Archives 2020
All reviews published during 2020
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...
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...
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...
For a span of twenty years, genre fiction fans had the opportunity to live through what many call the greatest science fiction tale of all tune, Frank Herbet’s epic Dune series. The saga consists of six novels: Dune (1965), Dune Messiah (1969), Children of Dune (1976), God...
On occasion I see adverts on TV encouraging me to visit America. A collection of Hollywood and TV stars will speak the sights, sounds, tastes and smells that are distinctly American. It seems glamourous, it seems fun. However, when I read crime books set in America or sit down to watch the...
When you think of a Sherlock Holmes do you imagine a novel or a short story? The reality is that many tales that we know from Arthur Conan Doyle are from his short stories and it is more the modern reimagining of the character that have taken the longer form. James Lovegrove is a leading modern...
Dragons get a bad press. They may have been known to ransack a few villages and eat people, but if they were left alone, they would not bother you. They are, of course, extinct now. If one or two of them remained where would they hide? Somewhere remote enough to be away from crowds carrying...
The movie industry is seen as all glitz and glamour, but just beneath the surface Donald E. Westlake suggests that it is made up of lies and even murder. What type of person is drawn to an industry where you pretend to be fake – fake people. In Double Feature, two of Westlake’s...
To the ill-informed all fantasy books must look the same. They are about elves and dwarves, just retelling The Lord of the Rings repeatedly, aren’t they? Fans of the genre know that this is anything but the truth. Fantasy is an evolving genre that encompasses high and low, fantastical and...
Offer me a time machine and I would travel no further back than the 1980s. This would allow me to place loads of bets on sporting events I know the results to and invest in Apple Computers. You would not see me travelling hundreds of years into the future or the past, are you mad? The 1980s were...
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...
Death is not something that people like to think about, but without death how are we to live? Within all of us in the unspoken knowledge that one day we will die. For this reason, we venture forth, live, breath, love and laugh. Some of us more than others, but without death would we even bother?...
Above all genres, science fiction is my favourite. Why? Because anything can happen. You can have epic space battles between alien races you cannot pronounce or go in the other direction and create a subtle alternative reality where words have the power to kill. Ideas run the entire gamete and...
The future could be Utopian, but if the vast majority of science fiction novels have taught us only one thing: it’s going to be Dystopian. The setting of Myke Cole’s Sixteenth Watch promises to be an uplifting one as humans have populated the moon and therefore found the resources...
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 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 noir genre has an inherent problem, it has the feel of the 1940s and 1950s. You imagine black and white films, men in fedoras and women with cascading red locks. The lack of technology forced the central gumshoe to walk the streets and knock together heads to gather the...
Bone Silence is the third book in Alastair Reynolds Revenger series and follows on from the events of Shadow Captain and Revenger.
First off, if you haven't read the first two books in the series, I suggest you do before starting Bone Silence. You could read it stand alone but it...
My partner and I went through a stage of watching only noir films. Many of them felt the same, but some stood out. The French films had an effortless style, Barbara Stanwyck was always amazing, and one film was just a little bit insane. That film...
Luddites are a group that used to destroy the machines that were taking their jobs. The term is now used as a derivative way to talk about someone who does not get technology but, did they have it right? All us smug computer literate people may have the best...
There are many things that I want to be in life, but I don’t want to be the relation of a famous Star Trek character. You are only there to be killed off at some point e.g. Kirk’s Son or Father depending on what Universe you are in. Now in Star Trek:...
I have read a lot of crime fiction and even as a fan you can be critical of how similar they can be. The formats and storylines can bog down into only a few basic formulas. In a less accomplished author this can lead to a bland book that fades quickly in the memory, but this...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Punk was a short-lived musical genre and if you have listened to some of it you can probably tell why. It was raw, edgy and loud, but most of the songs were not that great and it was more about attitude than being able to sing. The songs that you may like from that genre may...
Fair warning, this isn't going to be a normal review, it's the first one I've written post-covid and is much more personal than usual.
Some years ago, my father started reading again. Previous to that he hadn't read much for the last few decades outside of Haynes manuals and instruction...
The past twenty years or so has seen a massive increase in the visibility of Superheroes. The likes of Superman, Batman and Spiderman have been around for decades, but the market is so rich that many niche properties are having their time in the sun. The boom has not only promoted Superheroes,...
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...
As a football fan it is sometimes hard to understand that some people just don’t care about it. They see it as a frivolous game of kicking a pig’s stomach around a patch of grass. In the context of life and death, it is just something to keep you busy on a Saturday...
What is your Limbo? Do you even believe such a place exists between life and death? I have always imagined that if it did exist it would be like a waiting area in which you have to make up for all those sins you did in life. For me, this will consist mainly of apologising to ants...
I have read a lot of speculative fiction that shows humans going crazy if a major event happens; a pandemic has rioting in the street or the voice of God echoing from the heavens leads to a rise in suicides. Perhaps it is a British thing, but I think that we would just shrug our shoulders and...
I am not a big fan of train travel. The route I take is usually into London on a packed train. I have been made to suffer by standing all the way and having no access to the toilets. I have considered putting this into prose form in a science fiction thriller but needing the loo and...
Power is an interesting dynamic; some people want it, whilst others have no interest at all. Joan of Arc had a lot of power for a while but then it went (being burned at the stake will do that to you). Was she a heretic and a witch that craved this power, or was she someone caught up...
Walk into my house and glance at my bookshelves and you will find an eclectic mix of books. My favourite genres are represented heavily in science fiction and fantasy, but I also have loads of crime, history, biographies and general fiction....
Sound can be powerful, get the tone right or the volume loud enough and you can cause real damage. There are skyscrapers that have been built that hum when the wind perfectly hits the building to make it vibrate. The worse thing that happens here is an annoying sound when the...
I have known a few archaeologists and historians in my time, and I can tell you that adventure is not always in their blood. I have found that they have chosen those professions as they seek the opposite of adventure. Perhaps a nice library or a quiet dig site. Given the choice between a cup of...
I find that a lot of my favourite science fiction starts off as a simple What If scenario. A talented author can take a seemingly simple idea and extrapolate from there. A simple difference to our current way of life can have huge implications. Before long an entire new world has...
For those who haven't heard of him, Yoss is a Cuban science fiction author. He's one of Cuba's most iconic figures in literature, having written over twenty books so far, run science fiction workshops and even found time to be the lead singer of Heavy Metal band Tenaz.
Red Dust...
The Farseer Trilogy is one of those series that is so well crafted, unique that it defines a genre. It's been twenty five years since Robin Hobb (a pseudonym of Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden) started writing about the Realm of the Elderlings and the adventures of Fitz and the Fool. Since then...
Murder, kidnapping, shootings, stabbings; not an amusing set of words, but in the hands of a great author, crime can be funny. In fact, crime can be hilarious. The crime comedy when done well is one of my favourite genres and Carl Hiaasen has being doing it well for years. He has combined wit...
Science fiction is a crowded market. There are a variety of ways in which a writer can try to tell a story that gives a sense of a possible future. Some of those ways are close to our reality, some are not.
Complete Darkness by Matt Adcock certainly offers a glimpse into something...
Some people love the city life, there is something to do every hour of the day. I find it a little odd. You can open the door of your million-pound house and have to step over the passed out person on your step. One street can look like it is from a movie set,...
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...
I am not someone that goes in for Conspiracy Theories, I just don’t have the energy for them. Take for example the idea that nanobots are being injected into people so that the Deep State can track our every move. Why would they spend trillions of pounds on such technology when we...
As a superhero fan, the last couple of decades have been fantastic. The comics have had countless film adaptations and prose novels. This abundance of content has allowed content creators to explore the idea of superpowers more. We are no longer in the age of Gods,...
The Marvel Universe has plenty of areas to explore, it is not just superheroes. You also have mutants, magic, aliens and so much more. Perhaps one of the hardest elements to get your head around are the Gods of Asgard. Suddenly, the Norse Gods of Odin and Thor are fighting alongside...
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...
Volume 12 of Ellen Datlow’s annual “Best of” anthology is a must for any horror lover, assembling a bunch of short stories selected by this distinguished Editor from the usual annual deluge of dark short fiction appeared in print or online.
In addition the volume,as...
The timeline is fragile. Stand on a butterfly in the Jurassic Era and you may end up returning to a world in which we all have seven arms – useful for multi-tasking. If time travel were available not everybody would respect the past and therefore, it needs to be policed. A subtle and...
It's 2118 and humanity has not only got over the coronavirus, but have reached out into space - colonising the Moon, Mars, Ceres and Europa. It's still early days of mankind's expansion though and the ship Khidr is part of a small fleet who travel between the different colonies, assisting the...
I like to read a collection of short stories on occasion as they act as a wonderful palette cleanser after so many full-length tales. The authors need to be succinct with their ideas as they have 20 pages to get their point across, rather than 400. An...
One man’s truth is another man’s myth and whilst the Greek Gods may have once been worshipped as real, they are now considered by most as myths. This is great for a genre review site as the Greek Gods are as fantastical as they come. They turn themselves and others...
The latest collection by Anna Taborska, a British filmmaker and horror writer, includes fourteen stories, five of which previously unpublished. The volume is graced by a witty introduction by distinguished fellow writer Robert Shearman and enhanced by a number of beautiful illustrations by...
For many people clowns are the stuff of nightmares and there they should remain. In the modern age you can pretty much live a life free of these demon entertainers; just avoid going to the circus, CBEEBIES and any films about IT. But what about if the clowns of your dreams decided to...
Fantasy is known as an epic genre; stories can span generations and civilisations rise and fall. As a fan of the genre, you also notice some regular tropes that occur, similar races and similar storylines. Within the pages of Brian McClellan’s Powder...
I have been a fan of Star Trek for a long time and am happy to overlook many of the contradictions and technobabble that it has a habit of spouting but one thing I can never get my head around is why. Why are they on these ships? Why risk their lives? For...
To the uninitiated, the fantasy genre is stagnant. The same old dwarves and elves going on long journeys and then back again. Any fan of the genre knows that this is just not the case. The genre has evolved with society. The fantasy books of the 80s and 90s differ greatly from Tolkien...
The long running series is a dream for an author as it means that your characters and world are successful enough that people are buying them, and you can keep writing. John Sandford's Lucas Davenport books must be a success when you realise that Golden Prey is the 27th book...
Book of the month
