It being the case that our Club is a secret body, admittance to the membership of which is by invitation only -- and then to the most close-lipped and trustworthy of fellows -- I feel it incumbent upon me to start a journal of our activities. Accordingly, I declare this Club Diary to be open. The duty of maintaining it falls upon the shoulders of the chairman of the executive; therefore, in my capacity as co-founder of the society, I shall maintain it until the time comes to hand over our records to my successor.A collection of early Stross short stories, one of which ("Dechlorinating the Moderator", published in 1996) is actually set this coming Easter weekend, 30 March - 2 April 2018, in Maastricht which is not too far from here. The introduction, written with a decade or so of hindsight, is a very interesting insight into how Stross now feels about his own early fiction, and how the world has changed in ways which were and weren't imaginable last century. I particularly enjoyed the Lovecraftian "A Boy and his God" and "A Colder War", and the 1984 update "Big Brother Iron". Some of the others have worn less well. Worth a look.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2014. Next on that list is Le Mariage de Figaro by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. I will probably have to resort to an English translation again.
