Future, Present And Past

Three kinds of reading complement each other:

sf about future political conflicts like Poul Anderson's "The Pugilist," "A Man To My Wounding" etc;

the current news;

recent political historical works like Bye Bye Blackshirt: the fight against Oswald Mosley, antisemitism, and the British Union of Fascists, 1934-1936, by Mark Krantz who signed a copy for me at a book launch meeting last night.

Futuristic sf is part of this spectrum, commenting on the time in which it is written and the recent past. 

I am finding "A Man To My Wounding" somewhat heavy going but will persevere until the end, knowing that something is always to be learned from reading anything written by Poul Anderson.

(Book launch and other meetings are held in a Methodist Church Centre. We walk through a very lively Food Bank to get to the meeting room. All human life is here - or some of it, at least. The Centre is just off Dalton Square with the Town Hall and the statue of Queen Victoria.)