Popping out of the cave to mention Slice of Life, a collection of stories by Paul Haines, put together by Stuart Mayne and Geoff Maloney. The collection includes the Ditmar-winning The Devil in Mr Pussy and the Aurealis-shortlisted Doof Doof Doof. (The Ditmar and Aurealis are Australian speculative fiction awards.) I haven’t read any of Paul’s work, but I do read his blog, and thoroughly believe the description of Slice of Life as “twisted and murderous black humour”. Paul has been undergoing treatment for cancer, which all proceeds from the book will go towards.

On the subject of books, I had a kind of message in a bottle from the past the other day when the always-interesting Des Lewis emailed me to say he’d written a review of The Alsiso Project, a book I contributed to a few years ago. I like something he says about one of the stories (Steve Savile’s): “Thankfully, it is flawed and over-long. The focus is spread. And we can escape.” Whether or not the reader agrees with his assessment, it’s good to see an acknowledgement that perfection (as ordained by the fashions of the times and the habits of a culture, presumably?) isn’t always the best state of being for a story, or any other work of art. How much space is too much, how much time is too much, how much faithful reproduction of the disorder of real life is too much? These are subjective questions, and they oppose the tendency of well-meaning people to make prescriptive statements about the arts (all those statements with “should” in them, which are not infrequently calibrated by the needs of mass commerce, ne?)

Gee, out of the cave and straight onto the soapbox!