been published by a more active publisher!

So I’m going to pick instead Giant Thief by David Tallerman, the story of a thief who steals a giant and sets off on the world’s most exciting piggyback. I’ve no idea how well or otherwise it did, although two sequels were released. But it stands here for all the interesting books that Angry Robot have been publishing over the last few years.

Never finished it: Edge of Light by Robert Silverberg #bookaday

Today the #bookaday request is for a book you've not finished.

As you can see below, I had quite a lot to choose from. I'll get around to finishing all one hundred and thirty-six of them eventually, but I've gone for Edge of Light by Robert Silverberg as my book of the day.

It's an omnibus of five novels. I read the first two, and they were brilliant, but I never read the other three. (I've read a lot of his other books in the meantime, just not those ones.)

I love an omnibus, but as shown below I hardly ever finish them. Many of these are books I'm very fond of, like Songs of the Dying Earth.

(Titles and credits are from Goodreads and not checked; only first credited contributor listed; apologies for any errors in titles or attribution.)

• 52: Companion, Grant Morrison
• A Journey: My Political Life, Tony Blair
• A Logic Named Joe, Murray Leinster
• A Long Night at Abu Simbel, Penelope Lively
• A Pair From Space, James Blish
• Army of Darkness Omnibus, Volume 1, Sam Raimi
• Avant l'Incal (l'intégrale), Alejandro Jodorowsky
• Barnacle Bill The Spacer, And Other Stories, Lucius Shepard
• Be a Sex-Writing Strumpet, Stacia Kane
• BFS Journal Spring 2011, Allen Ashley
• BFS Journal Autumn 2011, Peter Coleborn
• BFS Journal Autumn 2012, Ian Hunter
• BFS Journal Spring 2012, Lou Morgan
• BFS Journal Summer 2011, Peter Coleborn
• BFS Journal Winter 2010, Sam Stone
• BFS Journal Winter 2011/2012, Peter Coleborn
• Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams, C.L. Moore
• Book of Prefaces, Alasdair Gray
• Bull Running for Girls, Allyson Bird
• Carmen et autres nouvelles, Prosper Mérimée
• Cities In Dust (Wasteland, #1), Antony Johnston
• Citizen Rex, Mario Hernandez
• Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady, Samuel Richardson
• Colomba et autres nouvelles, Prosper Mérimée
• Complete Stories, Rudy Rucker
• Darkness, Mist And Shadows: Volume 1 And 2: The Collected Macabre Tales Of Basil Copper, Basil Copper
• Do Not Pass Go, Joel Lane
• Doctor Who: The Child of Time, Jonathan Morris
• Doctor Who: Vanishing Point, Stephen Cole
• Don Juan, George Gordon Byron
• Don Quixote de La Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
• Edge of Light: The Robert Silverberg Omnibus, Robert Silverberg
• Empire Star / The Tree Lord of Imeten, Samuel R. Delany
• Essential Killraven, Vol. 1, Neal Adams
• Essential Punisher, Vol. 1, Gerry Conway
• Essential Works of Foucault (1954-1984), Volume 3: Power, Michel Foucault
• Fever Dream And Other Fantasies, Robert Bloch
• Filboid Studge, The Story Of A Mouse That Helped, Saki
• Four Gothic Novels: The Castle of Otranto; Vathek; The Monk; Frankenstein, Horace Walpole
• Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Gotrek & Felix: The First Omnibus, William King
• Great Stories of Crime and Detection Volume II (The Twenties and Thirties), Various
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7), J.K. Rowling
• How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Stewart Lee
• Isis Unbound, Allyson Bird
• La Compagnie des glaces 1, Georges-Jean Arnaud
• Let the Galaxy Burn, Marc Gascoigne
• Lieut. Gulliver Jones: His Vacation, Edwin Lester Arnold
• Lion Time In Timbuctoo (The Collected Stories, Volume 6), Robert Silverberg
• Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon
• May We Borrow Your Husband & Other Comedies of the Sexual Life, Graham Greene
• McSweeney's #10, Michael Chabon
• McSweeney's #27, Dave Eggers
• McSweeney's #45, Dave Eggers
• Mrs. Pepperpot Stories, Alf Proysen
• Nancy Drew Files: #66,96, Carolyn Keene
• Night Watch (Discworld, #29), Terry Pratchett
• Noddy: A Classic Treasury, Enid Blyton
• NOS4A2: A Novel, Joe Hill
• Odyssey, William Shatner
• Postscripts 14, Nick Gevers
• Ragmop, Rob Walton
• Rain, Conrad Williams
• Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy
• Rising Stars Compendium, J. Michael Straczynski
• Rupert: A Collection Of Favourite Stories, Alfred Bestall
• Rustblind and Silverbright - A Slipstream Anthology of Railway Stories, David Rix
• Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories, Leigh Brackett
• Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling, Andrew Rutherford
• Showcase Presents: Ambush Bug, Keith Giffen
• Showcase Presents: Green Arrow, Jack Kirby
• Showcase Presents: Jonah Hex, Vol. 1, John Albano
• Showcase Presents: Justice League of America, Vol. 2, Gardner F. Fox
• Showcase Presents: Phantom Stranger, Vol. 1, Robert Kanigher
• Showcase Presents: The House of Mystery, Vol. 1, Len Wein
• Showcase Presents: The Unknown Soldier, Vol. 1, Joe Kubert
• Showcase Presents: The War That Time Forgot, Vol. 1, Robert Kanigher
• Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honour of Jack Vance, George R.R. Martin
• Space War (Professor Jameson Space Adventure #3), Neil R. Jones
• Star Trek: Logs 7–10, Alan Dean Foster
• Starstruck Deluxe Edition, Elaine Lee
• Stonewielder, Ian C. Esslemont
• Teatro Grottesco, Thomas Ligotti
• Test Pattern: Jonathan Hickman Collection, Volume 1, Jonathan Hickman
• The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3), Philip Pullman
• The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories, John Kessel
• The Best American Comics 2011, Alison Bechdel
• The Best Of Fritz Leiber, Fritz Leiber
• The Best of McSweeney's, Dave Eggers
• The Book of the Thousand and One Nights. Volume 1, Anonymous
• The Burning Circus, Johnny Mains
• The Carl Hiaasen Omnibus: Tourist Season, Double Whammy And Skin Tight, Carl Hiaasen
• The Centauri Device, M. John Harrison
• The Chandler Collection: Volume 1, Raymond Chandler
• The Collected Stories, Katherine Mansfield
• The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard, Elmore Leonard
• The Dark is Rising Sequence, Susan Cooper
• The Dirty Dozen: The Best 12 Commando Books Ever!. Edited by George Low, George Low
• The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, #2), Stephen King
• The Dudley Smith Trio, James Ellroy
• The Ends of the Earth, Lucius Shepard
• The Expelled (Penguin Mini Modern Classics), Samuel Beckett
• The Finder Library, Volume 1, Carla Speed McNeil
• The Five Great Novels Of James M. Cain., James M. Cain
• The Halfling: And Other Stories, Leigh Brackett
• The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus, John Franklin Bardin
• The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19, Stephen Jones
• The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 16, Gardner R. Dozois
• The Mammoth Book of Contemporary SF Masters, Gardner R. Dozois
• The Matrix Comics Vol 1, Geof Darrow
• The New Avengers Vol. 1, Brian Michael Bendis
• The New Nature of the Catastrophe (Tale of the Eternal Champion, #9), Michael Moorcock
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
• The Planet of the Double Sun (Professor Jameson #1), Neil R. Jones
• The Polish Officer, Alan Furst
• The Richard Laymon Collection, Volume 4: Beware / Dark Mountain, Richard Laymon
• The Sam Gunn Omnibus, Ben Bova
• The Savage Sword of Conan, Volume 3, Roy Thomas
• The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner
• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories (Penguin Classics), Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Very Best of Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe
• The Weird: A Compendium of Dark and Strange Fictions, Ann VanderMeer
• The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, Timothy Ferris
• Them: Adventures with Extremists, Jon Ronson
• Time Patrol, Poul Anderson
• Un Lun Dun, China Miéville
• Uncle Tungsten, Oliver Sacks
• Unexpected Journeys, Juliet E. McKenna
• Unlikely Stories, Mostly, Alasdair Gray
• Valérian et Laureline l'Intégrale, volume 2, Pierre Christin
• Voice of the Fire, Alan Moore
• War and Peace (Konemann Classics), Leo Tolstoy
• Warlock, Andre Norton
• Yesterday's Tomorrows, Rian Hughes
• Young Miles (Vorkosigan Omnibus, #2), Lois McMaster Bujold
• Zombies in New York and Other Bloody Jottings, Sam Stone

Hooked me into reading: Star Trek 10 by James Blish #bookaday

Today I have to choose a book that hooked me into reading.

I could have gone for the Peter and Jane books, or the works of Enid Blyton, particularly The Enchanted Wood, The Magic Faraway Tree and The Wishing Chair. Or the Target Doctor Who books. They all played a huge part in giving me a love of reading and teaching me how to do it.

But I decided instead to highlight Star Trek 10 by James Blish, a true watershed book: the first book I got out from the big library!

True Detective, Season 1, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Is True Detective, Season 1 (Sky Atlantic, TV, 8 episodes) a crime programme or a supernatural programme? Even by the end I wasn’t entirely sure, though I suppose the title is a clue. I’ll hedge my bets and call it horror.

The series tells the story of two police officers in Louisiana working together for the first time. Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) is a family man cheating on his wife (Michelle Monaghan). Rust Cohle, played by an incandescent Matthew McConaughey, is a loner with a bare apartment who cribs his bleak philosophy of life from the likes of Thomas Ligotti. They don’t get on – a shame given how much time they’ll spend stuck in a car together.

Made to read at school: Les Mains Sales by Jean-Paul Sartre #bookaday

Not many books could be said to have truly changed my life, but my pick for day 23 of #bookaday is one. Unlike John, I wasn't very good at French, but when we studied Les Mains Sales by Jean-Paul Sartre I (a) loved it and (b) got straight As for my GCSE essays about it.

As a result of this surprising development I took French at A-Level, and after that at degree level, which is bizarre given that I was never any good at understanding or speaking the language. The oral exam for my degree went so badly that bellows of laughter broke out as I left the room! I used English words at one point!

Out of print: Philip Jose Farmer conquiert l'univers #bookaday

Day 22 of #bookaday, and we're supposed to name a book that's out of print. This one probably is: Philip Jose Farmer conquiert l'univers by Francois Mottier.

I found this on a secondhand bookstall in Tourcoing, near Lille, while spending a year there as a teaching assistant. I was terrible at it. Never have so many pupils played so many games of hangman.

Summer read: The Best of Archie Comics #bookaday

Day 21 of #bookaday (though I only started on day 4 and began blogging about it on day 5) is for naming summer reads. When I'm on holiday I try to avoid reading anything that gives me work to do, i.e. books I'll owe a review. It's a time for reading magazines, Doctor Who books, Penguin 60s and mini moderns, non-fiction, humour, and most of all: comics.

So my pick today is The Best of Archie Comics, a cheap four-hundred page collection of stories about everyone's favourite two-timer and his chums.

Archie comics are bright and cheerful and require absolutely no thought or effort - perfect for holidays. They are available in vast quantities at cheap prices, which is exactly how I like my comics. And best of all, our children often buy them with their own pocket money. Sometimes these even make me laugh out loud, usually when Jughead is involved. How does he keep his figure?

The Exploits of Engelbrecht by Maurice Richardson, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Gibbon Moon, ebook, 1736ll. In years gone by one of the principle pleasures of the gentleman on a Sunday afternoon was to read Maurice Richardson’s reports of the sporting activities of this nation’s greatest sportsman, Engelbrecht, the Dwarf Surrealist Boxer, “Sportsman of the Millennium”. Or at least to imagine doing so, since no Sunday newspapers saw fit to publish those reports, choosing instead to stick to quotidian sports such as football, cricket, rugby and badminton. That they could find no room for such estimable activities as clock-boxing, man-hunting and witch-shooting beggars belief.

Favourite cover: Babylon Steel by Gaie Sebold #bookaday

For day twenty of #bookaday we are asked to choose our favourite cover. So many to choose from! I love the cover of Vingt Mille Lieues Sous les Mers:

Although it loses a bit of glamour when you realise it’s used for all the other books in the Verne series too!

When I saw Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series in a three for the price of two sale, I doubt I’d have bought the whole lot if the covers hadn’t been so terrific. The stunning artwork is by Geoff Hunt, but look too at the map details behind the titles, showing where each adventure takes place.

The artist (or artists) who produced these bizarre alien images for the New English Library isn’t credited, but I’ve probably spent more time looking at them than reading the actual books!

Covers aren’t just about the artwork. Books in the Corgi SF Collector’s Library were notable for the lovely bumpiness of their purple covers:

If we’re talking best covers, I have to give Chris Foss a mention – if I saw a book with his art on the cover when I was a teenager, I bought it. One of the first times I saw his work was on this Panther Science Fiction edition of Skylark DuQuesne.

I doubt that this artwork was specially produced for The Stone God Awakens (the stone god in the book is a petrified human who wouldn't be able to turn his head to look at things until after waking up), but it always gave me a wonderful sense of otherness:

I could have gone for almost any issue of McSweeney’s. My current favourite is usually the one I bought most recently. Look at shiny blue #46! (Art and lettering by Sunra Thompson.)

And here’s #45. Where else would you see Alfred Hitchcock and Ray Bradbury having a punch-up? (Art by Tavis Coburn.)

But my pick today is the cover of Babylon Steel by Gaie Sebold.

The cover art is by Marek Okon. It isn’t a stock photo, it isn’t graphic design, it isn’t typography, it’s a new piece of commissioned artwork that tells us something about the book and gives us a real sense of the kind of characters it contains. It sells the book.

A couple of years ago I used it when the children wanted to do a “big write” at home. I gave them an unfamiliar book each and asked them to write as much as they could in fifteen minutes or so without opening the book or reading the back cover. Here’s what my oldest had to say about this one:

I agree, it does look really good. In fact, I’m going to start reading it today!

A dishonourable mention here for my least favourite cover of all time, the 1979 NEL edition of Robert Heinlein’s I Will Fear No Evil. A human skull in a curly blonde wig! And what is that weird white goo? This cover literally makes me feel unwell.

Still can't stop talking about it: Drunk with Blood by Steve Wells #bookaday

Day 19 of #bookaday and you must name a book you still can’t stop talking about. Well, some books I liked so much that I had to work hard to avoid bringing them up obsessively in reviews of other books. Like The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon, Quartet and Triptych by Matthew Hughes, and Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God by Lavie Tidhar.

But if you’re looking at the total amount of conversation provoked by a book, I bet that, over the course of my lifetime, Drunk with Blood by Steve Wells will take the prize.

Bought on a recommendation: Suddenly, Zombies by Amanda C. Davis #bookaday

Day eighteen of #bookaday, and I'm still going - just about! Today's request is for a book I bought on a recommendation. I wanted to go here for a book I've bought and then read, as opposed to books I picked up because they were going cheap and I'd seen good things said about them, but haven't got around to reading yet. (There are so many.)

So: Suddenly, Zombies by Amanda C. Davis. This was recommended by David Tallerman on his excellent blog, Writing on the Moon, and it was a good little read. Just a couple of stories, but they are fun, one about zombies on a spaceship, the other about giant zombie gorillas causing trouble in a city. An agreeable way to spend an hour.

And what a brilliant cover!

Future classic: Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg #bookaday

The seventeenth item on the Borough Press's #bookaday list asks for a future classic. So that's a book that isn't officially a classic now, but will be one day. A tricky thing to call! I seem to remember two writers of my acquaintance having a bet over which of them would be the first to make it into Penguin (Modern) Classics. That seems like a good way to approach this question.

What helps make a classic? Quality, in theory, but being publishable in a single volume helps. A film or television adaptation. The author having died. The book giving people plenty to discuss, being studiable. Something that makes people keep coming back to it long after its initial moment has gone, sometimes because its relevance isn't tied to that moment, at other times because the book is the perfect expression of that moment.

The Professor and the Siren by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The Professor and the Siren (New York Review Books, 78pp) is a new translation by Stephen Twilley of three stories by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, all of which originally appeared in the 1961 collection I racconti. The book will also include an introduction by Marina Warner (not available for review).

The first and longest is the thirty-eight-page title story, “The Professor and the Siren”, in its Italian publication “La Sirena” (the title change is perhaps to distinguish this volume from others), about an elderly professor who reminisces fondly about his sexual encounter, at the age of twenty-four, with a mermaid who had “the smooth face of a sixteen-year-old”, an “adolescent” with “features of infantile purity” and “decidedly youthful sensuality”.

Can't believe more people haven't read: Way Station by Clifford Simak #bookaday

Day 16 of #bookaday, and we are asked to come up with a book we can't believe more people haven't read. I haven't read it for a long, long time, but I always used to think that Way Station by Clifford Simak, about an isolated guy, living in his house, communicating with aliens and beset by humans, would make a perfect Tom Hanks vehicle. Or maybe Keanu Reeves. One thing's for sure: If John Wyndham had written it, it'd be a lot better known by now.

Favourite fictional father: Ben Healy in Problem Child #bookaday

Day 15 of the #bookaday challenge. Who is your favourite fictional father? Well, I don’t mind admitting that this one stumped me. Dads don’t seem to be that common in the books I read, living dads even less so. They tend to need avenging, deposing, finding or replacing. For example, here are the last ten novels I read, and what I could find about the dads in them:

1. The Buried Life, Carrie Patel: Jane is an orphan.
2. God’s War, Kameron Hurley: Nyx “has never known a father”, Rhys’s father disowned him and is dead.
3. Child of a Hidden Sea, A.M. Dellamonica: can’t be specific without giving away plot details, but he’s no Doctor Huxtable.
4. Ghost Train to New Orleans, Mur Lafferty: adoptive parents elsewhere, mentioned, but unaffectionate; birth parents missing or dead.
5. City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett: Shara is an orphan.
6. Lagoon, Nnedi Okorafor: the father of Adaora’s children quickly turns nasty.
7. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison: Maia was exiled to the middle of nowhere by his father, the Emperor Varenechibel the Fourth, who dies at the beginning of the book, leaving Maia an orphan.
8. Costume Not Included, Matthew Hughes: the previous novel in the series explains that Chesney’s dad, Wagner Arnstruther, “departed for parts unknown with a waitress he met at a truck stop”.
9. New Amsterdam, Elizabeth Bear: Jack says “my parents couldn’t afford to feed me; they indentured me at five”.
10. Template, Matthew Hughes: Conn says, “As an infant, I was sold anonymously to my indentor, Ovam Horder.”

So sod it, I’ve gone for a fictional dad who wasn’t in a book. Ben Healy in Problem Child, as played by the wonderful John Ritter. He adopts the child from hell, a little boy whose penpal is Martin “The Bow Tie Killer” Beck. Junior destroys Ben’s life, takes away everything: possessions, reputation, wife, job, sanity. By film two they’ve been forced to leave town. And yet he keeps trying to do his best for the kid. An example to us all!

An old favourite: The Duelling Machine by Ben Bova #bookaday

Oh, I love this book: The Duelling Machine by Ben Bova. This is my choice of an old favourite for today's #bookaday. As a teenager I read it over and over and over.

Like a lot of the early science fiction books I read, this one came from my dad.

When I was ten or eleven he gave me a box of grown-up sf that contained my first books by Philip Jose Farmer (The Stone God Awakens), Michael Moorcock (The Bull and the Spear, I think), Robert Heinlein (Starship Troopers?), Isaac Asimov (Foundation?), A.E. van Vogt (an omnibus). I went on to read everything I could find by those writers.

The Duelling Machine was one that he found floating around at work and brought home for me.

I loved it to death: it was about games, the duels taking place online in virtual reality, which back then seemed like the ultimate dream. It reminded me of my favourite Blake's 7 episode, with Tarrant in a similar duel, and I liked how the dweeby hero became a badass.

Must read it again.

Elvenquest: The Complete Second Series, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Elvenquest: The Complete Second Series (Audible edition, 2 hr 46) by Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto, sees the questers – Lord Vidar the elf, Dean the dwarf, Penthiselea the Amazon princess, Amis the chosen one (a former dog), and his owner Sam – unapologetically sent back to square one in their quest for the sword of Aznagar. It is once more abroad in the land! The subsequent adventures of this daft bunch are typically caused by their greed, lust, laziness and selfishness, and a general lack of appreciation for each other. Plots come second to jokes.

Meanwhile, villainous Lord Darkness, having made his way back to this world from another dimension, must recover his lost immortality, persuade bankers to lend him enough money to pay his mighty armies, and deal with personnel issues – the infernal horde find him a bit intimidating. His conversations with assistant Creech (similar to those of Blackadder and Baldrick) provide many of the programme’s funniest moments.

Makes me laugh: Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams #bookaday

Today's #bookaday question asks for a book that makes me laugh. Naturally, my first thought went to Groo the Wanderer, which is probably the funniest thing in the world.

Then I thought of Asterix. I often do! A couple of weeks ago, when someone asked for the dimensions of the new British Fantasy Award, my first impulse was to say, larger than the pen of my aunt, but smaller than the garden of my uncle. (My second impulse was to say, just the usual three. But that isn't a quote from Asterix.)

I pretend to (or might give the impression I) have read it: McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #bookaday

Today's #bookaday challenge is to name a book I pretend to have read. I can't think of a proper example of that. Obviously, at university there would be the occasional tutorial about a book or play I was supposed to have read, but I would usually be able to read ahead fast enough in class that I never needed to actually fib.

But here's my confession: much as I adore it, I haven't finished reading very many issues of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. I've finished #22 (with the magnets), #26 (new stories from home and overseas) and #28 (the little hardbacks), but that's about it. The rest are doomed to eternal dipping.

In fact, I finish very few anthologies at all, and the same goes for fiction magazines. It's not that I don't enjoy them, it's just that after a couple of stories a novel nuzzles its way in and I never get around to reading the rest. That's why you don't see many reviews of magazines or anthologies on here.

It's especially odd when you consider that McSweeney's #10 (the Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales) inspired me to start this zine in the first place. Forty-seven issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction later, I still haven't finished the book that inspired it. Shame on me!

Secondhand bookshop gem: The Dying Earth by Jack Vance #bookaday

Today's #bookaday challenge is to declare one of your books a secondhand bookshop gem. So many to choose from on my shelves! Apologies for the poor quality photographs that follow – these are all from my own collection.

Should I go for bona fide classics like the works of Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, and Brian Aldiss? Here are The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius and Barefoot in the Head.

R.L. Fanthorpe or Perry Rhodan, titans of the secondhand scene? Here are The Unconfined and UFO 517 (Fanthorpe there writing as Bron Fane) and Perry Rhodan 20: The Thrall of Hypno.

An American book that found its way to a UK bookshop in the days when that was still unusual, like Henry Kuttner's Return to Otherness? Or the kind of books you only ever seem to see second-hand, like Casca (a Roman soldier who stuck the spear into Jesus's side and is cursed to immortality) and Venus on the Half-Shell (by Kilgore Trout, as channelled by Philip Jose Farmer)?

Unread curios like On the Symb-Socket Circuit, Blood Sport and The Game of Fox and Lion by Kenneth Bulmer, Robert F. Jones and Robert R. Chase? What are these books, why did I buy them, and should I read them?

Lesser known works by superstar authors like Ursula K. LeGuin, Christopher Priest or Robert Silverberg, like Planet of Exile, Fugue for a Darkening Island and World's Fair 1992?

What about the mindblowing Best of Cordwainer Smith, found in a mysterious bookshop at a farm in Reading? A shop I only ever visited once, and yet I struck gold! Just reading the introduction was enough to knock me for six. I even wrote a poem about it.

All good contenders, but in the end there can be only one, and it's got to be The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, found in a junkshop in Keighley, bought for 5p and read in full on a coach trip to France. I might possibly have read the Planet of Adventure omnibus first, I'm not absolutely sure of the dates, but this was the book that made Vance one of my all-time favourites, and I could so easily have missed it. The shop I bought it in doesn't even exist any more.

Reminds me of someone I love: Little Miss Lorelei and Telzey Amberdon #bookaday

Today's #bookaday challenge is to find a book that reminds you of someone you love. Two books today, because I can't choose a book that reminds me of one daughter without choosing a book that reminds me of the other, or there will be hell to pay!

The first book here, Little Miss Lorelei, reminds me of my older daughter, which is hardly a surprise since I wrote and drew it as a present for her! Took an absolute age, because I sketched, then pencilled, then inked, then digitally coloured every page, but it was worth the effort. For obvious reasons this book has never been on sale, but you can help yourself to a free pdf copy if you want to laugh at my terrible drawings! (It's just a bit of fanfiction, but of course I'll take it down if the Roger Hargreaves estate or anyone owning the relevant trade marks or licenses asks me to.)

The other book I'm choosing is Telzey Amberdon by James H. Schmitz, which is where we found the name for our younger daughter. I was a bit unsure about using the name at first, because from one point of view the fictional Telzey becomes a bit dodgy, manipulating people's minds in a way you'd normally associate with a villain. But never mind. We took it on a playground test before making our final decision, taking our first daughter to the park and telling her that her name was Telzey for the hour to see if we would feel embarrassed about shouting it out. We did not, and the rest is Theaker family history.