Xmas bestsellers 2



For those who have already devoured the Luigi Node (see earlier) may we suggest the Illiterati Trilogy by Robert Sheadams and Robert Adam Stilton? In many ways a forerunner to the Luigi Node in that it manages to pack in just about every conspiracy theory ever thought by any manic paranoid anywhere, the main plot crosses time and space as it reveals a stunning conspiracy to keep the general public blinded to the massive range of conspiracies being enacted all of the time thoughout history by distracting them with a huge book of conspiracies while immortal penguins plot the world's destiny unseen... I see plans within plans...



For the serious fantasy buffs there is the long-awaited new book in the Chronicles of Tommy Agreement, Silver Service Waiter; yes Stadam Robertson has completed the Spoons of the Earth at last. Our intrepid hero, Tommy, must seek our the fabled Spoons of the Earth or else the Great King's Banquet of the Mystical Healing will fail, leading to a breaking of the peace treaty, spilled dessert and a bad review in the local newspaper's food column.



The Singularity Beard Implosion from Radab Omerts tells the tale of an up and coming SF&F writer in Edinburgh who, after leaving his webcam on one night, finds his voluminous beard is actually writing much of his critically-lauded fiction while he sleeps. Soon it becomes apparent that the beard had more than story-telling on it's mind as it begins to engineer a singularity in human society by fusing cutting edge SF, real ale and the innards of an IPOD linked to the web via a live journal. Can young Chaz stop the beard before it's too late and those white IPOD earphones feed a single cyber-entity into every person on the planet?



With apologies to Charlie Stross for that last one and I'll stop abusing the excellent Adam Roberts' good name in these spoofs (sorry, Adam - I dearly love your books but with all the spoofs you've written recently you were the logical choice for a seasonal spoofing; spoffing is a contagious disease (and if you use any of these ideas for another spoof I want a cut!)).



Alas we do not have the time and space to discuss some of the other most popular books of the previous year, such as the lavish coffee table Fart of the the Discworld in which Terry Pratchett explains the role of flatuelence in his fiction; The Wife and Pie, a semi-surreal novel in which a young wife is shipwrecked alone in a lifeboat with a talking pie for company; the amazing novel Quicksilva which is an astonishingly well-researched and written novel woven around the history of skateboarding and surfing clothes and gear; the Famous Five People you meet in Heaven, in which a recently deceased man runs past his waiting dead relatives and friends when he gets to heaven because he wants to meet his favourite five dead heroes (including Jimi Hendrix and Ben Franklin); An Extremely Long and Tedious History of Nearly Everything in which the genial author explains the entire history of the universe in only 73 trillion volumes and not forgetting the remarkable Doctor Strange and Mr. Horlicks in which the Marvel Comics magician is relocated to Georgian Britain and teamed up with the maker of the malted milk drink to calm a mad king, fight devious Faeries and an even more sneaky and underhand foe - the French.



With even more apologies to the real authors abused for seasonal japery once more.