When I stayed with John Clute on my way out to California he was very pleased to have been asked by The Guardian to write a full-length review of the new M. John Harrison novel, Nova Swing. Not a Jon Courtenay-Grimwood column-style brief look, but a whole proper review. One that even turns up in the Guardian Books RSS feed, which Jon’s column never did.

What is officially known as an “event” is in fact a crosshatching of realities (the waves of black and white cats that at dawn and dusk flood the interstices between worlds are vividly reminiscent of Escher’s drawings of black and white birds swapping colours as they change worlds). For the exiled humans of Saudade, the taste of Tefahuchi in their midst is soul catnip.

The fruit of his labors is now online, and a fine job it is too (as always). However, I couldn’t help but notice the repeated mention of something called the “Tefahuchi Tract”. It would not have surprised me to discover that Mike had changed the spelling of the place on a whim to confuse people, but a quick check of Gary Wolfe’s review in Locus reveals the original “Kefahuchi Tract”. I know that Clute is far too precise to make a mistake like that, so I can only conclude that he’s yet another victim of the Grauniad spelling disease. -sigh-

Update: And here’s the Independent review by Roz Kaveney, as per Mike’s comment below.