There have been a couple of interesting articles in the UK papers over the weekend. The first is from The Independent, and it looks into the scary fact that Booker Prize winning author, John Banville, has written (Shock! Horror!) a crime novel! Naturally this has been done under a pseudonym – mainstream authors are just as much a brand as SF writers. I would have been amused if he had called himself John M. Banville, but actually he’s gone for the traditionally gritty gumshoe name of Benjamin Black. Banville also admits to finding writing genre fiction liberating.

I’d been writing ‘literature’ since I was 12. So I needed to do this. I’m already half-way through the next one in the series and I’m having a peculiar kind of holiday from myself.

The article is also quite interesting for what Banville has to say about living in Ireland under a theocracy. Being British, I’m not going to comment on any of that, except to say that if Banville’s assessment of Catholic Ireland is anywhere near correct I’ll take freedom, with all its faults and responsibilities, any day.

The other article of interest is in The Guardian. Following the public passion for list-making, they a have asked a bunch of literary luminaries to vote on what they think is the Best British/Irish/Commonwealth (a long-winded way of saying “not American”) Novel of the past 25 years. The list of also-rans is fascinating. It includes Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, all of which have obvious SF&F themes. There are also books by Angela Carter, Michael Moorcock and Iain Banks. The literary community is doubtless currently engaged in frenetic speculation as to which of the “literary sages” voted for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.