Hello 2021. Feels just like 2020 with a tiny bit less dread, right? Or maybe just a different kind of dread. I started writing this one several times then ‘the news’ got in the way and I had to rethink, so this one is a bit of a stopgap and a hodgepodge of shorter notes.

Like a number of you I spent the last few days of 2020 reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s . It was one of R’s Christmas presents but I managed to sneak in a read of it while he was engrossed in something else. That ‘something else’ at the moment is Czech game - a pretty neat cross-platform factory building game which has all those characteristics that made so addictive for youngsters. Although opens with a very grim scene of extreme climate collapse, by its end the book was a surprisingly uplifting and optimistic way to close out the year. As far as speculative fiction goes, it managed to tread a line that was hopeful plausible, and importantly, US-centric. R is reading it now. It’s probably quite good for kids to read optimistic fiction about our ongoing climate crisis.