Review: 2040
<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>
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<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>
<p>I enjoyed it, but I can&#8217;t exactly recommend it.  Enter at your own risk.</p>
