Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist

If anyone was wondering, this is definitely not a Culture novel; unlike the other non-culture 'M' novels, it explictly isn't even set in the same universe. This is a different galaxy-spanning civilization, with its own history and politics and physics, a civilization where AI is proscribed, tied together by a sparse and fragile network of wormholes. It's still very distinctively Banks, full of unlikely architecture, vast set-pieces, and moments of stark brutality and inventive nastiness.

I noticed something else, too, that's hard to put a finger on; some distinctively British tone that turns up in the work of Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross and Terry Pratchett, a sort of matter-of-fact understatedness in the face of evil, maybe.

Daylight Saving

Arizona, like Hawaii and Indiana, doesn't do daylight saving time. We joke that in our scorching summers the last thing anyone wants is another hour of daylight, and maybe that really is the reason. The summer days here aren't nearly as stretched-out, or the winter ones as compressed, as I was used to in England; even in at midwinter it's still dusk at 6pm, and at midsummer it goes dark around 8.

Even though I didn't lose an hour's sleep this morning, the change affects the rhythm of my days in subtle, second-order ways. Tomorrow I'll be able to come home at 7pm to my favourite CNN show instead of the one I can't stand. My workday will mesh with that of my colleagues in California instead of the ones in Colorado; my weekly call to my mother will be an hour earlier. In an odd way, I feel further from home in the summer -- eight time zones instead of seven.