Books tagged with: amnesia

Death Drop is a science fiction novel by Sean Allen. The last known human was exterminated over 400,000 years ago and the known universe is ruled by the savage race known as the Durax, keeping control with their compelling mind powers. War rages against this vehement race and the free people have tw...

Waking up on a strange world with no memory of his past, our intrepid protagonist finds an unusual group of people surviving on the slope of a mountain chain that forms a ring around a vast sandy dust-bowl that appears to hold dangers unseen. Everyone else seem to also have no memories of their past...

Finity is a science fiction novel by the author John Barnes. The writing of a Science Fiction story that takes place in an infinite-multiple-universe setting often runs into the basic problem of stopping the main character from just finding the best possible universe and then staying there. Once rem...

Flow my tears, the policeman said is a science fiction novel by the legendary award winning author Philip K Dick, has been nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards and won the 1975 John W Campbell Award for the best science fiction novel of the year. Jason Taverner is a TV idol, singer and host and...

A starship hurtles through the empty void of space towards an unknown destination, it's purpose and history lost in the midst of time. One man finds himself ripped from his dream of a new home and partner and awakens to the freezing cold and dark halls of Hull Zero One, a place that seems full of da...

Kaleidoscope Century is the second volume in the Century Next Door series by the author John Barnes. I'm quite sure that I haven't read any John Barnes before and that can only be classified as a big mistake. Barnes is writing like nobody else that I can remember or try to compare him to. It's fast,...

Legion: Skin Deep, the sequel to Brandon Sanderson’s 2012 novella Legion, sees one-man army Stephen Leeds recruited to find the body of a recently deceased scientist who had been experimenting with storing data in human cells. It’s crucial research and Leeds’ employer (Yol, an old acquaintance) isn'...

Two years ago something happened in Broken Hill, something that killed thousands, the entire population of the small Australian mining town. Although everyone was encouraged to believe that some form of "environmental disaster" was the cause there are a few people who know what really happened. Emil...

Lord Valentines Castle is the first volume in the Marjipoor series by Robert Silverberg. The hardest thing about reviewing this book is to label it correctly. We are on a humanly colonised planet at least ten thousand years in the future. We share this world, of gigantic proportions, with several al...

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 others who also...

The Affirmation is one seriously good book, managing to create a complex and mind bending scenario that plays on the structure of reality, levels of existence and the nature of the mind - the very notion of "self" and the idea of identity. The story is narrated in the first person by the central pro...

The Bridge is a novel by the award winning British author Iain M Banks. I'm ever in awe over Banks - where The Wasp Factory was a really strong debut novel, The Bridge as his third published novel is just so much more. It's fantastic to see him develop as a writer and storyteller - Yeah, I know I sh...

The Force Unleashed 2 is the novelisation of the Star Wars game, written by the accomplished author Sean Williams. The prequel, The Force Unleashed (also written by Sean Williams) was a New York Times number 1 best seller. As ruthless apprentice to Darth Vader, Starkiller was mercilessly schooled in...

The Sky Is Falling is a speculative fiction novel by Lester del Rey. Waking up in a world of magic isn't an easy experience for, just dead, computer engineer Dave Hanson. It doesn't get any easier for him when he learns that the sky is falling and he has been destined to do something about it! Comin...

The Status Civilization - Mindswap is a collection of two science fiction stories by Robert Sheckley. This book contains two stories of about a hundred and fifty pages each. The stories are very different, so I'll review them as separate stories. The Status Civilization. Most of this story read as y...

Reading The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August got me hooked into Claire North's (also known as Kate Griffin and Catherine Webb) wonderfully rich, clever and entertaining stories. As such I've been eagerly awaiting The Sudden Appearance of Hope for some time. One of the things that really draws you...

The Turing Option is a science fiction novel by Harry Harrison. I have always enjoyed Harry Harrison's stories - he knows how to write a fast paced and interesting story, but what I know him best for is his space opera stories (The Stainless Steel Rat, Bill The Galactic Hero and the Deathworld stori...

Total Recall the film has recently been re-made and updated from the 1990 version that featured Arnold "The Governator" Schwarzenegger. This time Colin Farrell stars as Douglas Quiad, the man who dreams of walking on Mars. I was a big fan of the original but have yet to see this modern adaption so I...

An Assassin's bullet strikes President Seth Jerrison on the eve of a top secret military operation, he is taken to the nearest hospital where doctors fight to save his life. At the very same hospital Dr Ranjip Singh is carrying out experiments with a device that can ease traumatic memories. In the o...

We are here; fairly innocuous words that little prepare the reader for the tightly written thriller that Michael Marshall has penned. It all begins with the struggling author David and his wife Dawn visiting the publisher in New York who has finally agreed to print his debut novel. As he returns to...

The first three Hainish novels written by Ursula Le Guin in the 1960s are brought together in this one volume. This is the same science fiction setting as her award winning stories The Dispossessed and the Left Hand of Darkness . Worlds of Exile and Illusion begins with the short story prologue – Th...

In the dark future of Defender , the majority of the worlds population have died. Killed by themselves and others who were listening to voices steering their horrific actions. Those who survived live in a hostile environment, unable to trust strangers and fighting over limited resources. On a long d...

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 the first person by...

Killing is my Business (not to be confused with Megadeth's debut album) is the second novel in Adam Christopher's LA Trilogy, following on from Made to Kill . Featuring the robot Assassin Raymond Electromatic, disguised as LA's only artificial private investigator. it's a unique blend of hardboiled...

This Christmas a member of the family introduced me to NCIS. For those who have yet to discover this long-running US-based TV show it's a police-procedural series that follows the Naval Criminal Investigation Service. Until this time I hadn't even known such an organisation existed, not to mention t...

Before Mars is the third book set within the authors Planetfall Universe. As the name suggests it's actually set before the events of Planetfall and After Atlas. After months of travel, Anna Kubrin finally arrives on the Red Planet to begin her job as geologist and in-residence artist. She already m...

The Quanderhorn Xperimentations is a book thats been adapted backwards via the future from the Radio 4 series before it was made. It's pure, british comedy gold from the genius minds of Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall. The story is set in England, 1952. A time of (relative) peace and regeneration. The...

In Cheryl Campbell's vision of the future, humanity finds itself enslaved by a genocidal faction of an alien race known as the Wardens. Decades of war has left much of the planet in ruins and threatens the existence of any human (or alien) who offer any form of resistance. Dani thought she had survi...

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 t oilets. I have considered putting this into prose form in a science fiction  thriller but  needing the loo and having sore f...

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  super power s  more. We are no longer  in the age of Gods, when Superman fought othe...

A lot of the political hustle and bustle in today’s world has its  roots  in how far you think capitalism should go. Some countries are all for state control, others are far more lais s ez faire .  Do  private companies  already  have  too much power  pull ing  the strings behind  our  elected repre...

When I talk to readers who do not like Science Fiction, I have found they say their minds just cannot get around the fantastical nature of the ideas contained within. They cannot understand sentient spaceships or aliens that think differently to ourselves. I try to point out that the genre is a vast...

I have done my time at university where I drank too much and stayed out too late. Looking back now I can only think about my poor liver and the crazy never die attitude that many of the young have. I was never that adventurous and stuck to beer and whatever was on offer at the Student Union. I certa...

Artificial Condition is the second book in The Murderbot Diaries , and the follow up to All Systems Red . It won the 2019 Hugo and Locus awards for best novella, and like the others in the series, has received a great deal of praise. It is highly recommended (but not imperative) you read All Systems...

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 feels l...

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...

Calling your book The Escher Man is a bold move, but a move that T. R. Napper made. The name conjures up imagery from the artist of staircases to nowhere that lead back to the start. How does that effect the man eternally made to walk these steps? Throw in some Cyberpunk future and memory manipulati...

It is not that the aliens in Alien are constantly evolving, it is that they are constantly adapting to the scenario they are in. We usually see them egging up humans, but if they landed in a world populated by cows it would only be a few days that a bovine Alien was ripping up the locals. Aliens are...

The sheer number of comic books out there are a blessing and a curse. There are so many stories to catch up on and different versions of the same characters. It is wonderful for the explorer, but for the casual fan it can be daunting. We all know something about Black Panther , the character, Wakand...