For the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, last Saturday I got to indulge in my oldest hobby; I went to the cinema. So, after everything we went through over the last sixteen months, the first chance I got after things started opening again, I packed up my three children—plus my son’s friend—and the five of us headed for our local cinema in North London for some much-needed entertainment from the long-postponed Black Widow movie. But as we waited in the dark in an empty cinema for the film to start, my business analyst senses began to tingle; Cinemas are in real trouble.

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I am one of the millions flat surface dwellers that inhabit nearly every flat surface there is in London today. On any given day you can find me, and my brethren camped out with our laptops, frantically typing away in coffee shops, co-working spaces, libraries, offices (I assuming that people still working in these?!?) and anywhere else we can set up our portable work camps. My place of choice has long been Starbucks.

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There I was, just a few experience points shy of my 65th level and I swear for the seventh time this week I found myself facing down a horde of nuclear armed, suicidal, Super Mutants charging directly at me. If that wasn’t enough behind them was the largest Super Mutant Behemoth that I have even seen since crawling from Vault 111. I was trapped. I couldn’t run. My ammo was low. My amour was blown out. I was alone after shooting my last companion out in Nuka World. I knew I was dead.

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Me and Philip K Dick have issues. I totally agree Philip K Dick deserves his place among the great Sci-Fi writers and I would also agree that The Man in a High Castle is one of his best novels, but that doesn't mean reading his stuff fills me with great joy.

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A few years ago, I went mad and decided to take my hobby of reading Science Fiction to the next level. I set myself the challenge of reading all the Hugo Award winning novels that have been published since the award inception in 1953. To complicate things further I decided to write an article on each of the books that I read. At first I was confident that I would easily be able to knock out the 70 or so books in a year or two but somewhere around the deserts of Arrakis (Dune, 1966 Hugo Award Winner) I knew that this wasn’t going to be easy.

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First of all The City & The City is totally not a classic Sci-Fi Book, which is exactly why it is such a good Sci-Fi Book. There are no robots, aliens, spaceships, monsters or any other classic science fiction elements – other than some mysterious metals that may or may not have ‘special properties’ – in it.

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The famed Qeng Ho Trader and Galactic adventure Pham Nuwen is back from the dead after he has been literally pieced back together for one last adventure. This time he is teamed up with the only human librarian within 20,000 light years and some sentient house plants, known as the Greater Skroderider.

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