Antony Jones

You hear about those couples having the ill-concieved notion of getting matching permanent tattoos shortly after they've met, despite the real probability their relationship may not last. Crossover goes one further with that premise. Instead of tattoos it's a "simple" medical procedure ( EED ) that...

It's great to see Philip K Dick stories continue to be explored and consumed in different forms of media. His writing still popular long after his death. For those who aren't aware, the UK TV station Channel 4 (Broadcast in the US via Amazon Video) has started a new 10 part anthology series called E...

Killing is my Business (not to be confused with Megadeth's debut album) is the second novel in Adam Christopher's LA Trilogy, following on from Made to Kill . Featuring the robot Assassin Raymond Electromatic, disguised as LA's only artificial private investigator. it's a unique blend of hardboiled...

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 Metropolitan l...

After the Flare is the second book in the series which describes the a near future Nigerian Space program. Since a massive solar flare wiped out much of the worlds electronics, Nigeria find themselves in control of one of the last working spaceships and functional spaceport. Kwesi Bracket, formerly ...

Alien Covenant - Origins is a prequel to the latest Alien story, describing the journey of getting the colony ship launched on it's ill-fated journey, bridging the gap between Prometheus and Alien Covenant . Written by Alan Dean Foster - the author who has been writing about Aliens since the very be...

Apocalyptic fiction has been growing in popularity for years, with most stories following some big cataclysmic event such as a zombie uprising, sweeping plague, nuclear war or the rise of artificial intelligence. Recently though novels have started to appear that seem much closer to reality, some of...

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 years, The S...

It's hard to believe that Dune is over 50 years old. Originally released in 1965 it won the inaugural Nebula award for best novel and tied with Roger Zelazny's This Immortal for the Hugo Award. It's sold well in excess of 12 million copies around the world and is one of the world's best-selling scie...

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 classic that has pointed t...

While many stories depict the fight between man and machine, Sea of Rust shows a future where the machines have already won. Humankind has been wiped off the face of the Earth by the very robots that were built to serve them. Now the planet is controlled by vast intelligences (known as One World Int...

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 it's own right, "locked r...

I've been a big fan of the Aliens series ever since I saw the first film back in the 1980's. I've read all the books, including the expanded universe (non-canonical) ones from Bantam, and more recently from Titan books. I've watched and read the Aliens vs Predator crossover media, some which is grea...

Karin Tidbeck has written a number of short-stories, her first english Language collection (firmly rooted in Weird Fiction ), Jagannath , was nominated for the World Fantasy award and short-listed for the James Tiptree Junior award. It also received wide-spread critical acclaim. Amatka is her first...

A few weeks ago we reviewed the spider-infested book The Hatching . This was preperation for the launch of the much anticipated sequel Skitter . Skitter follows on directly from the dramatic events of the previous book and once more we are thrown into the middle of spidergeddon. Haven't read The Hat...

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 daughte...

It's funny how life seems to throw co-incidences at you. Until recently I'd never given the small island of Gibraltar any real thought. Then the company I work for expanded their services there which meant I needed to learn about this unusual British overseas territory. A few weeks later the monumen...

Haunted Futures is a collection presenting the uncertain future in many guises. Originally funded as part of a kickstarter campaign and edited by Salome Jones it features short stories from authors including Warren Ellis, Jeff Noon, Tricia Sullivan and SL Huang (amongst others). The brief these auth...

Space Team is one of those rare gems, a genuinely funny science fiction story that manages to entertain from beginning to end. The book follows the miss-adventures of small-time conman Cal Carver, abducted by aliens from incarceration due to a case of mistaken identity. His day goes from bad to wors...

Slow Bullets won the 2016 Locus award for best Novella and was shortlisted for the Hugo (along with making a number of must read lists). As you would expect from a novella it's a short read at 192 pages but it packs in more ideas than many more weighty novels manage. Narrated in the first person by...

There is a much bigger speculative fiction scene within China than most people realise. The main barrier to these stories for the western reader is of course language. It's wonderful to see writers such as Ken Liu translating important Chinese works so that a wider audience can begin to enjoy this r...