To be honest, Jo, I have no idea how dark Alex might go.. not sure I should ask, really.. he he. I do know he's a pretty level-headed & sorted young man, so I wouldn't be worried about what he might read for entertainment. I do know that when I read "Against a Dark Background", by Banks, I swore I'd never read it again (actually, I did & swore double I'd never read it again!) but Al just said "Well Dad, the clue is there in the Title.." & he now happily owns the book. I asked about Fantasy for the obvious reason, if you didn't guess already, yeah.. Christmas presents. So, if you had to recommend a quite dark (& really cool) title a Dad could give his son, What would it be? I'd much appreciate it. As for the SF titles thankyou, I will look them up!
I asked about new authors J. to see who might be around that catches the eye/ear(?). For various reasons, I have hardly read a SF book for a good decade & am completely out of touch (not that I've been off-planet, or anything). I was wondering if people were still writing in that genre successfully, because it is a field that attracts me. With the advent of 'The Martian', sent to me by my sister but on the recommendation of her son, my nephew, it's successful reawakening of my interest in SF (& being made into a film), I wondered if there might be a new wave of interesting titles to explore. Given your estimation that it fizzled out in the 90's, which seems to agree with my own time-scale of attention. Whilst everybody's taste is different, I'm happy to listen, then browse in a book shop to see.. thanks for your reply.
