By a Strange coincidence, I finished reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell today, and the other day, I finished off Moving Mars, by Greg Bear (no relation). How is that a coincidence? The two books could not be more different! Turns out Moving Mars won the 1995 Nebula Award, and JS & MN won 2005's Hugo! Both are prestigious sci-fi/fantasy awards (or as my coworker who looked at Moving Mars when I set it down called the genre, "Far-fetched"). And the more I thought about it, the more in common the two books had. One postulates a universe in which everything you see is the result of quantum 'descriptors' which can be tweaked in almost any way imaginable- such that you could move Mars to a whole other solar system if you wanted to. The other is about magicians who just tweak everything by magic to relocate such things as Brussels to somewhere in America. Practically the same book! Though of course both could have been improved by the addition of a polar bear or two.