ASYLUM

* The Weak Misanthropic Principle

So, it took nearly one whole month from subtards-kicking-my-door-in to having a replacement door that is actually worthy of the name, in that it has things like waterproofing applied, a window in the frame instead of cardboard and somewhere to push letters through, short of asking the postie to, say, punch through the cardboard. And I visited the dentist yesterday, on the same day that builders moved into the flat upstairs and started committing violence to kitchen units, from 7am to 6pm.

So while I'm feeling misanthropic:

SPACE PRISON, as bleak and horrible a book as you'll find in science fiction. Four thousand humans are dropped on a high-gravity planet, rejected by a slaving alien invasion force. One thousand one hundred of them die during the first night. And it really doesn't get any more cheerful from there. Tom Godwin, on almost every page, says to the reader, "oh, you liked this character? He falls off a mountain now. That one? Dies of exposure. This one? Eaten by goats. That one? Stabbed into meaty chunks by psychotic unicorns." And on and on. I must have read that book twenty times. — Warren Ellis