Introducing the stunning third volume of Philip Pullman's critically acclaimed fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials. The Amber Spyglass brings the intrigue of The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife to a heartstopping conclusion, marking the final volume as the most powerful of the trilogy.

Along with the return of Lyra, Will, Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel, Dr. Mary Malone, and Iorek Brynison the armored bear comes a host of new characters: the Mulefa, mysterious wheeled creatures with the power to see Dust; Chevalier Tialys and Lady Salmakia, hand-high spy-masters to Lord Asriel; and Metatron, a fierce and mighty angel. So, too, come startling revelations: the painful price Lyra must pay to walk though the land of the dead, the haunting power of Dr. Malone's amber spyglass, and the names of who will live -- and who will die -- for love. And all the while, war rages with the Kingdom of Heaven, a brutal battle that -- in its shocking outcome -- will uncover the secret of Dust.

In The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman deftly weaves the cliffhangers and mysteries of The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife into an earth-shattering conclusion -- and confirms his fantasy trilogy as an undoubted and enduring classic.

Now I know the real reason. He has recently completed the last section of a walk round the M25 in the company of Iain Sinclair, ending up in the bar of the Welsh Harp in Waltham Abbey. He had accompanied Sinclair and other companions on two other sections, and each time had come heroically misprepared: boots when he needed trainers, trainers when he needed boots, a leather jacket which "will cook him if he wears it; cripple him if he carries it". For the first leg he carries a rucksack filled with books. At a pub his socks have to be cut from his feet. "His blisters have blisters." By the time of the final stretch - including a terrifying twilight march through Epping Forest - he still hasn't learnt. His hair, says Sinclair, "turned grey in the course of the walk from Theydon Bois". Still, he is alive in the Welsh Harp:

" We leave him where he is. As far as I know, he's there still. He's probably taken out membership at the Waltham Abbey library. Signed up for night classes in runic prophecy and Pataphysics. He'll never make it across the market square to the mini-cab office. And they haven't got any available cabs."

Why walk around the M25? To kill freelance journalists? To oblige a publisher? Or, as one of his early companions says, to find out where it leads? The answer is, of course, the last. It's a pilgrimage, and the expiation sought, the spiritual agenda, is "a ritual purpose: to exorcise the unthinking malignancy of the Dome, to celebrate the sprawl of London". Sinclair is not the first to hate the Greenwich meniscus, and won't be the last - but we're only reminded of it when he gives it a savage mention. So he can be said to have succeeded. The act was pious: "walking is virtue", as he reminds us.

As for the London sprawl: that's celebrated inspirationally, as you might expect from Sinclair's mind. As all his books are book-length footnotes to his other books; you can also expect obsessions to reappear, to criss-cross the text like ancient drovers' tracks: he bumps into Rodinsky's final resting-place, Hawksmoor's ditto.

The M25 may be modern but Sinclair is only tangentially interested in modernity, saluting JG Ballard's prophetic fictions when interviewing him in Shepperton. Sinclair: "'Then' and 'now' are distinctions I can't make." Which is great for us: this is a walk through time as well as territory, and if he finds a gap in his encyclopaedic fund of arcana, then he will find someone who can fill him in - which is one reason why Jackson is a co-dedicatee, along with the painter Laurence "Renchi" Bicknell, whose highly Blakean illustrations separate the chapters - and who seemed to have suffered not so much as a muscle-twinge during the course of the whole 127 miles.

At one point I nearly dropped the book - and not just because of its heft, its roughly quarter of a million words packed into a volume not much smaller than the A-Z Master Atlas of Greater London, which I used as an enhancement to the text, and to stop myself from getting lost. They work together very well: in fact they're indispensable to each other, and when marking my place I would interleave the two, relevant page to relevant page. When I picked them up I had to remind myself which one I was reviewing. Anyway, where it nearly fell from my disbelieving hands was when I saw the walk described as "our amnesiac circuit".

Amnesiac? I've never met a structured book that forgets less, from Renchi's childhood memories of his grandmother's house - which they visit, in what is now a cordoned-off colony of paranoid retirees - to almost every conceivable cultural byway.

The circumference of the M25 was always liminal ground, even before it was built: turf either for bandits or those who needed to get out of London but stay within its reach. The motorway has made life easier both for criminals and nobs; the two come together in the building of exclusive golf courses, where the shady dispersal of toxic waste meets the "hermetic exclusivity" of the club.

At Merstham, a month before Sinclair crossed it, unknown persons dug up the fairways (designed by Jack Nicklaus) and drew cabbalistic diagrams with weedkiller. By the time you reach that bit, you're hardly surprised: weirdness seems to follow Sinclair around like an invisible dog. He doesn't seem to seek it out: it's just the way he tells 'em, the tone of voice supremely suited to representing chaos, to calming it down just enough for it to be readable. And very readable it is, more than the epithet "writer's writer" often applied to Sinclair would suggest. In fact, it's a hoot. But you'll need that map.

(Reviewed by Nicholas Lezard in the Guardian)

As one who nearly joined their ranks, please indulge me while I add my own anecdote to Spufford's excellent book. I vividly remember a holiday in 1975, on the day when one of the Viking landers touched down on Mars. While the family were sitting down to watch Patrick Moore and the first pictures from the surface of an alien world, we heard that the local chippy had acquired a new-fangled invention - a "microwave" oven. Dad rushed out and returned with chicken cooked from raw in the magic rays. It was pale and pasty, but somehow that didn't matter. We sat munching it with soggy chips in front of the telly and it felt like the dawn of our very own Space Age. Soggy chips and vaunting ambition is what this book is all about.

"Backroom Boys" starts with a chapter about the early British space programme ("Flying Spitfires to Other Planets") and ends with the "Beagle 2" mission to Mars. There's a scrotum-crawling irony about the way the latter turned out to be such a dog of spacecraft. Somehow, when you read this book you know that Britain's been here before. Most technological dreams turn out different to our expectations. But that's not a reason to give up trying.

If you still have hope that invention and technical creativity might hold some of the answers to the difficult problems we face on this planet, give this book a read.

(Review on Amazon by Hugh Mason)

Reacting to an itch common to Midwesterners since there's been a Midwest from which to escape, writer Bill Bryson moved from Iowa to Britain in 1973. Working for such places as Times of London, among others, he has lived quite happily there ever since. Now Bryson has decided his native country needs him--but first, he's going on a roundabout jaunt on the island he loves.

Britain fascinates Americans: it's familiar, yet alien; the same in some ways, yet so different. Bryson does an excellent job of showing his adopted home to a Yank audience, but you never get the feeling that Bryson is too much of an outsider to know the true nature of the country. Notes from a Small Island strikes a nice balance: the writing is American-silly with a British range of vocabulary. Bryson's marvelous ear is also in evidence: "... I noted the names of the little villages we passed through--Pinhead, West Stuttering, Bakelite, Ham Hocks, Sheepshanks ..." If you're an Anglophile, you'll devour Notes from a Small Island.

From Publishers Weekly

Before his return to the U.S. after a 20-year residence in England, journalist Bryson (Made in America) embarked on a farewell tour of his adopted homeland. His trenchant, witty and detailed observations of life in a variety of towns and villages will delight Anglophiles. Traveling only on public transportation and hiking whenever possible, Bryson wandered along the coast through Bournemouth and neighboring villages that reinforced his image of Britons as a people who rarely complain and are delighted by such small pleasures as a good tea. In Liverpool, the author's favorite English city, he visited the Merseyside Maritime Museum to experience its past as a great port. Interweaving descriptions of landscapes and everyday encounters with shopkeepers, pub customers and fellow travelers, Bryson shares what he loves best about the idiosyncrasies of everyday English life in this immensely entertaining travel memoir

Following his highly praised and bestselling book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley has written a brilliant and profound book about the roots of human behavior. Nature via Nurture explores the complex and endlessly intriguing question of what makes us who we are.

In February 2001 it was announced that the human genome contains not 100,000 genes, as originally postulated, but only 30,000. This startling revision led some scientists to conclude that there are simply not enough human genes to account for all the different ways people behave: we must be made by nurture, not nature. Yet again biology was to be stretched on the Procrustean bed of the nature-nurture debate. Matt Ridley argues that the emerging truth is far more interesting than this myth. Nurture depends on genes, too, and genes need nurture. Genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will.

Published fifty years after the discovery of the double helix of DNA, Nature via Nurture chronicles a revolution in our understanding of genes. Ridley recounts the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by instinct and culture. Nature via Nurture is an enthralling,up-to-the-minute account of how genes build brains to absorb experience.

In the four long stories in this collection, Marlowe is hired to protect a rich old guy from a gold digger, runs foul of crooked politicos, gets a line on some stolen jewels with a reward attached, and stumbles across a murder victim who may have been an extortionist

At the end of The Northern Lights, Lyra Silvertongue watched in fear and fascination as her father, Lord Asriel, created a bridge between worlds. Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon, are now lost in an alternate universe where they meet Will Parry, a fugitive from a third universe. Will has found a small window between Cittagazze (a place where children roam unchecked but invisible Specters suck the spirit out of adults) and his Oxford, which, with its Burger Kings and cars, is frighteningly different from the Oxford Lyra knows.

Will's father, an explorer, disappeared years ago, but recently some odd characters have started asking questions about him, and now, having accidentally killed one of them, Will is wanted by the police. Armed with the Subtle Knife, a tool that cuts any material (including that which separates universes) and Lyra's alethiometer, the children set out to find John Parry, with adults of various stripes in desperate pursuit.

Lyra's finest qualities, her courage and quick mind, are stretched to the limit as she has to lie, cheat and steal to keep herself and Will out of danger. However, she must also learn when to tell the truth and when to trust, for, though she does not yet know it, she has a huge part to play in the upcoming battle between Good and Evil.

Synopsis

The second book in the "Dark Materials" trilogy. Will is 12 years old and he's just killed a man. Determined to discover the truth about his father's disappearance, he steps through a window into another world. There, he meets a girl called Lyra who, like himself, is on a mission.

Lyra's life is already sufficiently interesting for a novel before she eavesdrops on a presentation by her uncle Lord Asriel to his colleagues in the Jordan College faculty, Oxford. The college, famed for its leadership in experimental theology, is funding Lord Asriel's research into the heretical possibility of the existence of worlds unlike Lyra's own, where everyone is born with a familiar animal companion, magic of a kind works, the Tartars are threatening to overrun Muscovy, and the Pope is a puritanical Protestant. Set in an England familiar and strange, Philip Pullman's lively, taut story is a must-read and re-read for fantasy lovers of all ages. The world-building is outstanding, from the subtle hints of the 1898 Tokay to odd quirks of language to the panserbjorne, while determined, clever Lyra is strongly reminiscent of Joan Aiken's Dido Twite.

Synopsis

In this first part of the "Dark Materials" trilogy, Lyra's friend Roger disappears. She and her daemon, Pantalaimon, determine to find him. Their quest leads them to the bleak splendour of the North where a team of scientists are conducting unspeakably horrible experiments.

Tony Hawks' debut book, Round Ireland with a Fridge, was an irreverent satire. The topic of the sequel is even more absurd. Like Round Ireland, it supposedly originates from an obscure bet. This time, Hawks bets he can't track-down the Moldovan football team and beat them all at tennis. The loser must perform the Moldovan national anthem naked on Balham High Road. However, knowledge of tennis and/or football isn't required to enjoy the book.

Hawks' Irish trip was characterised by willing accomplices who joined in the fun. In Moldova, Hawks also expects a good laugh. Instead, he discovers a grey, dour people, ground down by decades of poverty. He describes Moldova's "total lack of anything whatsoever to offer the tourist." Despite the rarity of visitors, he receives an apathetic welcome as his mission provokes little more than weak smiles. Tracking down the footballers and persuading them to play turns becomes almost impossible.

The book treads a fine line between brilliant and juvenile, between Jeremy Beadle and the genuinely witty. Hawks' sixth-form joke of presenting a round table to Moldova's new King Arthur is especially cringe-worthy. His experience as a second-division stand-up leads to innumerable trite quips. Still, overall Playing The Moldovans At Tennis is an entertaining, easy read that will make you chuckle. It provides an interesting view of Eastern Europe's post-Communist life, while keeping you in suspense: Will he? Won't he? Suffice to say that, yes, at the end of the book someone does end up naked and singing outside a South London Woolworths. --Sarah Champion

But is the single life quite all it’s cracked up to be?

In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss dares to say that, with our system of punctuation patently endangered, it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them for the wonderful and necessary things they are. If there are only pedants left who care, then so be it. "Sticklers unite" is her rallying cry. "You have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion--and arguably you didn't have much of that to begin with."

Restless, often unfocussed on the task at hand (at least that is the impression he leaves, though his accomplishments suggest otherwise), and with a group of friends with their own decidedly odd ideas and ambitions, Drummond involves himself in any number of unusual stunts and undertakings. Many of his efforts seem elaborate and often bizarre publicity stunts, and much of what he does is marked by a distinct effort to undermine his own efforts. Success, of sorts, seems to come despite his best efforts to avoid it.

45 is presented in the form of episodes, chapters of varying length on various subjects, most with the date on which they were (ostensibly) written (between 1997 and 1999, with the pieces not arranged in chronological order). Many of the vignettes deal with what Drummond is doing at the time when he writes them: taking his kids to a Michael Jackson concert in Helsinki, making soup for a houseful of artists in Belfast, driving around the M25 for 25 hours straight with Gimpo (Alan Goodrick), or his routine at his local library.

There are also pieces about the glory days: the invaluable From the Shores of Lake Placid, which recounts Drummond's career trying to manage Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes (and even includes a Courtney Love cameo), a demythologizing account of Tammy Wynette's contribution to the classic KLF track, Justified and Ancient, and an account of the Beograd screening of Watch The K Foundation Burn a Million Quid (a welcome complement to the superb Chris Brook/Gimpo chronicle, K Foundation burn a Million Quid -- see our review).

Drummond's contemporary focus and more incidental pieces -- about purchasing some Stewart Home pieces, interviewing Richard Long, flying on the same plane with Peter Green, Scots nationalism, making soup, his often mundane life -- are also accomplished, a worthwhile and interesting collection in their own right. However, the smaller and more cohesive collection, Annual Report (see our review), which is made up of similar pieces, is a more powerful book because, even though it is limited in scope, the pieces fit together. The fill of 45 is, ultimately too much, two books squeezed uncomfortably in one. Drummond comes close to pulling it off in his laid back style, but falls just a bit short.

45 is a useful companion to contemporary British culture. There's not quite enough here for it to be considered among the definitive books on Echo and the Bunnymen, the brilliant but difficult Julian Cope, or the KLF and its offshoots, but it does offer interesting views of all of these. In addition Drummond is a perceptive observer of the contemporary art scene and makes some astute (and clever) points regarding the difficulty of producing art in this day and age. He is not jaded, cynical, or too conceited, which makes the book an enjoyable read. Recommended. (www.complete-review.com)

Remember when everything was looking up? When the government was running at a surplus, pollution was disappearing, peace was breaking out in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, and the Bridge to the Twenty-First Century was strung with high-speed Internet cable and paved with 401K gold?

Well, so much for the future. Michael Moore, the award-winning provocateur behind Roger & Me and the bestseller Downsize This!, now returns to size up the new century - and that big, ugly special-interest group that's laying waste to the world as we know it: stupid white men. Whether he's calling for United Nations action to overthrow the Bush Family Junta, calling on African-Americans to place whites only signs over the entrances of unfriendly businesses, or praying that Jesse Helms will get kissed by a man, Stupid White Men is Mike's Manifesto on Malfeasance and Mediocrity. Among his targets: George W.: "President" of the United States. The Thief-in-Chief. A trespasser on federal land, a squatter in the Oval Office. Send in the Marines! Launch the SCUD missiles! Bring me the head of Antonin Scalia! Bill Clinton: One of the best Republican presidents we've ever had. The Former Yugoslavia: Bring back Marshall Tito! Nobody in America liked him much when he was alive, but now he looks like Lady Bird Johnson. The Idiot Nation: A friggin' stain on a blue dress. That's what captured our attention in the nineties - along with slow-moving Broncos, six-year-old strangled beauty queens, and Hugh Grant's dating habits. Corporate America: There is no recession, my friends: no downturn, no hard times. The rich are wallowing in loot -- and no they want to make sure you don't come a-lookin' for your piece of the pie.

The polls indicate that 60 percent of Americans are "upset or angry" about this land in which we now live -- a land where crooked courts select the president and money rules the day. So if you're feeling the same way and you're wondering what's going to give out first - the economy, Dick Cheney's pacemaker, or your new VW Beetle - here's the book for you.

Characteristically, the second sentence is perfect, but the first is too loose (why "pretty much"? Why "known"?). Still, Hall's absurdist inventions - when writing about US gun laws or an imagined military intervention in the sale of Bryan Adams CDs - are usually more entertaining than the work of many a newspaper "humorist".

Brief Description

Rich Hall invites us into his world as he describes his idyllic childhood in Tennessee, helping to operate his grandfolks' backyard nuclear plant; explains how he sold his soul to the Devil (and how the Devil tried to sell it back); and questions what people breathed before oxygen was discovered.

Juliet Millhouse, aka Milly, modest beauty and aspiring screenwriter, works as a receptionist at a posh hotel frequented by businesspeople and stars, including Hollywood producers. Having got an agent on the strength of winning a screenwriting competition, she now can't get him to read her second script or even speak to her.

Meanwhile, monster studio mogul Willenheim is looking for his next hit, which he finds when, in a move copied from The Importance of Being Earnest, Milly's script gets mixed up with those from Willenheim's development department.

Of course, the development department, headed by former child star Mitch Carmichael, doesn't know the script from Adam. The search is on, Mitch eventually staying in Milly's hotel, searching for what is under his nose, and Milly assisting him, not knowing any more than he does about the mysterious author, since he doesn't mention the name.

The Americans often speak in an inadvertently British idiom, but if the moguls talk about sacking someone rather than firing them, British audiences are unlikely to notice and Americans will just think them unusually classy for Hollywood.

Local baker Bill Baxter vents his frustration at the developer's by deliberately neglecting to put jam into a batch of doughnuts. Unbeknown to Bill, a rogue jamless doughnut sets in train a ripple of irrational anger which grows wave upon wave until if finally threatens to swamp the entire nation, leaving careers ruined, fortunes won and parliament in turmoil. But where will it end? And what will become of Bill and his beloved town?

Out of this stupid premise, a ridiculously amusing book was born. Quickly discovered by the Irish media, the thumbing Englishman finds that he and his box fridge are elevated to celebrity status, and there's no dearth of rides, places to stay or goofy people to meet, from kings to spoons players to locals who take his fridge surfing. As insightful about the strange inner workings of Hawk's mind as it is about charming peculiarities of Irishmen--it's doubtful that Hawks would have been similarly embraced by Germans, Italians, or the French--Round Ireland with a Fridge is an entirely silly, heart-warming tale told in a rollicking funny and refreshing style.

This year the Auditors, who want people to stop believing in things that aren't real, have hired an assassin to eliminate the Hogfather. (You know him: red robe, white beard, says, "Ho, ho, ho!") Their evil plot will destroy the Discworld unless someone covers for him. So someone does. Well, at least Death tries. He wears the costume and rides the sleigh drawn by four jolly pigs: Gouger, Tusker, Rooter and Snouter. He even comes down chimneys. But as fans of other Pratchett stories about Death know, he takes things literally. He gives children whatever they wish for and appears in person at Crumley's in The Maul.

Fans will welcome back Susan, Death of Rats (the Grim Squeaker), Albert and the wizardly faculty of Unseen University and revel in new personalities like Bilious, the "oh god of Hangovers." But you needn't have read Pratchett before to laugh uproariously and think seriously about the meanings of Christmas.

Somewhere around the Ventoux, the world's windiest place, Moore starts to change. He becomes enraptured by the feat itself as mile by mile he realises he is no longer an accidental cyclist but a lean, mean cycling machine. Gradually, the narrative turns from travel to a personal quest. Along the route, Moore's details of the heroes of the Tour make an excellent primer on this gruelling race and helps the uninitiated understand the frenzy that grips France each July as the races meanders through incidental villages, over mountains and, finally, into Paris. It is worth reading for that alone. Having survived mountains of pain, a disgusting diet and motels of dubious value, a new, muscular Moore concludes that "I might never leave my mark on the Tour, but that didn't matter. It has left its mark on me".

To follow Moore's path of perspiration is certainly not a vacation. Yet, this curmudgeonly clever and inspirational book makes one want to do just that. "Old Father Time was catching up with Old Father Tim. If I didn't do it this year, I wouldn't because maybe next year I couldn't," he says before starting out. And that, as Tim Moore so surely points out, is what pushes any true traveller out the door. Kathleen Buckley - Amazon.co.uk Review

A patient calling himself "prot" and claiming to be a visitor from the planet K-PAX, an idyllic world without wars, government, sex or religion, is brought to the Manhattan psychiatric institute run by a character named... Gene Brewer (who is a psychiatrist, not a retired molecular biologist like his creator). Self-assured, wisecracking prot, who seems to possess arcane knowledge of subjects ranging from astronomy to paleontology, announces that he will return to K-PAX on August 17, just two months away.

Before then, though, he enlists fellow patients in his fantasy; some of them, touched by his humanity, show marked improvement. Moreover, when Brewer invites prot home for a July Fourth barbecue, the man's mere presence seems to trigger dramatic changes in the psychiatrist's family.

The question is, can their love survive?Inconceivable confirms Ben Elton as one of Britiain's most significant, entertaining and provocative writers.

Stark does not want to answer the phone. When he does, he's called over to the Action Centre,the part of town where all the highly motivated over achievers live and work sontinuously. He's from Color, where the residents all agree to work together to create a continuous pallette of beautiful colors. His shirt shifts to match the scenes he walks through. The world that Smith presents us with in 'Only Forward' is a fascinating mix of high satire, great writing and ingenious invention.

Stark's assignment is to find a missing man. It sounds simple enough, but Smith's world is constantly surprising, threatening, and wonder-filled. Stark manages to find his man, and then the novel introduces Smith's invention which, it turns out, was not the intricate world he has created and kept so fascinating. There's something really weird happening. Smith takes us right there to witness the unfolding.

Smith laces his prose with a lower-key version of the kind of British humor that makes Douglas Adams books so popular, but does not succumb to the cartoonish impulse that such satire can lead to. And he keeps his wonders wondrous, his surprises surprising. It's a difficult feat condsidering how high he sets the bar, but he manages it with aplomb. 'Only Forward' is a spectacular debut novel for a writer who has kept his promise to keep getting better.

As part of the challenge his passport, his honeymoon tickets and his credit cards have been hidden in various places along the way - he has just 20 hours to find them all and complete his journey or the wedding is off. Tired, hungover, amazed at his own foolishness, he sets out on his journey at 5am with Brian, a drunk he picks up in Morden. He knows he can win his bet, and at first he seems to be making good progress. But then everything starts to go wrong...

A touching and perceptive debut novel about why men have obsessions and women tolerate them.

In Do Not Pass Go Tim Moore, belying his reputation as a player who always paid that [pound]10 fine rather than take a Chance, fearlessly tackles the real thing and along the way tells the story of a game and the city that frames it. Sampling the rags and the riches he stays in a hotel in Mayfair and one in the Old Kent Road, enjoys quality time with Dr Crippen in Pentonville Prison and even winds up at the wrong end of the Water Works pipe. And, solving all the mysteries you'll have pondered whilst languishing in jail and many other you certainly wouldn't, Tim Moore reveals how Pall Mall got its name, which three addresses you won't find in your A-Z and why the sorry cul-de-sac that is Vine Street has a special place in the heart of Britain's most successful Monopoly champion.

The stirring travelogue of one man's erratic progress around those 28 stations, utilities and street, Do Not Pass Go is also an epic and lovingly researched history of London's wayward progress in the 66 years since the launch of the world's most popular board game

The story tells of the desperate unknowability of humans to each other. The tragedy of the relationship between Kris Kelvin and Rheya, his re-animated lover, is that of all humanity: we cannot penetrate to the essence of those we love, for they are finally as incomprehensible to themselves as we are to ourselves. The rebirth of Rheya mirrors our own entry into the world and our struggle to become authentic to ourselves, to know what we are and why, if there is a reason, we are.

I hope this doesn't make it seem that Solaris is some terribly gloomy, ponderous philosophical discourse. On the contrary, it is a tale with many beauties: the evocative descriptions of the effects of the blue and red light from Solaris's twin suns; the ballet of generation and decay and regeneration enacted by the amazing mimoids, symmetriads and asymmetriads; and the development of the strange love between Kelvin and Rheya. And there is the wry humour of the history of Solarist research and theory, a compendium of creativity, crankiness and curiosity that mirrors on the cultural level the problem of our individual need to feel a real communication with others and how we project ourselves, our images and desires and obsessions, onto the world.

There is a well managed air of suspense and threat too. Lem has not forgotten the necessity of making the reader want to know what happens next.

This book contains much descriptive material, but I feel that it is on the whole essential to the philosophical underpinning of the story. Without detailed images of the planet's incredible structures and processes the narrative would lose its point altogether. Both Solaris and Rheya would be senseless, empty images. However, the philosophical discussion between Kelvin and Snow at the end seems a little adventitious. It deals with some interesting if not genuinely original notions of a lonely God who has lost control of His creation, drawing parallels with Solaris and humanity, but I would have preferred these ideas to have been hinted at subtextually rather than given a full exposition. On the other hand, there is something achingly poignant about the ending.

As always with the finest genre fiction, Solaris transcends the stylings and tropes of SF and proves to be a compelling, highly readable classic of world fiction.

After the surreal procedures of the training school, he is allocated his own patch, of which he grows quickly proprietorial. In a collection of precise tableaux, he neither leans upon nor ignores the inevitable anecdotal luggage that accumulates, but relates it with philosophical detachment and, when necessary, an engaged moral probity. He observes the archetypal gaits of his commuters, sings harmonies with a busking act, witnesses the spit and polish applied for a visit by John Prescott, and a man emerge from a train tunnel after being told at the previous station that it would be quicker to walk. Green grapes, he learns, are more deadly than banana skins, though not as lethal as suicidal "one-unders" (or "track pizza", in unforgiving New York parlance). A captured mosquito turns out to be unknown in Britain, an ugly, beswaddled baby turns out to be a monkey, and a dog on a lead a domesticated fox. Nothing is what it seems, but only if you look.

Like the best travel literature, Tunnel Visions chooses internal rather than external landscapes, and describes them with a steady calm eye. From the autopilot of the Victoria Line trains to the sheep-like, but never sheepish, autopilot of his gaggles of passengers, the wisdom, and man-hours, Ross invests in this woefully under-resourced utility rewards with the best view from the other side of the Tube tracks since John Wain's novel The Smaller Sky, now sadly out-of-print. In the end the pessimism ground Ross down, but the Oxford Circus' loss was literature's gain, with this terrific, humane, utterly original legacy.