{"id":6074,"date":"2014-07-23T20:09:36","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T00:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6074"},"modified":"2014-07-23T20:09:36","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T00:09:36","slug":"review-2040","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6074","title":{"rendered":"Review: 2040"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><cite>2040<\/cite> (Graham Tottle; Cameron Publicity &#038; Marketing Ltd) is a very odd book.  Ostensibly an SF novel about skulduggery on two timelines, it is a actually a ramble through a huge gallimaufry of topics including most prominently the vagaries of yachting in the Irish Sea, an apologia for British colonial administration in 19th-century Africa, and the minutiae of instruction sets of archaic mainframe computers.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s full of vivid ideas and imagery, held together by a merely serviceable plot and garnished with festoons of footnotes delving into odd quarters of the factual background. Some will dislike the book&#8217;s politics, a sort of nostalgic contrarian Toryism; many Americans may find this incomprehensible, or misread it as a variant of the harsher American version of traditionalist conservatism.  There is much worthwhile exploding of fashionable cant in it, even if the author does sound a bit crotchety on occasion.<\/p>\n<p>I enjoyed it, but I can&#8217;t exactly recommend it.  Enter at your own risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2040 (Graham Tottle; Cameron Publicity &#038; Marketing Ltd) is a very odd book. Ostensibly an SF novel about skulduggery on two timelines, it is a actually a ramble through a huge gallimaufry of topics including most prominently the vagaries of yachting in the Irish Sea, an apologia for British colonial administration in 19th-century Africa, and&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6074\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Review: 2040<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","category-science-fiction","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6074"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6076,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6074\/revisions\/6076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}