Books tagged with: female protagonist

Against A Dark Background is a novel by the noted author of science fiction Iain M Banks. Yes, more Banks - Since Crow Road and Use Of Weapons he has definetly become one of my favorite authors. Against a Dark Background is Science Fiction at its best. Suspence, love, action and high-tech gadgets ar...

WOW! I have not said that in a while and this reviewer surely did not expect that word to come from Alan Dean Foster’s 247-page novelization of Alien 3. Like so many—like millions— who were disappointed with David Fincher’s 1993 film, I did not expect Foster’s novel to change my mind about the “orig...

I've always loved the Aliens films (well at least the first two), both films work for very different reasons. The first was totally ground breaking with it's unique style, examination of claustrophobia, fear - the combination of science fiction and horror that combined with some exceptional music, d...

Novelizations of movies are often jutted to the back of the bookshelf after one reading. Reviewers are critical, normally arguing that it is just an attempt to make money off a popular film franchise, and at times they do so justly. Yet, some novelizations often tell the story in a way film simply c...

Steve Perry recruits his daughter, writer Stephani Perry, to conclude a separate storyline to one of the best SciFi franchises of all time. Filled with plenty of Xenomorph-action and a conclusion that no one would guess, Aliens: The Female War rocks hard and entertains like a champ! Now joined by El...

Ancillary Justice has won more awards this year than any book before it. Not only that but the awards it has won are most of the major ones in science fiction. The Hugo, the Nebula, the BSFA, the Arthur C Clarke and the Locus award (for first novel). It's clear to see that the science fiction genre...

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...

Contact is the first I have read by Carl Sagan and (shame on me) I don't know anything about him, so I do a search on his name on the web and it takes me about two minutes to find that he has just died, this December (1996)! I find myself in a very strange situation, thanks to the free flow of infor...

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...

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...

Elite: Mostly Harmless is the second Elite: Dangerous tie-in novel reviewed here on SFBook. Catch up with that first review and a bit about Elite here: Elite: Lave Revolution . Written by Kate Russell, Elite: Mostly Harmless follows Commander Angel Rose who is forced into a life of crime. She is det...

Dan Abnett and Nik Vincent have come together to tell a tale of a future that feels and sounds not like what one would envision, resembling more our distant past then our near future. Many readers will know of Dan Abnett and his prolific work with Marvel, Abaddon, Games Workshop, and his most succes...

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...

A title that gives a hint as to what we might expect, but ruins no surprises at all, Gemini Gambit by D. Scott Johnson is an intriguing story of the near future, immerses us in a world a generation or two further on from our own. Elite hacker ‘Angel Rage’ – whose real name is Kim Trayne has retired,...

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...

Nobody knows her name, not even her. Thus, she's called Mendoza. She's the latest operative to be recruited away from horrible circumstances (in Mendoza's case, she was imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition) to serve Dr. Zeus Incorporated in its eternal quest to make money and preserve some semblanc...

In Insurgent, we rejoin Tris Prior as she and the friends and family she has left run to Amity (the kindness faction). Throughout the novel, she must continue trying to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love. War looms as...

The arrival of the Jagannath changed everything. Humanity did not have time to reflect on the fact that they were not alone in the Universe. This amorphous blob appears unstoppable, simply absorbing everyone in it's path and assimilating their identity and intellect. Growing stronger and smarter as...

Mars Plus is the sequel to the science fiction classic Man Plus, by Frederik Pohl. Long awaited follow-up to the excellent novel Man Plus, takes place forty years after Man Plus - Mars has been settled, not only with Cyborgs (read the review of Man Plus), but also with normal people and everything i...

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...

Moving Mars is a science fiction novel by the award winning author Greg Bear. I nearly stopped reading this book around page fifty. Seldom had I been so bored and seldom had I felt so little sympathy for a lead character. Seldom have I been so happy that I hang on to it, but more about that later. M...

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"...

Oxygen is the first novel in a Christian science fiction series written by John B Olson and co-Written with Randall Ingermanson. This is a review by the previous owner of SFBook.com - TC. What intrigued me about Oxygen was the fact that it was labelled as "Christian science fiction" - never having m...

Podkayne of Mars is a science fiction novel by the legendary author Robert A Heinlein. One of the good old stories from the golden age of SF. One that I for some strange reason hadn't read before. I've always had strange feelings about Heinlein - I love most of his stories, but almost all of them le...

Silverhair is a science fiction novel by the award winning author Stephen Baxter. This book is very quirky in that it forces us to see from a new perspective. For anyone who's ever read Raptor Red the concept of this book will most likely be familiar. Baxter has decided to craft a story centering ar...

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,...

Spirit's Destiny follows the path of one Ella Bland, who having just finished a degree is looking forward to living on earth (a right for attending 4 years of university). The very last thing she ever expected was to become embroiled in an ancient, bloody and quite secret war between a genocidal art...

Sunrise Alley is a science fiction novel by the author Catherine Asaro. By 2033, biomech research scientist Samantha Bryton tasted success with the development of "forma" androids, but has fled to Northern California to reconsider her values as the wealth and fame she has accrued feels wrong. A badl...

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...

Tech Heaven is a science fiction novel by Linda Nagata. This is Linda Nagata's second book and is in a lot of ways, a lot better than her first (The Bohr Maker(TBM)). It's easier to read, it has a better flow and it also has a lot more to say. At the same time I think that it has lost something when...

Terra is a very different novel. It doesn't take itself too seriously and on the surface appears very light-hearted, a safe novel with prose full of soft curves rather than sharp edges. This is after all a young-adult novel and yet there is much more to this book than meets the eye. The story follow...

Bees are quite complicated little creatures and most of us know very little about them. Those that practice apiculture are becoming worth their weight in gold (or bees). We've been collecting their honey for over 15,000 years and we are just beginning to understand just how important to our survival...

The Big Time won the coveted Hugo award for best novel in 1958 - the fourth novel to win such award; a science fiction story written by an author best known for his fantasy stories. It's unique in style and form, reading as much as a play as it does a novel. This feeling is re-enforced by the fact t...

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...

The Business is a science fiction novel by the acclaimed British author Iain M Banks. Thinking that it maybe was about time for something not so spectacular, I grabbed this book by Iain Not-M Banks while I was at the bookstore (getting The Naked God). Good thing. Even with it's high finance setting...

The Carhullan Army is a dystopian science fiction novel set in an around the cumbrian fells, written by Sarah Hall. With much of Britain underwater due to a biblical level of flooding, the surviving population exist in concentrated pockets and ruled by the rather sinister sounding "Authority". While...

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...

Douglas Richards has a wonderful way of injecting science fiction elements into a thriller style plot without upsetting the balance and comparisons to the late Michael Crichton are inevitable. If anyone was to compare authors it would also be fair to say that Richards is a worthy successor to Cricht...

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...

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 Miracle Inspector is a science fiction novel by Helen Smith. England is now a partitioned country with the capital an oppressive place where poetry has been banned, schools are shut and women no longer allowed to work outside of the home. Lucas and Angela decide to try and escape the confining r...

In a future where fossil fuels have dried up, global warming has decimated ecosystems, and governments are culling populations, Antonia Honeywell’s debut sees teenager Lalla escape the ruins of London to live on her father's utopian Ship with 500 others keen to enjoy a 'happy death'. Their destinati...

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 Venom of Vipers is a science fiction novel by KC May. A supervirus is threatening to wipe out the human race and the only hope may be a human hybrid created by scientists, treated as sub human, locked away and hated. When a brilliant young scientist learns of this secret she must not only fight...

The Windup Girl is the award winning dystopian vision by Paolo Bacigalupi. Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's calorie representative in Thailand. Under cover as a factory worker he combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs long thought to be extinct. There he meets the Windup Gir...

The Year of the Flood is the second novel in Margaret Atwood's post-apocalyptic series and follows the viewpoints of Toby and Ren, members of a religious cult. The book tells the story of some of the events leading up to the cataclysm mentioned in the previous novel Oryx and Crake and there is a goo...

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...

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...

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.’...

Watch is the sequel to the acclaimed novel "Wake" (nominated for a Hugo award in 2010) and is the second volume in the WWW series by the award winning author Robert J Sawyer. Catlin Decter is a gifted 15 year old blind girl who is given the gift of sight for the first time in her life through the gr...

Noomi Rapier is a rookie investigator with the Transdimensional Authority, a force who police the travel between dimensions. When Noomi and her partner "Crash" Chumley find a dead body slumped over an altered transdimensional machine in one of the many dimensions they patrol, they must discover not...

In the very near future the Internet has given birth to a sentient, artificial being. "Webmind" could be seen as a post-human event that could benefit the whole of humanity but some of the World's governments don't share that optimism and see this new digital life as an enemy of mankind, fearing tha...

I was a big fan of the X-Files series in it's earlier days, although towards the later end of the show running I got fed up with hundreds of new questions rising without any real answers to the many others. I understand from a perspective of belief this makes perfect sense but it is also damn annoyi...

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...

‘We all just want to be people, and none of us know what that really means.’ Jeff VandeMeer’s Rachel summarises the theme of his latest book best. The author’s first novel since his acclaimed Southern Reach Trilogy, Van de Meer’s Borne is a surreal piece of work that examines the idea of identity in...

Spiders (or arachnids if you are being posh) provoke strong reactions in some. One of my brothers, who still considers himself tough (even though he's now over 40) will move astonishingly fast in the opposite direction when encountering such a beast - usually with the result that his teenage daughte...

Karin Tidbeck has written a number of short-stories, her first english Language collection (firmly rooted in Weird Fiction ), Jagannath , was nominated for the World Fantasy award and short-listed for the James Tiptree Junior award. It also received wide-spread critical acclaim. Amatka is her first...

While many stories depict the fight between man and machine, Sea of Rust shows a future where the machines have already won. Humankind has been wiped off the face of the Earth by the very robots that were built to serve them. Now the planet is controlled by vast intelligences (known as One World Int...

One of the (many) things I like about Adam Robert's stories is that they are always full of big ideas and The Real-Town Murders is no exception. This time the author has written a future-noir crime story which revolves around the "locked room mystery". A popular subgenre in it's own right, "locked r...

Paul McAuley is a vastly under-appreciated author. His books are inspiring, hypnotic and inventive. Austral is all of these and more, a book set in a plausible, climate-changed future where the planet has a new continent with a partial thawing of the Antarctic. There are still vast vistas of ice but...

You hear about those couples having the ill-concieved notion of getting matching permanent tattoos shortly after they've met, despite the real probability their relationship may not last. Crossover goes one further with that premise. Instead of tattoos it's a "simple" medical procedure ( EED ) that...

Zoe’s Tale is one of the Old Man War series of books by John Scalzi and covers the same time period and events as The Last Colony , (the previous book in the series) but from a different character’s perspective.  Despite this, it can be read as a standalone novel.  Zoe is moving to a new colony with...

The Bastard Legion is the latest Military Science Fiction from Gavin Smith, very much in the style of his earlier book Veteran and its sequel War in Heaven , although not connected in terms of plot or characters.  Smith’s hard hitting protagonist is Miska Corbin, a thief and hacker who steals a pris...

The global success of The Martian and its subsequent film adaptation, catapulted Andy Weir into the public eye. Whatever he chose to write next was always going to draw attention. Set in our near future, Artemis is the story of Jazz Bashara, a young girl living on the moon. Struggling to make a life...

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...

With the premise of Holly Cave's new novel, you could be forgiven for thinking it's a literary version of The Good Place. But Heaven Architect Isobel is no omnipotent Ted Danson, and The Memory Chamber no comedy. Cave's idea here is an interesting one. After you die, your consciousness is transferre...

Zero Day features a return to those creeping, swarming and skittling spiders that were introduced in The Hatching and Skitter . The world is a quite different place and the realisation that there is some co-ordination to the vast deadly swarms of arachnids raises the difficult question of what the U...

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...

As the name suggests, Pandemic explores what happens when a deadly infection takes the leap from epidemic to pandemic. A sobering passage on the cover aknowledges, it's not a question of if but when . There are many things that endanger the human race but with the exception of the zombie apocalypse...

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...

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...

On our first trip to Mars I hope that they send the best equipped, those with the skills and temperament to handle any situation that may occur. If disaster struck I would hope that these men and women would tackle the challenge dispassionately in an attempt to survive the oncoming end with as littl...

A Memory called Empire is the debut of Arkady Martine, although reading the book you'd be forgiven for thinking she's been writing best-sellers for years. The vast, interstellar Empire of the Teixcalaanli have appointed Mahit Dzmare as new Ambassador to the capital. When she arrives she realises tha...

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...

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...

It is not hard to see where Marvel Studios get all their ideas from as they sit upon a rich heritage of characters and storylines that will take decades to exhaust. I am somewhat of an old school Marvel fan and know the classic runs. Therefore, the newer creations flummox me. Captain Marvel is more...

Back in the day the Doctor Who spin off novels had a real advantage over the TV show as they had no budget. The limit to what could happen in these books was not down to the pen pushers at the BBC or the naivety of special effects. The only limit to the books was the author’s imagination. Go big or...

Science documentary producer Greg Chivers’ first novel is a delightful combination of sci-fi, politics, and the three strange characters ensconced within them. Chivers’ future Jerusalem is a city all but ignored as irrelevant by the world’s leaders, and in its anonymity the Holy City has become a ha...

The average person seems to put a lot of trust in their Government. No way they are spying on me online and even if they are, what am I doing that they would care about? This attitude has shown that ignorance is not bliss, they may just sell your data to the highest bidder and before you know it 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...

What is war good for? Not much, but it does advance some technologies faster than they might have been. Microwave technology, nuclear, plastic surgery – all have benefitted from being pushed by necessity. What about a war on a distant planet? Like here on Earth, any opposing armies will be looking f...

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...

To the uninitiated, Star Wars is just a film. To everyone else, that is just nonsense. There are multiple films, games, books, toys, teddies and now a theme park.  A  small part of the Star War Universe  resides  in Disneyland. You can visit the outpost of Black Spire and experience what it is  like...

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...

Humans always think we are special when it comes to science fiction. Somehow, we are better than the multitude of other alien races out there. How many times has Kirk used “this human emotion called love,” to win the day, or how often has an invading alien army been conquered by “the common cold”? I...

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...

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...

There is a certain type of film that I love. It has a central character wronged in some way and this gives them the flimsy premise to basically kill all the bad guys.  Death Wish ,  John Wick ,  The Equaliser , to name  bu t a few.  Red Noise  by John P Murphy is the science fiction  equivalent  wit...

I am not someone that goes in for Conspiracy Theories, I just don’t have the energy for t hem . Take for example the idea that nanobots are being injected into people so that the Deep State can track our every move. Why would they spend trillions of pounds on such technology when we are  all pretty...

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...

What do we expect from the future?  I consider myself a half glass full type of person, but even my positivity has taken a battering in the past few years. A world buried under a sea of sand sounds like it may be better  in some circumstances. If we do find ourselves roaming a desolate future what w...

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...

Almost everything  that we see  daily  would feel strange and alien to someone out of time. Show  an  Ancient Roman a modern carrot and they would ask why it was so large and orange.  In Caroline Hardake r ’s  Composite Cr eatures   the world has changed a lot. The sky is constantly covered with thi...

They all tell you that having children is not easy, but nothing prepared us for the first six weeks of having a  defenceless  little t y ke in the house. You may have read the books, been to a few classes or asked r elatives and friends, but when it comes down to it, this is all on your shoulders al...

I sometimes like to think about a singular change to  the  world and how  it  would affect the future. It  says  a  lot  about me that in most cases my thoughts  end up at dystopia.  Humans   are  always going to end at some point, I was just hoping that it would be a few years after I had gone. I a...

When an intellectual property becomes huge it can go one of two  ways,  a homogeneous blob of the same stories on repeat, or a vibrant  universe full of different adventures. Star Wars was already massive, but  recently has branched out even wider. This included a reset of the tie in novels and rath...

The best Science Fiction will tell a story, but also build a world. I prefer my tales to hint about the wider world and what happened to land the protagonists in their current position. Take Ten Low for example, a medic who roams a dusty moon. Her only goal in life is to survive and help others that...

Obsession can be a powerful emotion and lead you down a dark path. Being stalked causes the victim so much fear, not only because they are having to deal with the reality, but also what might happen. In the case of Madison May, she does not know she is being stalked until it is too late. A strange m...

Artificial intelligence is an exciting field that could help enrich the lives of most people on the planet from simple things like shopping to making life more inclusive for those with disabilities. AI will also come with a human cost. Many of the jobs that we do today could be redundant in twenty y...

Dystopian fiction has been becoming increasingly popular in recent years, probably because many of us can see the tell-tale signs of it coming along the tracks in real life. This is a depressing thought, but one worth exploring. How will humans continue to survive on a planet they are poisoning? Som...

There is one solution that would benefit our climate massively, but it is a bitter pill to swallow. Less humans. We are the cause of pretty much all the issues that the Earth is currently having and when we are gone, it will happily float around the solar system without us. A little bit grubbier, bu...

There is nothing quite like space for great action sci fi. The spaceships, the weapons, the futuristic or alien technology. Massive explosions and body parts flying about the place is great, but it is nothing without characters that you care about. Somone losing a hand means nothing if it is just an...

That one time you saved the world with stick with you for a lifetime. You may bask in the glory one day and wake up with cold sweats the next, either way, the event will be forged in your memories forever. What about two times? Three or four? Do you think that James Bond can remember one supervillai...

Constance Verity is anything but normal, blessed as a child to live an adventurous life, this may sound exciting, but the reality is much different. Now in her 30s, she is fed up with having to save the world all the time and just wants some normal downtime. By Constance Verity Saves the World , som...

By this, her third outing, Constance Verity has saved the world countless times and the Universe itself just as many. Fighting off otherworldly threats is an everyday occurrence. It is the more mundane things in life that worry Constance like assuring her best friend’s wedding is not ruined by mole...

H. G. Wells is a name to conjure with. Classic stories about time machines, invisible men, alien invasions and more. He was one of the earliest genre writers in a time when the idea of genres did not exist. He just wrote what he felt like. A modern author who has taken on this mantle is Silvia Moren...

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...

Like many Science Fiction fans, I am also a fan of Doctor Who, but not of a particular incarnation of the Doctor on television. I am a Doctor Who book fan. The show is great, but it in the novels where I have always found the most interesting stories free from budget constraints and allowing the aut...

The Doctor can travel anywhere in the Universe and at any time. He can witness the last days of existence or visit a planet of peace. Or he could visit Tara, a planet that seems like our own feudal era Britain, but with added androids. And some odd feeling 70s chauvinism. Target Books have adapted D...

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...

It should not matter what format you ingest a novel – on paper, on the screen or even via audio, but it does. I do not always get on with audio as I am such a fast reader, even on speed up the narrator cannot keep up with my awful lack of attention. However, the right book works as an audio experien...

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’...

The future is full of an almost infinite sea of possibilities and that’s what makes science fiction such a great genre. Whilst I may imagine a dystopian future of bleak radioactive zombies, you may think of a utopia. The best books should be a mix of the two, a dark future with a glimmer of hope, or...

There are many roads to enlightenment. You can spend decades mastering the art of meditation, becoming one with the universe. You can seek to achieve the divine through the depraved, in acts so vial that you push through what is acceptable into the other. Any of the routes take commitment and none o...

Twins have always had a mystery around them. Two people brought up so closely together that they have their own language. In Michael Ferris Gibson and Imani Josey’s Babylon Twin series, the language that the twins use is called the Twinkling, a speech so intuitive that only they can understand it. I...

Stories are often told from the side of good, the plucky underdog who fights against the armies of evil only to be victorious, but what about a book told from the side of the agitators, the terrorists the anarchists? These are all labels and Emily Tesh sets out to prove in Some Desperate Glory that...

I love time travel stories as you can tie yourself in knots figuring out what is going on. A writer can choose to do one of two things about the complexity of it all. Explore in great depth and try to make the inherent paradox work, or just go with the flow. Joshua David Bellin’s Myriad feels like a...

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. For years, the Jedi have been considered a paragon of virtue, everything that is good to the Sith’s bad. But there must be a reason so many Jedi fall. The path to the Dark Side is not pathed with sex, drugs, and rock...

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...

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

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

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

Any fan of the Marvelverse will understand there are various aspects to it. You have your traditional superhero tales, but also those set-in space, or ones that feature magic. Captain Marvel has always been a character who spans them all. Captain Carol Danvers has seen it all in her adventures acros...

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

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...

Any story of colonial rescue, involving cryosleep spaceships and small crews operating to solve a crisis far from Earth has all the ingredients to be an exciting read. However, the way in which a writer organises these elements and makes them palatable as a story remains an issue at hand. Refraction...

I imagine there is a dial that an author has when they are writing their book, it spans the gamut of subtle to outrageous. Where do you decide to place your story? Should you keep it lowkey, writing about a world like our own, but with a small tweak? Or do you embrace all that science fiction has to...

Before a drug is allowed onto the marketplace, it must undergo rigorous tests. Firstly on animals and then eventually on humans. These tests will determine what side effects there are, and in many cases, there will be side effects. Do the positives outweigh the negatives? If a wonder drug saves the...

The future is uncertain but as long as there are people on the planet, there will be drama. The cities could be crumbling and the seas boiling but a few people gather in the same cave for protection, and it will be mere hours before they are arguing, falling in and out of love and not getting on wit...

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...

As comic book fans, we really are living in the best of days, not because there is so much content to read or watch, but because the artform is established. The concept of comics, superheroes and, in this case, Marvel are well enough known that we can play with the format. Marvel has been doing it f...

What is your plan for when the apocalypse comes? One of the best things about reading speculative fiction is that you get loads of clever ideas on exactly what to do should a meteor plummet to Earth or the undead rise from their graves. The truth is that your plan is to curl up and inevitably succum...

When the apocalypse inevitably comes do you want to know about it? Would you like the chance to peer out of the window and see the world burning, perhaps you can make a run for the high ground? Another option is to live in pure ignorance underground, competing with your fellow residents for the perc...

The Earth has exploded killing all the inhabitants, the only survivors are those humans that happened to be off planet at the time. Does not sound like the start of a fun Science Fiction novel, does it? Douglas Adams would beg to differ and so would Gareth L. Powell. Future’s Edge is the author’s la...

I have come across the argument that people do not read science fiction as they cannot connect it to their own lives. Most sci fi fans know that even a book set in deep space or thousands of years in the future is often just using images of tomorrow to discuss the issues of today. However, if a read...

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...

Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you went in there in the first place? Could just be a good old fashioned brain burp, but perhaps it is something more sinister. In Nicholas Binge’s Dissolution there is a character who knows too much, so much that their mind is being wiped to preven...

There are books in a person’s life that helps to define their taste in genres. I was lucky enough in my teenage years to work my way through some of the classics of science fiction instilling a lifelong love of the genre. One novel that stands out among the best was Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Ma...

Science has taken humans to amazing places, prolonged our lives, made living better, but it has also created great harm. Have some diseases been developed in a lab then released, on purpose or by accident? Perhaps legitimate research led to tragic mistakes. In the world of Laura Elliott’s Awakened ,...

I picked this book up after learning about it being short-listed and eventually winning the Arthur C Clarke Award . It's proof of not judging a book by its cover because I'd have completely passed it by sitting on a table, with its shockingly bright pink swirlyness and quote by Sheena Patel that say...

I love a good magic system in a fantasy novel, one that sets the rules in an interesting way and is still able to amaze. It is one of the reasons that I am not a huge fan of Fae magic with all its side clauses and tricks. You never know what you are really going to get or what you can trust, therefo...

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...