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ARC Review of Part 1 of Drake, by Ed Adams

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★★★★★ CatGirlforChaos I came for Drake. I stayed because apparently the universe has pub logic. Right. I need to explain this book, and I’m already annoyed because I’m not entirely sure what sort of book it is. There are four ancient non-human entities called Watchers. They can become Presences, which means they look like people and can do normal human things such as ride buses, drive Ford Escorts, drink bitter and get irritated with one another. One of them is Drake. Drake is my favourite. Obviously. At one point three of the others walk into a pub called the Three Jolly Wheelers and Drake announces: “Look. Here come the Three Jolly Wheelers.” This is approximately the level of seriousness with which Drake approaches the existence of the universe. DO NOT BE FOOLED. Underneath the pubs and buses and extremely specific 1970s cars, this book is quietly messing about with probability, observation, time, cosmology and whether something being ridiculously unlikely mea...
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ARC Review : Magenta, by Ed Adams

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Physicist Review: A Future Without Footnotes There is a moment familiar to every physicist reading speculative fiction. A character glances meaningfully at a blackboard, another character asks what it means, and the story stops while somebody delivers a short public lecture on quantum mechanics. The cat is summoned. The slits are opened. Entanglement is described as “spooky.” If string theory is involved, dimensions are folded, usually with the aid of a sheet of paper. Ed Adams does none of this. I cannot adequately express my delight. Magenta neither explains string theory nor asks it to perform as decorative authorization for fantasy. The novel does something far more interesting: it asks what another d-brane might feel like. That distinction matters. Physics describes relationships through mathematical structures. Fiction describes the experience of being caught inside relationships before one understands them. Adams wisely leaves the equations where they belong and attends instead...
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