Not being on anyone’s permanent reviewing staff and not being the kind of blogger with enough influence to shape the fate of publishing empires, I don’t get free stuff through the post that I can boast about, but I do buy a lot of shit. And I thought, in lieu of any real content to put up tonight and being too tired to start an argument about all the stuff that is bugging me today, I’d tell you about the nice stuff currently sitting on my desk.

1. My daughter’s new class photograph. Okay no one else is interested in this but it is funny - thirty-odd four year olds caught trying to smile precisely at the moment it started to rain on them. You can see the confusion of their faces - the mix of “we’re four, we’re looking cute cos that’s what four year olds are best at” and the barely constrained fury of a smallish mob of wild things forced to get wet while some idiot points a camera at them. It’s a bit like someone’s opened Schrodinger’s box and captured the point where the wave between angel and anti-christ finally collapses. If looks could kill…

2. Postscripts issue 10. I’m late getting this because I accidentally let my subscription lapse, but Peter Crowther has definitely stretched the definition of a “magazine” to breaking point. This is a 350+ page hardback that just happens to feature fiction by Joe Hill, Connie Willis, Graham Joyce and some bloke called Stephen King, amongst others. Most excitingly, for me, is a big section devoted to Michael Marshall Smith, whose novels I enjoy, even when he drops the “Marshall” (err “Smith”, obviously) and writes “mainstream” detective stories (with vast global conspiracies and psychic bigfoots!). I’m going on holiday later in the month, and Postscripts 10 will be in my bag. I’m hoping to get to MMS’s The Intruders soon too.

3. Triquorum 2, is a plainly covered collection of three novellas. I really enjoyed issue one, so this will be coming with me on holiday too. Not least because it features Jason Andrew’s fantastically titled Fear and Loathing in Bat County: Hunter S Thompson vs Dracula.

4. Jupiter no. 17 (named after the moon Callirrhoe, which, as my wife succinctly and accurately points out, sounds like a venereal disease) I always say this, but Ian Redman’s little A5 photocopied jobby is one of my favourite arrivals through the letterbox, and not just because the nice man published two of my stories. Jupiter delivers “core sf” - stories will often feature spaceships and aliens and plots - and while some of the writers who appear in Jupiter (and I include myself in this category) aren’t quite ready for prime time, the magazine frequently prints very strong stories. Fantastically regular, for a small press magazine, and ludicrously low-priced, how can you not subscribe?

5. I picked up a copy of Schismatrix Plus, the collection of all (It’s an old book, is that still true?) of Bruce Sterling’s Shaper/Mechanist stories - I’ll happily reread the novel and the only one of the short stories I’ve read is “Twenty Evocations”, which was in Interzone, so there are four new ones in the volume. More holiday reading.

6. This blog post has been brought to you by Simian Mobile Disco, who as well as having one of the best band names ever, have also been cheering me up with their new album Attack Decay Sustain Release (sad, though, that I’m old enough (and wasn’t wasted enough at the time) to remember rave the first time around). It’s tiding me over until the new Chemical Brothers album arrives - bring me big beats. Bigger, damn you, bigger!

7. High interest rates might be threatening to bankrupt me due to the spiralling cost of our mortgage, but on the bright side it does mean it’s cheaper to buy cool shit/tat from America. I could resist this no longer. The tin box is a thing of beauty as is the little Robbie the Robot figure. I’m looking forward to sitting down with the film and watching this sparkling new print (which looks fantastic on a quick inspection).

I’m currently reading Brasyl - which I’ll probably review more fully later - on the train and my “bedtime book” is Helix by Eric Brown, which has been great fun so far (about half way through). Next up probably David Marusek’s Counting Heads (at last) and Alistair Reynolds’ The Prefect.