As previously reported, Marianne and I headed off to a retreat on Friday evening and Saturday for our first night away together since Jessica was born way back in June of 2000, and it was a thoroughly enjoyable and very relaxing time. We got to enjoy a wonderful meal at The Loose Box which wandered across three or four hours, before retiring to our chalet for late drinks and conversation to the wee hours (you can see the menu here). Saturday was a very relaxed breakfast, before meandering our way home in the mid-afternoon. All in all, well worth doing.
I tried to not bring any kind of work along, but I did pack the September issue of Asimov’s so I could catch up on the one or two stories I’d missed, and one of them, David Moles’ “The Third Party”, was very good indeed. I’d read a couple of David Moles’ stories here and there over the past couple years and got to meet him while I was in Oakland this year which was nice, but “The Third Party” is easily the best thing I’ve seen from him. It’s a fairly traditional piece of science fiction adventure, filled with political intrigue and other maguffins, but it’s tightly written and well thought out with interesting characters. All in all, clever stuff and worth checking out. I’ve seen a few online comments about wanting to see the novel it seems to be part of and, while I can sympathise, I think it stands alone very well indeed.