The Scholars of Night

A sort of a Cold War spy thriller (published in 1988, when the Cold War was still a thing) in which an academic who participates in games of Diplomacy and occasionally does "consulting" work on the side finds himself sent to England to investigate and attempt to verify a recently-discovered "lost" p......more

A clever (perhaps too clever for its own good), twisty (ditto) post-Cold War thriller by the late, great John Ford. I think this is his only non-sff novel, though it is arguably alternate history and possibly sf of the techno-thriller variety. It juggles a lot of complex puzzle pieces, action set-pie......more

Still unwell. Ugh. John M Ford, man-about-literature, wrote a spy novel, and it is a clever, elliptical tale of game-playing and historical secrets and a plot that, quite properly, reveals a contempt and hate and fear of the world that gives us spy novels. Ford can be downright obscure in his writin......more

Read thanks to NetGalley. Well that was a completely bonkers read. When I first asked to review this, I didn't realise it was a reprinting; I'm not enough of a Ford fan to know that he's passed on. Then I read Charles Stross' introduction, in which he talks about this being published in 1988 and sett......more