Antony Jones

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 station missing th...

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 complicated world who...

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is a Hugo award winning post-apocalyptic tale of human cloning. For the Sumner family the recent droughts, floods, blighted crops, pandemic plagues and rising sterility all point to the demise of the human race. Their isolated farm in the Appalachian Mountains provide...

I've always known that Paul McAuley can write, as far as I am concerned he's one of the finest writers in the genre right now however he's also vastly under-appreciated. I'm really hoping that the release of confluence will help in addressing this oversight - not only is it an incredibly well writte...

This review was originally published in 2012 and has been re-published following the launch of the book in the US, published by Crown Publishing. I often start a review with a bit of blurb about the book itself, setting the scene for the reader and I try to never give too much away - limiting the in...

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 artifacts are retur...

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 author has rele...

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 it...

I've always loved the Aliens films (well at least the first two), both films work for very different reasons. The first was totally ground breaking with it's unique style, examination of claustrophobia, fear - the combination of science fiction and horror that combined with some exceptional music, d...

With On the Steel Breeze Alastair Reynolds has managed a little slice of futurism, how? Elephants. It seems we've been vastly under-estimating the intelligence of these gentle giants, at least most of us have - Reynolds hasn't. Recent research now suggests that Elephants are at least as intelligent...

Europe in Autumn is an alternative history near future story that could be considered Kafkaesque in more than one sense of the word. Its part of new style of novel that mixes European settings with a gritty noir feeling such as seen in those quite brilliant novels Osama and Wolfhound Century. In Hut...

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 to...

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 and...

In Channel Blue the Earth is essentially an entertainment show, think "The Truman Show" on a world-wide scale. For many years Earth was Galaxy Entertainments most successful show attracting the western galaxy's richest and savviest viewers. Nothing lasts forever though and lately ratings have begun...

Brave new world was written over 80 years ago; back in 1932 and describes London in the year 2540 - or 632 AF as the year is described in the book. The AF stands for "After Ford", meaning the American industrialist Henry Ford who has become something of a messianic figure in Huxley's World. It's bee...

Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? The Heroes (and it appears, Villians) of this fine city are being bumped off one and no-one seems to have any idea who could be carrying out this evil deed. Worse still there are supposed to be fail-safes to prevent any Cape (be they good or bad) from dying...

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 thoug...

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 written in...

I'm often saying that there just isn't enough well written comic fantasy, aside from the likes of Pratchett, Holt, Howard and Rankin the laugh-out-load novels still being written are few and far between and in large the genre is being propped up by writers such as Rob Knipe and RJ Astruc. Thankfully...

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 time travel...

To relate to this novel you need to understand the reason for the book, memories . Those snapshots of time stored in our own personal biological computer situated in our noggin. In many ways it's these recordings of our travels through time (and if we are very lucky, space) that make us the people w...

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 planet is...

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 the...

Proxima is more than a bit of a surprise. There is no doubt that Stephen Baxter is a talented and imaginative author and has worked with some of the finest people to put pen to paper however I find some of his novels quite dry and lacking in empathy / effective characterisation. To be fair though pa...

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 Cricht...