2007 books

82) Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden, 1978
Over a hot English summer, a family of four recently orphaned children avoid being taken into care by not telling anyone of their bereavement, instead choosing to fend for themselves. Narrated by the morose teenager Jack, it's soaked in an authentic atmosphere of a boring 1970s British adolescence, but their unguided excursions into premature adulthood would probably be treated as farcical and troubling comedy if they were from a less finely-tuned author. The setting seems as familiar and mundane as McEwan could possibly make it (notwithstanding the sibling sexual tension and the problem of how they dispose of their dead mother), and for a first novel it's as dry as dust in its cold and disturbing perfection.

Life imitates SF

Which is cooler, flying cars from Blade Runner or the X-Hawk Fancraft?

James P. Hogan's 'trimagniscope' from Inherit the Stars could soon be reading the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Humans can't live more than a few days without water... with the obvious exception of Russian cosmonauts? Gerbils in space.