Reading: Simon Morden

     Some of his novels -- the "Metrozone" books I'm reading right now -- won the Philip K. Dick award and I can see why, but Simon Morden's work reads more like a collaboration between Raymond Chandler and William Gibson. Possibly with the occasional bit of dialog from Yakov Smirnov.

     Set largely in the remains of London ("the Metrozone") in a much-damaged future that can be read as either dystopian or literally post-Apocalyptic, the first book introduces an appallingly determined, incredibly talented Russian refugee in the process of finishing up a Physics Ph.D., collaborating on a Grand Unified Theory of Everything, and, incidentally, saving the city.  Or most of it.  Madcap hijinks do ensue, most of it moving so quickly that you won't have time to wonder at what happened to your disbelief, trussed up and hanging over an abyss.

     While one reviewer complained the themes and plot "would have been more suited to a graphic novel," I doubt any artist could match the pictures Morden paints inside your head.  His action sequences (at least in the nearly two books I've read so far) are as good as any of Larry Correia's and that's not something I say lightly.

     Good, solid SF, like it seems they don't make so much of.  Equations of Life, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom were all published in 2011, followed by The Curve of the Earth in 2013.