This week’s story up at Metaphorosis is my “In the House of Geometers.” If you’d like to read it, it’s available to read for free here or you can support this excellent magazine by purchasing the issue or a subscription here.

I owe a debt of gratitude to editor B Morris Allen who worked with me on several editorial iterations of the story. I’ve always been amazed by how much time and effort he invests with each and every author. His editorial eye for detail and sense of what makes a good story is second to none, and I think it shows in the quality of the magazine.

To put icing on the cake, there are audio narrations (podcasts) of each story which are published on the magazine’s website alongside the text. You can listen to the narrated version of “In the House of Geometers” here.

Matt Gomez is the podcast host and narrator and he’s done a terrific job, absolutely bringing the story to life. He nails the voicing of the different characters and the podcast’s production values are second to none. I couldn’t be happier! 

It’s a slightly strange (but delightful!) feeling, hearing someone voice a story that one has lived and breathed so intimately during its creation. 

So the results are in and these are all the physical books I read during 2021.

Anyway, I’m really not that fussed about the number of books. I don’t feel I’m in a competition to see who can read the most. Which is just as well as I’m never going to win something like that. But I’m interested to look back and see the mix of books in the stack. Strangely, it doesn’t feel representative of what I actually consumed during the year but that’s mostly because a large part of my fiction reading is consumed electronically. It has to be that way because the SF magazines I read are mostly online reads (e.g. Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, Cossmass Infinities, Metaphorosis, Clarkesworld, Galaxy’s Edge – and plenty more besides). As you can see, I dallied with hard copies of Asimov’s and Analog for a few issues during the year because I miss the feel of those magazines in my hands, but it takes months for the issues to reach the UK and they’re five times the price of the e-versions.

For 2022, I’ll probably try to track what I read in e-format, and also what Audible books I listen to. (Stand out Audible book for last year was Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary” – loved, loved, loved that book and the narration.) I think it might be interesting to look back at the end of 2022 and see the full spread of things I’ve read. I’m also hoping that I’ll get the opportunity to read a bit more than I have the last couple of years, but things still look as busy as ever.

For comparison, this was the books-read stack for 2020:

It’s great news that the the deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope continues to go without a hitch. Such a remarkable feat of science and engineering.

Slightly closer to home, there has been another telescope deployment, used in anger for the first time two nights ago (which was the first time since Christmas that we’ve had clear skies in these parts). The DBGS (Dave’s Back Garden ‘Scope) is a magnificent 114mm Newtonian Reflector from Sky-Watcher. It cost roughly one hundred million times less than JWST but admittedly it won’t deliver results quite so impressive. That said, the crescent Moon, Jupiter and the Jovian satellites were a magnificent sight through it, as was the Andromeda Galaxy – although I need to get a bit better at knowing exactly where to point it to find the dimmer objects.

I have a long list of objects to visit next time we have clear skies, although the local light pollution is going to limit what’s possible I think.