(c) Beatrice Warde (1932) What's the Hamlet of scifi? (Not the 'greatest and most complex work in its field': the book which earns you disapproval if you admit to not having read it.) Brave New World ? Do Androids Dream? Dune ? Gravity's Rainbow? It's hard to imagine anyone making fun of you for not having read 2001 . So, is scifi less centralised and hierarchical, then? Maybe. Maybe the scifi world is just yet to have its Robert Hutchins , the fossilising stipulation. Maybe I've just not spent enough time around the geek equivalent of academic snobs: convention attendees. ***************************************************** Scandinavian countries are the least violent places in the world, all hovering around 0.5 murders per 100,000. But their crime fiction - unusually pessimistic, lonely, and depraved even for crime fiction - has been taking off like nobody's business. How long will it take for the entire population to be fictionally murder