Sam Tyler

Science Fiction can be upbeat and utopian or downbeat and dystopian. The current trend is to focus on the negatives, but even these books have a glint of hope in them. When it comes to dystopian visions of the future, they do not come much more intense than Premee Mohamed’s The Siege of Burning Gras...

There are space books and then there are Space Operas. What makes a good Space Opera is a sense of scale – the big and the small. Characters making decisions that define the entire Universe, but also their place in the local power struggle. Who will rule, which family? Which sect? Which Goddess? Red...

What made people think that the middle of the desert was the right place to build a town like Los Vegas where people from around the world flock to get their vice on? It was the fact that it was in the middle of nowhere, safe from prying eyes and it was desperate to for people to visit. There should...

At its best science fiction can be a prism to view the current world’s ills in a more palatable manner. Reading about the destruction of our world in a dystopian future feels one step removed from simply looking out of the window. Like environmental catastrophe, some themes are too powerful to go un...

You see it more often in fantasy than science fiction, but there are stories about young people living a life of drudgery only to be plucked into being exceptional as if fate is playing with them. It is a comfortable coming of age trope that has worked so well, so many times, but what if fate did co...

One of the biggest problems to overcome when writing science fiction is how do humans communicate with an alien race? They may speak a different language or may not even have mouths in which to make noises. The Universal Translator is a popular cheat, or fundamental maths that should be universal, b...

As a someone who studied history, I am fascinated by the past, but also the evolution of studying the past. History as we know it adapts and changes with the current way of thinking. Sometimes you must sit back and remember that things were different back then, that opinions and attitudes were just...

Wouldn’t it be great to be in more than one place at once? Rather than having to do all those boring jobs you could make a version of yourself to do it for you, leaving time for you to do what you really want, like playing too many computer games or reading too many books. Before you know it, you ma...

It can feel at times like the entire world is out to get you, but who is the person you must watch out for the most? Your family, spouse, work colleagues? Nope, the biggest saboteur is often yourself. Your own thoughts and deeds coming back to haunt you. Iris Henderson has it worse than most as she...

Who doesn’t love the Alien series? But which subset are you talking about? Like any science fiction property, once you investigate it and expand upon it, the series begins to fragment. You have Alien , Aliens , Aliens vs Predator , Prometheus , and more. They are all the same universe but split off...

Certain jobs can change you, the things that you see, the things that you must do. You may become closed off, hard, brittle, or just a little bit over the edge. Julie Crews has become all these things and more as a local Psychic Operative. Living off a diet of cocaine, regret and apprentices who onl...

As a long-term science fiction fan, it sometimes feels like we are living the books that I grew up reading. Not the flying cars and cure for cancer stories, but the ones that warned about humankind’s tendency to destroy itself. It feels like only a matter of years until Gort rocks up to give us one...

Love is love and that is truer in science fiction than any other genre as you can fall in love with anyone or anything. Someone of the same species, an alien or even a spaceship. With AI advancing who is to say that one day their personality will not appeal, couple that to an avatar they can create...

Any Doctor Who fan knows that this year is a big anniversary for the series and there is so much content coming that even the wider community may be aware that the Doc is turning 60. How do you stand out from the new books, audio series and episodes all incoming around the festive period? Perhaps a...

I love time travel stories, but the entire concept is a paradox. It just cannot happen. What happens to the version of you that was in the past/present once you have travelled? It can be hard to even think about it, but what happens if you live this paradox? The Farrow woman have all been cursed wit...