Member: AlanPoulter
CollectionsYour library (1,483)
Reviews964 reviews
Tagsscience fiction (1,223), short fiction (859), fantasy (222), free fiction (110), alien contact (106), space exploration (96), near future (96), fiction magazines (87), romance (74), alternate reality (58) — see all tags
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Recommendations60 recommendations
About meStarted out as a librarian - I worked at the British Library as a Cataloguer and the Science Museum as Deputy Systems Manager. Got into academia as a lecturer in library and information studies at Leeds Polytechnic, then went to Loughborough University, then back to Leeds Metropolitan. I am now at Strathclyde University in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, where I lecture on information management and librianship courses. I am a member of CILIP (the professional association for librarians in the UK).
Outside of work I read mainly science fiction (but will stray outside the genre) and play boardgames/wargames. I was a member of the International Gamers Awards Historical Simulations Committee. I am a member of the British Science Fiction Association joining a long, long time ago....
About my libraryI buy all my science fiction from the very wonderful Transreal, located at 46 Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh. It features in Ken Macleod's novel The Restoration game.
My SF Library paperback to buy list (17/05/13)
BOOKS I MISSED IN THE PAST
Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor
Brian Aldiss - Hothouse, Non-Stop
Nina Allan - The silver wind
Roger MacBride Allen - The Ring of Charon
John Barnes - Directive 51
Stephen Baxter - Reality Dust/Making History,
Vacuum diagrams
Lauren Beukes - Moxyland
Michael Bishop - Brittle innings
Ryan Boudinot - Blueprints of the Afterlife (Jan 2012)
Lois McMaster Bujold - Mirror
Raphael Carter - The Fortunate Fall,
C. J. Cherryh - Alternate Realities
Ernest Cline - Ready Player One
James S. A. Corey - Leviathan Wakes
Paul Cornell - Something more, British summertime
Moira Crone - The Not Yet
Julie E. Czerneda - Survival
Samuel R. Delany - Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders
Candas Jane Dorsey - Black Wine
Kelley Eskridge - Solitaire
Neil Ferguson - Putting Out, Double Helix Fall
Jeffrey Ford - Memoranda, Beyond
Mary Gentle - Left to His Own Devices
Lisa Goldstein - Uncertain Places
Kathleen Ann Goonan - Mississippi Blues, Light Music
Daryl Gregory - Devil's alphabet
Sarah Hall - Carhullan army
Mark Hodder - Burton and Swinburne in the Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
Nick Harkaway - Gone-away world
Alexander Jablokov - Carve the Sky, A Deeper Sea, Nimbus, Deepdrive
Kameron Hurley - God's war
Gwyneth Jones - Universe of things
Graham Joyce - The silent land
David Kowalski - The company of the dead
Fritz Leiber - The big time, The wanderer
Paul Levinson - The Plot to Save Socrates
M. J. Locke - Up Against It
Paul Mcauley - The Secret of Life,
Reality Dust/Making History, Stories From The Quiet War (ebooks)
Wil McCarthy - Murder in the Solid State
Michael A. McCollum - A Greater Infinity
Maureen F McHugh - After the Apocalypse
David Masson – The Caltraps of Time
John Meaney - Paradox
China Mieville - Railsea
Walter M. Miller Jr - Dark Benediction
David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Michael Moorcock - Behold the man and other stories, The black corridor, Byzantium Endures, The ice schooner
John Morressy (Del Whitby trilogy) Starbrat, Nail Down the Stars (aka Stardrift), Under a Calculating Star
Kim Newman - Anno Dracula, The Hound of the Durbervilles
Kevin O’Donnell - Mayflies
Charles Oberndorf - Foragers
Félix J. Palma - The Map of Time
Stephen Palmer - Memory seed
K. J. Parker - The Hammer
Garth Powell - The recollection
Tim Powers - Strange Itineraries, The Bible Repairman
Keith Roberts - The inner wheel
Robots: The Recent A.I.
Justina Robson - Heliotrope
Mary Rosenblum - Chimera
Lucius Shepard - Barnacle Bill the Spacer and Other Stories/Beast of the Heartland, and Other Stories
John Sladek - The Complete Roderick
Brian Francis Slattery - Lost Everything
Cordwainer Smith - The Rediscovery of Man
Brian Stableford - The Realms of Tartarus, Fountains of youth, Dark Ararat, Omega expedition, Designer Genes, The Undead, Les Fleurs du Mal and Swan Songs: The Complete Hooded Swan Collection
Neal Stephenson - Quicksilver, Confusion, System of the world
Boris and Arkady Strugatsky - Monday begins on Saturday
Walter Tevis - Mockingbird
E.C. Tubb - The Best Science Fiction of E.C. Tubb
Jack Vance - The Blue world, Emphyrio, The Best of Jack Vance, The Dragon Masters, The Jack Vance Treasury, [Tales of Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel’s Saga, Rhialto the Marvelous]
Connie Willis - Blackout, All clear
Ben Winters - The last policeman
Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters/In Green's jungles, Return to the Whorl, Pirate Freedom
Jack Womack - Going going gone
Roger Zelazny - Lord of light
NEW PAPERBACKS
Daryl Gregory - Raising Stony Mayhall (June 2012)
Stephen King - 11.22.63 (July 2012)
Ian Whates - Solaris 1.5 (July 2012 ebook)
Ian Tregillis - Bitter Seeds (July 2012)
Neal Stephenson - Reamde (August 2012)
Rob Ziegler - Seed (Sept 2012)
Elizabeth Bear - Shoggoths in Bloom (Oct 2012)
Lavie Tidhar - Osama (Dec 2012)
Tobias Buckell - Arctic Rising (Dec 2012)
Nick Harkaway - Angelmaker (Jan 2013)
Robert Jackson Bennett - American Elsewhere (Feb 2013)
Chris Beckett – The Peacock Cloak (May 2013)
Kim Stanley Robinson - 2312 (May 2013)
Lucius Shepard - The Dragon Griaule (May 2013)
Adam Roberts - Jack Glass (May 2013)
Keith Brooke - Harmony (May 2013)
John Varley - Slow Apocalypse (June 2013)
G. Willow Wilson - Alif the Unseen (June 2013)
M. John Harrison - Empty space (July 2013)
Hannu Rajaniemi - The Fractal Prince (July 2013)
Tim Powers - Hide Me Among the Graves (Sept 2013)
Iain M. Banks - The Hydrogen Sonata (Sep 2013)
Ned Beauman - The Teleportation Accident (Nov 2013)
NOT YET AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK...
The Best of Kage Baker
Other Seasons: The Best of Neal Barrett, Jr.
Stephen Baxter - Last And First Contacts: v. 2: Imaginings
Michael Bishop - The Door Gunner
James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull
Paul Di Filippo - After the Collapse
Jeffrey Ford - Crackpot Palace
Kathleen Ann Goonan - This shared dream, Angels and you dogs
Elizabeth Hand - Errantry
Michael Flynn - On the Razor's Edge, Captive Dreams
Leigh Kennedy - Wind angels
Torsten Krol - The secret book of sacred things
Ian R. MacLeod - Breathmoss, Song of time, Summer isles, Journeys, Wake Up and Dream
Paul Mcauley - Little machines, Stories from the Quiet War (Kindle), A Very British History: The Best Science Fiction Stories of Paul McAuley, 1985-2011
The Cassandra Project - Jack McDevitt and Mike Resnick
Tim Powers - American Fantastic Tales, Salvage and Demolition
Leonard Richardson - Constellation Games
Kit Reed - The Story Until Now, Son of Destruction
Robert Reed - Eater-of-Bone and Other Novellas
Alastair Reynolds - Deep Navigation, Troika, On the Steel BreezeRemembered Earth
Rudy Rucker - Turing & Burroughs
Geoff Ryman - Paradise Tales
Lucius Shepard – Five Autobiographies and a Fiction
James Smythe - The Explorer
Bruce Sterling - Caryatids, Gothic High-Tech
Jonathan Strahan - Godlike Machines, Edge of Infinity
Charles Stross - Neptunes Brood, Scratch monkey
Catherynne M. Valente - Deathless
Walter Jon Williams - Green leopard plague, The Boolean Gate
Jo Walton - Half a crown, Lifelode
Peter Watts - Beyond the Rift
Ian Watson - Saving for a Sunny Day
Liz Williams - A glass of shadow
Gene Wolfe - The Land Across
Groups18th-19th Century Britain, 50-Something Library Thingers, Anarchism, Atwoodians, Banned Books, BBC Radio 3 Listeners, Best of British, Bits for Brits, Board Game Geeks, Book reviewers —show all groups, Books in 2025: The Future of the Book World, Brits, Bug Collectors, Build the Open Shelves Classification, Catalogers who LibraryThing, Combiners!, Common Knowledge, WikiThing, HelpThing, Dystopian novels, Early Science Fiction, Elizabethan England, English History - Tudor through Edwardian, Feminist SF, Gamers, glasgow, Libertarian Science Fiction, Librarians who LibraryThing, Libraries who LibraryThing, Library Society of the World, Librarything Series, Martian Fiction, Military History, New Model Army, New Wave Science Fiction and Fantasy, Penguin Books, Penguin Classics, Post-apocalyptic Literature, Reviews reviewed, Science Fiction Fans, Scottish LibraryThingers, Steampunk, Taggers!, The Academy, Time Travel, Alternate Histories and Parallel Worlds
Favorite authorsBrian W. Aldiss, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, J. G. Ballard, Iain Banks, Stephen Baxter, Barrington J. Bayley, Elizabeth Bear, Greg Bear, Chris Beckett, Gregory Benford, Alfred Bester, Michael Bishop, Terry Bisson, James P. Blaylock, James Blish, John Boyd, Damien Broderick, Eric Brown, John Brunner, Algis Budrys, Octavia E. Butler, Richard Calder, C. J. Cherryh, Ted Chiang, John Christopher, Arthur C. Clarke, David G. Compton, Michael G. Coney, John Crowley, Tony Daniel, Jack Dann, Samuel R. Delany, Bradley Denton, Philip K. Dick, Thomas M. Disch, Jacek Dukaj, Greg Egan, Harlan Ellison, Christopher Evans, Philip José Farmer, Neil Ferguson, Michael Flynn, Jeffrey Ford, Daniel F. Galouye, Mary Gentle, William Gibson, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Richard Grant, Colin Greenland, Russell M. Griffin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison, M. John Harrison, Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Robert Holdstock, Barry Hughart, Kij Johnson, Gwyneth Jones, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Richard Kadrey, Daniel Keyes, Garry Kilworth, C. M. Kornbluth, Nancy Kress, Jay Lake, Stanisław Lem, Jonathan Lethem, Ian R. MacLeod, Ken MacLeod, Phillip Mann, Wil McCarthy, Jack McDevitt, Ian McDonald, Sean McMullen, Pat Murphy, Jamil Nasir, Kim Newman, George Orwell, Alexei Panshin, Paul Park, Marge Piercy, Frederik Pohl, Tim Powers, Hannu Rajaniemi, David Redd, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Adam Roberts, Keith Roberts, Kim Stanley Robinson, Justina Robson, Rudy Rucker, Mary Doria Russell, Joanna Russ, Richard Paul Russo, Geoff Ryman, Hilbert Schenck, Karl Schroeder, Bob Shaw, Robert Sheckley, Lucius Shepard, Lewis Shiner, Robert Silverberg, Dan Simmons, John Sladek, Norman Spinrad, Brian Stableford, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Charles Stross, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Theodore Sturgeon, Tricia Sullivan, Michael Swanwick, Rachel Swirsky, Lavie Tidhar, Wilson Tucker, George Turner, Catherynne M. Valente, A. E. van Vogt, John Varley, Vernor Vinge, Howard Waldrop, Jo Walton, Ian Watson, Peter Watts, Stanley G. Weinbaum, H. G. Wells, Scott Westerfeld, Liz Williams, Walter Jon Williams, Connie Willis, Robert Charles Wilson, Gene Wolfe, Jack Womack, John C. Wright, John Wyndham, E. Lily Yu, Roger Zelazny, David Zindell (Shared favorites)
Homepagehttp://www.poulter.demon.co.uk
Also onBoardGameGeek
Real nameAlanPoulter
LocationEdinburgh
Emailalan
poulter.demon.co.uk
Account typepublic, lifetime
URLs
http://www.librarything.com/profile/AlanPoulter (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/AlanPoulter (library)
Member sinceFeb 19, 2009
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Thanks much for finding my library to be of interest; yours is quite well stocked with plenty of books I'd like to get my greedy mitts on, too.
I see you live in Edinburgh. I went to an Ian Rankin book signing a few weeks ago, and found him pleasant and entertaining. I just started his newest Rebus/Fox book last night, so soon I'll know the city better than you, or at least the A9 (yeah, right!).
Take it easy,
bookstothesky
posted by bookstothesky at 7:51 pm (EST) on Feb 19, 2013
posted by aleciastone at 4:53 pm (EST) on Jan 19, 2012
posted by LyleWonders at 11:27 am (EST) on Dec 22, 2011
posted by LyleWonders at 7:23 pm (EST) on Dec 21, 2011
posted by RBeffa at 11:21 am (EST) on May 12, 2011
Thank you for letting me know your review is up. I don't think I'll be reading New Model Army.
Sounds like someone was trying to immitate Ken MacLeod and failed miserably.
I liked your Yellow Blue Tibia review too.
Peter
posted by pgmcc at 4:48 pm (EST) on Apr 11, 2011
I think PRECIS was an excellent system. True, it had a learning curve, but was probably the most intelligently design subject analysis system, incorporating the most cutting edge thinking about subject analysis. I like that it really made the whole subject analysis process a single whole process, producing subject retrieval points both alphabetically and systematically (i.e., via classification). It's too bad the Library of Congress didn't adopt the system.
How has work on your paper about resurrecting the ideas behind PRECIS progessed? I would be very interested in reading it when it is ready. Are you saying you see a possible revival either of PRECIS or of a system based on the thinking behind PRECIS?
To me, the ideal subject analysis system would be one incorporating PRECIS or something similar, with Bliss as the classification system?
I would be interested in hearing your ideas at your convenience.
Malik
nautilus_library
posted by nautilus_library at 1:18 pm (EST) on Feb 8, 2011
posted by stellarexplorer at 2:16 am (EST) on Jan 12, 2011
In answer to your question regarding Interzone, I have enetered all the ones I have. I wish I had more, but that is what I have. Thanks for adding me to your list of interesting libraries!
Joe
posted by jotoyo at 10:13 am (EST) on Jul 5, 2010
posted by crimeminister at 2:21 am (EST) on Jun 26, 2010
It's a really good concept, it gives someone the chance to check out other people's collections who have similar tastes. You've written quite a few reviews which really help in deciding what I might like. I need another 24 hours in each day to fit in the amount of reading I like as well as everything else! :)
Cheers,
Steve
posted by MaxedOut at 6:49 am (EST) on May 7, 2010
Take care,
Joe
posted by LouBriccant at 3:31 pm (EST) on Apr 16, 2010
I've got Keith Roberts' Drek Yarman serial in Spectrum SF, just one (or several) of the many books I haven't got around to cataloguing yet. . . . about a thousand down and only seven or eight thousand to go.
posted by solarisbooks at 5:30 am (EST) on Sep 26, 2009
Cheers for the Stephen Baxter recommendation. It was a good one - I'm quite a big fan of his (reading the Xeelee sequence at the moment). [Sorry for the delayed reply, i haven't logged in to LT for quite a while).
Simon
posted by SimonChamberlain at 4:12 pm (EST) on Sep 6, 2009
If you think some of the railway stuff I've been cataloguing is difficult, I'm just about three-quarters of the way through creating a bibliography of Austrian railways for the Austrian Railway Group, a body which I was briefly Chairman of. Apparantly, the only previous effort was done in the 1920s, and then only in German. I need to get access to a couple of private collections I know of, to tie up details of works I've only seen reference to in other books, and then I can start formatting the thing for publication.
I took my inspiration (and the classification scheme) from George Ottley's Bibliography of British Railway History, though I had to add types of railway that we don't have but the Austrians do (or did) and remove a couple that were unique to Britain.
Despite having asked for contributions, I suspect that critics will only emerge after publication...
posted by RobertDay at 5:49 pm (EST) on Sep 3, 2009
Unfortunately, I fell foul of:
1) the library profession's over-promotion of itself, leading to the LA (as it was then) admitting to us that "there's been a 40% over-production of librarians for the past few years"
2) Derbyshire County Council's wierd unwritten policy of not appointing local people to professional posts (I saw this with teachers, too), whereas every other council DID favour locals when it came to handing out trainee librarian jobs
3) the same employer's cessation of giving traineee jobs to under-graduates the year I was going to apply
4) the election of the Thatcher Government in 1979 and
5) the invention of the personal computer and the internet.
(Chip on my shoulder? Where?)
So after six months working as a wages clerk in a furniture factory (I left because I was paid less than the maintenance man's lad), I saw an advert for local recruitment to the Civil Service, and was persuaded that here was an organisation that gave promotion to bright people and also sometimes employed librarians. Wrong on both counts. 30 years later, I wish I'd remembered my childhood dream of being an architect, or taken up photography as a career as I've turned out to be rather good at it.
posted by RobertDay at 5:42 pm (EST) on Sep 3, 2009
Thanks for adding me to your "interesting libraries" list. I still lay claim to the title of 'librarian', even though I only ever did ten months' professional work! (Long story.) The Sacred Workplace has just decided to embrace the new mantra of "Knowledge Management", and I shall be involved in that - more by luck than judgement on their part, I have to say - and I shall be intrigued when I do the training set for October to see just how much the KM gurus have re-invented the wheel! Already I see that what you and I would call 'classification' is now called 'taxonomy' - it was the training topic 'faceted taxonomy' that gave it away....
posted by RobertDay at 12:17 pm (EST) on Aug 31, 2009
I thought the third book was best of the trilogy. It ties up the trilogy quite well, doesn't simply go for the "happily ever after" ending, and the sub-plot within the third novel (religious cults and their perception in the far-future) was far more interesting than that in the first two novels.
For all of that, this is one of the best military-SF series' I have read.
posted by rojse at 12:28 am (EST) on Jul 10, 2009
Curt
posted by clong at 3:28 pm (EST) on May 30, 2009
posted by andyl at 6:26 am (EST) on May 16, 2009
posted by bluetyson at 11:20 pm (EST) on May 15, 2009
Yes, you have to combine them into the one work via the author page, although yours should have combined automatically I would have thought.
I combined them just then, so all good now.
posted by bluetyson at 11:46 pm (EST) on May 6, 2009
posted by andyl at 6:48 pm (EST) on May 6, 2009