The Website of Karl Wilcox

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0100

A strangely compelling if rather disjointed story of modern life for a young person in today’s China.

The overwhelming impression I get is a strange mix of frenetic entrepreneurship and stifling bureaucracy, with periods of boredom and depression.

Our hero has a lot of jobs in very different industries but doesn’t seem to be able to stick to any of them for too long, despite demonstrating quite a wide range of skills and talents (although not salesmanship or negotiating skills it seems).

It is an honest account in that the author may well do himself down rather unjustly, he has clearly been good at some things.

My main complaint is that, despite reading it over a few days I lost track of where he was and when things were happening. The timeline seemed to jump around almost at random and the occasional extract from his journal didn’t really enlighten, although they were often quite elegant prose.

It didn’t really seem to have any conclusion or actual analysis of the state of China, it was just a factual account of experiences. Although this is what would make it a great subject for a book club — the very lack of analysis leaves it all for discussion by the readers.

Fackham Hall

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0100

An absolutely perfectly pitched country house drama parody. Yes it’s all very silly but it made gentle fun of the genre not meanness or nastiness and it was clear that everyone involved was having a great time.

The Butler and Housekeeper played their parts to perfection and had some great lines (“I don’t sleep, I find it interferes with my duties”) and every scene was packed with detail — as well as the obvious centre stage farce there was a great deal of quite subtle background humour that would reward re-watching. Sometimes looking away for a fraction of a second would cause you to miss a clever reference and even when I was paying attention I’m sure that there are things that I missed.

In addition to the main boy meets girl plot (boy is not appropriate, plan to run away etc.) there’s a murder (this is a country house after all). And the murder plot is actually plausible within the story and very satisfyingly handles it, just as if this were a straight whodunnit.

So a movie that packed a huge amount into its ninety minutes — almost constant jokes, slapstick humour, broad parody, a love story and a murder mystery. Well worth watching. You could even re-enact much of it in stop-motion animation using the Lego Downton Abbey set due for imminent release!

Greek Escape

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0100

So here’s this concierge service for billionaires that can arrange pretty much anything for their clients. Our heroine looks after a number of them and has moved to New York to avoid the fallout from a failed romance with the company head based in London.

She ends up caught in the crossfire in a commercial dispute between two billionaires.

It would be easy to dislike this book — everyone is rich, successful and beautifully groomed with much name dropping of luxury brands. Fortunately Ms Swan brings enough humanity to main character to actually feel some sympathy for her and after a rather slow start the story does get both exciting and interesting.

That said, it’s all still a bit light and fluffy and don’t think I would ever want to re-read but first time through was enough to engage with.

Mayday

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0100

After a bit of a slow start this turned into a surprisingly watchable and fun film with some nice moments. Ryan Reynolds is always very watchable although this doesn’t really ask for much of a stretch of his acting skills, in a largely straightforward story of an American Navy pilot shot down behind enemy lines and his escape aided by an ex KGB agent.

There are some nice moments, the scene in which they turn up at a random farmhouse saying that we’re tired and hungry, and the drink sipping — and I liked that they didn’t go for the obvious daughter falls for the handsome pilot plot line. The potential setup for a sequel was a bit unnecessary but the 1980s feel was very nicely done, and the movie was a good length, not over-staying its welcome, but do wait for the after-credits scene!

I liked the scene in the wine cupboard of the Dacha, but the timing of the approach to the carrier didn’t really convince, but that didn’t really matter, this is not a movie to over analyse, even though it did make some simple points on the communism vs. capitalism debate.

Appeal

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0100

I must hold my head up and admit to judging a book (entirely) by its cover. I had seen this book frequently in Waterstones but since it shared its design style with Richard Osman (for whom I have an irrational dislike) I dismissed this as a shallow piece of cosy crime fiction.

In reality it is the intertwining story of an amateur dramatic society’s staging of a play and a GoFundMe appeal for a local girl who needs life saving cancer treatment that eventually results in murder. But who is the victim, who gets the blame and who really did it? And it turns out to be a very clever work, on two levels.

First and most obviously, the updating of the epistolary novel to include email, texts, voice messages and interview transcripts. Secondly because of the plot structure — the frame narrative with the two legal pupils reviewing case evidence works very well and the underlying mystery is cleverly constructed — I did find myself looking back as I saw things in a new light as later messages revealed more information.

I’m not convinced that I would have guessed the murderer myself (there was a lot of misdirection and almost everyone had something to hide) but I did enjoy reading this. The author does a great job of getting the different character voices across and also painting an effective picture of village life despite the restrictions imposed by her chosen medium (you can’t just dump a pile of expository text for background, for example).

I was wrong about Ms Hallett and will gladly admit it and read more of her work!

Stars and Bones

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0100

A somewhat moralistic tale of the earth’s population exiled to vast space arks (one thousand of them) in order to teach humanity the folly of destroying its environment and the evils of capitalism.

All is well until we encounter what Iain M. Banks would call a “smartmatter” outbreak.

There’s quite a bit of horror (which Squeamish me didn’t really like) and Gareth is not afraid to kill off fairly major characters and millions of innocent bystanders.

The origin of the “smart matter” is quite a clever plot twist but some elements seem a little simplistic, almost puerile at times, so it’s a curious mix. I did however like it enough to order the second volume.

I listened to this as an audio book, which was fairly well done except for some odd pronunciations which took me out of the story for a while — does anyone actually proof-listen to these things?

Ships have a “bow”, not a “boe”, “Hearth” does not rhyme with “Earth” and “Megacity” is not pronounced as if it is “sagacity”. At least there was nothing as egregious as “primmer” from the Diamond Age narrator.

It’s a good but not great adventure story that probably did not need quite so much explicit horror (or maybe I just need to toughen up)!

Datum

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0100

corridor

One of the problems of trying to make observations about the Culture is that for every descriptive statement that you make there are always exceptions. How can it be otherwise with a multi-species, cross-civilizational grouping of trillions of individuals?

For example, after I’d been aboard the GSV for a couple of years I wanted to be able to say that there was nowhere “special”. Now, I know what you are thinking - what’s NOT special about a multi-billion tonne, 20 kilometer long craft laden with wonders and populated by 10 million sentient beings - the place that you live! That’s got to be special, right?

But that’s very much an outsider’s view - to a Culture citizen, especially one born and raised on this GSV, it was just that - a rather ordinary vessel, one of many thousands like it - indeed a rather dated example of the type, that sometime in the future might even get downgraded to Medium System Vessel designation.

What I mean by “nothing special” is that everything on this GSV is multiply redundant, backed up and heterogenously and homogenously duplicated and widely distributed across every part of the ship. So for example, there is nothing like the bridge of an ocean liner or the cockpit of an aircraft - a quiet space peopled by earnest beings staring into screens and manipulating control panels. The triumvirate of minds “flies” the ship, directing its course, protecting it, maintaining it with the help of hundreds of other systems of varying levels of sentience. But even this isn’t always true of every GSV - those that are involved in making contact with newly discovered civilizations sometimes have something they might call a “command centre”, and it will be built on a grand scale but it is all smoke and mirrors of course, even if it probably is at least semi-functional. They exist so that there is something to invite the local worthies to visit as they tend to expect that sort of thing and are honoured to be taken to some inner sanctum. I’ve never seen one myself but I understand that as well the ceremonial purpose they are sometimes used to host massive collaborative simulation games of “Interstellar Space Battle Fleet Encounters”, although I understand the participants prefer to think of them as “training and preparation sessions”.

Even the triumvirate of minds on this GSV doesn’t have a single, physical location that inhabitants can point to. Orbitals often like to pretend that their controlling minds are all located in the central hub - that’s why the folks who live there often preface their requests with “Hey, Hub…”, just like we GSV dwellers say “Ahh, Ship?”. As an aside, I’ve noticed that’s how you can tell orbital from ship dwellers - orbital folk just shout out their demands to the controlling mind, ship residents are much more diffident in their requests. My theory is that people think that orbitals are in nice safe orbits around a pleasant well behaved sun so the minds have little else to do but respond to the needs of their inhabitants. Ship dwellers on the other hand have this sub-conscious feeling that if they suddenly distract a mind at a vital moment then it might crash in to a star or something, so they always check first…

Whatever, I’m pretty sure that the orbital hub location thing isn’t entirely true either. Minds may have some portion of themselves in an orbital hub but they are pretty conservative and heavily into self protection so I can’t imagine that they would put the entirety of their physical presence into something so small and easily targeted as a hub station. Minds really like to be widely distributed, not to mention extending into hyperspace in some weird way that I don’t really understand so they don’t have (or at least don’t advertise) their actual physical position - everyone just takes for granted that they are “there” somewhere.

Equally there’s no ‘engine room’ here. Oh, there are engines alright, enormous ones but there are dozens of them, scattered at numerous places, generally near the outer hull all over the ship (that redundancy again). I’ve seen them.- they might be big but otherwise they are deeply unimpressive - huge grey, vaguely organic shaped boxes (no right angles or straight edges, something to do with resistance to invasive fields I think…?). I fancied that they may have hummed slightly but I might even have been imaging that, I’m told all the exciting stuff goes on in the infra and sub-space grids anyway and that I don’t have the right sensory apparatus to see it.

Obviously it is true that various locations on the GSV are “record holders” - top side park for example was the biggest park by contiguous area but it wasn’t the only one - most outriggers also held large areas of parkland and even the neighbourhoods deeply buried in the main body of the vessel had their own local parks, playgrounds and sports fields. There’s always a “biggest” main bay, always a “deepest” drop, “busiest” transit exchange or whatever - but none of these were unique in the way I was thinking. I was after something that was genuinely unique and special within the ship.

I tentatively raised this topic with some Culture people that I like to think I had become genuine friends with. Most of them looked a bit blank but one of the younger ones suddenly lit up. “What you mean, like datum?” Everyone else looked relieved and there much nodding and signs of agreement whilst it was my turn to look blank.

“Yes,” continued my friend, “everybody goes, its a big thing in Kindergarten, each class has like this special day trip, but its not such a big deal when you grow up. Want me to take you?”

My young friend told me it was “a bit of a trek” so we set out after lunch. Now I need to write up my thoughts on GSV transit systems at another time to explain what that “trek” involved but suffice it to say that I was guided to one of the long distance transit lines, heading pretty much directly towards the rough centre of the ship and we then took a platform down a drop shaft - look I know that you can just step off into a shaft and control your descent speed simply by holding your arms (or other suitable appendages) out wider or narrower to suit, or just speak your destination to the shaft control system but I haven’t really got the hang of that yet and tend to scream involuntarily and screw my eyes shut as the bottom of the shaft rushes up to meet me; so for me the use of a platform has the multiple benefits of hiding the terrifying depths below us from view and letting me tell myself that the platform floor hides fans that are actually holding us up (and has parachutes in case it all goes horribly wrong!) Funnily enough I’m much happier in risers - exactly the same technology and control method but going upward to a distant ceiling just isn’t that scary since I feel totally in control and as long as I don’t look down I’m fine. I know, animal brains right…?

For the first time since I’ve been aboard we did actually descend all the way to the base of the shaft, very deep in the bowels of the main hull of the ship. Now in the novels and movies of my homeworld this part of the ship would be dank, intermittently lit and filled with detritus, dirt and almost certainly giant carnivorous space rats or something. In this case however it was just more wide, high, corridor, brightly lit, although rather bland and much quieter both in terms of inhabitants and background noise. I recall the GSV avatar Quarnax telling me that it was difficult to get people to feel at home on the lower decks and he tended to use them for storage, so I guess the same was true on this ship. Certainly there were big, sealed doors leading of the corridor and we did see the occasional cargo pallet floating about its business.

Finally, up ahead we could see a group of people, mostly children by the look of them. My friend looked delighted and whispered urgently “Oh wow! There’s actually a school party here! Lets get closer, but stay back and keep quiet…” He had the strangest look on his face and it took me a while to place it - I believe it was something akin to reverence, not something that comes easily to the easy going and definitely non-worshipful citizens of the Culture.

We stood well back but close enough to hear what was going on. A taller than usual ship avatar was speaking with a deep and grave voice at the children ranged in a semicircle before him. “And you are from which school?”

The kids seemed quite intimated by this but an adult, presumably a teacher smiled encouragingly and one of the pupils piped up “Lebberen Treen Junior!”

“Ahh, I know it well”, intoned the avatar (as if the ship wasn’t intimately familiar with everywhere - and everyone onboard), “now, if I asked you where you school is, what would you say?”

One of the more confident kids smugly called out “Midships port deck 40!”

“Good, good - a lovely location, you are lucky to have such a fine school”. I thought he was laying it on a bit thick but the kids were looking up at him with the same expression I’d just seen on my friend’s face. “That is a good way to tell your friends where your school is, but I use a different method. What if I want to send a janitor bot to clean up a split lunchbox? Do you know where I tell it to go…?”

Expectant silence.

The avatar smiled broadly and said “I say report to +44231 -00032 +1044!” He rattled off the numbers machine gun fast and the children tittered appreciatively. “Do you know what those numbers are? Well I’ll show you…”

The nearest wall had a large screen that lit up to show a picture of a vast hanger space with some tiny figures in the centre surrounding a large metallic sheet. The avatar settled into story telling mode, making his voice slightly less sententious. “This is a construction bay under the Astarill Mountains, between two plates of the Tamarron Orbital and it is where I was born.” He paused for dramatic effect and the children looked from the screen to the avatar and back. “That’s not me there, I was some few terabytes of code just coming to sentience and about to rewrite myself in my own image but that is the very first piece of base material that was laid down as part of my hull. The very piece that you are standing on now!”

The children looked down in astonishment and I must admit to being moved myself. “You can see in the image now a drone using a field tool to cut two grooves, at right angles - these two grooves right here!” He pointed down dramatically to something at his feet that I couldn’t quite see.

“The point where the two grooves cross we call ‘datum’. Every part of the ship is measured in three directions, up or down, left or right, forward or back right from this point! And that’s what those numbers are. Distances from this exact spot! You can think of them like footsteps - they tell me how far away something is by going first forwards, then sideways, then upwards, the exact number of footsteps right to the dining room in your school!”

The kids look suitably impressed.

He went on to explain that he used numbers and not addresses because in the almost one thousand years since that piece of hull had been laid down there had been hundreds and hundreds of changes made to the ship. Fashions came and went, new technologies were developed, new needs arose, entire districts were torn down, re-modeled and given new names to keep things fresh and exciting. And to keep track of everything, new and old, it was all measured from right here!

Eventually, after a free floating camera drone had taken some group pictures the whole party moved off, the adults nodding to us as they passed, heading back towards the drop shaft we had just come down and we could get our own look at datum.

It wasn’t much to be honest, just those two grooves etched into the floor, still as sharp edged as they had looked in the original images - it takes considerably more than many hundreds of years of feet, wheels and general wear and tear to make any appreciable difference to base material.

I have to say that I felt pretty reverential myself and was surprisingly awed. I admitted as much as we ourselves walked away. “OK, I admit that was a bit special, there is somewhere ‘unique’ on the ship after all. So do all ships have something like that?”

“Well, all this class do, but I don’t think the smaller MSVs and SSVs make so much fuss about it. And come to think of it, my Grandmother is helping build one of those new system class GSVs, ten times bigger than this thing. It’s really just this big collection of city, park and utility domes linked by bridges and floating about in a variable containment field. They can even move the domes around inside to do whatever they need doing so I’ve no idea how they keep track of that - there’s not really a fixed point. No wonder they need seven minds to control them…” he said, thoughtfully.

You see that’s the trouble with trying to get a handle on the Culture, everytime you think you’ve got a reasonable generalisation or found some fixed point of reference there’s always an exception…

Colin From Accounts

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0100

If you are going to bring your hit comedy to a close then you might as well do it by producing a screamingly funny series that leaves us wanting more and ensures a place in TV history and never even approaches anything like a shark jumping moment!

I think what makes this show so good is the verisimilitude - the sheer lived-in reality of the lives we are looking at. These people argue and bicker, they talk over each other, fail to complete their sentences and make bad decisions. And we love them for it, and not for them.

I must say that if this group of misfits is an indicator of the broader population it’s not a great outlook for the country, but who cares?

The scene in the cafe with Gordon and Ashley, in a single take from a fixed camera location was a masterclass in acting, and the impassioned cry from Chiara of “Oh my god what is that? It smells like a dead mermaid’s vagina” is absolute comedy gold.

If you haven’t seen any of these shows then I envy you as you can enjoy them all now but I’ll still happily watch them all again. Highly recommended and well worth your time.

Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0100

I think that I have a new favourite Brontë novel! I really enjoyed the story of the mysterious new tenant of the rundown hall, wearing widow’s weeds and accompanied only by her young son and her maid. She becomes an object of fascination for Gilbert Markham, a local farmer and an object of neighbourhood gossip due to her apparent closeness to her landlord.

Although a fairly long book this has an easy feel, both in terms of the language which was not ornate or strained, and in the way the story develops - the nested “frame narratives” is a clever structure and works well.

I don’t think that the big reveal was all that much of a surprise, and I don’t think it was meant to be, but we all saw Gilbert’s anguish both before and after the background came to light.

I like Gilbert he is real human, with flaws and desires. He’s moody, and hot-headed, duffing up Mr Lawrence, but ultimately honourable and tries to do the right thing by turning away.

Helen is entirely a “good” (almost saintly person, certainly having the patience of one) and the rest of the cast are well drawn in both the two milieus (county gentry, rowdy boys) and the themes and incidents from Helen’s marriage have a relevance and resonance today, showing gaslighting years before the term was invented.

A great novel - not as witty or biting as an Austen but moving, exciting and still very important today.

Burnout

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0100

This is the first of Ms Kinsella’s books I’ve encountered and I can see why they are popular. It has been hanging around in my “unread” audio book selection for a while so I think that I must have picked it up in a 2-for-1 credit offer some time ago.

This is the easiest of easy reads - there’s no actual peril (although some papers are damaged by a slammed coffee cup). The supporting characters are drawn with a broad brush, mostly for comic effect; indeed many of the situations verge on the farcical (in a good way).

There’s a mystery of sorts (who is leaving messages and gifts on the beach) and an enemies-to-friends romance, all of it clearly telegraphed and the mystery reveal turns out to be quite low key.

It might really be called “The Burnout” because both our protagonists are stressed at work and forced to take a de-stress break and end up at the same run down out of season seaside hotel that they had stayed at as children (I know, what are the chances, right?)

It’s all very cosy and undemanding but still fun and interesting and I quite enjoyed it - who doesn’t like a bit of easy listening (or reading) as some light relief now and then?