Midsomer Murders with witches

Paul Cornell's Witches of Lychford is a novella set in a village in rural England. Residents are divided over a proposal to build a new supermarket, and one elderly woman called Judith knows that if the development goes ahead, dark forces will be unleashed.

The story's premise is appealing in that it brings fantasy into a modern, stereotypical village setting; a sort of Midsomer Murders with witches. Its three main characters are likeable: Judith the elderly witch, Lizzie the vicar, and her childhood friend Autumn who runs the local witchcraft shop.

The new gods of America

"[-] there are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit-card and freeway, of internet and telephone [-]"

Neil Gaiman's American Gods imagines what it would mean to be a god in the modern world. Its premise is that the gods brought to America by successive waves of immigrants, are growing old and forgotten through lack of belief. Modern gods have been created out of media and technology; these are the things in which people now put their faith.

Hollywood highbrow in 2050?

"... most of [Hollywood] 2050's productions would have seemed incomprehensibly highbrow to 1950."

Oh dear. I can't see this vision of the future becoming reality any time soon.

Childhood's End begins in the aftermath of WW2, when the development of nuclear weapons threatened to annihilate life on earth. Spaceships arrive and hover over the world, and alien Overlords establish order to ensure humans do not destroy themselves.