Reviews with titles beginning with S.
Stories from Adam Roberts are always challenging as well as entertaining. Saint Rebor follows this trend, being a diverse collection joined together by the writer’s conceptual ideas in the prologue. Whilst you might expect a variety of story premises in a collection, in Saint Rebor, you have a...
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...
Schild's Ladder is a science fiction novel by the Australian author Greg Egan. Egans latest hard physics thriller Schilds Ladder, presents his yet hardest to understand story. This time I'm actually unsure whether it's worth the effort, to try to understand what he’s saying. I normally find...
Sometimes I feel that reading post-apocalyptic tales are less an escape and more training for the future, after all as a race we aren't doing a great job of preventing this self-destructive outcome. Luckily there is no shortage of literature to teach us about survival in a future wasteland and...
I may be biased, but I think that science fiction is the greatest of genres because you can explore so many avenues. I have read many a future dystopian that have explored human’s obsession with science or lack of care with climate change. What I have never read is a science...
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...
FBI Special Agent Jack Dawson's best friend and colleague is brutally murdered while pursuing an investigation into the genetic manipulation of food crops and Jack is convinced that a group of eco-terrorists are behind the killing, with the beautiful geneticist Naomi Perrault being the prime...
I first read this book about 20 years ago, one that I picked up at random having not heard anything about the author in the slightest, it become one of the most memorable books I have read before or since and this will be the third or fourth time I have read it. Ironically it's still the...
Selected Shorts and other methods of time travel is a collection of short stories especially created for Young Adults, written by David Goodberg. The Year is 2051 and time travel has become a commercial success. Opportunities abounded for curious history buffs, futurists, and corrupt...
The world will not die with a bang, but with a whimper. Similarly, it won’t be the robots that uprise and destroy humans, but our own incompetence when it comes to programming. Build and programme things correctly and everything should be fine, but this is modern life and doing things...
Have you ever wondered what happens in those years after the Superheroes have saved the planet? Would they continue to fight crime or would it all turn into a big PR exercise? While many would see them as noble warriors who are elevated far above the common man what would happen if they...
Set within the same universe as the authors previous novel Tribes, Shades of Empire follows the ex-soldier Alexander Napier, merchant starship captain Madeline Pallestrino and a host of other colourful characters.
Alexander still reluctantly wears the marks of his servitude to the...
I've been reading Reynolds books since he began writing them and have seen him grow over the years from a seriously talented writer to one of the best in his field. Revenger was one of his finest works to date, Shadow Captain eclipses it easily. It's the second in a planned trilogy but manages...
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,...
38 000 years in the future and the greatest, most terrible war humanity has ever faced rages across the galaxy as the forces of chaos look to spread terror to every corner and man fights fellow man. On the home world of the human race preparations have begun to defend the Imperial Palace and get...
Shakespeare's Planet is a science fiction novel by Clifford D Simak. The plot of the novel lacks overall action. There is some exploration of the ruins, pond and hill by Carter Horton but this come to very little information or help to solve the problems the characters face. Most of the time...
Shards of Honor is a novel in the Miles Vorkosigan Adventures by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is the first book by McMaster that I've read that isn't about Miles Vorkosigan. It is about Miles's mother and father and the story of how they met and fell in love. Shards of honor takes place during...
Shards of Space is a collection of short science fiction stories by Robert Sheckley. Normally I make a short mention of each of the stories in short story collections, but there's has to be a limit. Shards of Space contains eleven stories and none of them are worth the time (my time) or space...
If I have said it once, I have it said a thousand times, science fiction is the best genre as it is so wide reaching. Stories can be grandiose, epic Space Operas with multiple characters on several planets. Or, stories can be personal affairs, titbits of speculative fiction that tweaks our own...
What would you do should a sudden cataclysmic event effect the Earth? The answer is that you will probably be dead, but if you are lucky enough to be the protagonist of a book you are likely to have survived. It would be a very short book otherwise. The events in Dana Fredsti and David...
Hutchinson's writing has, at times, turned out to be worryingly prophetic - he wrote about the break-up of the European Union while Brexit was just a twinkle in David Cameron's eye, in his astounding Fractured Europe series.
This time he's writing about life in rural...
The second part of the story begun with Bowl of Heaven, Benford and Niven bring us the conclusion to their mysterious 'big smart object' story.
Shipstar is less of a sequel than a continuation. The fitful nature of the story which caused problems in the first book is not smoothed as much...
I found this book on Amazon while generally having a browse around and put it on my wish list for Christmas (yes, last Christmas). I finally got round to reading it, I'm glad I did!
Shovel Ready is set in a near future New York that has suffered much since a dirty bomb hit Times...
What is war good for? Not much, but it does advance some technologies faster than they might have been. Microwave technology, nuclear, plastic surgery – all have benefitted from being pushed by necessity. What about a war on a distant planet? Like here on Earth, any opposing armies will be...
I am not one to look back on my life, preferring to live and enjoy what I have in the present, but when I do it is often about my years at school and University. That person I could have treated better or the time I stood up in assembly by mistake. The events felt at huge at the time, but in...
Horror author William Massa has been terrifying me since I first watched saw the film he scripted—Return to the House on Haunted Hill. Since then, I have ploughed through his writings, recently reading his hybrid cyberpunk-android-civil-rights-commentary-action-packed-science-fiction-novel...
Silverhair is a science fiction novel by the award winning author Stephen Baxter. This book is very quirky in that it forces us to see from a new perspective. For anyone who's ever read Raptor Red the concept of this book will most likely be familiar. Baxter has decided to craft a story...
Sirius by Olaf Stapledon is a science fiction novel and part of the Gollancz SF Masterworks collection. Sirius is the pinnacle of Thomas Trelone's experiments, the body of a large dog with the intelligence of a gifted human. He is raised as an equal in the Trelone household, alongside the...
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...
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.
...
In Denmark there is a thriving science fiction subculture with many short stories being written every year. Since 2007 the Danish science fiction association (Science Fiction Cirklen) has published an annual anthology of a selection of these original stories, written by Danish authors. For the...
Sky Coyote is the second volume in The Company series of novels by Kage Baker, following on from the events of the novel "In the Garden of Eden".
This time, the viewpoint changes from Mendoza, child of the Spanish Inquisition, to Joseph, her rescuer and recruiter. Unfortunately, Baker is...
Slant (/) is a science fiction novel by the award winning writer Greg Bear. With nano machines taking care of the human race, from food to both physically and psychologically health, we seem to have it made. There's even a small free heaven for the freaks that for some reason would rather live...
I missed reviewing Sleeping Giants when it first came out. I've finally got round to picking up a copy to find out it's now been out long enough that there are two further novels in the series: Waking Gods and Only Human. Back in 2016 It was one of those break-out novels such as The...
A collection of six short works all with author commentary as to their origins. As a writer I would characterise David Hutchinson as a storyteller first and foremost. Each of the pieces in this collection tick forwards continually without straying too far. The exposition is neatly added...
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...
Fire fighter Sean Grigsby’s near future debut sees the world infested with dragons risen from beneath the ground. The wingless wyverns rise up to destroy cities and take lives, leaving only the shadows of people - ‘wraiths’ - behind. It’s up to the ‘smoke.
Cole Brannigan, a...
We are told to live in the moment; don’t worry about the past or the future, it is now that you should care about, but how many of us really do? We spend endless hours checking our phones or having meaningless arguments online. If someone walked in on you right now and said that you are not...
Snow crash is an acclaimed speculative fiction novel by the award winning author Neal Stephenson. Never getting into the Cyberpunk thing and hating the much-hyped use of the word Cyber, I've stayed away from everything that fell within the Cyberpunk category, with William Gibson as the centre of...
So Bright The Vision is a short story collection by the award winning author Clifford D Simak. A small collection of four stories written in the late fifties: The Golden Bugs Are they bugs or are they aliens? And why are they cleaning house? Leg. Forst. Collecting stamps is a whole other ball...
A deep space adventure with monstrous aliens, this short and pacey read from Stargate official fiction novelist Cannon, draws inspiration from both Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s sequel. Humanity’s struggle against the Harvestmen – a feral xenomorph with a terrifying instinct...
Stories are often told from the side of good, the plucky underdog who fights against the armies of evil only to be victorious, but what about a book told from the side of the agitators, the terrorists the anarchists? These are all labels and Emily Tesh sets out to prove in Some Desperate Glory...
A near future that sees an altered world, changed by flooding, climate change and terrorism. The biggest change however is by the arrival of the aliens who call themselves the Jackaroo.
The Jackaroo seem to be Earths hope and salvation, saving it from itself. At last the question of...
The year is 2065 and two decades have passed since civilisation in the west was destroyed by economic collapse. In the UK no central government exists and people survive in broken pockets of civility - small communities who have banded together to build some semblance of order amid the chaos....
Son of the Tree is a science fiction novel by Jack Vance. SON OF THE TREE-Jack Vance. I loved this story even more. Head in the clouds the arrogant druids of Kyril fed and nutured the 5 mile wide by 12 mile tall tree that was the cornerstone of their religion. They have a full slave society...
SOUTH is a dystopian fiction set in an alternate America, set in modern times, where a civil war breaks out between the North and the South. The story follows a variety of five characters, each trying to kill, hide or survive. The book follows Garrett and Dyce, on the run from the South’s law...
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...
Space Marine is a rare novel that is set in the Warhammer 40k universe, written by Ian Watson. Space Marine is essentially a piece of history in the Warhammer 40k universe, but one that Games Workshop doesn't actually agree with, and was never re-printed. The novel itself no longer "fit's in"...
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...
Space, Time and Nathaniel is a collection of science fiction short stories by Brian Aldiss. The stories in this collection are some of Aldiss' earliest stories and it's amazing how little they have lost through the years. Nearly none of the stories seem quaint and silly the way some of the...
Spaceship Earth is a science fiction novel by Tom Schwartz. Scientists have discovered that the universe is a "closed system" and that the rate of expansion is slowing. This means that eventually the universe will stop expanding and begin collapsing upon itself, ultimately resulting in the...
Speaker for the Dead is the second volume in the Ender Saga, by Orson Scott Card and has won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula awards. This book could probably be read on it’s own, but it contains numerous spoilers for Enders Game and I can’t think of any good reasons why you wouldn’t want to...
Spirit's Destiny follows the path of one Ella Bland, who having just finished a degree is looking forward to living on earth (a right for attending 4 years of university). The very last thing she ever expected was to become embroiled in an ancient, bloody and quite secret war between a...
Star King is a classic science fiction novel by Jack Vance. Scifi mystery novels are strange creatures. Quite honestly, I have not come across many, and I haven't enjoyed most that I have come across. One exception is Peter Hamilton's Quantum Murder series (at least I think that's its name)....
Lieutenant Callum (called California, Cal or Harper) Harper punches his Captain, Laurence Decker for being incompetent and letting soldiers die on a mission we (initially) don’t learn much about. Cal has time and the option to finish things off but backs down and so...
It is feels increasingly complex to be a Star Trek fan. Things started off being about Kirk and co, then Picard, then Sisko etc. By now there are various TV shows that have been and gone, but also films that are set in parallel universes and I have no idea what is happening in...
The original USS Enterprise was sent out on a five year mission to explore Space, but even the biggest Star Trek fan would not want to know about every single detail that happened on the voyage. We can forgo the times that they slept or went to the loo. Perhaps even skip a few lengthy sessions...
What makes a great trilogy? Three stories that combine to make one, but are themselves also valid. Each book should have a start, middle and end that combine together to make a longer narrative. There are not many things worse for a fantasy or science fiction reader than getting their hands on a...
Star Wars was a huge part of my childhood, the original was the first film I ever saw at the Cinema and for a period I watched the film (and the two proceeding) pretty much every day - at one point I could recite the whole script if you'd asked me to. Must have driven my poor mother to...
As a fan of the expanded Star Wars Universe of novels, I pinch myself with the amount of quality content there is. These are not just novelisations of the films, or even expansions of the most well-known characters, the novels are cutting deep and exploring corners of...
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...
Illustration ©2018 Stephen Hickman from The Folio Society edition of Starship Troopers
The Folio Society has produced a beautiful, limited edition of Robert Heinlein’s classic book, Starship Troopers, first published in 1959.
In 1998, aged 22, I went to the cinema to see...
Inheritance should never be something that you look forward to, but when you receive some, it can make a huge change to your life. I may be enough to pay a deposit on a house or pay for a child to go to university. It can also be a real pain in the bureaucracy. Think of the taxes that...
Startide Rising is a science fiction novel by the acclaimed author David Brin. Finally I have some luck with a Brin book. SR has its good sides even if parts of it make me kind of sick. Sorry, but intelligent dolphins not my cup of tea. I'm not sure why, but I think its because I really loath...
State of Being is the third novel in the God Head trilogy and follows directly on from the cataclysmic events in State of Union. Jake Travissi is on the run, having lost everything he cared for and the future looks bleak with AI taking over the surviving population; the only hope may mean going...
State of Mind is a post-cyberpunk science fiction thriller by Sven Michael Davison. In the year 2030 you can eat all you want, take drugs and drink as much as you want without any negative side effects, you can call a friend, surf the web, listen to music, watch a film or even play a game...
State of Union follows on from the events of the authors previous novel, State of Mind - a post cyberpunk novel that we reviewed back in February 2011.
Jake has been living off the grid for five years and returns to civilisation to find a nano-virus pandemic known as MaxWell has killed...
A near future premise that quickly transforms into a Lovecraftian space opera, as you may guess, Static Push is full of surprises. The title, whilst directly relevant to the story really doesn’t do the ideas contained in the novel justice.
A science team at Dennison Industries are...
Day One - The Georgia flu sweeps the globe, a pandemic on a scale not seen before. Reports put the mortality rate at 99%.
Week Two and most of Civilisation lies in ruins.
Twenty years after the cataclysm and pockets of humanity have rebuilt settlements across the US. Things seem...
Steeple is the sequel to the quite brilliant novel Barricade which we reviewed back in June last year. It describes a post-apocalyptic world torn apart by a war of human against their artificial, super-human constructs, the "fiscials".
As you can imagine, fighting against a superior...
Space travel is often painted in a glamourous fashion. Sleek ships sail among the stars as the crew members go on daring adventures, but the reality would be much more cramped. The planet Earth may feel a little crowded at times, but compared to being in a space craft, we can...
Stolen Lives examines the questions of self and free will. How do we become the person we are? What would happen if our memories; the details of our very identity were stripped away?
Matt Tyler is going to find out. He awakes to find no memories of who he was, in a strange place with...
Stranger in a Strange Land is one of the most famous and controversial science fiction novels, by the legendary author Robert A Heinlein. A best seller and Hugo award winner - having never been out of print, Stranger in a Strange Land was written in 1961, almost 50 years ago. The original...
Comedy combined with Science Fiction is rare because it is so hard to do. When it clicks though it is worthwhile as you get some absolute classics such as Red Dwarf or Hitchhiker's. Those are mighty large shoes to try and fill, but Chris Panatier is giving it a go in Stringers, a book that...
Sunrise Alley is a science fiction novel by the author Catherine Asaro. By 2033, biomech research scientist Samantha Bryton tasted success with the development of "forma" androids, but has fled to Northern California to reconsider her values as the wealth and fame she has accrued feels wrong. A...
Sunshine Republic is a dystopian science fiction novel by Ted Brownstein. It's the year 2130 and the newly independent Republic of Florida is deeply divided over the use of technology, the Futurist party believe that their society could be vastly improved by the use of cheap, abundant robot...
The thought of travelling to space and living on the International Space Station has no interest to me. Stuck in a metal box, isolated, miles away from civilisation with only the same people as company sound like a one-way ticket to madness. You do not need to go into space to create such a...
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