Nothing much new today, I'm afraid - just the usual job hunting and reading. I did manage to find one job I was qualified for, so hopefully I'll have some response on that one. Thankfully I was done with Christmas shopping nearly two weeks ago, so I haven't had to worry about braving the crowds this year!

Today I finished reading Toast, which is a short story collection by Charles Stross. He's the writer behind the recent SF space opera Singularity Sky and the Accelerando stories published in Asimov's over the past few years.

Toast includes stories by Mr. Stross from as far back as 1990, most of which have appeared in various UK-based SF mags. The two stand-out stories in this collection are Antibodies, featuring mysterious goings-on and a Vingean Singularity, and A Colder War, a Lovecraftian spy-thriller hybrid. Both have appeared in Garder Dozois's (editor of Asimov's) annual Year's Best SF anthology.

Other stories in the collection include:
Bear Trap - a futuristic adventure with an economic bent.
Extracts from the Club Diary - diary entries from a club devoted to the present-day drug of choice.
TOAST: A con report - a retrocomputing convention, as covered by an aging hacker.
A Boy and His God - an amusing Lovecraftian pet tale.
Ship of Fools - aboard a ship with a group of people riding out the Y2K rollover.
Dechlorinating the Moderator - another con report, this one with plenty of physics. Left me thoroughly confused :)
Yellow Snow - time travel and post-Cyberpunk humour.
Big Brother Iron - an extension of Orwell's 1984, with computers and paranoia aplenty.

The majority of stories in the collection exhibit the same information-dense prose found in Mr. Stross's more recent work. At times this can make reading heavy going, and those with little or no computer science background may find some sections beyond understanding. Still, the sheer quantity of ideas and the intriguing scenarios presented make for fascinating reading.

Recent scientific advances, principally in regards to computer technology and the field of biology, render several of the stories obsolete. Sadly this is the price paid by much SF, which is essentially more about the present than it is about the future. That said, their obsolescence does little to diminish the entertainment factor.

While the stories are consistently high quality, the same cannot be said for the text itself. I spotted many spelling errors, strange punctuation, and even an occasional consistency problem. It looks as if the publisher was a little careless in this respect, so I hope they intend to correct these problems in future editions.

Toast is well worth a look, especially for fans of Charles Stross's Accelerando series and those who don't mind a bit of hard science fiction in their reading diet :)