I have just started reading New Life and New Civilizations: Exploring Star Trek Comics. As the name rather gives away, it’s a book about Star Trek comics, a collection of essays which pretty comprehensively examines all the various series there have been, from the sixties until now. I’m barely past the intro, but it has contributions by some of my favourite authors, and explores something I’m interested in, so I’m looking forward to it.

Right now I’m about a third of the way into Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt. It’s an alternate history novel, set in a world where everyone in Europe died from plague, leaving it open to be repopulated by the rest of the world. Every few chapters we skip ahead a generation or few as history unfolds in a new way without Europe’s influence on the world. The stories are strung together not just be a shared history, but by characters, who we follow through various reincarnations. Right now I’m up to the Chinese discovery of the Americas, which is still relatively near to the point of divergence; can’t wait to see how history is retold.

My chosen book for this Naked Reading Day is Alan K. Baker’s The Martian Ambassador, which I finished a couple of weeks ago. It’s the first steampunk novel I’ve ever read and I found it thoroughly enjoyable; set in Victorian England in a world where the British Empire and the Martians (friendly versions of the War of the Worlds variety) are firm friends.