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The best villains have depth; a reason why they became villainous. There are few maniacs that comes out of the womb thus, they must be moulded into the cackling psychopaths that you love to hate. In the Minecraft Dungeons game, you go up against the Arch-Illager; a diminutive enemy who has the...
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...
If you read enough Near Future fiction you will start to see a trend. The future is not orange at all but bleak and a little depressing. It could be giant robots, aliens or the undead. There always seems to be something around the corner that is more dystopian than utopian. I can take all...
A Memory called Empire is the debut of Arkady Martine, although reading the book you'd be forgiven for thinking she's been writing best-sellers for years.
The vast, interstellar Empire of the Teixcalaanli have appointed Mahit Dzmare as new Ambassador to the capital. When she arrives she...
The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not
There is a certain type of film that I love. It has a central character wronged in some way and this gives them the flimsy premise to basically kill all the bad guys. Death Wish, John Wick, The Equaliser, to name but a few. Red Noise by John P Murphy is the science...
The best thing about genre fiction is that it provides such a wide array of ideas. Take the concept of a vampire novel. You may immediately think of gothic buildings and lace, but you could easily read a modern vampire novel that is violent and full of action. Love...
Releasing a book about a pandemic during the middle of a real pandemic is a bold move but one that Paul Tremblay has taken. Although there are some parallels between what is happening in the world today and those within the pages of Survivor Song, they are...
No Way is the follow up to the gripping thriller One Way. A perilous journey to the Red Planet by a group of convicts. Deciding that it was much more economically viable to train people that would have otherwise rotted in a jail rather than a group of experienced and highly trained...
H P Lovecraft’s shadow casts a long one over the horror genre. He developed new types of horrors that reverberate today; psychological and body horror are just two. What has changed is the way that people perceive horror. Whilst once upon a time...
The gothic novel should always have on the cover the image of a women with a ripped and flowing dress running away in terror from an imposing stately house. This is not the cover that Silvia Moreno-Garcia chose for Mexican Gothic, but it could so easily have been. The...
If you look at the Star Wars timeline from afar it can seem a little depressing. An Old Republic falls only for an Empire to rise. That goes and you get The New Order. It seems that the rebels are always having to rebel against something. However, for the Sith to rise,...
Heroic Fantasy doesn't always get the credit it deserves, but when done well can be powerful, energetic and immersive fiction. Sky in the Deep is one of the best examples of recent times and an equal to Gemmell's past stories.
The story follows Eelyn, a member of the Aska...
Gene Roddenberry famously pitched Star Trek to NBC executives as “Wagon Train to the stars”. He was referencing, of course, the TV series about a group of settlers forging their way westward across 19th-century America. Wagon Train was hugely popular in its time, running for eight seasons between 1957 and 1965, although nowadays it is largely remembered for its role in inspiring a markedly more successful SF franchise.
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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...
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
The Butterfly Effect is a device used to explore alternative versions of our world. The simple action of a time travellers going back to the time of the dinosaurs and standing on a butterfly would alter everything that followed, ripples expanding from that one point. Robert...
Jo Walton is a multi-award winning, talented and often under-appreciated author. A number of her novels examine philosophy, religion, divinity and humanity. Lent continues some of these themes along with her knack for creating irresistible, thoughtful and engaging fiction.
Girolamo...
Kids love them or fear them. It may seem a little odd to be scared of infants, but if anyone else screamed at you with a psychopathic rage you would probably take a step back. On their own they can be manageable, but in a group, they...
Having read more than a few Starship loads of science fiction in my time I am particular about what type of aliens I like. I have a fondness for the Star Trek tactic of gluing some plasticine to the forehead of a humanoid but in today’s fiction...
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