Memories are real

Philip K Dick is a smart sassy writer and his short stories are ideal for film. But book versus film is always going to be a futile question. They are different. Get over it. They can both be great. Both be bad. One great and one bad.
What interests me is how your anticipation or retrospective memory are slightly different for each of these forms. How we feel about the experience is important to whether we react positively or not. It is the same with memories. If we had a bad experience with something we are unlikely to want to repeat it and yet the facts of the experience may or may not support whether it was good or not. So, TripAdvisors, how do you rate your trip to Mars? Was it a good holiday, a nightmare or a bit of both? Can you trust your memory? Are you Arnold Schwarzenegger or Colin Farrell? Are you both and someone has tampered with your memory? We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.

The war is over but the battle repeats

HG Wells' stories continue to inspire film, theatre, music and art high and low.

It's not hard to work out why as he was a rattling good story teller. He had imaginative plots, lots of action and some good twists. Whether you get to know the characters in depth and can overcome some of the jarring historical references (servants and stuff) is another matter.

Some of his tales, and War of the Worlds is definitely one of them, do fare better with reinterpretation and I'm not talking Tom Cruise here. Still it's refreshing now and then to get back to the source.

Fishing for compliments

I had some difficulty enjoying this book. I had no problem with the cultural location - a family in Nigeria to which I'd had some remote exposure through studies, friends and colleagues - and liked the expression and some great turns of phrase. What I struggled with was something much more familiar to readers of generational literature from the UK south west. This was the Thomas Hardy fateful doom that is obvious and inevitable as these youngsters grow up and come of age. But don't let me put you off. There is even a happy ending. I just didn't like the "something bad is going to happen" and then surprise, surprise it does.