Books tagged with: far future

In 3001, the human race has, unbelievably, survived, living in fear of the trio of monoliths that dominate the solar system. Then a small hope flickers to life. The body of Frank Poole, thought dead for a thousand years, is recovered from the deep frozen reaches of the galaxy. Restored to conscious...

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post apocalyptic science fiction novel by Walter M Miller. It is a strange story of a post apocalyptic monastery, which tries to save information about the time before the great destruction. The idea is good enough, but I can't say that I like what Miller has done with...

A Choice of Gods is a science fiction novel by Clifford D Simak. The novel raises a number of very interesting issues including: Robot society structure and religion Human society reaction to removal of technology Man developing psychic powers to travel to the stars and interstellar communication Un...

A Princess of the Aerie is the second volume in the Jak Jinnaka series by author John Barnes. It's hard to stay away from series, in this world. There are a lot of upsides to them and, as long as they stay fresh, the downsides are few. You know what you can expect, you are already wise to the backgr...

The Space Wolves, those fiercely loyal and dependable Space Marines are sent to Propsero to enforce the Emperors justice after the Primarch of the Thousand Sons chapter makes a serious mistake that puts the safety of the very birthplace of humanity at risk. The events of this story run parallel with...

Across Realtime is a science fiction novel by Vernor Vinge. This is Vinge's first full length novel. For some strange reason, I've never gotten around to it before now. I'm not sure why, but maybe it has been a combination of fear that it couldn't live up to the expectations that A Fire Upon the Dee...

Amortals is a science fiction thriller of high octane action and is the novel of Matt Forbeck, published by Angry Robot Books. The year is 2168 and Secret Service agent Ronan "Methusaleh" Dooley is hot on the trail of a vicious killer, but this case is a bit of a twist as the victim happens to be hi...

Billed as a ‘graphic novel, novel’ An Android Awakes tells the story, through pictures and words, of Android Writer PD121928 as it tries to produce stories that a publisher will accept before the submission limit on its programming runs out. What we have here is an innovative throwback; something th...

Anvil of Stars is the sequel to The Forge of God, written by Greg Bear. Sometimes reviewing a sequel is nearly impossible without spoiling the first book for people who hasn't read it. This is one of those times and I'm not going to try, so if you haven't read The Forge of God (tFoG) yet, don't read...

Apocalypses & Apostrophes is a collection of short stories by the American author John Barnes. I think that I got the idea that Barnes is kind of weird around page 25 of Kaleidoscope Century, and nothing I've read since then has made me think otherwise. Apocalypses & Apostrophes confirms my suspicio...

Young adult science fantasy is a story type that has existed in various forms since the 1950s. The writing quality can vary, but the intention – to convey a vision  where humanity has become an interstellar society always fires the imagination of impressionable readers. Architects of Destiny is a bo...

Artificial by Jadah McCoy is the authors debut and the first book in a planned series called The Kepler Chronicles . Set in 2256, the story unfolds on Earth’s first colony amongst the stars, the aforementioned Kepler. As humanity traversed through the deep dark of space, they decided to entrust thei...

Beyond This Horizon is a classic science fiction novel by Robert A Heinlein. Another one of RAH's looks into the future with a little twist. The story is about a man named Hamilton and the society he lives in. It is set in the distant future were people still have babies together BUT their genes are...

Harry Harrison was a genius. The way he managed to use absurdity, satire and slapstick humour to talk about some pretty grim subjects is nothing short of remarkable. Way before Pratchett, Holt, Adams and Naylor, Harrison was creating some of the funniest books on the planet. Bill, the Galactic Hero...

There are very few authors alive today that can quite match Alastair Reynolds vision of future space and Blue Remembered Earth is the beginning of possibly his most ambitious future vision yet. At the same time it's also one that also feels much closer to home than any novel he has written before. T...

Brave new world was written over 80 years ago; back in 1932 and describes London in the year 2540 - or 632 AF as the year is described in the book. The AF stands for "After Ford", meaning the American industrialist Henry Ford who has become something of a messianic figure in Huxley's World. It's bee...

Broken is a speculative fiction novel by Susan J Bigelow. When Broken lost her ability to fly, she thought she was finished with being an extrahuman, a superhero. Then the world around her started to break apart and the mysterious teenager Michael found her, bringing with him the promise of rebirth...

Candle is the third volume in the Century Next Door series by the author John Barnes. Barnes, just keeps on getting better and better. Candle is clearly his best book to date, which says a lot. Currie is an old man, when the global controlling super mind, called One True, asks him to take on the tas...

Cantata 140 (also known as "the crack in space") is a science fiction novel by Philip K Dick. The name comes from Bach's Cantata BWV 140 which is also known as "Sleepers, Wake". The year is 2080 and overpopulation has become such an issue that millions of people have voluntarily become cryogenically...

Desperate to find a new home amongst the stars, the last remnants of the human race are cast out into deep space. Thousands upon thousands asleep aboard a colossal colony ship, hibernating until a habitable planet is located. Eventually they discover a world which was terraformed by humanity long ag...

Back when I used to play Fantasy Battle Khorne was my favourite of the chaos horde, I had an army of bloodletters, fleshhounds and beastmen, all lead by a greater deamon. There is something primal about Khorne, the blood-red colours, the flames and the atypical looks that all speak of what a deamon...

City is set sometime in the future at a time when mankind's acheivements are immense with intelligent robots, genetic modifications, commonplace space travel and genetically uplifted animals. This technical progress comes at a cost, humanity itself has become tired and society has broken down into s...

I've always known that Paul McAuley can write, as far as I am concerned he's one of the finest writers in the genre right now however he's also vastly under-appreciated. I'm really hoping that the release of confluence will help in addressing this oversight - not only is it an incredibly well writte...

Today we are all too familiar with the assault of digital information and various forms of media which work hard to blur the definition of reality. Robertson has created a world where that idea is pushed to its disturbing conclusion. On the Station, where the remnants of humanity orbit a toxic world...

I’m always guilty of making snap judgements of books and their covers. Sci-fi covers don’t tend to help. Andrew Bannister’s The Creation Machine is not going to draw you in with its generic spaceship framed by a generic planet, and the woefully reductive, sensationalist logline of ‘It helped create...

Crossed Genres Year 2 is a collection of twelve short stories featured in the Crossed Genres magazine between issues 13 and 24. Crossed Genres has a different theme each month so there is quite a varied mixture on offer here. All have been written to a high standard and each have a distinct voice. L...

I've been collecting Neal Asher novels for ages however until now I've not had chance to read much of his work. Luckily Dark Intelligence has been sent in for review and so I've finally had chance to discover the delight that is the Polity Universe. Dark Intelligence is all about transformation. Phy...

Daylight on Iron Mountain is the second book in David Wingrove's epic re-imagining of his Chung Kuo series and follows on from the events in the incredible novel Son of Heaven , I seriously recommend you read that novel first. Although we still have the characters of Jack, Mary and their family - wh...

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...

Tanyana has the innate talent to manipulate the very particles that hold matter together, as one of the most skilled pionners in a far-future society she can craft almost anything with just her concentration. An accident however brings her whole life crashing down and she is virtually cast out of th...

Deception Well is a science fiction novel by Linda Nagata. In this, the third book from this new master, Linda Nagata takes us to the far future and away from earth - paradoxically the characters in this book aren't quite as strange as the characters in her first two books (The Bohr Maker and Tech-H...

Diaspora is a science fiction novel by the Australian author Greg Egan. About a thousand years in our future an entity is born. Not of man and woman , but as an orphan of Konishi Polis. A Polis is a virtual reality society, where a group of computerbased intelligences are living. There are several P...

Disaster Park is a science fiction novel by Mark Konkel. Imagine that you could experience the greatest (or worst) disasters in human history, be on board the Titanic as it leaves Southhampton docks on the 10th April 1912 or perhaps a visitor on the 92nd floor of the North Tower on that fateful day...

Divergent is the kind of book I stay awake reading until 4am. It gripped me and didn’t let go, staying with me when I closed the book with a rush of adrenaline and a serious hankering for its sequel. The novel takes place in Tris Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, where society is divided into five fa...

Divine Endurance and Flowerdust, - two novels collected together for the first time exclusively as an e-book and known as "The Last Days Of Ranaganar" - are set within a far-future south-east Asia, a future that is hardly recognizable from the present and one that seems both medieval and futuristic...

Down to the Bone is the first novel I have read in the Quantum Gravity series and indeed the first by Justina Robson, as such this review should be seen from that perspective; how a novice of the series will fare jumping in at the fifth and final volume. The idea behind Quantum Gravity is that our r...

It's hard to believe that Dune is over 50 years old. Originally released in 1965 it won the inaugural Nebula award for best novel and tied with Roger Zelazny's This Immortal for the Hugo Award. It's sold well in excess of 12 million copies around the world and is one of the world's best-selling scie...

Earth is a science fiction novel by David Brin. Normally I never give up on a book, but I guess that it had to happen and now I have to decide whether it is fair to review a book that I have not read all the way through. But then again, why do I have to be fair to a book that has wasted so much of m...

This is a very interesting book, a sort of post-apocalyptic, post-cyberpunk tale that also weaves in a good dose of historic fantasy and mythology while told in a very confident voice dripping with poetic, imaginative prose. Essentially the story goes that the human race almost wiped itself complete...

Enders Game is the award winning first novel in the Ender Saga, by Orson Scott Card. A trip to the library, nearly always bring something good with it. Just the feeling of being surrounded by all those books, can bring a joy to my heart, that can’t even be totally thwarted by the fact that they had...

Sequel to Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion – there's no reason to read this book if you haven't read those two books. Actually the question is if there's any reason to read this book at all! Fall of Hyperion ends the story of the Cantos and the Web quite nicely, with nearly no loose ends. So that's no...

Engine City is the third volume in the Engines of Light series by Ken Mcleod. I've been holding back on reading this the last book in the Engines of Light series, as I was rather disappointed with the second book. Luckily Newton's Wake was a wonderful book, as it gave me the strength to take on MacL...

Evening's Empires is the fourth novel set within the Quiet War series, although it is pretty much a stand-alone story in that universe and can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of McAuley's works. The story follows Hari, a young man who has narrowly escaped kidnap (or worse) and as we join him...

Evolution is a monumental tale of the very evolution of mankind, from the age of the dinosaurs to way into the distant future. Created by the multiple award winning author Stephen Baxter. Evolution begins it's story in the Cretaceous period over 65 million years ago (the age of the Dinosaurs), and j...

This is a first for SFBook, in it's 13 year history not once has an Audio book been reviewed, it's long before time this changed and I hope to review at least a few novels in this format over the coming months. Honour of the first goes to a specially created audio only book by the Black Library. Eye...

Fahrenheit 451 is a science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury which depicts a dystopian future society where books that have any intellectual value are banned and destroyed where-ever they are found. With a Hedonistic and lawless society, the highest achievement for any individual is happiness and the m...

Falling Free is a science fiction novel by the award winning American author Lois McMaster Bujold and takes place within the Vorkosigan Saga. Taking place in the same universe as the Vorkosigan adventures, but not featuring any of our beloved characters, for the simple reason that Falling Free takes...

Firefall is a collected duology and includes the previously released novel Blindsight along with the new sequel Echopraxia . Firefall is hard science fiction which places a firm grip on high-concept science. While many hard-science fiction novels can tend to exclude the casual reader, Watt's writes...

It has been nearly 20 years since I first read a Warhammer 40K novel, way before Games Workshops publishing company Black Library was formed. I was and always will be a big fan of anything Games Workshop related, spending a vast amount of my formative years playing a myriad number of games and paint...

The only science fiction novel that the immensely talented Cecelia Holland has written, Floating Worlds is taking it's rightful place within the halls of Gollancz SF Masterworks collection. The novel tells the story of humanity 2000 years in the future where capitalism has been overthrown and anarch...

Fork in the Road to Apocalypse is the second volume in the Subnorms, written by Jeff Gonsalves. It's the middle of the 21st Century and much of the World's population have seen their genetic makeup mutated by insidious viruses and powerful radiation. A sub species of human has developed from these g...

The Earth is an all but forgotten planet in the footnotes of mankind's history, a race who are now spread throughout the Milky Way as part of the vast Galactic Empire. An Dominion that looks after a quintillion souls and one that is becoming crippled by it's very size and complexity. A whole planet...

Future Hope is a science fiction novel written by David Gelber. The novel is set in the year 2156 and the Earth is getting a pretty crowded place. While many of the social and economic problems have been eradicated - along with most illnesses, new problems have taken their place. Principal amongst t...

Galileo’s Dream is a brand new novel from Kim Stanley Robinson and follows Galileo on an amazing journey from the dawn of the modern age to a future on the brink of a scientific breakthrough. While on the brink of the modern world, Late Renaissance Italy is still surrounded by Alchemy and the teachi...

Gateway is a classic science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl. Rereading classics or old favourites is something that I've done all to seldom the last couple of years, which is both a testimony to the high quality of the book published today and the fact that I actually have the money to buy new books...

After hearing about the passing away of Poul Anderson, I pretty much ran out and picked up this book. I figured that it would be good therapy and a good way to honour him. This worked fairly well, I hadn't read any of his new stuff before, so I was unsure as to what we missed out on. Genesis is an e...

The second novel in the Warhammer 40k Gaunt's Ghosts Series and written by that insanely talented author Dan Abnett, Ghostmaker acts as a reflection on the history of the Ghost's and focuses on telling the story of the major characters within the regiment. This is done through the use of connected s...

When a territory engineer dies in suspicious circumstances, three qverse experts are brought in to investigate. Initially the three hacks choose to work separately on the case, but as they continue their investigations they discover clues leading to some of the most powerful figures in the qverse. S...

Heads is a science fiction novel, written by Greg Bear. A hundred years in the future, Michael Sandoval is the manager at Ice Pit Station – a research station on the Moon. Two projects are taking place here. His brother in-law is trying to reach absolute zero in a small piece of copper. His sister i...

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...

Hyperion is a science fiction novel by the author Dan Simmons. This is the first book that I've read by Dan Simmons, but definitely not the last - actually I've already started on the sequel. Hyperion is the tale of a bunch of pilgrims, on their way to the Time Tombs on remote planet of Hyperion. Al...

I am Legend is a post apocalyptic vision by Richard Matheson, created in 1954 it tells the story of Robert Neville, the last surviving human in the world, surrounded by bloodthirsty vampires - both living and undead. Part of the Gollancz SF Masterworks collection, the novel has received critical acc...

I, Robot is a collection of nine short stories by Isaac Asimov, which originally appeared in Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction between 1940 and 1950. The fictional character Dr Susan Calvin (robopsychologist for U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Inc) relating these stories to a repor...

The great world-spanning City of Chung Kuo see's the "War that wasn't a war" being fought between it's levels as the ruling seven T'ang struggle to maintain calm and prevent change. But this War isn't being fought on a battlefield, instead these combatants are employing a degree of subterfuge and gu...

Dan Simmons can write just about any genre he takes a stab at and be good at it. Carrion Comfort for horror, Crook Factory for War/thriller and of course the Hyperion Saga for some of the best SF ever written. Ilium is a meta-literary meta-historical science fiction story. That's a lot of meta. I be...

There is a particular pleasure in returning to an Arthur C. Clarke novel that nobody talks about much, and Imperial Earth is one of those. It does not have the reputation of 2001 or Rendezvous with Rama , it rarely turns up on best-of lists, and when it is mentioned at all, it tends to be with a sli...

Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman is a science fiction novel by Angela Carter. It seems some editor thought War of Dreams is a better title for the Americas than The INFERNAL DESIRE MACHINES OF DOCTOR HOFFMAN which is the UK title...stupid editor!! My copy says "WAR OF DREAMS" but I am choosin...

On the dark and bloody battlefields of the Warhammer 40k universe few enemies incite more dread than the merciless Chaos Space Marines. Spreading terror and destruction in their wake, they have fought against their hated Space marine brethren for a millennia. The Iron Warriors are brutal even amongs...

Joshua and Aaron is the second volume in the ITP series, following on from the events of Future Hope, written by David Gelber. It is the the year 2163 and 7 years have passed since David Sanders fated voyage through the ITP to another world. Joshua Smith shuns society and instead spends his time wat...

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,...

I can't really imagine a more exciting sounding Warhammer 40K novel, a battle during the Horus Heresy conflict that depicts the Ultramarines (my favorite Legion) against the Word Bearers - told with energy and grace by that master of battles Dan Abnett. The Primarch of the Ultramarines - Roboute Gui...

Berserker chaos marine chapter the World Eaters are blazing a path of destruction across the galaxy, following in the path of a weird, blood-red comet which holds portents of doom. The small cemetery world of Certus Minor is one such planet along this celestial bodies route and the Excoriators chapt...

To think that it has been nearly a year since I read any Banks last – not strange that I had to consume this one over a single weekend. Sometimes a book is just so good, that it becomes hard to review properly, without reverting to long sentences overflowing with superlatives (which quickly becomes...

Lord of Light is a science fiction novel written by Roger Zelazny. Reading classics, isn't exactly what I would call a duty, but one should remember to pick up a classic once in a while and see why it became a classic. Some of them are actually quite good! I don't think that I've ever read any Zelaz...

Lost Fleet: Dauntless is the first in the military science fiction series by Jack Campbell. The Alliance has been fighting a losing battle with it's deadly enemy - the Syndic for over a century. Now its primary fleet is stranded deep in enemy territory. Their only hope is Captain John "Black Jack" G...

Lost Fleet: Victorious is the sixth and final volume in the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. Captain "Black Jack" Geary was cryogenically frozen for a hundred years before this final conflict gathered. Upon awakening he finds himself sucked back into a war he thought would long be over, leading a...

Will McIntosh writes love stories with high body counts. In terms of total death toll, he's probably killed all of humanity at least twice by now, yet each of his books is genuinely touching. In his first novel, Soft Apocalypse, his characters try to hold relationships together in the face of appall...

Man Against The Future is a collection of short stories by Bryan Young, author of “Lost at the Con”. I love short story collections, not just because I have the attention span of a small yapping dog, but they can be a great introduction to a new author or genre. They can be quite hit and miss though...

Man over Mind is a science fiction novel by Dean Warren. After about a thousand years of expansion, humanity has pretty much conquered the Milky Way with their FTL ships. The Plastowich – descendants of the guy who invented the hyperdrive – are doing a good job of running the show. Not really rulers...

The product of a 2013 Kickstarter, Mechalarum is Emma Larkins debut work and has clearly benefited from her efforts to crowd fund. The process has allowed her creative control and enabled her to seek professional assistance in assuring the work comes up to scratch. And come up to scratch it does, wi...

Methuselah's Children is a science fiction novel by the author Robert A Heinlein. Another golden oldie from Heinlein. Through a selective breeding program, the Howard Foundation has managed to breed a much longer living human. Today there are about a hundred thousand people (The Howard Families) who...

Newton's Wake is a science fiction novel by Ken Mcleod I've been looking forward to this book for a while. The Engines of Light series kind of fizzled out for me with book two and I never got around to book three. And that got me worried a lot, since I really, really liked MacLeods Fall Revolution b...

Odd John was first published in 1935 and was one of the very first novels to explore the theme of the super human, coining the term homo superior . It's being reviewed here as part of Gollancz excellent SF Masterworks series. Written from a narrator's perspective, Odd John is a pretty unique piece o...

First Impressions: Odyssey took some getting used to in order to plow through it! My only other introduction to the author Jack McDevitt is through his excellent novel, "Time Travelers Never Die" so I was hoping this book was going to be a continuation of the excellent style I was used to. "Not so"...

At 75 years old, John Perry takes stock of his remaining life, with his wife dead and buried and a retirement of increasing dotage to look forward to he does the only sensible thing possible - he joins the army. Now known as the Colonial Defense Force (CDF) the war of the 22nd century is fought out...

With On the Steel Breeze Alastair Reynolds has managed a little slice of futurism, how? Elephants. It seems we've been vastly under-estimating the intelligence of these gentle giants, at least most of us have - Reynolds hasn't. Recent research now suggests that Elephants are at least as intelligent...

One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy is a science fiction novel by Stephen Tunney. Two thousand years from now and the moon has been terraformed as an experiment - long before humanity perfected the technique on other planets. As a result the moon has a breathable atmosphere but has a bright red sky and is...

Outies is the sequel to the much acclaimed novel The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. This novel has been written by Jerry Pournelle's daughter, Jennifer. It has been a very long time since I read The Mote in God's Eye, the review on this site was written by my predecessor TC. I...

Pandora's Star is the first volume in the The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton. "Part one of the Commonwealth Saga" it says on page five. "Main characters" it says on page seven and then it goes on to list 44 characters. Then follows nearly nine hundred page of story which ends with the text "...

Passengers to Sentience is a science fiction novel and is the debut of the author Peter Salisbury. The Human race has reached the corners of the galaxy, colonising many worlds and enjoying advanced technology such as blindingly fast Data Transmission, organic metal alloys and the succesful manipulat...

The gargantuan star fort of the Imperial Fists, the Phalanx is to be the host for half a dozen Space Marine Chapters. Along with Inquisitors, Sisters of Battle and agents of the Adeptus Mechanicus they will witness a darkly historic event - the end of a Space Marine chapter. After the events of Hell...

Prophets of the Ghost Ants is about as different a story as you are ever going to read (and given the sheer breadth of works around nowadays that is saying something). It's already been optioned for a film trilogy and has been lauded by such people as Lawrence Bender - the Oscar winning film produce...

This is the third audio book to be reviewed within the pages of SFBook and again we are firmly within the realms of Warhammer 40k, this time during that tremulous period of the Horus Heresy. Dan Abnett is the author and Prospero Burns the novel, narrated by Gareth Armstrong on eleven CD's representi...

Richard is a Level 5 Artificial Intelligence and a Private Eye, his partner a German ex military cyborg named Klein. Their newest case takes them on the hunt for a killer who has jumped realities, hiding in the artificial construct of Reality 36. Unless Richard and Klein can stop him his powers coul...

Ringworld is a science fiction novel by the award winning author Larry Niven. I'm sure that I have already read this book once a long time ago - probably about ten to twelve years ago, and that was probably in danish - anyway I had forgotten most of the important stuff and everything that would have...

Ringworld Engineers is the sequel to the science fiction classic Ringworld, by Larry Niven. This is the sequel to Ringword (doh!). There's not much to say about it, other than it is as good as the original Ringworld and you if you liked the original Ringworld book, you will probably like this one as...

Alex Lamb's Roboteer paints a picture of a future, that in the political climate of today, feels far too possible.  In this book, a war rages between two sides of humanity, two different and opposing ideologies and lifestyles.  One side, combining genetic and induced mutation with advanced technolog...

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 great pl...

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 only novel...

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 entrepreneurs....

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 rea...

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 witho...

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 game w...

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 for survival,...

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. In the...

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" with t...

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 opposite...

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). But eve...

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 distraction....

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 investigating a me...

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 a lot less dangerous...

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 labour a...

Tangerine is a science fiction novel by PJ Hawkinson and K Wodke collectively known as Wodke Hawkinson. Set in a future time where long distance space travel is commonplace and aliens are a natural part of society, Tangerine is a story of the interstellar biologist Ava who explores the wild orange b...

On the edge of Earths Empire, far out in space, an elite group of soldiers are on a training mission. A training mission preparing them to face their implacible enemy against which a war rages across the galaxy. Deep in the heart of the hollowed out asteroid where their training takes place a chilli...

The Art of War continues David Wingrove's epic re-imagining of the Chung Kuo, the fifth novel in the 20 book series and things are starting to really heat up. It's five years after the events depicted in Ice and Fire and the story picks up in the summer of 2206. The Dispersionists who have vehementl...

The Augmented Agent is a collection of science fiction short stories by Jack Vance. Jack Vance:I read the intro and.....Basically it was a campaign for Vance heroes as regular fellas running around and doing incredible things to the environment they are written into with wits and brains rarely emplo...

The genuine autobiography of one of the bravest, most dashing and heroic starship captains to ever bodly-go into the depths of space. You may be pleased to know that this Kirk is the real one, not the imposter who has more recently been seen in the latest films. This Kirk doesn't get command of the...

"Originally written 24th July 2008, expanded 2026" The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories is a collection of eleven Isaac Asimov short stories and a poem, first published by Doubleday in 1976 to coincide with the United States Bicentennial year, and the title is not accidental. Asimov had been commi...

Seen as how BOB has been hanging around the website for some time now (he's the robot at the top left) I thought it was about time that I reviewed The Black Hole, the book (and film) that features BOB. The book is a direct novelisation of the 1979 Disney film of the same name, written by Alan Dean F...

The Boat of a Million Years is a science fiction novel by Poul William Anderson. Starting in the year 310BC and taking us beyond our present day, The Boat of a Million Years takes on one of Poul Anderson's favourite topics, namely longevity. Most of the book follows Hanno as he lives through a coupl...

The Bohr Maker is a science fiction novel by the writer Linda Nagata. This is the first book that I have read by Linda Nagata and I'm not quite sure what I feel about it. The basis for the book is interesting enough - it takes place in a world where nanomachines, bio-engineering and neural computer...

Gene Wolfe is perhaps one of the most under-rated and criminally overlooked writers in genre fiction. The New Yorker recently called him Sci-Fi's Difficult Genius . Authors Michael Swanwick and Patrick O'Leary have gone so far as to say he is: The best writer alive today. Ursula K LeGuin is frequent...

Before his early retirement Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland (Ida) has one last duty to perform, overseeing the decommissioning of a partly deserted research post which orbits a toxic star right on the edge of Fleetspace. When Ida arrives on board the U-Star Coast City he finds the station missing th...

The Cassini Division the third volume in the Fall Revolution series which began with the Star Fraction, written by Ken Mcleod. My second read by Ken MacLeod (how do you pronounce that?). Humanity has come a long way since the Star Fraction and the struggles of Moh Kohn. Humanity has split into a pos...

The concluding part to the adventures of Jean Le Flambeur, The Causal Angel is a little confusing in its listing on various websites. Despite some titles to the contrary it is part three of the trilogy; where The Fractal Prince is part two and The Quantum Thief is part one. Admirers of Rajaniemi wil...

The Caves of Steel is a classic science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov and could be considered the first in the Robot series. It has been about twenty years since I read this book first and ten years since I read it last. I've grown older and hopefully wiser since then and The Caves of Steel is creep...

The Chapters Due is the sixth novel in the Ultramarines series and the third in the Ultramarines Omnibus II, which also includes several additional short stories and even a nice graphic short. Once again we follow Captain Uriel Ventris as the Chapter goes up against their ultimate nemesis, the bruta...

The City and The Stars is a science fiction novel by Arthur C Clarke. This little story has a rather nice premise: After decades of exploring space and it's many wonders, The Intruders force Humanity to retreat into an enclosed city on Earth that is totally self-sufficient. Humans have lived in this...

The 15th April 2012 marks a century after the RMS Titanic (operated by the White Star Line) sank after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. 1517 people died in those freezing waters. It's as much a lesson in human arrogance as it is in maritime disasters (...

The Corridors of time is a science fiction novel by the author Poul Anderson. Reading almost exclusively in english, very few of the stories that I read take place in my home country of Denmark, in fact I think that this is the first one, that I've read, which takes place mostly in Denmark. Well, ex...

Defeatism. Fatalism. These are universal, recurrent maladies that everyone experiences at points throughout their lives. Even if one moves forward - how do we find meaning in such a vast, uncaring universe? Only here, the universe isn’t uncaring, it’s quite pointedly predatory. These are the central...

It's the 23rd Century and Earth is changed forever following the arrival in Darwin, Australia of the alien "builder" technology that provides a "tether" out into space; humanity finally has a space elevator. No-one knows why, or even if these elusive aliens will return. Some time later the planet is...

The Darwinian Extension: Completion is the third volume in the The Darwinian Extension trilogy, written by Hylton H Smith. Over twenty years have passed since the Red planet was first colonised and contact was made with an alien intelligence. Much has changed in this time, Mars now has a thin, breat...

The Demolished Man was the first ever novel to win a Hugo award for "Best Novel" in 1953. As with much of Alfred Bester's works, it remains an understated classic. The novel is set in the 24th Century with a society who can no longer hide their crimes following the rise of police telepaths (known as...

The Diamond Age is a speculative fiction novel by the award winning author Neal Stephenson. Where the core technologies of matter compilers and nanotechnology of this book is quite interesting and where Stephensons portrayal of a future based on nanotechnology is one of the best, that I've ever read...

The Drowned World is J.G. Ballards first novel. It's written more than twenty years before he writes his, probably, best known novel The Empire of The Sun. Ballard actually wrote about 10 SF novels (and countless shorts) before he writes Empire of the Sun, and if you enjoyed Empire of the Sun and yo...

The Duke of Uranium is the first volume in the Jak Jinnaka series by the American author John Barnes. The Duke of Uranium introduces Jak Jinnaka. Jak is Barnes try at an arse-kicking, undercover agent for the thirty-sixth century. Somebody who can compete with Miles Vorkosigan, The Stainless Steel R...

The legendary Grey Knights are all that stand between mankind and the horrors of chaos. Secret Guardians who journey into the very realms of the warp and beyond in pursuit of the enemy; to most they and their foes are nothing more than myth and legend, those are the lucky ones. The fortress of Titan...

The Everlasting Beyond of Eternal Happiness reminds me quite a bit of Harry Harrisons "Bill, The Galactic Hero" series, which itself is in part a parody of Heinlein's Starship Troopers - there is a very similar irony running throughout and the book even shares some of the same vernacular. There are...

The Fall of Hyperion is the follow up novel to Hyperian (winner of the Hugo award) by Dan Simmons. I've been putting of writing this review for the last few days, hoping that time would make it easier for me to write it. Unfortunately I don't find it any easier to write now – but I'll try, giving up...

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 Forever War is the Hugo and Nebula award winning military science fiction novel by Joe Haldeman. Originally written in 1974, the novel begins in the relative future of 1997 where thanks to the discovery of the collapsars - wormhole type gates that allow faster than light travel between the stars...

The Fountains of Paradise was originally intended to be Arthur C Clarkes last novel and this is clearly reflected within both the backdrop - a fictional version of his home of Sri Lanka called Taprobane - and the narrative structure itself which feels very personal, much more so than any other of hi...

The Fractal Prince is the follow-up to the hit début novel The Quantum Thief that was released to a great deal of acclaim last year. Like the Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince follows two distinct threads, which while written in a vividly descriptive and disarming style offers a vision that is so di...

In the future world of "A Girl in the Road" global power has shifted and a revolution blows with the easterly wind. It's a future where the technology so long held in the west meets the culture of the east. Into this maelstrom of technology walks Meena, a complicated girl in a complicated world who...

The Houses of Iszm is a science fiction novel by Jack Vance. HOUSES OF ISZM-Jack Vance. The Iszic have been growing some wicked pod homes with security, pipes, and furniture included for 200,000 years. The secret and origin of growing these homes are very guarded because this is what keeps the plane...

Over a 100 years have passed since the annihilative events of 2045 and the world is a very different place. With the earths climate raging out of control and ice spread across much of the globe humanity is forced to survive in nomadic pockets around the narrow band of the "Temperate Zone" near the e...

The year is 2175 and the Earth is a very different place with radiation from the long depleted ozone layer now reaching dangerous levels. A co-operation exists between the previously warring factions of humanity and their creation - the Cyborgs. An unexpected find on one of Jupiter's moons leads to...

The Killing Ground is the first novel in the newly released second Ultramarines Omnibus, which also includes several additional short stories and even a nice graphic short. The story see's the Two Ultramarines Pasanius Lysane and Uriel Ventris escaping from the Eye of Terror after the events of Dead...

The Last Underclass is a science fiction novel by Dean Warren. A hundred and fifty years in the future, the world has polarized in to winners and losers, has and has-nots, in this book they are called Welfies and Achievers. Ghetto born and raised Quiet is a Welfie to the core. Trying to raise money...

And so we come at last to the final volume in the remarkable journey that is The Long Earth . It also happens to be the swansong of that singular author Sir Terry Pratchett. And what a finale it is. The Long Cosmos lives up to the promise the authors have been building with this series, it is quite...

Anyone who has been following the Long Earth series will be eagerly awaiting this fourth and penultimate novel in Stephen Baxter's and Terry Pratchett's series. The Long Mars was the strongest novel in the series so far and so The Long Utopia has a lot to live up to. The Long Utopia is set some time...

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was originally funded as a small kickstarter project and self-published as a result. It was such a hit that it found a big publisher, got nominated for a ton of awards and has been raved about by many, many people. What struck me in particular wasn't just what ev...

The Middle Kingdom, the third volume in David Wingrove's re-imagined epic Chung Kuo series see's the Earth covered in continent spanning, mile high city of Ice; ruled by the seven T’ang, the Kings of China. A century of peace is shattered when the Minister of the Edict is assassinated and the seven...

Written in 1966 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has been critically acclaimed and is often considered as one of Heinlein's finest works, winning the prestigious Hugo award and also becoming a part of the original SF Masterworks collection. It's only the third Heinlein novel I have read after Stranger i...

The Mote In God's Eye is a classic science fiction novel by Larry Niven with Jerry Pournelle. I not sure how I have managed to put off reading this classic for so long - but better late than never. The Mote takes place in 3017 when the human empire makes its first contact with an alien species. Two...

It is a time of legends, the entire galaxy is one mighty battleground which see the indomitable space marines locked in a bitter civil war, divided by the heresy of Horus. Some chapters remain loyal to humanities greatest leader; the Emperor, while others have chosen the chaos tainted promises of th...

The Proteus Operation is a science fiction novel by James P Hogan. Once upon a time in the late 21st century, everything was just a-okay and everybody where happy. Utopia had been reached. Well, except for a couple of malcontents who where rather bored with all this be-good-to-thy-neighbour and nobo...

Towards the end of the 21st Century Earth appears as a very different place, a post-singularity existence and a fractured future of a billion earthbound souls, preserved at the bottom of a gravity well. Huw is a technophobe and somewhat of a misanthropist - a natural selection for the Tech Jury Serv...

The Reality Dysfunction is the first volume in the Nights Dawn Trilogy by Peter Hamilton. In the far future, humanity has divided along a single major line. The Edenists are genetically engineered space-dwellers with telepathic affinity to their biotechnological homes and ships. Adamists are effecti...

Strange arches are appearing all over the world and the brother of failed artist Ed disappears through one that suddenly jumps into being at the bottom of a London Escalator. With no visible way back Ed must put aside his differences with his brother's wife and go find him. Four hundred years into t...

Not to be confused with the A589 (which is the road to Morecambe) or that very depressing Cormac McCarthy novel, The Road to Hell* (now known as Out of Time) is indeed paved with good vibrations intentions, in this case that road involves a future that uses a limited form of time travel. During the...

The Shores of Tomorrow is the third volume in the Chronicles of Solace series by Roger MacBride Allen. In the far distant future, mankind has learned, thanks to Oskar DeSilvo, how to terraform planets. Once that operation was complete, humanity would colonize that world but what few people know is t...

Reviewed by Philip Graham. Kurt Vonnegut was, until recently, my personal Leo Tolstoy. By that I mean that I knew his name, I knew he was a famed author, and I knew that I really should have read more, or even some, of his work. So finally I went out and got "The Sirens of Titan". I chose this book...

The Sky Road is the fourth volume in the Fall Revolution Series by Ken Mcleod. Expectations are a funny thing. It has been nearly ten months since I read the first three books by MacLeod and loved them, and now I that I've read his fourth book I'm unsure as to the reason as to why I'm disappointed w...

The Song of the Swan II is the sequel to The Song of the Swan by Arthur D'Alembert. This Part II is a direct continuation of the first Song of the Swan even if it takes place fifty years later. As that it's kind of uninteresting if you haven't read the first part, but then again it's interesting to...

I've said a number of times now that Adam Roberts is a gifted author and this is increasingly evident with each new book he writes. His work overflows with ideas and at the same time he seems to delight in using different structures, to experiment in forming his narrative. This time he's turned his...

Far in the future the humans of Earth have spread to the stars, but at great cost to Earths fragile ecosystem. For a world that is largely concrete and plastic, wood has more value than gold and the Terrans waste no time in establishing a logging colony and military base named "New Tahiti" on an idy...

The World Inside is a science fiction novel by Robert Silverberg. Silverberg's "THE WORLD INSIDE" is about the giant apartment communistic/yet caste ridden complex (the floors are divided up according to job 'importance), and thought this is the straight bullet shot to the future. Population goes fl...

I must admit that one of the reasons I picked up this novel is that it has my surname on it, the other being that it is of course Philip K Dick who still rates as one of my favourite authors. Written back in 1956 The World Jones Made is one of the authors very early novels and tells the story of Flo...

The World of Ptavvs is a classic science fiction novel by Larry Niven. A good old idea book from the good old days when a book didn't have to be 500+ pages – not that I don't like thick books, but once in a while it's nice to read something that you can actually see an end to. Ptavvs (how do you pro...

Andy Remic has managed to carve out his own particular niche within the science fiction genre, deliberately pushing the boundaries and not holding back in the slightest. Finding a new Remic book is very much like finding a new Tarrantino film - you just know it's going to be an irresistible action p...

This Alien Shore is sort of a corporate mystery novel set in the far future, written by C S Friedman. The reader knows about as much of what is going on as the main character. She learns something new, you learn something new. Despite not having any big fire-works ending, this book is good. Very goo...

A journey into the past that can never be repeated, travelling from 2070 AD all the way back to 12000 BC; a chance for the four passengers of the "time ship" to study the primitive man as no-one could ever do before or will be able to since. None were prepared for what they would discover, or indeed...

Timelike Infinity is a science fiction novel by Stephen Baxter. Having read Baxter's The Timeships I had quite high expectations for this book, maybe too high, because I found Timelike Infinity to be rather disappointing. In the first two thirds of the book nothing really happens and when I finally...

To Live Again is a science fiction novel by Robert Silverberg. Recently i finished a silverberg book where about 10% of the population can be "reincarnated" sort of. their personas are imprinted onto another person's brain (IF they've got the cash), so in a way they get "To Live Again"...as the book...

Transitor is a hard science fiction novel and the debut of David Sharrock. The Human race have spread out across the Galaxy by the means of the iNet transportation network - a vast sprawling system that allows Galactic travel by means of a subethernet. Controlling this mindbendingly complicated syst...

Tritcheon Hash is a science fiction novel by Sue Lange. The first thought that popped into my head after having read a couple of pages of T. Hash was; “What? Lesbian Science Fiction?”. After at few chapters it's clear that it isn't and after having finished it, I'm not even sure that it qualifies as...

Death, the final frontier, the one inescapable and inevitable fact of that we call life, or is it? What if even after you died you could come back for a limited time and in some limited form to once again see your loved ones and experience the linear existence we so often take for granted. In the vi...

Buying Bank's Use of Weapons was a long shot - a friend had recommended the danish translation of Player of Games, but the (American) bookstore where I mail order most of my books didn't have PoG stocked, so I decided to try another Banks book (I have been wanting to read something by him, for quite...

Award winning novelist and academic Gwyneth Jones asserts that ‘a typical science fiction novel has little space for deep and studied characterisation, not because writers lack the skill (though they may) but because in the final analysis the characters are not people, they are pieces of equipment.’...

Vast is a science fiction novel by Linda Nagata. Taking off where Deception Well ends, this book tells the story of Lot and friends as they fly around in the good ship Null Boundary. They are of to find the truth about the Chenzeme, the strange robot starcrafts/alien race that is trying to destroy h...

Three hundred years in the future and the world is a vastly different place with humanity fighting a seemingly endless war against an implacable alien enemy. The planet is in constant danger from alien infiltrators and religious hackers while orbital elevators allow easy access to space, a huge conv...

The Night Lords are being relentlessly hunted by the Eldar of the Craftworld Ulthwé, fleeing to the dark fringes of the Imperium in an attempt to escape their pursuers. The fickle hand of fate delivers them to the carrion world of Tsagualsa, a world where their Primarch died and the legion broken. H...

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is a Hugo award winning post-apocalyptic tale of human cloning. For the Sumner family the recent droughts, floods, blighted crops, pandemic plagues and rising sterility all point to the demise of the human race. Their isolated farm in the Appalachian Mountains provide...

While the Gods Sleep is a science fiction novel of a dystopian future, written by Johnny Fincham, a futurologist and distinguished palmist. Not too far in the future, there is a cataclysmic event that turns nature against humanity. The air becomes poisonous, plants die and virulent strains of super...

This Frank Herbert fella wrote the book Dune which was a semi sleeper for me as it walked around this barren planet with some aristocracy stuff going on, got to try to read it again maybe I'm missing something? This other "WHIPPING STAR" is swell though. Frank's little obtuse and abstract words and...

Every so often there comes along a book that manages to make you go wow , one that stands out as a book that is destined to become a classic. Last year Osama was such a book; this year Wolfhound Century takes that honour. Set in an alternate Russia the novel tells the tale of Investigator Vissarion...

I missed out commenting about this novel when it was first released. There was such a rush by everyone to say how great it was I felt that I would be adding but a small ripple to a raging Tsunami. Everyone from the big papers to the big authors have commented how magnificent the book is, and they ar...

I was quite unprepared for Mechanical Failure . While the blurb mentions it as a "sarcastic adventure", such a description doesn't do justice. Set in the far future after Humanity has spread to the stars and now live in a different Galaxy, mankind has managed to endure Two Hundred years (and countin...

Alastair Reynolds has the kind of scientific imagination that few can match, his stories often explored on a grand scale. While the Universe in Revenger is certainly grand and gloriously imagined, the story itself it much more personal. The far future Galaxy of Revenger has seen vast Empires rise an...

What if our day to day behaviour was recorded, analysed and mapped to create a copy of us in a  digital utopia? How would this new reality transact with our own where people need to be born and grow up before they can be absorbed? What would the consequences be for those left behind? Migration tells...

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...

It's funny how life seems to throw co-incidences at you. Until recently I'd never given the small island of Gibraltar any real thought. Then the company I work for expanded their services there which meant I needed to learn about this unusual British overseas territory. A few weeks later the monumen...

Apocalyptic fiction has been growing in popularity for years, with most stories following some big cataclysmic event such as a zombie uprising, sweeping plague, nuclear war or the rise of artificial intelligence. Recently though novels have started to appear that seem much closer to reality, some of...

It's great to see Philip K Dick stories continue to be explored and consumed in different forms of media. His writing still popular long after his death. For those who aren't aware, the UK TV station Channel 4 (Broadcast in the US via Amazon Video) has started a new 10 part anthology series called E...

Aurora Rising is a stand-alone novel written within the authors Revelation Space universe, set before other novels and before the cataclysmic event of the Melding Plague. It's worth noting that Aurora Rising was published in 2007 as The Prefect . Reynolds fan's who are looking for a new book will ne...

Elysium Fire is the sequel to Aurora Rising (also known as The Prefect), set in Reynold's Revelation Space universe but before events of his previous novels. Like Aurora Rising, it can be read as a stand-alone novel. It's the 25th century (with no Buck Rogers in sight) and humanity has, in many ways...

An interstellar expedition, tracing an anomalous signal back to its origin. Three men on board a ship called the Fargo , all returning dead, two hundred years later, but with the cargo hold full of an unknown mineral that makes the fortune of the company that sent them into the unknown. Twenty-five...

I've always said that Hutchinson is an under-appreciated author. His Europe series not only being an accomplished trilogy, but also somewhat prophetic given the UK's current realtionship with the EU. Acadie is a step away from his near-future,alternative fiction series, instead set in the far-future...

Mike French returns to the world of An Android Awakes with this initially more conventionally presented sequel. Fictional Alignment is not the same animal as its predecessor – an oversized picture story book anthology of the attempts of Android PD121928 to create fiction that can be accepted by its...

Daughters of the Forgotten Light is set in a deep space penal colony called Oubliette. Floating in space, it's home to the most savage criminals and other members of the population Earth no longer wants. To survive on Oubiette you need to join a gang and Lena "Horror" Horowitz leads the Daughters of...

As I write this, the fifth book and first full-length novel in the Murderbot diaries , Network Effect , has won the Hugo award 2021 for best novel, already having won the Nebula and Locus . The series itself has also won the 2021 Hugo for best series. I guess I have some catching up to do. All Syste...

The Tourist (not to be confused with the book and film of the same name by Olen Steinhauer) is a story of time travel, imagining a future where people can take holidays to the past and experience the genuine 21st century in all it's glory. There are three main tour operators offering holidays to the...

By the pricking of her thumb follows on from The Real Time Murders published last year, but can be read as a stand-alone novel. Set in a future where almost everyone spends all their time in a virtual world, private investigator Alma is caught up in another impossible murder. She has been asked to i...

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 Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation...

Corax Lord of Shadows is the tenth book in the pre-Horus Heresy Primarch series, featuring the leader of the Raven Guard. Set During the great Crusade, the immense void-cities of the Carinae must be brought under the control of the Imperium. Corax joins his Legion with an Imperial War Host to being...

So this is it, the 54th and final book in the Horus Heresy series. But before you despair, it isn't the end of the story and the mad Titan Horus is only just knocking on the doors of Terra. The final battle will be played out over a series of novels called the Siege of Terra , presumably ending with...

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 to av...

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 Discovery half the tim...

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 betwe...

Illustration ©Grahame Baker-Smith from The Folio Society edition of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells The work of H. G. Wells is both seminal and formative to our current interest in Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy. The collection of these two novellas in one volume is a common publication format....

The 53rd and penultimate book in the epic Horus Heresy  series and the brave soldiers of the Emperor attempt to hold back the armies of chaos from reaching Terra. The line is drawn on Beta-Garmon and god-machines of the Adeptus Titanicus are at the front. Horus has defeated all that have stood befor...

One of the many hats I wear is that of a professional software engineer. As a junior professional software engineer, I experienced acute imposter syndrome. It didn’t help that I was surrounded by people who had been engineering software for years, even decades, longer than I had. I resolved my pligh...

What is  religion? Most of us aren’t used to contemplating that question too hard. The answer seems self-evident. In the world around us now, we have Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as the big three monotheistic religions. India and East Asia provide numerous examples of the polytheistic variety. I...

Haimey is the engineer aboard the Singer, an interstellar salvage vessel named after its shipboard Intelligence. Haimey is genetically modified for zero-G, and she has brain-enhancing implants that connect her to the rest of the crew and chemically manage her emotional state. Haimey, Singer, and the...

A change of pace and approach from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Cage of Souls is a first-person past narrative, presented as a journal. This is a collection of writings from Stefan Advani, the chronicler of the last days of the last city of humankind – Shadrapar. Our story begins with Stefan being brought to...

A Hopeful Future Review kindly provided by Vanessa Smyth.  Welcome to the third and latest instalment in The Wayfarers series, Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers. This current narrative is set within the same captivating universe as the first two books and, despite a few oblique character l...

Many stories end abruptly with our heroes achieving their goal. The girl marries the Prince, the good guys win the fight. We all know that in real life stories don’t actually end, they carry on regardless whether you got married or now sport a medal. At the end of The Return of the Jedi you would be...

This debut novel from Ada Hoffman comes on the back of a strong catalogue of short story success in Uncanny, Asimov’s and other well-known SF magazines. Onboard the space station, Pride of Jai, autistic scientist Yasira Shien leads a huge science and engineering project in power generation through a...

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 futuristic. A worl...

In Stephen Baxter's collaboration with the late Terry Pratchett, he imagined that there were a limitless number of parallel dimensions just a small step away, each with a slightly different version of Earth (although none others of which contained indigenous humans). In his latest novel, World Engin...

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 wouldn't make as m...

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 far...

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 Emperor of Dune (1981), He...

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 spee...

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 needed to power Ea...

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 jobs  now , but how lo ng until...

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...

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, there  must  be moments when...

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 afternoon. That is unless you a...

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 (translated from Span...

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 huge c...

Growing up my group of friends was obsessed with America and  all wanted to move there. They had all been taken in by the glossy American films and TV shows that suggested that even if you were  unemployed, you would own a swanky loft apartment. I had relatives who live there and was far more aware...

Over the next three days, three reviews will stand before you. Read them in any order, some elements will be the same, others quite different. If you would like to go straight to the segment unique to this review, please start with paragraph 4. Drafting a book must be like standing in front of a ser...

The genre of Science Fiction has always been a wide one in terms of ideas. You can set a book on our own Earth with only one or two tweaks to the norm. This Speculative Fiction is Sci Fi, but so are the Space Op eras that span eons and are inhabited by alien races. Although the nature of Sci Fi can...

The Force is a concept that underpins the Star Wars Universe, but it is good or bad? The entire point is that it is both. There is a Light Side and a Dark Side, and these two opposing elements must be in balance. During the Star Wars films, the Dark Side is on its uppers and therefore we follow a ba...

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 fiction book that explor...

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...

If I lived in a Star Trek universe I would always travel by shuttlecraft and refuse to use the transporter. I am just uneasy with the idea of being split into atoms and reformed elsewhere. I am, for all intents and purposes, the same person, with the same memories, but am I? Is it not true that one...

Throughout history many have searched for ways to live longer, from healthy eating and exercise to eliminating illness and seeking an elixir of life. I think it’s fair to say it’s a common goal to extend our lifespan. What would you say if I told you there was a substance that, if ingested regularly...

I have a love hate relationship with time travel stories. I love the mind-bending physics and puzzles that they create but hate the fact that most of them just could not work. How can people from the past learn what they need to from those in the future if they have not lived their own futures yet?...

I adore science fiction, but it also frustrates me. I consider myself reasonably well read and clever enough to cope with most books, but occasionally a science fiction book comes along that I just cannot get my head around. Momenticon by Andrew Caldecott is a Bizzaro take on a dystopian future that...

When we colonise space, I hope that we send out the brightest and the best. These people will represent the absolute best that humanity has to offer, but what happens if the journey is a long one? The bright young things are not going to live to see the destination in 150 years, but their great-grea...

The concept of humankind travelling to other planets to colonise has been a staple of science fiction for decades and as the world in which we inhabit becomes increasingly tricky for humans to live on, the novels are set to keep on rolling. Some are action pieces, some concentrate on the colonists t...

Time travel is fascinating, it is also some of the most fictional science fiction you will ever get. What has happened must have happened, lest you rip apart your universe in a paradox. The scientists in A. G. Riddle’s Lost in Time seem to have found a workaround as they send the worst criminals int...

Humanity is a parasite sucking the recourses from the Earth until there are no more. Like a remora attached to the undercarriage of a shark, humans will one day need find a new host. The alternative is to change our ways, but that does not seem likely. Titan Hoppers by Rob J Hayes follows a flotilla...

Science Fiction writers love a dystopia, there are so many ways that it could all go wrong. Overpopulation is one. It not a pleasant thing to think about, but we already use too many of the world’s finite resources and as the population grows, this is going to get even worse. In The Nursery by Roark...

Science fiction is a brilliant tool for pondering what happens after the inevitable fall of humans. There is only so long that the Earth can sustain us, but that does not mean that other civilisations may not develop after. Beyond the Burn Line by Paul McAuley is a Sci Fi mystery told from the persp...

I read and listen to books in all formats, but still prefer the feel of paper in my hand. Audiobooks are great for the commute, but they are just not pacy enough for me, I read quickly, and a narrator often seems to go in slow motion even at 1.5 speed. 2000AD and Penguin Audio must know my brain as...

When the apocalypse happens, science fiction has taught us that some of us will run below and others will be left on the surface. Pick a side. Down below could be a Fallout or Wool situation, better than being on the surface, dead or a mutant. Up above could be The Time Machine or Mary Baader Kaley’...

Science Fiction is one of the best genres because you can explore subjects via a prism of the future. Writing a book about how we treat others does not have to be told via a historic story, or the present, you can look far to the future and draw parallels between that world and ours. What would happ...

Science Fiction has been inspired by religion ever since it started being written, Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus even has the Greek Gods in the title. The word science may be in the title of the genre, but it is also a genre about wonder, about questioning the things around us. Science fiction a...

It can be hard for the casual Doctor Who viewer to see the character as alien. They may have two hearts, regenerate once in a while, but fundamentally the Doctor looks human. It does not help that they are obsessed with human culture and like to hang around on Earth a lot (cheap sets). But fundament...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

After a string of novellas that were, frankly, brilliant, the fifth book and first full-size novel in The Murderbot Diaries , Network Effect stormed the science fiction scene when it was released, winning the holy trinity of Hugo , Locus and Nebula awards for best novel. As I write this the first (i...

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...

Subgenres come and go and one that I have recently been enjoying is ‘Cosy Fantasy,’ what does that mean? Basically, fantasy with some of the trepidation taken out, a chance to get to know the characters and enjoy a fantasy setting in peace. Riley August’s The Last Gifts of the Universe opens my worl...

Over the years Star Wars has become a complicated beast, even the first film was a Space Opera that had a lot going on. Throw in various timelines and you have an epic on your hands, but some of the simpler stories are the ones that work the best. The Acolyte was series that expanded on The High Rep...

Unto Leviathan was originally released back in 2001, under the title Ship of fools , winning the Philip K Dick award in the process. It's since been re-released by Orbit under the current title. The generational ship Aragonos  travels the galaxy, looking for signs of life and a possible place to cal...

There was a time in my life that I would sit down and read some Dystopian Fiction and not consider at all that it would happen in my lifetime, but all I need to do is some doomscrolling on my social medias to think that elements of Carl Wilhoyte’s Ultimart may not be long in our future. This is a bo...

We all come of age at some point in our lives. If we are lucky enough this will be as part of a loving household and we come out of it not too messed up, but not everyone is lucky. In the real world it can be tough enough, but take this dysfunction and place it is space, things can get real bad. Haz...

Starting a new book can always be daunting, but I have a special trepidation for short story collections. They can be vast, full of stories that are loosely linked. Trying to find themes and remember all the stories can feel impossible when considering a review. However, you sometimes get a more cur...

As more novels are written within the Star Wars Universe, I start to realise that I am drawn increasingly towards the wider Universe and not the core Skywalker saga. On TV, The Mandalorian, and in the book world the stories I have enjoyed most were adapted from a Star Wars comic, and one even based...