philip reeve's mortal engines, being read on bbc7 by adrian rawlins in abridged form, is turning out to be gripping. in allotments of ten minutes a day, however, (and we're only six days into the serial,) it will be a very long time before i am put out of my misery. but i simply refuse to have anything to do with the book until the summer - because there are four of them and it sounds like the sort of thing that if i got my hands on i would read immediately, and even i am not that silly - this is not the semester for mucking about, and the whole idea is far too exciting: traction cities, municipal darwinism, (urbivores!), guilds of engineers, navigators, economists and historians! perhaps julian would read it in his spare time and tell me about it! (i'm glad southeast asia is part of the anti-traction league, though i don't fancy china being the head of the league. according to the premises of the book it was they who were in the sixty-minute war with north america that caused the fallout to begin with. why do people always harp on about east asia? what about the rise of southeast asia? there would be better food under our leadership, to begin with.)

oh and, kay sambell has a good article out in the lion and the unicorn called carnivalizing the future, which is about mortal engines. if you have access, do take a look. it's vol28 issue 2 (2004.)