Two more from my swiftly dwindling pile of unread books acquired in 2015.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of The Happier Dead, by Ivo Stourton, is:

“Did the kids get off to school alright?”

Dystopian detective story of a not too distant future England where a rich minority have access to immortality treatments. Our policeman protagonist is called in to investigate a murder; it becomes clear that the mystery is intimately tied in with the whole political structure of society, which is anyway crumbling into riot and disorder, and he fights through to discover what is really going on. Interesting enough. You can get it here.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of Queen of the States, by Josephine Saxton, is:

She lay there thinking that she went in and out of states of consciousness as often as other people went through doors. This was not what she had intended for today … or yesterday? Time here was meaningless, she did not sense it passing. She had intended to drive away on an adventure, feeling her freedom, tesing herself out instead of existing in the judgement of others, who said she was unfit to manage her own life. She sat up, and the room had no corners. Everything had gone. Oh dear, a delusion.

This is on a different level, a finalist in 1987 for both the Clarke and BSFA Awards (beaten by The Handmaid’s Tale and The Ragged Astronauts). The protagonist travels between a failing marriage in today’s England and an alien society on another planet via a psychiatric ward. I thought it was funny as well as reflective. You can get it here.

The Happier Dead was the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves; next on that pile is Guy Erma and the Son of Empire, by Sally Ann Melia. Queen of the States was my top unread book acquired in 2015; next on that pile was The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media, by Peter Steven, which I have in fact read in the meantime.