Reviews with titles beginning with T.
Tales of Time and Space is a collection of science fiction short stories by Pat Castaldo. There are 27 short stories contained within this book, all written by Pat Castaldo. The short stories are: The Immune Man Dr Barron's Boy The Pottery method My other self the test the galactic inn for...
Talus is a science fiction novel by Erol Ozan. Deep in the wild and dangerous forests of Madagascar, Rylan and his anthropologist partner Ursula Deiss find a population of cryptic man-like primates. This discovery quickly escalates and draws them into the vortex of an ancient conspiracy that...
Tangerine is a science fiction novel by PJ Hawkinson and K Wodke collectively known as Wodke Hawkinson. Set in a future time where long distance space travel is commonplace and aliens are a natural part of society, Tangerine is a story of the interstellar biologist Ava who explores the wild...
Tech Heaven is a science fiction novel by Linda Nagata. This is Linda Nagata's second book and is in a lot of ways, a lot better than her first (The Bohr Maker(TBM)). It's easier to read, it has a better flow and it also has a lot more to say. At the same time I think that it has lost...
This is a story collection that stays in your mind long after you’ve finished reading, John Grant’s selection of writings vary widely across subjects, but return to the theme of duplicity. In many of these stories, the fantasy or science fiction element remains minimal and acts in a...
As Star Wars fans we take the lore for granted. We know our Wookie from our Ewok, but to the casual person they are just two different types of furry alien. Take a step back and it is a complex universe, full of planets and species. It was tricky enough with just the three films, but six films...
On the edge of Earths Empire, far out in space, an elite group of soldiers are on a training mission.
A training mission preparing them to face their implacible enemy against which a war rages across the galaxy. Deep in the heart of the hollowed out asteroid where their training takes...
The best Science Fiction will tell a story, but also build a world. I prefer my tales to hint about the wider world and what happened to land the protagonists in their current position. Take Ten Low for example, a medic who roams a dusty moon. Her only goal in life is to survive and...
Teranesia is a science fiction novel by the Australian author Greg Egan. As per my usual routine I never read about a book before I start on it. I never read the back of a book before I start on it and I never, ever read other peoples reviews. If I had done any one of those things I wouldn't...
Terminal Earth is a collection of original short stories that all feature the end of the world in some way, edited by Michael Stewart and Neil Thomas.
With 23 tales of the apocalypse, Terminal Earth offers a great deal of compelling tales from talented authors. Despite the common theme...
This novel tells the story of the events that lead to the Terminator salvation film, set after Judgement day, skynet has reduced the worlds population to scattered survivors. Out of the ashes rises the resistance, this is their...
Terra is a very different novel. It doesn't take itself too seriously and on the surface appears very light-hearted, a safe novel with prose full of soft curves rather than sharp edges. This is after all a young-adult novel and yet there is much more to this book than meets the eye.
The...
Science Fiction is fun in so many ways and one of the most entertaining games to play is to think about if. What is Nickola Tesla invented a way to harness an all-powerful energy? Would such power be safe to use, not only for an individual, but for a nation? This was an era of World Wars; more...
To anyone who has seen the latest Avengers movies you will know that Thanos is not a nice chap. He single handily (infinitely glovely) creates an intergalactic genocide. Despite this, the films try to give him some sympathetic elements; he only wipes out so many to save the whole. The Thanos of...
The year 1973, UK, Ireland and Denmark join the European Union, CBS sell the New York Yankees for $10 million and Skylab, the United States first ever space station, is launched. It's not a year that's often recalled in history, but quite a bit did happen.
Inflation caused issues around...
Obsession can be a powerful emotion and lead you down a dark path. Being stalked causes the victim so much fear, not only because they are having to deal with the reality, but also what might happen. In the case of Madison May, she does not know she is being stalked until it is too...
Peter Hamilton doesn't just write Space Opera, he defines it. The Abyss Beyond Dreams is the start of a new series that takes place in his wonderfully rich Commonwealth universe. It's no secret that we love the works of Peter Hamilton at SFBook and The Abyss beyond Dreams is no exception. To...
I sometimes like to think about a singular change to the world and how it would affect the future. It says a lot about me that in most cases my thoughts end up at dystopia. Humans are always going to end at some point, I was just hoping...
Christopher Priest is without a doubt one of the finest writers alive today. Rather than compromise his stories for the sake of easy understanding Priest writes undiluted and it's up to the reader to pay attention; to digest and to consider what the story really means, or at the very least what...
The Affirmation is one seriously good book, managing to create a complex and mind bending scenario that plays on the structure of reality, levels of existence and the nature of the mind - the very notion of "self" and the idea of identity. The story is narrated in the first person by the...
The Doctor can travel anywhere in the Universe and at any time. He can witness the last days of existence or visit a planet of peace. Or he could visit Tara, a planet that seems like our own feudal era Britain, but with added androids. And some odd feeling 70s chauvinism. Target Books have...
A multiple Award-winning British author of speculative fiction, Nina Allan returns with a new collection of novelettes much to the joy of her numerous fans.
Having read ( and reviewed) myself some of her stories in the past I was looking forward to new material by this talented...
The Art of War continues David Wingrove's epic re-imagining of the Chung Kuo, the fifth novel in the 20 book series and things are starting to really heat up. It's five years after the events depicted in Ice and Fire and the story picks up in the summer of 2206. The Dispersionists who have...
When I first started to read this book I was anticipating a plot involving Atlanteans and genetics. This is exactly what you get. Tenfold.
The Augmented Agent is a collection of science fiction short stories by Jack Vance. Jack Vance:I read the intro and.....Basically it was a campaign for Vance heroes as regular fellas running around and doing incredible things to the environment they are written into with wits and brains rarely...
The genuine autobiography of one of the bravest, most dashing and heroic starship captains to ever bodly-go into the depths of space. You may be pleased to know that this Kirk is the real one, not the imposter who has more recently been seen in the latest films. This Kirk doesn't get command of...
Most of us have a subject at school that we struggled with more than others and for me that was languages. Maths, English, Science, I was fine, but my brain does not feel designed for languages. So, if someone offered me a chip that would allow me to instantly understand all languages on Earth,...
The Bastard Legion is the latest Military Science Fiction from Gavin Smith, very much in the style of his earlier book Veteran and its sequel War in Heaven, although not connected in terms of plot or characters.
Smith’s hard hitting protagonist is Miska Corbin, a thief and hacker...
The Beautiful Land makes excellent use of the parallel dimensions theory as it relates to time travel. Here you don't directly travel in time but to a different point in a parallel world which could be almost like our own or vastly different depending on the changes that have taken place. Here...
Bees are quite complicated little creatures and most of us know very little about them. Those that practice apiculture are becoming worth their weight in gold (or bees). We've been collecting their honey for over 15,000 years and we are just beginning to understand just how important to our...
The genre of Science Fiction has always been a wide one in terms of ideas. You can set a book on our own Earth with only one or two tweaks to the norm. This Speculative Fiction is Sci Fi, but so are the Space Operas that span eons and are inhabited by alien races. Although the nature of Sci Fi...
This is a collection of 11 science fiction short stories and a poem by Isaac Asimov. The Bicentennial Man features as one of the stories and was later expanded into a novel called The Positronic Man which was co written with Robert Silverberg. The Positronic Man formed the basis of the film...
The Big Time won the coveted Hugo award for best novel in 1958 - the fourth novel to win such award; a science fiction story written by an author best known for his fantasy stories. It's unique in style and form, reading as much as a play as it does a novel. This feeling is re-enforced by the...
The Big U is the first novel by the award winning author Neal Stephenson. Reading the reprinting of the first (and unsuccessful) novel of a now successful author can be a mixed blessing. Sometimes there’s actually a good reason why it wasn’t that successful the first time around. The Big U...
Seen as how BOB has been hanging around the website for some time now (he's the robot at the top left) I thought it was about time that I reviewed The Black Hole, the book (and film) that features BOB. The book is a direct novelisation of the 1979 Disney film of the same name, written by Alan...
The Blood Red City, the second novel in the Never War Series, following the dramatic alternative history novel Suicide Exhibition.
The story picks up not long after the events of the first novel and it's advisable you read this book before reading The Blood Red City. Where the first...
The Boat of a Million Years is a science fiction novel by Poul William Anderson. Starting in the year 310BC and taking us beyond our present day, The Boat of a Million Years takes on one of Poul Anderson's favourite topics, namely longevity. Most of the book follows Hanno as he lives through a...
The Bohr Maker is a science fiction novel by the writer Linda Nagata. This is the first book that I have read by Linda Nagata and I'm not quite sure what I feel about it. The basis for the book is interesting enough - it takes place in a world where nanomachines, bio-engineering and...
The Book of Adam: Autobiography of the first human clone is a science fiction novel and the debut of Robert M Hopper. On February 22, 1997, the world was shocked with the announcement that a lamb named Dolly had been born, the first mammal cloned from adult cells. The reaction was largely one...
The way that humans treat each other in real life is far darker and harrowing than any science fiction book that you can create, but this does not stop some authors from exploring the depths of the human condition. If we are only as good as how we treat the weakest in society, the...
The Book of Strange New Things, is itself quite strange. It's one of those genre books that have managed to convince the mainstream that it's more mainstream literature. I must admit that it's also not a bad example and will certainly not do the reputation of science fiction any harm.
It...
Gene Wolfe is perhaps one of the most under-rated and criminally overlooked writers in genre fiction. The New Yorker recently called him Sci-Fi's Difficult Genius. Authors Michael Swanwick and Patrick O'Leary have gone so far as to say he is:
The best writer alive today.Ursula K LeGuin...
The Bridge is a novel by the award winning British author Iain M Banks. I'm ever in awe over Banks - where The Wasp Factory was a really strong debut novel, The Bridge as his third published novel is just so much more. It's fantastic to see him develop as a writer and storyteller - Yeah, I know...
So this is it, the 54th and final book in the Horus Heresy series. But before you despair, it isn't the end of the story and the mad Titan Horus is only just knocking on the doors of Terra. The final battle will be played out over a series of novels called the Siege of Terra, presumably...
Before his early retirement Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland (Ida) has one last duty to perform, overseeing the decommissioning of a partly deserted research post which orbits a toxic star right on the edge of Fleetspace.
When Ida arrives on board the U-Star Coast City he finds the...
The Business is a science fiction novel by the acclaimed British author Iain M Banks. Thinking that it maybe was about time for something not so spectacular, I grabbed this book by Iain Not-M Banks while I was at the bookstore (getting The Naked God). Good thing. Even with it's high finance...
I love genre fiction that deals with people who have developed superpowers; X-Men, The 4400, The Boys. All of them have ordinary people gaining extraordinary powers. Some become superheroes, other supervillains. However, what about those mutations that are a...
The Carhullan Army is a dystopian science fiction novel set in an around the cumbrian fells, written by Sarah Hall. With much of Britain underwater due to a biblical level of flooding, the surviving population exist in concentrated pockets and ruled by the rather sinister sounding "Authority"....
The Cassini Division the third volume in the Fall Revolution series which began with the Star Fraction, written by Ken Mcleod. My second read by Ken MacLeod (how do you pronounce that?). Humanity has come a long way since the Star Fraction and the struggles of Moh Kohn. Humanity has split into...
The concluding part to the adventures of Jean Le Flambeur, The Causal Angel is a little confusing in its listing on various websites. Despite some titles to the contrary it is part three of the trilogy; where The Fractal Prince is part two and The Quantum Thief is part one.
Admirers of...
The Caves of Steel is a classic science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov and could be considered the first in the Robot series.
It has been about twenty years since I read this book first and ten years since I read it last. I've grown older and hopefully wiser since then and The Caves of...
The Centauri Device is a classic science fiction tale told by M John Harrison. Picking up another classic from the SF Masterworks series, by an author which was a total unknown to me. It's kind of a high risk gamble, it could open my eyes to something completely new and it could be a complete...
The Ceres Solution is a science fiction novel by Bob Shaw. It's important to read the copyright page closely, before you start on a book. Knowing the year a story was written (or first published) can greatly change the way you'll understand a story. I had somehow gotten the impression that The...
The Chapters Due is the sixth novel in the Ultramarines series and the third in the Ultramarines Omnibus II, which also includes several additional short stories and even a nice graphic short. Once again we follow Captain Uriel Ventris as the Chapter goes up against their ultimate nemesis, the...
There is something magical about the idea of a circus, the lights, the action, the antics, and the acts. The reality in my youth was a little different with a threadbare tent being erected in a local muddy play field. Khan Wong has thankfully decided to capture the majesty that the idea evokes...
The City and The Stars is a science fiction novel by Arthur C Clarke. This little story has a rather nice premise: After decades of exploring space and it's many wonders, The Intruders force Humanity to retreat into an enclosed city on Earth that is totally self-sufficient. Humans have lived in...
The Marvel Universe is jammed packed with famous storylines, but one of the biggest has always been the time that The Fantastic Four took on Galactus. It resonates because it has lasted since the 1960s and appears to be having a reimagining in the latest film. The Coming of Galactus by...
The 15th April 2012 marks a century after the RMS Titanic (operated by the White Star Line) sank after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. 1517 people died in those freezing waters. It's as much a lesson in human arrogance as it is in maritime...
The Confederation Handbook is a stand alone novel set within the same universe as the Nights Dawn Trilogy. "A Vital Guide To the Night’s Dawn Trilogy" the subtitle of The Confederation Handbook says and that pretty much says it all. Two hundred and thirty pages of facts about the culture,...
The Corridors of time is a science fiction novel by the author Poul Anderson. Reading almost exclusively in english, very few of the stories that I read take place in my home country of Denmark, in fact I think that this is the first one, that I've read, which takes place mostly in Denmark....
The Crook Factory is a novel by the award winning author, Dan Simmons. During World War II Ernest Hemingway apparently asked for permission, from the American government, to run a spy ring from his home in Cuba and got it. In steps special agent Joe Lucas. J. Edgar Hoover (chief of the FBI at...
Science documentary producer Greg Chivers’ first novel is a delightful combination of sci-fi, politics, and the three strange characters ensconced within them.
Chivers’ future Jerusalem is a city all but ignored as irrelevant by the world’s leaders, and in its anonymity...
There is something gritty and slightly dirty about Simon Spurrier's writing, making it an acquired taste in science fiction at times. Certainly in The Culled, the first book of the Afterblight Chronicles published by Abaddon Books, we are introduced to our main character in a way that parades...
Douglas Richards has a wonderful way of injecting science fiction elements into a thriller style plot without upsetting the balance and comparisons to the late Michael Crichton are inevitable. If anyone was to compare authors it would also be fair to say that Richards is a worthy successor to...
The Cybernetic Walrus is a science fiction novel by the Jack L Chalker. On my version of this book the title contains the words Book One - which is, if you ask me, a good thing. All too often you have to read the fine print on the back of a book to find out that it's number one in a series -...
The Daleth Effect is a science fiction novel by Harry Harrison. Denmark has the Anti Gravity Device! Wouldn't it be nice if one of the non-bully invade the world and dominate countries got a hold of the perfect insta travel to the moon devices? Denmark gets it and does everything it can with...
Horror comes in different guises, it can be dark, chilling, violent, bloody and psychological;
Simon Law’s second novel The Damaged is all of these themes.
The story starts in 1987 during ‘The Great Storm’. Law does a great job of writing about the eighties that is both...
I imagine there is a dial that an author has when they are writing their book, it spans the gamut of subtle to outrageous. Where do you decide to place your story? Should you keep it lowkey, writing about a world like our own, but with a small tweak? Or do you embrace all that science fiction...
Defeatism. Fatalism. These are universal, recurrent maladies that everyone experiences at points throughout their lives. Even if one moves forward - how do we find meaning in such a vast, uncaring universe?
Only here, the universe isn’t uncaring, it’s quite pointedly predatory. These...
The Dark Side of Technology is a science fiction novel by Mark Antony Rossi. The tale of the mad scientist is even older than the Shelly novel of Frankenstein. Since the dawn of the written word man has tried to altered his appearance, environment or internal makeup in a vain attempt to gain...
It's the 23rd Century and Earth is changed forever following the arrival in Darwin, Australia of the alien "builder" technology that provides a "tether" out into space; humanity finally has a space elevator. No-one knows why, or even if these elusive aliens will return.
Some time later...
The Darwinian Extension: Completion is the third volume in the The Darwinian Extension trilogy, written by Hylton H Smith. Over twenty years have passed since the Red planet was first colonised and contact was made with an alien intelligence. Much has changed in this time, Mars now has a thin,...
The Darwinian Extension: Initiation, is the first volume in a trilogy of novels from author Hylton H Smith. The Darwinian Extension begins in 2033, with a planned mission to populate Mars. The mission is not one of simple habitation however, but one of true colonisation including terraforming,...
The Darwinian Extension: Transition is the second volume in the science fiction trilogy from author Hylton H Smith, and follows on from the events in Initiation. Transition begins in the year 2038, 2 years have passed since the return of the Copernicus, the ship carrying the first Mars...
H. G. Wells is a name to conjure with. Classic stories about time machines, invisible men, alien invasions and more. He was one of the earliest genre writers in a time when the idea of genres did not exist. He just wrote what he felt like. A modern author who has taken on this mantle is Silvia...
Certain jobs can change you, the things that you see, the things that you must do. You may become closed off, hard, brittle, or just a little bit over the edge. Julie Crews has become all these things and more as a local Psychic Operative. Living off a diet of cocaine, regret and...
Shakespeare plays have been around for a long time, and you do not need to do a straight adaptation. Many of the terms used in the plays have entered the common vernacular and the storylines can be traced throughout modern film and television. I don’t recall Romeo or Juliet breaking out...
The Death of Grass is a classic post-apocalyptic tale of a world without grass. Written in 1956 - just as the post-apocalyptic genre started to gain ground, created by the British author Samuel Youd - under the pen name John Christopher.
The Death of Grass was Youd's second novel and was...
The Demolished Man was the first ever novel to win a Hugo award for "Best Novel" in 1953. As with much of Alfred Bester's works, it remains an understated classic.
The novel is set in the 24th Century with a society who can no longer hide their crimes following the rise of police...
The world of The Dervish house is a reflection of it's parent city of Istanbul which is itself a reflection of the nation of Turkey; ancient, paradoxical and divided like the brain of a human being. In the year 2027 on a swealteringly hot summers day there is a small explosion in Enginsoy...
The Diamond Age is a speculative fiction novel by the award winning author Neal Stephenson. Where the core technologies of matter compilers and nanotechnology of this book is quite interesting and where Stephensons portrayal of a future based on nanotechnology is one of the best, that...
There are a lot of different ways to be smart and just because you are one, does not automatically make you the other. The classic is book versus street, you may know your way around an academic essay, but would fail to talk yourself out of a tricky situation outside the pub at closing time. If...
Something is going wrong on the planet of Paradise, crops will no longer grow while those imported are withering and dying in their droves. The indigenous plant life (never entirely safe) is becoming wildly unpredictable and dangerous. And so the order is given to abandon Paradise, all personnel...
The Dispossessed, a novel by the distinguished and award winning author Ursula K Le Guin It's been some time since I last read anything by LeGuin (I think that it was The Word for World is Forest, which I liked); I've never really been much into her for some reason. Got no idea why. She writes...
As a species we are doing a good enough job of messing up our own chances of survival, but what if I told you that we could also mess up another distant planet too? In Stephan George’s The Distant Stars Are My Only Friends, Arax is a traveller who does not go into space, but instead...
The Divine Invasion is a science fiction novel by the critically acclaimed author Philip K Dick. Couple of people live in some bubbles on a crispy cold methane planet. Bachelor pad one: the guy loves some Rondstadt type woman (Linda Fox) and is a dj from his home dome. The lady in the next...
Hig is a survivor, a lone pilot who's wife, friends and almost all neighbours are long dead. Living in the hanger of a small abandoned airport with only his dog and his gun-toting neighbour for company. He flies his 1956 Cessna around the perimeter looking out for trouble and occasionally sneaks...
Adrian Tchaikovsky has a talent for writing deep, meaningful scifi. He won the Arthur C Clarke award in 2016 for Children of Time and the 2019 BSFA best novel award for the follow-up Children of Ruin. There are few authors that can quite match his vision for non-human intelligence, or his flair...
The Drowned World is J.G. Ballards first novel. It's written more than twenty years before he writes his, probably, best known novel The Empire of The Sun. Ballard actually wrote about 10 SF novels (and countless shorts) before he writes Empire of the Sun, and if you enjoyed Empire of the Sun...
I think the pessimistic among us see a future of raised water levels and the UK losing plenty of its coastal land and anything close to our rivers. However, even the most resigned will not have imagined the world that Martin Mulligan and Jack D. McLean have created in The Drowning Earth. Not...
The Duke of Uranium is the first volume in the Jak Jinnaka series by the American author John Barnes. The Duke of Uranium introduces Jak Jinnaka. Jak is Barnes try at an arse-kicking, undercover agent for the thirty-sixth century. Somebody who can compete with Miles Vorkosigan, The Stainless...
Doctor Who is the same, but also different, in each iteration and that is what makes the characters so interesting. The Twelfth Doctor is one of the latest incarnations and one that reflected on the Doctor’s past as much as the present. The humour was still there, but also more of the...
The legendary Grey Knights are all that stand between mankind and the horrors of chaos. Secret Guardians who journey into the very realms of the warp and beyond in pursuit of the enemy; to most they and their foes are nothing more than myth and legend, those are the lucky ones.
The...
The Empire is a science fiction space opera by Elizabeth Lang. The Centuries old war with Andromedans is heating up and the Empire is the only force that can stand it's way. One brilliant scientist may hold the key to a weapon that could swing the tide and save the galaxy but the method's of...
Calling your book The Escher Man is a bold move, but a move that T. R. Napper made. The name conjures up imagery from the artist of staircases to nowhere that lead back to the start. How does that effect the man eternally made to walk these steps? Throw in some Cyberpunk future and memory...
The Everlasting Beyond of Eternal Happiness reminds me quite a bit of Harry Harrisons "Bill, The Galactic Hero" series, which itself is in part a parody of Heinlein's Starship Troopers - there is a very similar irony running throughout and the book even shares some of the same vernacular. There...
The Exodus Towers is the second volume in the Dire Earth Cycle, picking up right where the cliff-hanger ending left the story. A new Elevator and those strange Black Towers only complicate matters for those survivors of the wasteland that is the Earth. Not all survivors are that friendly either...
Journalist Cormac Easton is chosen to join a group of elite astronauts as they take part in the very first manned mission into the furthest reaches of the solar system. Documenting the greatest journey of human-kind should secure his place in history as one of the outstanding explorers of the...
Dmitri, the only son of the Czar of Stritonoly and heir to the throne has been driven insane by the forbidden poison of the diminutive slave race that provide a worker class to the Empire. Setting in motion a catastrophic chain of events, a storm of epic proportions gathers over the Citadel...
The Fall of Hyperion is the follow up novel to Hyperian (winner of the Hugo award) by Dan Simmons. I've been putting of writing this review for the last few days, hoping that time would make it easier for me to write it. Unfortunately I don't find it any easier to write now – but I'll try,...
The Fallen Star by Claudia Gray is released on the first anniversary of the creation of The High Republic Universe, a bold move by the Star Wars novels to create their own sandbox in which to play, free from the Skywalkers. There are comics, YA books and more....
Imagine a world where cloning was not only advanced enough to create real bodies but where the technology was inexpensive and simple enough to be viable on a large scale. Of course making copies of real people would be wrong and there would bound to be a law against such a thing but what if a...
The Fight for Naturah: The Reclamation is a speculative fiction novel by Lloyd Blake. The Year is 2085 and Mark Ashton has just finished his term as the President of the United States of America. Leaving in his wake a very successful 8 years with an improved economy, increased employment and a...
When the apocalypse inevitably comes do you want to know about it? Would you like the chance to peer out of the window and see the world burning, perhaps you can make a run for the high ground? Another option is to live in pure ignorance underground, competing with your fellow residents for the...
Like many Science Fiction fans, I am also a fan of Doctor Who, but not of a particular incarnation of the Doctor on television. I am a Doctor Who book fan. The show is great, but it in the novels where I have always found the most interesting stories free from budget constraints and...
The Firestorm Conspiracy is a science fiction novel by Cheryl Angst. Fleet Commander John Thompson is on long term leave from the USEF and is pretty much just drifting through life until an old friend tracks him down and forces him to confront some very uncomfortable truths that he has been...
I often stay clear of books recommended by Richard and Judy, I find their "recommendations" largely restricted to wishy washy "popular" and "literary" fiction. However, like a thousand Monkeys at a thousand typewriters random chance dictates that they "should" occasionally strike gold and The...
The Force Unleashed 2 is the novelisation of the Star Wars game, written by the accomplished author Sean Williams. The prequel, The Force Unleashed (also written by Sean Williams) was a New York Times number 1 best seller. As ruthless apprentice to Darth Vader, Starkiller was mercilessly...
The Forever War is the Hugo and Nebula award winning military science fiction novel by Joe Haldeman. Originally written in 1974, the novel begins in the relative future of 1997 where thanks to the discovery of the collapsars - wormhole type gates that allow faster than light travel between...
The Forge of God is a science fiction novel by Greg Bear. First Europe (as in the sixth moon of Jupiter) disappears, then a strange cinder cone/spaceship including a sick and dying alien is found in Death Valley and a giant new mountain/spaceship including robots is found in the desert of...
The Fountains of Paradise was originally intended to be Arthur C Clarkes last novel and this is clearly reflected within both the backdrop - a fictional version of his home of Sri Lanka called Taprobane - and the narrative structure itself which feels very personal, much more so than any other...
The Fractal Prince is the follow-up to the hit début novel The Quantum Thief that was released to a great deal of acclaim last year. Like the Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince follows two distinct threads, which while written in a vividly descriptive and disarming style offers a vision that is...
The Furthest Station is a new novella that continues the adventures of PC Grant and the Folly in the Rivers of London series, investigating crimes that are a bit more out of the ordinary.
PC Grant joins British Transport Police officer Jaget Kumar to investigate ghost sightings on the...
The Gemini Factor is a supernatural thriller from the award winning author Paul Kane, whose previous novels include "The Lazarus condition", "Broken Arrow" and "Peripheral visions". The novel tells the story of a twisted and highly successful serial killer who's victims are always one of twins...
The Genesis Machine is a science fiction novel by James P Hogan. (take a look at the clothes the guys are wearing on the cover - wow!) Written in 1978 and taking place a few of years from now, The Geneses Machine pretty much read as an alternative history story, even if it wasn't intended as...
The Genocides is a classic science fiction novel by Thomas M Disch. In this post apocalyptic tale of vegetable domination, the earth has been overtaken by a strain of alpha plants... massive and imposing, they suck up all the resources and wreak major havoc on the ecosystem. In just 7 years...
The idea of a virtual reality being superior to the real thing reoccurs often in science fiction. Why live in the slums of Ready Player One or the battleship grey halls of Red Dwarf, when things can be Better Than Life? The issues...
It's been too long since I read an Arthur C Clarke book, before I even started reviewing in fact and so when the opportunity presented itself to review The Ghost from the Grand Banks I jumped at the chance. This is one of Clarkes later novels, published in 1990 and the story revolves around the...
The Giant Novels are a series of science fiction novels by James P Hogan. I'm usually not a man that believe in miracles, but something fairly fantastic must have happened at Del Ray Books, the day they came up with the idea for this book. To put three classics, Inherit the Stars, The Gentle...
In the future world of "A Girl in the Road" global power has shifted and a revolution blows with the easterly wind. It's a future where the technology so long held in the west meets the culture of the east.
Into this maelstrom of technology walks Meena, a complicated girl in a...
I have always enjoyed the Star Wars extended universe novels, be they the Legend set, or the newer relaunched series. The books allow us to explore the Skywalker saga in more depth, but for me the most fun is exploring the deeper cuts. I have read fantastic novels that have delved into the lives...
It can feel at times like the entire world is out to get you, but who is the person you must watch out for the most? Your family, spouse, work colleagues? Nope, the biggest saboteur is often yourself. Your own thoughts and deeds coming back to haunt you. Iris Henderson has it worse than most as...
What if God was one of us? Just an Artificial Intelligence like one of us. Just a stranger on the internet, trying to wreak our lives. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the Bible will know that God can be a little tricksy. If that God can flood the world or demand you sacrifice your child, what...
This Christmas a member of the family introduced me to NCIS. For those who have yet to discover this long-running US-based TV show it's a police-procedural series that follows the Naval Criminal Investigation Service. Until this time I hadn't even known such an organisation existed, not...
The Guns of Mars is a science fiction novel by Martin T Ingham. Morgan Asher finds himself a reluctant Martian, part of the colonization effort so that his wife can fulfill her lifelong dream. It isn't long after arriving on the red planet that Morgan discovers a sinister plot by a group known...
Melek Ahmar, the Lord of Mars, the Red King, the Lord of Tuesday, Most August Rajah of Djinn, wakes up three millennia after being knocked out cold in a bar fight. Though his magic is weak at first from disuse, he struggles out of his stone sarcophagus, which is sealed with aging spells cast by...
Spiders (or arachnids if you are being posh) provoke strong reactions in some. One of my brothers, who still considers himself tough (even though he's now over 40) will move astonishingly fast in the opposite direction when encountering such a beast - usually with the result that his teenage...
This Omnibus Edition Includes the First 4 books in the "Hitchhikers guide Trilogy" 5 book set. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is also the title of the first of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series by Douglas Adams. The novel is an...
The Honour of the Knights is the first volume in the space opera series The Battle for the Solar System by Stephen Sweeney. The Honour of the Knights is quite an accomplished novel, a grand story on a fairly epic scale with some good dialog and well rounded, engaging characters. The author has...
The Houses of Iszm is a science fiction novel by Jack Vance. HOUSES OF ISZM-Jack Vance. The Iszic have been growing some wicked pod homes with security, pipes, and furniture included for 200,000 years. The secret and origin of growing these homes are very guarded because this is what keeps the...
John Scalzi is a household name as character-driven sci-fi goes. The Human Division, 5th in his Old Man’s War series detailing the fate of the Colonial Union and it’s increasingly tenuous relationship with the Earth, is...
The Human Front is a science fiction novel by Ken Mcleod. I read this after finishing the Engines of Light series, and to be honest didn't expect a whole lot from it, especially after finding out that it was only 90 pages long... but to my pleasent surprise, my inital views were nothing to go...
Over a 100 years have passed since the annihilative events of 2045 and the world is a very different place. With the earths climate raging out of control and ice spread across much of the globe humanity is forced to survive in nomadic pockets around the narrow band of the "Temperate Zone" near...
Another novel being published by those good people at Scifi Cafe, The Inosculation Syndrome is something of a surprise. The book tells the story of the astronaut Kal who becomes stranded on an alien planet due to a series of errors after losing touch with his star ship while charting regions...
The sheer number of comic books out there are a blessing and a curse. There are so many stories to catch up on and different versions of the same characters. It is wonderful for the explorer, but for the casual fan it can be daunting. We all know something about Black Panther, the character,...
The Ion Raiders is book two of Ian Whate’s Dark Angels series, however despite featuring some if the same characters as book one, Pelquin’s Comet, it is not a direct continuation of the same story so can be read without knowledge of the first. Not to give to many spoilers, but...
The year is 2175 and the Earth is a very different place with radiation from the long depleted ozone layer now reaching dangerous levels. A co-operation exists between the previously warring factions of humanity and their creation - the Cyborgs. An unexpected find on one of Jupiter's moons leads...
What are you going to do if Godzilla arrives. You must have a plan in mind. At least one for home and one for the office. I used to have a great plan that would see me have an almost 100% chance of surviving, but then I went and started a family. Now I have no chance as their little legs are...
The Killing Ground is the first novel in the newly released second Ultramarines Omnibus, which also includes several additional short stories and even a nice graphic short. The story see's the Two Ultramarines Pasanius Lysane and Uriel Ventris escaping from the Eye of Terror after the events of...
As a child you read books and imagine that you may be that child who is whisked away on an adventure. Perhaps you will be the chosen one to be taken through a magical wardrobe or told you are a wizard. By the time you are studying for a PhD such flippancy is no longer part of your character, so...
That one time you saved the world with stick with you for a lifetime. You may bask in the glory one day and wake up with cold sweats the next, either way, the event will be forged in your memories forever. What about two times? Three or four? Do you think that James Bond...
The battle over Stritonoly is now underway as Strito and the Princess Becki lay siege to the citadel. Barok emerges, transformed yet again and returns to try and make amends to his people and his wife however the whole race of the Acidel may be at risk when Gunther unveils his terrible plan to...
Subgenres come and go and one that I have recently been enjoying is ‘Cosy Fantasy,’ what does that mean? Basically, fantasy with some of the trepidation taken out, a chance to get to know the characters and enjoy a fantasy setting in peace. Riley August’s The Last Gifts of the...
Humans always think we are special when it comes to science fiction. Somehow, we are better than the multitude of other alien races out there. How many times has Kirk used “this human emotion called love,” to win the day, or how often has an invading alien army been conquered by...
The Last Man Anthology is a collection of works that pays tribute to the mother of science fiction, Mary Shelley by featuring 19 tales of Catastrophe, Disaster and Woe. Edited by Hunter Liguore the anthology spans two centuries and includes works by Ray Bradbury, CJ Cherryh, DH Lawrence, Edgar...
Wars can go on for years. Not just the moments of action in which thousands of people die, but the cold wars between. Different factions may have an uneasy peace, but is this peace just an excuse to build for the next conflict? You may not imagine that Star Trek: The Next Generation is the best...
The Last Underclass is a science fiction novel by Dean Warren. A hundred and fifty years in the future, the world has polarized in to winners and losers, has and has-nots, in this book they are called Welfies and Achievers. Ghetto born and raised Quiet is a Welfie to the core. Trying to raise...
The Left Hand of Darkness was first published almost 50 years ago, receiving critical acclaim and firmly establishing Le Guin as a serious, talented author. It's known as one of the first examples of feminist science fiction and retrospectively won the Hugo and Nebula awards. I don't...
Hood and his army of freedom fighters are ready to start their counter attack against the K'Thraa invaders of Earth. By sabotaging a huge mirror which the aliens have placed in space to raise the temperature on the planet, hood is able to plunge Earth into a mini ice age overnight. Seriously...
Time is relative. We use this term in our everyday lives to explain why boring tasks seem to last an age, but the day flies by when we are having fun. Sounds good, but it is not what Einstein had in mind. His thought process was far more interested in physics and what happens as we approach the...
And so we come at last to the final volume in the remarkable journey that is The Long Earth. It also happens to be the swansong of that singular author Sir Terry Pratchett.
And what a finale it is. The Long Cosmos lives up to the promise the authors have been building with this series, it...
The Long Earth follows the premise that there are an infinite number of alternative dimensions, all existing within one great "Multiverse", each universe containing a slightly different version of the Earth. A few years in the future and a device powered by the humble potato (it will make sense,...
The Long Mars is the third novel in the Long Earth series and is set in the years following the events of the cataclysmic finale of The Long War. The world has now been changed not just by the continued expansion of humanity into the Long Earths but also by recent events. Populations begin to...
Anyone who has been following the Long Earth series will be eagerly awaiting this fourth and penultimate novel in Stephen Baxter's and Terry Pratchett's series. The Long Mars was the strongest novel in the series so far and so The Long Utopia has a lot to live up to.
The Long...
The Long Earth is an outstanding novel; entertaining with some great touches and a unique story that has Pratchett's touch of genius about it - combined with Baxter's hard-scifi edge and world building skill. All the ideas and the vast scope of the story carried the book forward really well but...
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was originally funded as a small kickstarter project and self-published as a result. It was such a hit that it found a big publisher, got nominated for a ton of awards and has been raved about by many, many people. What struck me in particular wasn't just...
As a long-term science fiction fan, it sometimes feels like we are living the books that I grew up reading. Not the flying cars and cure for cancer stories, but the ones that warned about humankind’s tendency to destroy itself. It feels like only a matter of years until Gort rocks up to...
The Ultimate Trip started with a story called The Sentinel, by Arthur C Clarke. It took flight when Stanley Kubrick asked Clarke to write a novel of space exploration. The Result was on of the most extraordinary films of all time. In this book you can find the original story of how this all...
Any show on the US TV network Fox has to realise that its days could be numbered. Fox have the reputation of axing cult shows before their time from Arrested Development to Family Guy. Despite their cancelation these shows are still being made. Firefly was not so lucky. This was a science...
The Man Who Never Was begins in 1986 with the discovery of human bones during the demolition of the old Coke works in Derwenthaugh. The find also includes a strange artefact, one that suggests that the death of the bones owner goes back to 1945 and a set of strange circumstances.
The...
The Man from Primrose Lane - an elderly recluse who wore mittens all year round; a man who seemed to have no friends or family, is murdered one summers day. The murder goes unsolved with little or no evidence until a day four years later when Best-selling author David Neff learns of this strange...
The Man in the high castle is the hugo award winning alternative history novel by Philip K Dick. After the Axis won the Second World War the African continent is virtually wiped out, the Mediterranean drained to make farmland and the United States divided between the Japanese and the Nazis....
The March Hare Network is a science fiction novel by Jack L Chalker and follows on from the events of The Cybernetic Walrus. I'm not happy with this book, it takes off where book one ends and goes on and on in the same track, with nothing really new happening. The strange thing is that Chalker...
The Martian is one of those books that if many authors had attempted it, wouldn't have worked. The majority of the novel follows one man surviving on Mars with little more than a shelter, 2 rovers, a few space suits, air, water and potatoes. There are no monsters, no antagonists (unless you...
The reason that I enjoy the Star Wars Universe so much is that it vast and can be explored in new and interesting ways. The Skywalker stories will always be there, but there are shady towns and abandoned Sith temples spotted all over the Universe. You can follow an eccentric archaeologist...
A collaboration between Science Fiction greats, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds, The Medusa Chronicles picks up the story of Arthur C. Clarke's A Meeting with Medusa a Nebula Award winning novella published in Playboy in 1971. It takes the story of Howard Falcon, from his shattered...
With the premise of Holly Cave's new novel, you could be forgiven for thinking it's a literary version of The Good Place. But Heaven Architect Isobel is no omnipotent Ted Danson, and The Memory Chamber no comedy.
Cave's idea here is an interesting one. After you die, your...
The Middle Kingdom, the third volume in David Wingrove's re-imagined epic Chung Kuo series see's the Earth covered in continent spanning, mile high city of Ice; ruled by the seven T’ang, the Kings of China.
A century of peace is shattered when the Minister of the Edict is assassinated...
The Miracle Inspector is a science fiction novel by Helen Smith. England is now a partitioned country with the capital an oppressive place where poetry has been banned, schools are shut and women no longer allowed to work outside of the home. Lucas and Angela decide to try and escape the...
The Moat around Murcheson's eye is the sequel to the scifi classic The Mote in God's eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. (Released as "The Gripping Hand" in the US) The Gripping Hand is the sequel to The Mote In God's Eye and as that I think that it's utterly uninteresting for people...
Written in 1966 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has been critically acclaimed and is often considered as one of Heinlein's finest works, winning the prestigious Hugo award and also becoming a part of the original SF Masterworks collection. It's only the third Heinlein novel I have read...
The Mote In God's Eye is a classic science fiction novel by Larry Niven with Jerry Pournelle. I not sure how I have managed to put off reading this classic for so long - but better late than never. The Mote takes place in 3017 when the human empire makes its first contact with an alien...
One of the biggest problems to overcome when writing science fiction is how do humans communicate with an alien race? They may speak a different language or may not even have mouths in which to make noises. The Universal Translator is a popular cheat, or fundamental maths that should be...
The Naked God is the third novel in the Nights Dawn Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton. Sitting with the final and conclusive volume of The Nights Dawn and looking at it's massive 1150 pages (at 1.5Kg it's just about the heaviest book I've ever read), I felt kind of intimidated. My faith in Hamilton...
The Naked Sun is the second volume in the Robot series by Isaac Asimov.
This is the second book in the Elijah Baley series. The simple fact that it's the number two in a series, gives it a couple of advantages and a couple of disadvantages. On the plus side is that we know the main...
The Nano Flower is the third volume in the Greg Mandel Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton. Greg Mandel is back, Julia is back and, well actually a hole bunch for people from Mindstar Rising is back in this book. Ready for more post-warming big corporate dealings and mercenary action. This book is the...
The Neutronium Alchemist is the second volume in the Nights Dawn Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton. In The Reality Dysfunction, the presence of an energy-based alien lifeform during the death of a human on the colony world of Lalonde somehow "jammed open" the interface between this universe and "the...
First time author T. Ellery Hodges enters the scifi genre with both barrels blazing! His debut novel The Never Hero is an unexpected thrill-ride through both time and space as our protagonist Jonathan fights an alien force hell-bent on destroying humankind.
From the back cover:
...
The New York Trilogy is a collection of 3 stories by Paul Auster. This is the first book that I've read by Poul Auster. I saw him on TV a few months ago, he read from this book and I was deeply fascinated – the way the words flowed and the richness of his voice, gripped me deeply. And then...
The Nexus Odyssey is an omnibus featuring the Darwinian Extension series along with the follow-on novel "Renewal", a series that presents a bold vision for the human race.
It begins in 2033 with a planned mission to populate the red planet, Mars. But rather than a simple plan to create a...
There are books in a person’s life that helps to define their taste in genres. I was lucky enough in my teenage years to work my way through some of the classics of science fiction instilling a lifelong love of the genre. One novel that stands out among the best was Ray Bradbury’s...
Modern life has highlighted the plight of The Other. People are marginalised for all sorts of reasons and from what I can tell it is more noticeable than ever. If you are different but can blend in with everybody else, would you keep it a secret or not? The Nobody People are hidden from view for...
The Nomad of Time trilogy (The Warlord of the Air, The Land Leviathan and The Steel Tsar), compiled into one volume in this paperback edition from Gollancz is a nostalgic treat for fans of steampunk and alternative history. These three stories are the memoirs of Oswald Bastable, Captain of the...
From the back cover:
The oil is gone. That way of life, ended. An invention frees the mind. A cyber-world becomes salvation. A boy, a weapon. A soldier, a titan. While nations thrash into antiquity, And a CEO becomes Queen, A man, brilliant and cunning, Plots to rule it all.
...
Science Fiction writers love a dystopia, there are so many ways that it could all go wrong. Overpopulation is one. It not a pleasant thing to think about, but we already use too many of the world’s finite resources and as the population grows, this is going to get even worse. In The...
There is one solution that would benefit our climate massively, but it is a bitter pill to swallow. Less humans. We are the cause of pretty much all the issues that the Earth is currently having and when we are gone, it will happily float around the solar system without us. A...
The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance, written by Sean Williams. A novel in The Star Wars series, the story is set 3650 years before A New Hope. It is a novelisation based on the new Bioware and LucasArts massively multiplayer online role-playing game. I must confess that I am a big fan of Star...
The Origami Man begins with the death of the protagonist, Greg Samson. This however doesn't prevent Greg from returning home and then off to work.
It does however mean he now has to carry around an incredibly deadly alien warship which has burrowed into his neck and is now in a symbiotic...
The Other End Of Time is a classic science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl. I bought The Other End Of Time because it was a scifi and more importantly because Pohl is referred to as asking unpleasant questions. ...Some of them are outright disturbing. I would dissagree with this comment. While...
The Other Log of Phileas Fogg is very much a "literary mashup" novel which fills in the blanks from Jules Verne's classic novel "Around the World in 80 Days". It's being given a new lease of life thanks to Titan Books, originally published almost 40 years ago.
As the title suggests the...
This debut novel from Ada Hoffman comes on the back of a strong catalogue of short story success in Uncanny, Asimov’s and other well-known SF magazines.
Onboard the space station, Pride of Jai, autistic scientist Yasira Shien leads a huge science and engineering project in power...
Call me old fashioned, I am a little scared of the future. This is a sentiment that will hit many of us eventually. What is wrong with the way technology works right now? Do I really need to talk to my speakers or plug myself into the Matrix just to order a pizza? The idea of getting behind the...
I have come across the argument that people do not read science fiction as they cannot connect it to their own lives. Most sci fi fans know that even a book set in deep space or thousands of years in the future is often just using images of tomorrow to discuss the issues of today. However, if a...
The Plague Forge is the dramatic conclusion to the Dire Earth Cycle. With the Builders plans still hidden and time running out, can Skyler and his team recover the four remaining relics before the final Builder event takes place?
No-one really knows what will happen when the five...
The Player of games is a Culture series novel by the noted author Iain M Banks.
I've been looking for Player of Games (PoG) for quite some time now (it has been out of print for some years) but finally I got lucky and found it in Gatwick Airport - So the big question for me was...
The Players is a science fiction novel by Joseph Fullam. I accepted getting a review copy of this book after having having read the byline which says "All the universe is a stage, And all the men and women merely players...". I must have thought that that sounded intriguing or something, but...
After discovering what The Price of Safety and The Price of Rebellion are in the first two outings in Michael C Bland’s dystopian trilogy, we finally get to see what The Price of Freedom is in this final outing. In a world in which everyone has been rendered blind unless they wear...
I do enjoy a set of short stories. There are typically two types that you can get, a collection, or a theme. The Price of Memories and Other Stories by Sally McBride is a classic style collection of an author’s works brought together over years into a curated whole. Are there themes that...
Some things are bigger than just us. We need to think about more than the individual or even the family unit, think of the bigger picture. The Price of Rebellion by Micheal C. Bland is the second part of a trilogy all about an inventor who would do anything to protect his family, but in doing...
What would you do to protect those that you love? What is The Price of Safety? This is a question that Michael C. Bland poses in the first of a trilogy set in a troubling future. It is a story about a genius, but also a family man whose inventions gets them all into danger. At what point do you...
It is a time of legends, the entire galaxy is one mighty battleground which see the indomitable space marines locked in a bitter civil war, divided by the heresy of Horus.
Some chapters remain loyal to humanities greatest leader; the Emperor, while others have chosen the chaos tainted...
You see it more often in fantasy than science fiction, but there are stories about young people living a life of drudgery only to be plucked into being exceptional as if fate is playing with them. It is a comfortable coming of age trope that has worked so well, so many times, but what if...
The Proteus Operation is a science fiction novel by James P Hogan. Once upon a time in the late 21st century, everything was just a-okay and everybody where happy. Utopia had been reached. Well, except for a couple of malcontents who where rather bored with all this be-good-to-thy-neighbour and...
The Quanderhorn Xperimentations is a book thats been adapted backwards via the future from the Radio 4 series before it was made. It's pure, british comedy gold from the genius minds of Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall.
The story is set in England, 1952. A time of (relative) peace...
Towards the end of the 21st Century Earth appears as a very different place, a post-singularity existence and a fractured future of a billion earthbound souls, preserved at the bottom of a gravity well.
Huw is a technophobe and somewhat of a misanthropist - a natural selection for the...
With an illustrious writing career spanning several decades, Ursula Le Guin’s name is synonymous with the very best and thought provoking science fiction and fantasy writing. The Real and Unreal: Volume 1: Where on Earth? is a collection of her short stories with a common theme of being set in...
One of the (many) things I like about Adam Robert's stories is that they are always full of big ideas and The Real-Town Murders is no exception. This time the author has written a future-noir crime story which revolves around the "locked room mystery".
A popular subgenre in...
The Reality Dysfunction is the first volume in the Nights Dawn Trilogy by Peter Hamilton. In the far future, humanity has divided along a single major line. The Edenists are genetically engineered space-dwellers with telepathic affinity to their biotechnological homes and ships. Adamists are...
The Rebel Worlds is a science fiction novel by author Poul Anderson. When I’m a bit stressed at my daytime job, I take a lot more care when I select a new book to read. It has to be fairly short if I want to finish it anytime soon, the story line has to be fairly simple and it has to keep me...
Strange arches are appearing all over the world and the brother of failed artist Ed disappears through one that suddenly jumps into being at the bottom of a London Escalator. With no visible way back Ed must put aside his differences with his brother's wife and go find him. Four hundred years...
The Red Notebook is a novel by the American author Paul Auster. Paul Auster is one of those annoying people that not only have interesting things happening to them seemingly all the time, but also have a talent that enables them to describe these events, in such a way that other people actually...
Love is love and that is truer in science fiction than any other genre as you can fall in love with anyone or anything. Someone of the same species, an alien or even a spaceship. With AI advancing who is to say that one day their personality will not appeal, couple that to an avatar they...
Failed science writer Alex Dolan is just floating along, struggling to find work when multi-billionaire Stanislaw Clayton provides a surprising, well-paid offer out of the blue. He wants Alex to write a book about the world's first privately funded high-energy physics facility - the...
The movie tie in novel is much maligned but I have always had a soft spot for them. I have spent many a pleasurable hour with the works of tie in master Alan Dean Foster who was able to improve several mediocre films with his prose. Films are great at bombastic action, but they often fail to...
The Force is a concept that underpins the Star Wars Universe, but it is good or bad? The entire point is that it is both. There is a Light Side and a Dark Side, and these two opposing elements must be in balance. During the Star Wars films, the Dark Side is on its uppers and...
Not to be confused with the A589 (which is the road to Morecambe) or that very depressing Cormac McCarthy novel, The Road to Hell* (now known as Out of Time) is indeed paved with good vibrations intentions, in this case that road involves a future that uses a limited form of time travel. During...
The Robots of Dawn is the third volume in the Robot series by Isaac Asimov
Written nearly thirty years after The Naked Sun this, the third volume in the Elijah Baley series, is one of Asimovs greatest accomplishments. His writing has matured a lot in those thirty years and he has, in...
The Sacred Protocol is a near future novel of an alternative history, written by Hylton H Smith. After the Spanish Armada defeat the English fleet in 1588 the great British Empire is overthrown and Spain control most of Europe. Moving forward to 2016 and the Internet collapses causing mass...
The Salmon of Doubt, Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time is a posthumous collection of previously unpublished material by Douglas Adams, published in 2001. English editions of the book were published in the USA and UK in May 2002, exactly one year after the author's death. It consists largely...
This is a sorta Bradbury esque horror attack of the pod people subtle down home lets conform and all is well book. Like his other great(er) book THE GREEN BRAIN it takes on evolution of a society without a wage of sin or shame in front of it. Is it cool for you to abandon your humanity for a...
Avatar is without a doubt a great film and I'm clearly not alone in that opinion, since it's release in 2009 it has become the highest grossing film of all time and the first to pass $2 billion in sales. It was nominated for a total of 9 Academy Awards and won "Best Cinematography", "Best Visual...
The Scientific Method is a young adult novel by Jeff Thomason. The Holy Grail of Physics, the Unified Field Theory promises to revolutionize the way mankind lives, and would bring with it advancements never before dreamed of. It has however defeated the most brilliant minds of the last 100...
A while ago now I reviewed a surprisingly entertaining novel called "The Insoculation Syndrome" which detailed a tale of an astronaut stranded on a alien planet.
The Seed Garden starts in a very similar fashion, Jed's ship malfunctions and his only hope for survival is to jump in an...
I am not an argumentative fellow and the only two full on blowouts I can remember are well within the geek sphere. Who was the actor alongside Harrison Ford at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark and how does time travel work? I may have been wrong about Alfred Molina but I...
A new fantasy series from Stephen Donaldson, the author of the Thomas Covenant chronicles and the two Mordant’s Need novels. The first book, The Seventh Decimate tells the story of the war between the nations of Amika and Belleger that has raged for generations. Its roots lie in the distant...
The Shadow of Heaven is a science fiction novel by Bob Shaw. First copyrighted 1969, this "terrifying novel of the future" is surprisingly unjaded by time. In The Shadow of Heaven, World War III isn't the nuclear inferno as must feared at the time, but something a lot closer to what we fear...
In a future where fossil fuels have dried up, global warming has decimated ecosystems, and governments are culling populations, Antonia Honeywell’s debut sees teenager Lalla escape the ruins of London to live on her father's utopian Ship with 500 others keen to enjoy a 'happy death'. Their...
A secret Russian mind research laboratory in Podol'sk is destroyed in a freak accident involving one of its patients. The resulting devastation leaves thousands dead and a mile wide crater where the ground has quite literally been pulverized. Plucked from discredited obscurity, parapsychologist...
The Shores of Tomorrow is the third volume in the Chronicles of Solace series by Roger MacBride Allen.
In the far distant future, mankind has learned, thanks to Oskar DeSilvo, how to terraform planets. Once that operation was complete, humanity would colonize that world but what few...
Science Fiction can be upbeat and utopian or downbeat and dystopian. The current trend is to focus on the negatives, but even these books have a glint of hope in them. When it comes to dystopian visions of the future, they do not come much more intense than Premee Mohamed’s The Siege of...
Mallory Grace had been successfully hiding out in London for some time until she met Obadiah in a seemingly random encounter. Now she's just had to kill someone and if she wants to survive the next few hours she'll probably have to kill again. To survive the night she'll need a...
Reviewed by Philip Graham. Kurt Vonnegut was, until recently, my personal Leo Tolstoy. By that I mean that I knew his name, I knew he was a famed author, and I knew that I really should have read more, or even some, of his work. So finally I went out and got "The Sirens of Titan". I chose this...
Trained in the mental and physical disciplines of his people, Ran-Del Jahanpur is a warrior of the Sansoussy Forest. Overconfident in his abilities he is all too easily caught when he sets off a high tech trap. He finds himself transported to a strange alien city where machines speak, metal...
The Sky Is Falling is a speculative fiction novel by Lester del Rey. Waking up in a world of magic isn't an easy experience for, just dead, computer engineer Dave Hanson. It doesn't get any easier for him when he learns that the sky is falling and he has been destined to do something about it!...
The Sky Road is the fourth volume in the Fall Revolution Series by Ken Mcleod. Expectations are a funny thing. It has been nearly ten months since I read the first three books by MacLeod and loved them, and now I that I've read his fourth book I'm unsure as to the reason as to why I'm...
It's funny how you can read books as far afield as China and Australia and not realise there are talented authors on your own doorstep. I discovered the author Robert Gibson in Morecambe bay, only a few miles from my home. Robert has been writing science fiction stories for a number of...
Who are the goodies and who are the baddies? In most media, the baddies are normally some form of massive entity that is squashing the smaller rebels. These rebels become the de facto good guys as they fight against repression. However, what happens when the power shifts? If the rebels take...
The Song of the Swan is a science fiction novel by Arthur D'Alembert. Normally I don't comment on the finish of a book or the price of the book that I'm reviewing. Normally there's no reason to. The Song of the Swan is different. First of all it mainly published in electronic form as an Acrobat...
The Song of the Swan II is the sequel to The Song of the Swan by Arthur D'Alembert. This Part II is a direct continuation of the first Song of the Swan even if it takes place fifty years later. As that it's kind of uninteresting if you haven't read the first part, but then again it's...
Slippery Jim diGriz, the future's master criminal tumed super-spy, is recruiting for an all-out interstellar war! Loathsome, mind sucking creatures from an unknown star are closing in on Earth. Once again it's up to the Stainless Steel Rat to save humanity. In a daring caper packed with action...
The Stainless Steel Rat and Angelina enjoy a belated honeymoon on a planet run by a dictator who rigs elections to get into office, so they set the Rat up as a candidate instead. Very much a satire on banana republic politics and a parody of adventures set in Latin America I regretted buying...
The Stainless Steel Rat gets married, but rapidly gets involved in something that so far has proven impossible in the galaxy - the planet Cliaand has successfully been invading other worlds. Jim is sent to investigate, and discovers the mysterious Grey Men behind Cliaand's success, encounters a...
The galactic civilisation of the Torrian Alliance is on the brink of Civil War - crusading to destroy the "Star-children" to suppress an intergalactic evil. King Gregorio Derry send's his only son on a mission to restore the honor of his family, to hunt down one of these children. Life is never...
The Star Fraction is a science fiction novel by Ken Mcleod. This is the first book by MacLeod that I've read but certainly not the last, not just because I've already bought The Stone Canal and The Cassini Diversion, but because MacLeod is a damn good writer. I mostly picked up these books on...
The State of The Art is an anthology collection by Iain M Banks.
The State of The Art is a collection of eight stories with the story The State of The Art making up one hundred of the two hundred pages. As can be expected with Banks all of the stories are well written and interesting,...
The Status Civilization - Mindswap is a collection of two science fiction stories by Robert Sheckley. This book contains two stories of about a hundred and fifty pages each. The stories are very different, so I'll review them as separate stories. The Status Civilization. Most of this story...
The Stone Canal is the second volume in the Fall Revolution Series, following on from the events of the Star Fraction, written by Ken Mcleod. The third book from this soon to be grand master (if I have anything to say about the matter). Stone Canal takes place in two threads, the first one...
One of those books I missed the first time around, The stone man is the first in a series of science fiction thrillers. It looks like it's already become a bit of a self-published success story and the second in the series, The empty men is out now.
The story begins on one July afternoon...
The Target imprint of Doctor Who novels is like nectar to any fan as they offer a punchy adaptation of almost every episode of the series up to the mid-90s, but there were a few missing. Fear not, as BBC Books are not only releasing adaptations of newer episodes but are also looking to fill in...
Reading The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August got me hooked into Claire North's (also known as Kate Griffin and Catherine Webb) wonderfully rich, clever and entertaining stories. As such I've been eagerly awaiting The Sudden Appearance of Hope for some time.
One of the things...
I must admit I have a fondness for alternative history novels, especially those that depict the second World War. Throw in secret Nazi plots that involve alien technology and that infamous Axis quest to create the Übermensch and you have a formula for a very interesting book indeed. Suicide...
The System of the World is the third and final volume in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. In 1714 Daniel Waterhouse arbitrates the irrational dispute between the aging mathematical giants Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, both angrily insisting they invented the calculus. However...
What is religion?
Most of us aren’t used to contemplating that question too hard. The answer seems self-evident. In the world around us now, we have Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as the big three monotheistic religions. India and East Asia provide numerous examples of the...
The Terminal Experiment is a science fiction novel by Robert J Sawyer. After the bad experience with Frameshift, I didn't really want to starting on a new story by Sawyer. But, everybody deserves a second chance and when a friend ruthlessly dumped The Terminal Experiment (TTE) on me, I decided...
I've said a number of times now that Adam Roberts is a gifted author and this is increasingly evident with each new book he writes. His work overflows with ideas and at the same time he seems to delight in using different structures, to experiment in forming his narrative. This time he's turned...
The Pandoran war machine is on the move and Simon Dodds finds himself shot down over the luxury planet of Mythos. Separated from his team mates he soon learns that the once-popular holiday destination has become a hellish war zone, swarming with armies of seemingly unstoppable black-suited...
Social Media has changed the world we live in today by accelerating the polarisation of opinion. No longer is a debate a two-way conversation between people discussing their own point of view, but a slanging match in which neither side can see the others’ point of view. Until the last...
The Three-body Problem was originally written in Chinese by Liu Cixin. Launched to great acclaim within China, it became one of the most popular science fiction novels within the country and won the 2006 Chinese Science Fiction Galaxy Award. Thankfully it has now been translated by the talented...
Anthony J. Melchiorri’s The Tide (Tide Series Book One) is set in the present. It ties Japan's secret attempt to prepare its people in case of a major American assault following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mysteriously, a protein complex...
Illustration ©Grahame Baker-Smith from The Folio Society edition of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
The work of H. G. Wells is both seminal and formative to our current interest in Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy. The collection of these two novellas in one volume is a common...
Back in November 2011 Jeff and Ann VanderMeer published "The Weird", the ultimate collection of weird tales of the last 100 years. This November they turn their attentions to Time Travel in another landmark Tome.
This is without a doubt the most definitive collection of stories featuring...
The Tourist (not to be confused with the book and film of the same name by Olen Steinhauer) is a story of time travel, imagining a future where people can take holidays to the past and experience the genuine 21st century in all it's glory.
There are three main tour operators...
The Turing Option is a science fiction novel by Harry Harrison. I have always enjoyed Harry Harrison's stories - he knows how to write a fast paced and interesting story, but what I know him best for is his space opera stories (The Stainless Steel Rat, Bill The Galactic Hero and the Deathworld...
The Twilight of Briareus is a science fiction novel by Richard Cowper. Getting bad weather as after-effects of a nearby supernova, seems quite reasonable, but the people of earth are in for a lot more that they had expected. Humanity wakes up on the brink of a new ice age and is forced to...
The Two Faces of Tomorrow is a science fiction novel by James P Hogan. Hogan starts of well enough in this book, where he tries to tackle the quite interesting question of whether an artificial intelligence could be a threat to mankind or not. The premis is that anything worthy of the label...
Philip K Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle is one of my favourite all time reads. An alternative history novel that sees the Axis winning the second World War and splitting the USA between Germany on the East coast,Japan on the West and a small neutral zone in the middle. There is an...
I love time travel stories, but the entire concept is a paradox. It just cannot happen. What happens to the version of you that was in the past/present once you have travelled? It can be hard to even think about it, but what happens if you live this paradox? The Farrow woman have all been cursed...
This second volume in a collected anthology of Ursula Le Guin’s work showcases more of her Science Fiction and fantasy stories and has a more prominent escapist theme than the first. Her introduction to this volume is deeply insightful, commenting on the writer’s perspective of genre being...
The Venom of Vipers is a science fiction novel by KC May. A supervirus is threatening to wipe out the human race and the only hope may be a human hybrid created by scientists, treated as sub human, locked away and hated. When a brilliant young scientist learns of this secret she must not only...
The Violent Century has been one of my Holiday reads, a book I bought when it first appeared but had not had time to enjoy until now. It has to be said that Lavie Tidhar is a master linguist. His voice is confident, it's boldy unique and daring.
With The Violent Century the author turns...
The Vor Game is a science fiction novel by the author Lois McMaster Bujold. The Vor Game takes place in the same universe as Mirror Dance and it has the same main character - only it takes place before Mirror Dance, so I would recommend that you read The Vor Game first. The Vor Games starts...
The War of the Worlds was originally written in 1897 and it's never been out of print. It's one of the earliest stories to depict conflict with an alien race and has been influential in film, radio, TV, music and even science. The Guardian has gone as far as to say:
A true...
The Wasp Factory is the stunning debut of the British author Iain M Banks. Having read everything by Iain M. Banks and finding this book while browsing my brother's bookshelves, made for some hasty rearrangements of my to-read stack. Mostly the words "first novel" on the cover intrigued me -...
I am a massive fan of the Target imprint of Doctor Who books. Recently they have been filling in the gaps from the older series and producing new adaptations based on the past few Doctors. Taking stories out of any given season is a risky business. It could be a standalone monster of the week...
When I imagine the aliens coming, I always imagine that they would pick somewhere amazing to land their ship. Probably America as all the movies have trained my brain to think that way. The place I do not jump straight to is Manchester, or at least the hills around the city. I know those hills...
Newcon Press’ second novella series is a beautiful collection of four books. The Wind by Jay Caselberg launches straight into the kind of folk horror/ weird fiction premise that seems to emerge from a particular sense of British society. There are shades of Mythago Wood and The Wickerman in...
The Windup Girl is the award winning dystopian vision by Paolo Bacigalupi. Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's calorie representative in Thailand. Under cover as a factory worker he combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs long thought to be extinct. There he meets...
Far in the future the humans of Earth have spread to the stars, but at great cost to Earths fragile ecosystem. For a world that is largely concrete and plastic, wood has more value than gold and the Terrans waste no time in establishing a logging colony and military base named "New Tahiti" on an...
The World Inside is a science fiction novel by Robert Silverberg. Silverberg's "THE WORLD INSIDE" is about the giant apartment communistic/yet caste ridden complex (the floors are divided up according to job 'importance), and thought this is the straight bullet shot to the future. Population...
I must admit that one of the reasons I picked up this novel is that it has my surname on it, the other being that it is of course Philip K Dick who still rates as one of my favourite authors.
Written back in 1956 The World Jones Made is one of the authors very early novels and tells the...
The World of Ptavvs is a classic science fiction novel by Larry Niven. A good old idea book from the good old days when a book didn't have to be 500+ pages – not that I don't like thick books, but once in a while it's nice to read something that you can actually see an end to. Ptavvs (how do...
The Year of the Flood is the second novel in Margaret Atwood's post-apocalyptic series and follows the viewpoints of Toby and Ren, members of a religious cult. The book tells the story of some of the events leading up to the cataclysm mentioned in the previous novel Oryx and Crake and there is a...
The Years of the City is a science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl. Subtitled A Chronicle of New York in the next Century, this book is about actually not as much about the big city as about the people in it and how they interact or rather doesn't. The book is split in to five different stories...
I have a sort of self imposed resolution to read all of the books that have won a Hugo award and to be honest this is the only reason I first picked up this book. I haven't read anything else by the author although I am of course aware of him, however as a more "literary" author he's not...
2047 in New York and the future imagined in Zxap Jacket is a grim one; acid snow falls with abandon on the dirty streets and those without a Zxap Jacket suffer stinging eyes and burned skin. As is commonly prevailent within the early 21st Century, it isn't long before private enterprise looks at...
Doctor Who has saved the solar system on countless occasions and planet Earth even more than this, but some of these saves felt a little.... minor. Alien races trying their arm at taking over Earth with nary a plan worth writing on the back of a psychic beermat. Sometimes though the stakes are...
Andy Remic has managed to carve out his own particular niche within the science fiction genre, deliberately pushing the boundaries and not holding back in the slightest. Finding a new Remic book is very much like finding a new Tarrantino film - you just know it's going to be an irresistible...
Thin Ice is a science fiction detective novel by Phill Jones. Thadeus Rede is a detective who is trying to hunt a vicious serial killer on the streets of Seattle in the year 2037. The killer appears to be targeting the powerful political New Natural Law Party (NNLP) who are strong opponents of...
Wouldn’t it be great to be in more than one place at once? Rather than having to do all those boring jobs you could make a version of yourself to do it for you, leaving time for you to do what you really want, like playing too many computer games or reading too many books. Before you know...
This Alien Shore is sort of a corporate mystery novel set in the far future, written by C S Friedman. The reader knows about as much of what is going on as the main character. She learns something new, you learn something new. Despite not having any big fire-works ending, this book is good. Very...
When the Star Wars sequels were announced a world of fandom got very excited. What happened to Han Solo, Luke and Leia et al? Many Star Wars fans already had an inkling having read the many Star Wars tie in book that released from the early 90s onwards. However, like many a Star Wars film, there...
It's true that I have a soft spot for a good post-apocalyptic story, there is just something about the setting that appeals to me. I'm clearly not alone in this regard either, post-apocalyptic scenarios are dominating the film world this year while in the world of books we have excellent...
As a someone who studied history, I am fascinated by the past, but also the evolution of studying the past. History as we know it adapts and changes with the current way of thinking. Sometimes you must sit back and remember that things were different back then, that opinions and attitudes were...
Ben Elton is a talented fellow. I've loved most of the TV programs he's been involved in from the Young Ones and Blackadder to Blessed and the Thin Blue Line. His humour is often satirical, off-the-wall and almost always makes me laugh.
The only novel I've read of his prior to Time and...
On first impression Ragle Gumm is pretty much an ordinary man leading a fairly ordinary life - the only exception being that he makes his living by entering a newspaper contest every day - and winning every day, for the last 3 years. After a few strange occurances that break the otherwise...
A journey into the past that can never be repeated, travelling from 2070 AD all the way back to 12000 BC; a chance for the four passengers of the "time ship" to study the primitive man as no-one could ever do before or will be able to since.
None were prepared for what they would...
Timelike Infinity is a science fiction novel by Stephen Baxter. Having read Baxter's The Timeships I had quite high expectations for this book, maybe too high, because I found Timelike Infinity to be rather disappointing. In the first two thirds of the book nothing really happens and when I...
Timeshift is a science fiction novel by Philip Ellis Jackson. Sometime in our near future the united states will separate into two different countries, a bit after that we have a small nuclear war and after that some moron releases a new life-form that eats everything in its path and leaves the...
In the near future, the world is falling apart. Wars, unrest, economic collapse and ecological disasters plague the globe - as it tries to hold the pieces together, the USA deploys a new weapon, the Tin Men. They are remote controlled drones piloted by American soldiers who have their minds...
The 53rd and penultimate book in the epic Horus Heresy series and the brave soldiers of the Emperor attempt to hold back the armies of chaos from reaching Terra.
The line is drawn on Beta-Garmon and god-machines of the Adeptus Titanicus are at the front. Horus has defeated all that...
Humanity is a parasite sucking the recourses from the Earth until there are no more. Like a remora attached to the undercarriage of a shark, humans will one day need find a new host. The alternative is to change our ways, but that does not seem likely. Titan Hoppers by Rob J Hayes follows a...
Titanborn follows the life of "collector" (part bounty hunter part detective) Malcom Graves. Graves is a seasoned veteran who has seen the worst of humanity and is often tasked with cleaning up such flotsam. He lives in a future where mankind has spread to other planets and have adapted, with...
To Live Again is a science fiction novel by Robert Silverberg. Recently i finished a silverberg book where about 10% of the population can be "reincarnated" sort of. their personas are imprinted onto another person's brain (IF they've got the cash), so in a way they get "To Live Again"...as the...
To Open The Sky is a science fiction novel by Robert Silverberg. This book could have been titled "To Eternity and The Stars through Religion" – it may not be catchy, but it's a lot more accurate then the original title, which is a bit nondescript. It's the 22nd century and the Vorsters are...
Melbourne, Australia - a metropolis that at one time was the biggest and wealthiest city in the world, ranked as one of the top three world's most liveable cities and a mecca for the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, sport and tourism. It also happens to be the only city in the world...
Total Recall the film has recently been re-made and updated from the 1990 version that featured Arnold "The Governator" Schwarzenegger. This time Colin Farrell stars as Douglas Quiad, the man who dreams of walking on Mars. I was a big fan of the original but have yet to see this modern adaption...
Trader to the Stars is a collection of science fiction short stories, written by Poul William Anderson. Three stories copyrighted from 1956 to 1962 from one of the old masters. All three stories have the space merchant Nicolas Van Rijn as the main character and what a character! He's the kind...
Transformers Exodus is the official history of the war for Cybertron, written by Alex Irvine. Before Autobots and decepticons, before Optimus Prime and Megatron, Cybertron was a planet with a strict caste system, each bot assigned a role according to their own caste. Orion Pax is a data clerk,...
Transitor is a hard science fiction novel and the debut of David Sharrock. The Human race have spread out across the Galaxy by the means of the iNet transportation network - a vast sprawling system that allows Galactic travel by means of a subethernet. Controlling this mindbendingly...
Hob is a slave, abandoned as a baby to be brought up with no hope of freedom or any chance of a normal life. On the world of Tribes any male babies born without a father figure to welcome him into his tribe becomes enslaved. Eventually Hob manages to escape and is rescued by a woman from a...
An Assassin's bullet strikes President Seth Jerrison on the eve of a top secret military operation, he is taken to the nearest hospital where doctors fight to save his life. At the very same hospital Dr Ranjip Singh is carrying out experiments with a device that can ease traumatic memories....
Tritcheon Hash is a science fiction novel by Sue Lange. The first thought that popped into my head after having read a couple of pages of T. Hash was; “What? Lesbian Science Fiction?”. After at few chapters it's clear that it isn't and after having finished it, I'm not even sure that it...
Truth and Fear is the second novel in the Wolfhound Century series by the talented author Peter Higgins. The first book in the series Wolfhound Century was a seriously impressive novel. So much so that it won Book of the year on SFBook for 2013.
The story continues right where we (quite...
There seems to be a bit of a resurgence in the superhero story and this new wave of fiction manages to offer a different slant on the traditional tales, combining the modern interpretation of a superhero set within with the contemporary urban fantasy framework.
Turbulance manages to go...
Dystopian fiction has been becoming increasingly popular in recent years, probably because many of us can see the tell-tale signs of it coming along the tracks in real life. This is a depressing thought, but one worth exploring. How will humans continue to survive on a planet they are...
As the name would suggest, Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea takes on the classic Jules Verne 19th century novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as inspiration to create a remarkably clever and entertaining novel that is in parts as thought provoking as the original must have been when...
Over the next three days, three reviews will stand before you. Read them in any order, some elements will be the same, others quite different. If you would like to go straight to the segment unique to this review, please start with paragraph 4.
Drafting a book must be like standing in...
Twiglight Candleflies is a collection of three post apocalyptic short fiction stories, written by Scott Niven. The three stories presented here are told in different styles and set in different worlds but all have a post apocalyptic edge to them. While each is a fairly short and sweet story...
Book of the month
