A recent news story about a man who had a 55lb tumour removed from his stomach led me to start thinking about the way we think about fat people. The automatic reaction that many people have when seeing someone who is obese is one of automatic disapproval. I feel myself doing it all the time, and I've been wondering why we should disapprove of someone who is fat. One could argue that, in a country like this, where the health service is paid for by taxes, that obesity puts a strain on the service that we all have to pay for. But the same is equally true for people who do sports, or smoke, or drink, or sit badly, and the disapproval in these cases seems lesser. (Unless the smoking or drinking is impinging directly upon us). I'm inclined to think that we are caught up more in a puritanical mindset that considers obese people to have eaten too much or to have failed to care for themselves in a way we think they should. Which is ridiculous, because while obesity can be caused by overeating, and we live in a finite world, it is also a result of genetics and, in the case above, disease. There is also, I suspect, the disapproval of anyone who diverges too greatly from the norm. Anyone who follows any kind of unconventional lifestyle will be quite familiar with that. No doubt that disapproval has some kind of evolutionary imperative, but I'm buggered if I know what it is.

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Another review of Crab Apple, this time from Tangent Online. It's interesting to see the different interpretations that this story has gathered from the readers. This was probably the least positive of the reviews, but I was happy enough with it:

"In the end, the science fiction fan in me wanted a little more explanation, but this is still a nice, subtle faerie tale about hope and embracing the wildness inside us."

Thanks to James Palmer for the review.

The other reviews so far:
Internet Review of Science Fiction (You need to sign up to access this one.)
Science Fiction Romance
David Roy

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To my delight, Steph has started writing a new novel. The opening is absolutely fantastic: very exciting, very original. For now, I get to read it. You don't. :)