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‘It’s the greatest thing that’s happened to us since Maggie took us into the Falklands.’ This is the voxpop that sticks in my mind: a Benidorm resident quizzed on Brexit, one of many in the days after the 2019 election and just before our EU membership expired quietly in a corner with barely a whimper. Never mind whether the Falklands was triumph or absurdity nor whether Thatcher was hero or villain. What surprised me...
Let’s talk movies… sort of.
Okay, let’s actually talk movie deals and taking books to the silver screen. A thing that authors get asked a lot is, “Why don’t you make your book into a movie?” Ah, if only it were that easy. There is, of course, a lovely complement contained in that question. The reader is saying, “Hey, I think your book would make a great movie,”...
1999 - SFBook is born
We've been writing book reviews since the last Millennium, before blogging was a thing and before most carried powerful computers around in their pockets. Back in 1999, the internet was quite different to how it looks today. Google was still a baby and most people used the search engines "Alta Vista", "Yahoo" or newcomer "Ask Jeeves". Fast internet was just a dream. Broadband was in it's infancy and not...
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
No matter what else happens, 2019 sounds like it's going to be a good year for books. While we haven't heard whether George RR Martin or Patrick Rothfuss will actually release their eagerly, long awaited novels, there are plenty of other books to get our teeth into. Some from established legends of the genre such as Alastair Reynolds, Tim Powers, Gregory Benford, Tad Williams, Guy Gavriel Kay, Pat Cadigan, Margaret Atwood (with her long...
SFBook would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year.
2019 looks to be an important year for science fiction. There are some promising stories on the horizon while we are hoping that the science fiction genre should continue to be accepted more broadly. We may even see some work from George R.R. Martin or Patrick Rothfuss, although I wouldn't count on it. There are a few big films coming out - not least with Star Wars Episode 9,...
A new imprint has recently launched with a an impressive line-up of authors and books. Flame Tree Press is a brand new publisher dedicated to finding the best award-winning and original voices. While it might be new, Flame Tree Press consists of experienced industry professionals, led by Nick Wells, the Founder of Flame Tree Publishing and a former MD of HarperCollins Enterprises.
Nick Wells commented:
After 24...
2016 looks set to be a big year for science fiction and fantasy, with some highly promising TV series - from Man in the High Castle to new episodes of Black Mirror, films from another Star Wars to JG Ballard's High Rise (with many in between) and of course lots of lovely books.
Some of the most...
SFBook would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year for 2016.
The last 12 months have been a rewarding one for book readers with a number of stand-out novels from some massively talented and diverse authors, despite attempts by small but vocal groups to bash the genre back into the stone...
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
To celebrate the release of the quite excellent Twelve Kings, (click the link to see our review) we've been lucky enough to be provided with an extract of the novel and an introduction by the author.
Throughout the book, I have several other characters interspersed with those of Çeda, the story’s main character. One of those...
Gollancz paperback of the Month for September is Richard Morgan's The Dark Defiles, conclusion to the incredible series A land fit for Heroes.
Following on from The Steel Remains and The Cold Commands, The Dark Defiles is epic fantasy in every sense of the word. A fitting conclusion to one of the great "dark" fantasy series of the 21st Century, absolutely not to be missed. Perfect for anyone looking for fantasy with a hard-edge.
...As many readers will know, this year there has been a concerted effort by a small but vocal minority to "game" the Hugo awards and try and put science fiction back by a few decades. They don't want to see ethnic and gender diversity in "their" science fiction and many of the Hugo award shortlists for this year were full of this small groups short-sighted, predominantly white male fiction.
Thankfully the larger science fiction...
Gollancz Paperback of the Month August 2015 is John Scalzi's novel Lock In which we reviewed back in January. It's not, as you might expect a novel about late night pub drinking, instead it's a science fiction police procedural which describes a pandemic virus which causes 99% of the population to suffer "flu like" symptoms. The other 1% become "locked in" to their own bodies, fully awake, but unable to move or respond to stimulus (a...
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