This booklet was printed for Confabulation, the 1995 British Convention. The cover is by Sue Mason, interior illustrations by Jim Barker.

There is a short note from Bob Shaw where he points out that they were written as speeches; to be heard and not read, and therefore may feel different to something written to be read.

The booklet is well printed and bound, very neat. It was all done in Claris Works on a Macintosh IIvi. I have a Mac Classic somewhere in the house but it wont boot due to a memory problem. I’ve worked on Macs but I’m not as fanatical about them as some people are. Nowadays you can get a Mac to run on a USB stick: that’s the problem with computing technology. It’s state of the art for five minutes then it’s redundant.

The Need For Bad Science Fiction kicks off this collection of speeches and it takes a dig at reviewers as much as writers. It touches on SF conventions, SF films and the night shift of Star Trek.

Common to all the speeches is the diversity of topics within. They were designed to entertain a live audience and so had to be suitable to grab and keep the attention of the audience. I think that makes them a little tricky to review and summarise. There are bits within bits. One off jokes, puns, nods to SF and fandom.

The talks cover the period 1974 to 1988 and are mainly Eastercon speeches. In a few of the speeches there is a reference to the TV Series Space:1999, which in Bob’s head has become Space: £19.99. I’ll refrain from any comments on the budget of said show.

The Bermondsey Triangle Mystery nicely builds up ‘elements’ of pseudo science to create a very British inspired mystery. Shaw cleverly delves into the past to tell us about the peculiar events that shaped Britain, involving the Civilisation of the Cod People, giant tubers known as Taters, sliced by a wire mesh fence.

Other delights include Time Travellers Among Us with Shaw detailing the time machine, the Chronoclipper Mk. II, for sale at a reasonable price of £2,000 – this speech is from 1975 but even allowing for inflation I’d say that’s cheap for a time machine! Among others there is also Beyond Cosmos, where he tries to get a TV show made with the German/Irish scientific researcher and writer Von Donegan. Up The Conjunction covers the well worn topic of Astrology with the help of a couple of illustrations.

The Ceres Solution was the first Bob Shaw novel I read, back when Bob Shaw was relatively new to me. I had bought A Better Mantrap to ‘try out’ the author and enjoyed it so much I went back to the SF bookshop in Edinburgh ( I remember their radio advert on Radio Forth giving their address on West Crosscauseway and finishing with ‘Where on Earth is that?’ Well, I found it funny) and hoovered up a few more books. The Ceres Solution was relatively new at that time.

One of the central characters in the book is Denny Hargate, wheelchair bound and embittered whose life is changed when he meets a beautiful woman in an out of the way place called Cotter’s Edge. The adventure starts when he sees her draw a complex pattern in the air with her hand and this makes her disappear instantly.

Shaw brings up some social attitudes within the novel. For instance, the woman, Gretana ty Iltha. is beautiful by Earth standards but very unattractive within her own society. A bold brushstroke of the old saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Assigned and persuaded to go to Earth, which fills her with dread, Gretana arrives on Earth and Shaw begins to reveal the plot slowly. The Moon plays a large and vital part in the story. Working on earth Gretana meets another agent and forms a friendship, against the rules. He, Kelth, informs Gretana and the reader about the influences of the Moon on people, and further develops the plot as well as laying down clues.

The conflict then escalates as it is revealed a radical group of Mollanians are on Earth and they disagree with the Star Trek like non interference policy of the establishment.

The plot slowly unfolds and we find that the Ceres Solution is a radical move by the ‘terrorists’ to free the Terrans from the influences of the Moon.

The novel slowly builds, with Shaw revealing details and clues throughout, until the climax where the Ceres Solution is delivered and mankind is changed forever.

The Ceres Solution is a good solid novel from Shaw, where he takes small things – such as the moon’s influence over us – and expands it into a wondrous and fantastic tale of human struggle. Human struggle against nature, politics, dogma. Shaw weaves the various elements together with flair. He builds characters we learn to like and empathise with – who’d have though anyone would root for a sarcastic wheelchair bound runt? The book ends of the story, a short intro at the beginning and a short piece at the end, highlight and enforce one of the main themes of the book; lifespan. The worlds presented and the ‘technology’ used for space travel are well reasoned and to an extent plausible.

Shaw developed and enhanced ‘ley lines’ and astrology in an inventive and imaginative way, one of the things I feel was a forte of his. The result is an enjoyable and entertaining novel. Fair seasons.

And publishing to the three blogs is only a matter of a few clicks. There doesn’t seem to be an option to publish to all blogs with one click but I live in hope. One click is better than half a dozen but it is a nifty and neat program.

Quite odd too that I haven’t heard about it before. I have Office 2007 on my computer and Windows Live was installed a part of it. Windows Live comes with several components but I chose only to install Windows Live Writer.

Blogger is ok but it’s not as clean and simple as WordPress. I suppose it doesn’t really matter now as the plan is to use Windows Live Writer for all blogging. Write once publish thrice.

Windows Live Writer is pretty nifty. It was a 14MB download after install. I signed in using the hotmail account I have but have never used and so people can follow me on Hotmail/MSN too.

I didn’t get it to work with MySpace and didn’t try Facebook.

I’ll have to look closer at images as the only one I use images on is the Bob Shaw blog, and those are scanned in and placed in a directory online then referenced in using WordPress: that is a very good and easy to use feature in WordPress. One I like a lot.