SFBook - 20+ Years of Reviews
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How do you like your science fiction and fantasy? I will admit to being someone who loves a simple and accessible tale, but the genres can offer so much more than this. There are few genres better equipped to take a reader to truly alien places, to worlds that feel like they were designed in a...
I find most comfy crime novels an oxymoron as they usually deal with a hideous murder. The cosiness comes in the telling and the setting. I blame Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple books with that inquisitive pensioner solving crimes that were hideous, gruesome, committed for money, revenge, or...
War, what is it good for? Not a lot, but depressingly it is a real driver of innovation. What better way to inspire the greatest minds in the country than to task them with more efficient ways to kill the enemy? Arms races happen all over the place from conventional gun and bullets to newer...
There are shifts in the Fantasy genre that perhaps only the ardent fan will notice. The epics of Tolkien and the 80s are still being written, but now there are more intimate stories that follow one or two characters as they graft in their small way among the wider Fantasy world. These are...
I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it
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...
Never say never when it comes to being a hired hitman. You may not want to kill for money anymore, but if you are anything like Quarry in The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins you may just end up getting in a situation that relies on your old skills and if you get paid for it all the better. This...
Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you went in there in the first place? Could just be a good old fashioned brain burp, but perhaps it is something more sinister. In Nicholas Binge’s Dissolution there is a character who knows too much, so much that their mind is being wiped...
There is more than one tradition in science fiction. You can have your epic space battles, but here in Blighty we have the tradition of an every person getting wrapped up in something far above their pay grade. Arthur Dent had his towel, and Johnny Gomez has his mop and bucket. It can’t...
A good life is a life well lived full of new adventures, meeting new people, and experiencing new things. On this criteria Angel Dare has had one of the best lives, she is always meeting new people and finding herself in new places, but not for the reasons she would want. From adult film star to...
Never judge a person till you've walked a mile in their shoes, the late Terry Pratchett might add "because then you're a mile away, and have their shoes". It's something we do all the time, form snap judgements about people and situations, often based on first impressions. Perhaps it's a genetic...
There is no doubt that Tchaikovsky is a prolific author - I'm counting at least 38 novels and many novellas and short stories. Every few months, there seems to be a new book on the horizon. But that regularity of releases doesn't seem to impact the quality of his writing or the sharpness of his...
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...
What can cause the end of the World? A massive explosion, a meteor the size of the moon tearing it in two? What would cause the end of the World and what would cause the end of humankind are two very different things. Our watery globe will still be spinning long after we are food for the worms,...
Agatha Christie would have us believe that inter-War murder was cosy, taking place in a picturesque village or on a mode of transport whilst taking in the sites of the Grand Tour. Whilst Marple was eating muffins and Poirot was drinking Prosecco, most of us would have been thrown into the daily...
Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and fear.
There has been somewhat of a renewed interest in all things fungi since the Last of Us depicted a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by such an infection that could spread to humans. It's one of those things that at first glance seems worryingly within the realm of possibility, all too well...
In some books there is more one thing that a reader can focus on. It could be the characters that draw the reader in, or the narrative, or the world building. As a long-term fantasy fan, one element that I often end up focussing on is magical systems. How magic works in a fantasy world can...
The Earth has exploded killing all the inhabitants, the only survivors are those humans that happened to be off planet at the time. Does not sound like the start of a fun Science Fiction novel, does it? Douglas Adams would beg to differ and so would Gareth L. Powell. Future’s Edge is the...
It is not that the aliens in Alien are constantly evolving, it is that they are constantly adapting to the scenario they are in. We usually see them egging up humans, but if they landed in a world populated by cows it would only be a few days that a bovine Alien was ripping up the locals. Aliens...
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...
Puzzle me this. Whilst other kids were outside climbing trees or knocking a football around, you would often find me indoors or under a tree reading a book or doing puzzles. That has led to two lifelong consequences; a love of puzzles and a problem with weight. Puzzler was always my favourite,...
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