Books tagged with: male protagonist

When asked to review this book I can honestly say I did so with some trepidation. Although few would doubt King is as his name suggests, his later period of novels, Dark Tower aside, would, I’m sorry to say argue the case against him. But this is King you say, and I know many Constant Readers out th...

Mankind has long lost it's connection to mother nature, to the wildlife of Earth and all the natural wonders contained. In an effort to recreate that which was lost a remote planet is terra-formed to resemble mankind's first home and then populated with all of the plants and animals that existed in...

Occasionally a book and a writer comes along that breaks rules left right and centre, but does so with panache and style that makes you tip your hat. The beginning of A Fistful of Clones clearly sets it out to be one of those books; an accessible science fiction comedy that immediately endears, the...

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...

A novel chronicling the beginning of the Stainless Steel Rat's career. Young Jim diGritz has only one abition in life, to become a master criminal. He intentionally gets caught trying to rob a bank so that he will go to jail where he can learn from the masters of crime, only to realize (too late) th...

Acts of the Apostles is a science fiction novel by John Sundman. I'm a bit less qualified to review this books, than normal, as it's part of a genre that I know next to nothing about, namely the conspiracy genre (if there's such a thing), or maybe it the techno-thriller genre, I don't know. But I'll...

The second installment in the new Alien series by Titan books is quiet different from the first and doesn’t quiet fit in the way I expected. Yet, it delivers what any fan of the Alien franchise craves: insane amounts of Xenomorph action. Alien: Sea of Sorrows takes place on LV178, which is what conn...

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...

Apocalypse novels are all the rage these days, and with good reason, as any rational person can sense that we are rapidly approaching some kind of great calamity. There are plenty of choices: climate change, rapidly depleting resources, drug resistant disease, or even a straight up revolution of the...

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...

I've been a gamer and science fiction fan since the very first home computers become popular. From the days of the ZX81 and even before that with the Intellivision and Atari 2600. I've been playing games ever since. Like the authors first novel, Armada seems to speak to the older gamers out there. T...

The future vision in Barricade shows a world torn apart by a war fought against humanity and their own artificially created super-humans, known as "Ficials". In the UK (seemingly along with the rest of the World) the results are pretty catastrophic. As you can probably imagine once humanity has crea...

Behold the Man was originally written as a novella in 1966 and won the Nebula award for best novella. It was later expanded into a very slim novel in 1969 — although at 128 pages it could still be considered novella length. Gollancz has quite rightly chosen to include it in their SF Masterworks Coll...

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...

Black Light is an original science fiction novel, written by Christian Tremain. Josh Brenin is going through some pretty tough times. Since he lost his wife in a car crash, Josh has been unable to adequately deal with life. He loses his high paid exceutive job and begins to suffer from insomnia, cau...

Blope is about segregation, plastic surgery gone wrong, and all sorts of messed up religion. For a little background, it is basically another version of history where the American Southwest becomes part of an extreme Taiwanese empire. Its ruler uses the American Southwest as an experiment & segregat...

Written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden and voiced by Seán Barrett, Butchers Nails is a new and original Audio Drama set within the time of the Horus Heresy and focused on Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters legion - uber-violent, unpredictable and somewhat unhinged (he eventually went on to become a Daemo...

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...

Cetaganda is a science fiction novel in the Miles Vorkosigan Adventures series by Lois McMaster Bujold. This time Miles go to Cetaganda to attend the funeral of the Empress and ends up in a lot of trouble (now where have I heard that before?). The Cetagandan empire is build on a power division betwe...

In Channel Blue the Earth is essentially an entertainment show, think "The Truman Show" on a world-wide scale. For many years Earth was Galaxy Entertainments most successful show attracting the western galaxy's richest and savviest viewers. Nothing lasts forever though and lately ratings have begun...

Children of the Thunder is a science fiction novel by John Brunner. John Brunner has written a really wonderful book 'THE SHEEP LOOK UP' that I should probably re-read. This book came close but not quite to the despondancy that Earth is supposed to face in the present/near future. There is developin...

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...

By the end of the eighteenth century, our world had become fully charted, catalogued, mapped and explored. No longer could it be imagined that beyond some distant horizon there lay a land of extraordinary wonders—a hidden utopia, for example, nestled away somewhere safe from the corrupting influence...

The fifth book in the Ultramarines series and the second in the newly released Ultramarines Omnibus II, which also includes several additional short stories and even a nice graphic short. Captain Uriel Ventris is once again in charge of the 4th company, this story is firmly rooted in Uriel's return...

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...

Cronix starts off with the old and rather underplayed question of what happens when we’re able to upload our minds into virtual reality, and everyone wanders off into imaginary fairylands. As I’ve personally spent many days in a gaming induced haze punctuated by sporadic breaks for work or food, I’v...

Crow Road is a novel by the noted British author Iain M Banks. Craving for more books by Bank and needing a few books to bring with me on my holiday (mostly consisting of doing nothing but reading and being on the beach) I started by taking a trip to my local library. I didn't really find anything i...

Cydonia is the second volume in the Web series of young adult fiction, written by Ken Mcleod. Some where out there there's a link to this page saying that I've reviewed everything MacLeod has published, which can't be true all the time, but I can do my best and review as much as I can find. Even if...

Dagger of the Mind is a speculative fiction book by Bob Shaw. Dagger of the Mind, is a strange book. It takes off normally (well..) enough, Redpath is an epileptic living in a small english town. To make a buck, he participates in a series of experiments involving a new drug Compound 183. The book s...

Damnation Alley is a post-apocalytic tale of survival by the Hugo and Nebula award winner Roger Zelazny. Set in the decades after a devastating nuclear war, the former USA is a very different place. With mass destruction, dangerous mutants, large areas of deadly radiation and a worldwide wind preven...

Dead Lines is a science fiction horror novel by Greg Bear. Peter Russell’s life turned out much different than he expected. He wanted to write books but instead made a living taking picture and making movies of naked people when the soft porn industry flat-lined. Now he is a little more than an erra...

I'm often saying that there just isn't enough well written comic fantasy, aside from the likes of Pratchett, Holt, Howard and Rankin the laugh-out-load novels still being written are few and far between and in large the genre is being propped up by writers such as Rob Knipe and RJ Astruc. Thankfully...

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...

Greg Bear's Dinosaur Summer is a follow up to the old The Lost World a novel written by Sir Author Connan Doyle, taking place in 1947. After Professor Challanger returned from the Lost World, there were a lot of follow up expeditions and dinosaurs were taken back to civilisation, where they where pu...

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...

Distress is a science fiction novel by the Australian author Greg Egan. Once again Egan grabs an idea and takes it to the limit, this time to the ultimate limit. In Quarantine he tackled quantum Mechanics, this time he takes on nothing less than the Theory Of Everything (TOE). The year is 2055 and A...

Divine Fanaticism is the fourth novel in the Jim Long series by Robin G Howard. Long ago on the planet Thraeot a religous order was created that was shrouded in miraculous mythology, now the political environment of the planet has become unbalanced and mass scale war appears imminent. To make matter...

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the classic novel that became the film Blade Runner. Written by legendary award winning author Philip K Dick. The aftermath of the World War Terminus sees a devastated Earth with severe radioactive fallout and most of nature destroyed. Many of the survivors have...

Dreadnought is the fourth Volume in the H.I.V.E (Higher Institute of Villainous Education) Young Adult series, written by Mark Walden. Hive is a school where villains rule, students are trained to be the best at the worst in the hope they will become the next great super-villian. One of the most pow...

Dreaming of Eden is a science fiction novel by James Lucien. In the dystopian future of 2049, a ravaged world, divided into four Super States, is locked into a continuous war for diminishing resources. Under the oppression of a totalitarian government, an Elite DHS hacker, a robotics scientist, an N...

There is a kind of science fiction that uses a single fantastical premise not to build a world but to dismantle a man, and Dying Inside is perhaps the finest example the genre has produced. Robert Silverberg published it in 1972, at the height of his powers and at the close of an extraordinarily fer...

Docking is Difficult , so is trying to escape a backwards planet who's only exports are methane and a type of plant that superficially resembles a pig in taste and a triffid in shape. Misha dreams of escaping the mud and mundane life to become an Elite pilot and live a life full of adventure. He als...

Empire State is the début novel of the talented author Adam Christopher, combining a superhero tale with an alternative reality prohibition era noir-esque New York. Throw in gangsters, private investigators and a rogue robot and even a slight nod to steampunk then you have one daring mix. The parall...

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...

The Merseian Empire has, for some strange reason, decided to help out the water people of Starkad. Which means that the good old Earth Empire, simply has to help the land people of Starkad to keep the status quo. Now if I tell you this story was published right in the middle of the Vietnam War, the...

Escape from Bagdad! is a novel riding the wave of modern, alternative fiction that provides a fresh and marked difference to the over-subscribed European / American setting. As the title implies the story is set in Bagdad during the US invasion. With the American military, Religious fanatics, Mercen...

Ethan of Athos is a science fiction novel by Lois McMaster Bujold. Never having seen a woman in his life, Ethan is in for quite an eye opener when the first woman he meets is Elli Quinn of the Dendarii Mercenaries. As a good Athosian he tries his best to stay clear of her, but after a small misunder...

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...

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

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...

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

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...

America of 2036 is a wasteland in economic ruin, plagued by Terrorism and extreme acts of violence. Society escapes from this harsh reality by numbing itself on the drug Flashback - a euphoric yet cripplingly addictive drug that allows its users to re-visit their happier, past experiences. It's also...

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

First things first, Forever Peace is not a sequel to Forever War, for that you need to look for the later novel Forever Free (expect a review at some point when time permits). Forever Peace does however share a few of the same ideologies as it's predecessor and it also won both the Hugo and Nebula a...

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...

Frankenstein Unbound is a science fiction novel by the British author Brian Aldiss. Time is starting to break up, when Joseph Bodenland, a citizen of the year 2020, gets thrown back through time and space to Lake Geneva around the time when Mary Shelly was writing the original Frankenstein story. To...

Frankenstein.com follows the sleuth DCI Jack Renton who we were first introduced to earlier this year in Resident Fear . Another murderer is on the loose in the northeast of England and this time it's a much more macabre, chilling murder scene that the detectives are drawn to. A horrific picture tha...

Furnace: Lockdown is a young adult science fiction novel and is the first volume in the Furnace series, written by Alexander Gordon Smith. The Furnace Penitentiary is an underground prison, buried a mile beneath the earth's surface, where juveniles are sentenced for life, with no hope and no chance...

Furnace: Solitary is a young adult science fiction novel, the second volume in the Furnace series by Alexander Gordon Smith. Furnace Prison is located a mile beneath the surface of the planet, a place where juveniles are sentenced to life imprisonment with no hope of release, a place where death is...

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...

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...

Good News from Outer Space is a science fiction novel by John Kessel. This probably the strangest book that I've read in a long time. Taking place in the last days of 1999 the book is mostly about faith run amok. Kessel paints a picture of an alternative timeline that's dark and that I do not care f...

Hardcase is a detective fiction novel by Dan Simmons. Dan Simmons certainly gets around. He has written straight horror, epic SF, thrilling espionage and with this book he has opened a door the the hard-boiled Private Investigator genre. Hardcase is the first book in a series of books, about the for...

Hooded Man collects the three novels Arrowhead, Broken Arrow and Arrowland (along with a short story set between the first and second books), all of which are part of the shared post-apocalyptic universe known as the "Afterbright Chronicles" - which includes this years SF Book of the year School's O...

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...

I'd probably be best beginning this review by mentioning that Humpty Dumpty in Oakland isn't actually science fiction. It's a realist work of dark comedy. For some reason whatever miss-guided fool wrote the wikipedia entry for this book called it "non-science-fiction". Surely "non-science-fiction" i...

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...

It's a fact that following the explosion of technology we now give away vast amounts of information freely and often unknowingly. Big companies have got smart at figuring out just how best to get such information. Many sell that data on without compunction. Fast forward to the year 2066 and big corp...

In the Blood is a science fiction novel by Robert J Sullivan. The Utu festival was only three days old when the first body was found, 22 year old Gloria Ashlock, naked except for her shoes, lashed to a column in a warehouse and stabbed 35 times. The discovery was a shock but not a surprise to the po...

In the Hall of the Martian King is the third volume in the Jak Jinnaka series by the American author John Barnes. This is the third book in the Jak Jinnaka series. Jak, has gotten him self an easy job administrating the Hive base on Deimos. Noting much is supposed to happen, but of cause something d...

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...

Infernal Devices is a steampunk fiction novel by K W Jeter. INFERNAL DEVICES-K.W. Jeter. Oh dear reader, the book I have just read flamed the mind with it's fancy and mystery to make the fragile bones of my pudenda quiver with delicate joy such that I have never felt afore! Goddam what a book. This...

I discovered Michael Moorcock’s work fairly late in life. I’d just started teaching in Higher Education and was pointed towards both Elric of Melibone and his academic text – Wizardry and Wild Romance. The latter I found disagreeable, but deeply insightful and the former a read I could begin but not...

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...

Just Another Judgement Day is the ninth volume of Simon R. Green's Nightside sequence, published in hardback by Ace in January 2009, and a useful demonstration of why long-running urban fantasy series end up the way they do. Green has been writing the Nightside since 2003. He produces these books at...

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,...

If you missed out on Michael Moorcock the first time around, the collated paperback editions of his work from Gollancz are an excellent way to discover his stories. Kane of Old Mars collects three Kane books, Warriors of Mars , Blades of Mars and Barbarians of Mars . All of Moorcock’s adventures are...

This is the first Ben Bova that I've read in a long time. Chet Kinsman will do just about anything to get into space, and luckily for him he gets to go to space with the space marines. He's not so lucky when he gets grounded after a "small" accident. He's lucky again when NASA lets him go to the moo...

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...

If you thought a book written on a plane might be a bit rough around the edges - a few plot holes, perhaps, or precious little scene setting - think again, because when Brandon Sanderson does it, the result is nothing less than first class. The celebrated author’s 2011 novella Legion (reprinted this...

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...

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

Lies, Inc. is a science fiction novel by the award winning author Philip K Dick. To control the aggressiveness of citizens living on top of one another in crowded file cabinets like anthills in overpopulated urban regions, Lies Incorporated uses computer software to keep people sublimely quiet. A me...

Little brother is a young adult science fiction novel written by Cory Doctorow. The novel has debuted at no 9 on the new york times bestseller list, spending 6 weeks in the top 10. The book has also won the 2009 White Pine award, is a finalist for both the Hugo Award and the 2009 Prometheus Award. S...

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...

If you can imagine what a science fiction novel written by Raymond Chandler might be like (while Chandler is known to have hated Science Fiction stories rumours persist he did write one) then Made to Kill is about as close as you will likely ever get (short of resurrecting the late author). It pays...

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...

Man Plus is a classic science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl. In the near future things will start to go bad. Really bad - international tension will rise, numerous smaller and not so small wars will flare. Resources will be scarce. Chaos will rule around the globe - even in the good old U.S. of A....

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...

Mindstar Rising is the first volume of the Greg Mandel Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton. First some ranting about the cover art: The cover "art" on this book is incredibly stupid looking - there's a picture of a "tough guy" (well, he looks more like a cheap actor to me) wearing a blue jacket with too sho...

Misspent Youth is a stand alone science fiction novel by the acclaimed British author Peter F Hamilton. Misspent Youth – try saying it to your self – Misspent Youth, not exactly catchy is it?. It sound so much like a story about maladjusted working class youngsters in some large industrial town or t...

While most post-apocalyptic novels focus on destruction brought on humankind (or occasionally robotkind), the disaster in Moonfall is much more natural. The Moon has indeed fallen and caused widespread destruction across the globe. The book picks up 20 years after this earth-shattering event and fol...

Mr. Vertigo is a novel by the American author Paul Auster. Reading Auster is a bit like riding a bike, you’ll get a really good view of the scenery, you’ll have to do some of the work yourself and if you keep at it for to long your ass will start to hurt. Peter Aaron is a writer, Peter has a friend,...

Nemesis ex nihilo is an apocalyptic science fiction novel and is the first in a two part series (dilogy), written by William Pascoe. Barry Edwards is a fairly average guy who is working on his PhD in astrophysics at the University of Longminster, England. In 1995, while still working on his PhD he m...

Released in 1984, Neuromancer was one of those rare moments that broke the mold, pretty much inventing the notion of cyberspace and beginning the genre of the cyberpunk novel. It's been many years since I first read this book and I am re-visiting it here as part of my desire to read all the Hugo awa...

New Model Army is a science fiction novel by Adam Roberts. Pantegral is a giant, a democratic gestalt entity whose thoughts are populated from the thousands of minds that make up a New Model Army, it's intelligence is born from the almost limitless knowledge available on the internet. Stalking throu...

Nightingale’s Lament is a novel in the Nightside series by Simon R Green. The Nightside occupies the same space but in another dimension as London does. To travel there one must know the correct portals. John Taylor lived in Nightside all his life until it was discovered that his mother was not huma...

Like all the best novels, Nod develops from a simple premise. Imagine that the vast majority of people around the world suddenly stopped being able to sleep. No deep sleep, no cat-naps and no snoozing at all. It's only a matter of time before society collapses. How many times have we had a bad night...

Noir is a science fiction novel by K W Jeter. NOIR.....Hohoho! What a way to go! Corpses in this book aren't allowed to die, they go into debt and are kept from the grave to hang out on the dead side of what was L.A. (now the Gloss) to wait for some job so they can be buried. X shaped pupils. One gu...

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...

After technologically superior aliens conquer earth, humanity survives very much like mice, living within the walls of the huge homes of the giant aliens. They scurry about under their feet, stealing food and avoiding the ever more devious traps set out for them. As time goes on humanity adapts and...

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...

I've been meaning to grab this series for quite some time — the combination of Atwood's evocative prose and a post-apocalyptic setting is a highly promising one. Oryx and Crake tells the story of an altered world through the eyes of a man once known as Jimmy. Now known as Snowman and clothed in dete...

Joe is a private detective who after a visit from the obligatory attractive but mysterious woman is tasked with finding the author of the pulp-fiction series "Osama bin Laden: Vigilante". In this alternative history which seems to have split some time after world war two, the horrific terror attacks...

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...

Permutation City is a science fiction novel by the Australian author Greg Egan. Having liked Egans Quarantine, I was looking forward to reading this one and I was not disappointed. Again Egan has written a fantastic story by grabbing an idea and taking it to the limit. This time we are in a world wh...

Pink Noise: A Posthuman Tale is a hard science fiction novel, the debut of Leonid Korogodski. Before I begin the review it's worth noting a few things to put this literay achievement into some perspective. Pink Noise is the first novel to be written by Leonid Korogodski, a native Ukrainian who gaine...

Cory Doctorow has a unique way of capturing the technological challenges of current times that speaks volumes, provocative and blended perfectly into an entertaining, rewarding story. Pirate Cinema is no exception and the fact that it is labelled as a "Young Adult" book should not put the older read...

Point is the near future thriller and the sequel to Edge, by Thomas Blackthorne. In a Britain on the edge of collapse, the lost teens have formed Cutter Circles, a terrible cult based on mutual suicide. For ex-Special Forces soldier Josh Cumberland, this is just the start of another descent into the...

Villain.net: Power Surge is the 3rd volume in the Villain.net series, one half of the merged series (with Hero.com) from the author Andy Briggs. Jake Hunter is now on the council of evil and is finally in a position to extract revenge on those most deserving. He also has a mission, to restore his fa...

Prey is a science fiction novel by the late author Micheal Crichton. Micheal Crichton, the well-known author of Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain continues his long list of precautionary tales in his most recent novel, Prey. If you are familiar with Crichton's work, you no doubt know that he lo...

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...

Quarantine is a science fiction novel by the Australian author Greg Egan. Yet another book, by an author that I have never read anything by before, but with Greg Egan I have a good excuse: He's a fairly new writer - On third page of the book there's a Books by Greg Egan and all it says is Quarantine...

Radio Free Albemuth is a science fiction novel by the legendary author Philip K Dick. Radio Free Albemuth is like Valis but without Horselover Fat. Just Phil Dick and his buddy Nick getting too involved with Valis and the gestapo political system that is sending the commies to work camps. Like MAN I...

The smash hit science fiction debut from Cline in 2011, Ready Player One has been written about and reviewed many times since. What more can we say here at SFBook? Cline’s story is a first person narrative that describes a new virtual utopia woven out of eighties culture. The real world socio-econom...

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...

Realtime Interrupt is a science fiction novel by James P Hogan. This book has a theme somewhat similar to Permutation City by Greg Egan - Again it's about VR and how far it can be taken. Hogan does a nice job of it, but I wasn't as fascinated by Realtime Interrupt as I was with Permutation City. The...

The idea behind Red Planet Blues is a clever one. Mars has been colonised and is the new frontier with many parallels to the American gold-rush of the 1800's. This time around however it is genuine alien fossils that are in demand and fetch a high price. Since pretty much anything can now be synthes...

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...

Rockets, Redheads and Revolution is a short story collection by James P Hogan. RR&R is a mixed bag of science fiction short stories and non-fiction essays. The mix is a bit too heavy on the essay side for me, but that doesn't make it a bad book as HogRockets, Redheads and Revolution is a short story...

Rogue Moon is the disquieting story of what happens when aberrant scientific ambition is matched by human obsession. Shortlisted for the 1961 Hugo Award (losing out to the quite wonderful A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr), Rogue Moon is one of the few genre novels that Algis Budrys w...

Shakespeare's Planet is a science fiction novel by Clifford D Simak. The plot of the novel lacks overall action. There is some exploration of the ruins, pond and hill by Carter Horton but this come to very little information or help to solve the problems the characters face. Most of the time the cha...

Sky Coyote is the second volume in The Company series of novels by Kage Baker, following on from the events of the novel "In the Garden of Eden". This time, the viewpoint changes from Mendoza, child of the Spanish Inquisition, to Joseph, her rescuer and recruiter. Unfortunately, Baker is hit with a...

Snow crash is an acclaimed speculative fiction novel by the award winning author Neal Stephenson. Never getting into the Cyberpunk thing and hating the much-hyped use of the word Cyber, I've stayed away from everything that fell within the Cyberpunk category, with William Gibson as the centre of my...

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...

Son of the Tree is a science fiction novel by Jack Vance. SON OF THE TREE-Jack Vance. I loved this story even more. Head in the clouds the arrogant druids of Kyril fed and nutured the 5 mile wide by 12 mile tall tree that was the cornerstone of their religion. They have a full slave society with man...

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...

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...

Lieutenant Callum (called California, Cal or Harper) Harper punches his Captain, Laurence Decker for being incompetent and letting soldiers die on a mission we (initially) don’t learn much about. Cal has time and the option to finish things off but backs down and so gets re-assigned back to Earth. O...

State of Being is the third novel in the God Head trilogy and follows directly on from the cataclysmic events in State of Union . Jake Travissi is on the run, having lost everything he cared for and the future looks bleak with AI taking over the surviving population; the only hope may mean going int...

State of Mind is a post-cyberpunk science fiction thriller by Sven Michael Davison. In the year 2030 you can eat all you want, take drugs and drink as much as you want without any negative side effects, you can call a friend, surf the web, listen to music, watch a film or even play a game without to...

State of Union follows on from the events of the authors previous novel, State of Mind - a post cyberpunk novel that we reviewed back in February 2011. Jake has been living off the grid for five years and returns to civilisation to find a nano-virus pandemic known as MaxWell has killed millions of p...

Steeple is the sequel to the quite brilliant novel Barricade which we reviewed back in June last year. It describes a post-apocalyptic world torn apart by a war of human against their artificial, super-human constructs, the "fiscials". As you can imagine, fighting against a superior force of artific...

Stranger in a Strange Land is one of the most famous and controversial science fiction novels, by the legendary author Robert A Heinlein. A best seller and Hugo award winner - having never been out of print, Stranger in a Strange Land was written in 1961, almost 50 years ago. The original published...

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...

Teranesia is a science fiction novel by the Australian author Greg Egan. As per my usual routine I never read about a book before I start on it. I never read the back of a book before I start on it and I never, ever read other peoples reviews. If I had done any one of those things I wouldn't have be...

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...

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 Book of Strange New Things , is itself quite strange. It's one of those genre books that have managed to convince the mainstream that it's more mainstream literature. I must admit that it's also not a bad example and will certainly not do the reputation of science fiction any harm. It is however...

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 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 Centauri Device is a classic science fiction tale told by M John Harrison. Picking up another classic from the SF Masterworks series, by an author which was a total unknown to me. It's kind of a high risk gamble, it could open my eyes to something completely new and it could be a complete waste...

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 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...

The Crook Factory is a novel by the award winning author, Dan Simmons. During World War II Ernest Hemingway apparently asked for permission, from the American government, to run a spy ring from his home in Cuba and got it. In steps special agent Joe Lucas. J. Edgar Hoover (chief of the FBI at the ti...

The Cybernetic Walrus is a science fiction novel by the Jack L Chalker. On my version of this book the title contains the words Book One - which is, if you ask me, a good thing. All too often you have to read the fine print on the back of a book to find out that it's number one in a series - sometim...

The Darwinian Extension: Initiation, is the first volume in a trilogy of novels from author Hylton H Smith. The Darwinian Extension begins in 2033, with a planned mission to populate Mars. The mission is not one of simple habitation however, but one of true colonisation including terraforming, resea...

The Dispossessed, a novel by the distinguished and award winning author Ursula K Le Guin It's been some time since I last read anything by LeGuin (I think that it was The Word for World is Forest, which I liked); I've never really been much into her for some reason. Got no idea why. She writes quite...

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...

Journalist Cormac Easton is chosen to join a group of elite astronauts as they take part in the very first manned mission into the furthest reaches of the solar system. Documenting the greatest journey of human-kind should secure his place in history as one of the outstanding explorers of the age. I...

I often stay clear of books recommended by Richard and Judy, I find their "recommendations" largely restricted to wishy washy "popular" and "literary" fiction. However, like a thousand Monkeys at a thousand typewriters random chance dictates that they "should" occasionally strike gold and The First...

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 Genesis Machine is a science fiction novel by James P Hogan. (take a look at the clothes the guys are wearing on the cover - wow!) Written in 1978 and taking place a few of years from now, The Geneses Machine pretty much read as an alternative history story, even if it wasn't intended as such. I...

The Giant Novels are a series of science fiction novels by James P Hogan. I'm usually not a man that believe in miracles, but something fairly fantastic must have happened at Del Ray Books, the day they came up with the idea for this book. To put three classics, Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants...

The Guns of Mars is a science fiction novel by Martin T Ingham. Morgan Asher finds himself a reluctant Martian, part of the colonization effort so that his wife can fulfill her lifelong dream. It isn't long after arriving on the red planet that Morgan discovers a sinister plot by a group known as th...

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...

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...

The Long Earth follows the premise that there are an infinite number of alternative dimensions, all existing within one great "Multiverse", each universe containing a slightly different version of the Earth. A few years in the future and a device powered by the humble potato (it will make sense, tru...

The Man from Primrose Lane - an elderly recluse who wore mittens all year round; a man who seemed to have no friends or family, is murdered one summers day. The murder goes unsolved with little or no evidence until a day four years later when Best-selling author David Neff learns of this strange dea...

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...

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...

First time author T. Ellery Hodges enters the scifi genre with both barrels blazing! His debut novel The Never Hero is an unexpected thrill-ride through both time and space as our protagonist Jonathan fights an alien force hell-bent on destroying humankind. From the back cover: At the gates between...

The New York Trilogy is a collection of 3 stories by Paul Auster. This is the first book that I've read by Poul Auster. I saw him on TV a few months ago, he read from this book and I was deeply fascinated – the way the words flowed and the richness of his voice, gripped me deeply. And then joy, joy,...

From the back cover: The oil is gone. That way of life, ended. An invention frees the mind. A cyber-world becomes salvation. A boy, a weapon. A soldier, a titan. While nations thrash into antiquity, And a CEO becomes Queen, A man, brilliant and cunning, Plots to rule it all. Imagine a future where o...

The Player of games is a Culture series novel by the noted author Iain M Banks. I've been looking for Player of Games (PoG) for quite some time now (it has been out of print for some years) but finally I got lucky and found it in Gatwick Airport - So the big question for me was whether or not it wou...

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 Rebel Worlds is a science fiction novel by author Poul Anderson. When I’m a bit stressed at my daytime job, I take a lot more care when I select a new book to read. It has to be fairly short if I want to finish it anytime soon, the story line has to be fairly simple and it has to keep me enterta...

The Robots of Dawn is the third volume in the Robot series by Isaac Asimov Written nearly thirty years after The Naked Sun this, the third volume in the Elijah Baley series, is one of Asimovs greatest accomplishments. His writing has matured a lot in those thirty years and he has, in countless robot...

This is a sorta Bradbury esque horror attack of the pod people subtle down home lets conform and all is well book. Like his other great(er) book THE GREEN BRAIN it takes on evolution of a society without a wage of sin or shame in front of it. Is it cool for you to abandon your humanity for a better...

The Scientific Method is a young adult novel by Jeff Thomason. The Holy Grail of Physics, the Unified Field Theory promises to revolutionize the way mankind lives, and would bring with it advancements never before dreamed of. It has however defeated the most brilliant minds of the last 100 years and...

A while ago now I reviewed a surprisingly entertaining novel called "The Insoculation Syndrome" which detailed a tale of an astronaut stranded on a alien planet. The Seed Garden starts in a very similar fashion, Jed's ship malfunctions and his only hope for survival is to jump in an escape pod and l...

The Shadow of Heaven is a science fiction novel by Bob Shaw. First copyrighted 1969, this "terrifying novel of the future" is surprisingly unjaded by time. In The Shadow of Heaven, World War III isn't the nuclear inferno as must feared at the time, but something a lot closer to what we fear today. A...

Trained in the mental and physical disciplines of his people, Ran-Del Jahanpur is a warrior of the Sansoussy Forest. Overconfident in his abilities he is all too easily caught when he sets off a high tech trap. He finds himself transported to a strange alien city where machines speak, metal boxes ca...

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

The Stainless Steel Rat gets married, but rapidly gets involved in something that so far has proven impossible in the galaxy - the planet Cliaand has successfully been invading other worlds. Jim is sent to investigate, and discovers the mysterious Grey Men behind Cliaand's success, encounters a worl...

The galactic civilisation of the Torrian Alliance is on the brink of Civil War - crusading to destroy the "Star-children" to suppress an intergalactic evil. King Gregorio Derry send's his only son on a mission to restore the honor of his family, to hunt down one of these children. Life is never stra...

I must admit I have a fondness for alternative history novels, especially those that depict the second World War. Throw in secret Nazi plots that involve alien technology and that infamous Axis quest to create the Übermensch and you have a formula for a very interesting book indeed. Suicide Exhibiti...

The Terminal Experiment is a science fiction novel by Robert J Sawyer. After the bad experience with Frameshift, I didn't really want to starting on a new story by Sawyer. But, everybody deserves a second chance and when a friend ruthlessly dumped The Terminal Experiment (TTE) on me, I decided to gi...

The Pandoran war machine is on the move and Simon Dodds finds himself shot down over the luxury planet of Mythos. Separated from his team mates he soon learns that the once-popular holiday destination has become a hellish war zone, swarming with armies of seemingly unstoppable black-suited soldiers....

The Vor Game is a science fiction novel by the author Lois McMaster Bujold. The Vor Game takes place in the same universe as Mirror Dance and it has the same main character - only it takes place before Mirror Dance, so I would recommend that you read The Vor Game first. The Vor Games starts when Mil...

The Wasp Factory is the stunning debut of the British author Iain M Banks. Having read everything by Iain M. Banks and finding this book while browsing my brother's bookshelves, made for some hasty rearrangements of my to-read stack. Mostly the words "first novel" on the cover intrigued me - what co...

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...

I have a sort of self imposed resolution to read all of the books that have won a Hugo award and to be honest this is the only reason I first picked up this book. I haven't read anything else by the author although I am of course aware of him, however as a more "literary" author he's not someone who...

2047 in New York and the future imagined in Zxap Jacket is a grim one; acid snow falls with abandon on the dirty streets and those without a Zxap Jacket suffer stinging eyes and burned skin. As is commonly prevailent within the early 21st Century, it isn't long before private enterprise looks at the...

Thin Ice is a science fiction detective novel by Phill Jones. Thadeus Rede is a detective who is trying to hunt a vicious serial killer on the streets of Seattle in the year 2037. The killer appears to be targeting the powerful political New Natural Law Party (NNLP) who are strong opponents of genet...

It's true that I have a soft spot for a good post-apocalyptic story, there is just something about the setting that appeals to me. I'm clearly not alone in this regard either, post-apocalyptic scenarios are dominating the film world this year while in the world of books we have excellent examples li...

On first impression Ragle Gumm is pretty much an ordinary man leading a fairly ordinary life - the only exception being that he makes his living by entering a newspaper contest every day - and winning every day, for the last 3 years. After a few strange occurances that break the otherwise relaxed mo...

Timeshift is a science fiction novel by Philip Ellis Jackson. Sometime in our near future the united states will separate into two different countries, a bit after that we have a small nuclear war and after that some moron releases a new life-form that eats everything in its path and leaves the surf...

Titanborn follows the life of "collector" (part bounty hunter part detective) Malcom Graves. Graves is a seasoned veteran who has seen the worst of humanity and is often tasked with cleaning up such flotsam. He lives in a future where mankind has spread to other planets and have adapted, with the hu...

Trader to the Stars is a collection of science fiction short stories, written by Poul William Anderson. Three stories copyrighted from 1956 to 1962 from one of the old masters. All three stories have the space merchant Nicolas Van Rijn as the main character and what a character! He's the kind of cha...

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...

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...

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...

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...

How do you shake up the familiar “war that never ends” trope? James Barclay has one answer; add alien DNA with lizards to create genetically modified dragons; then fly those dragons into the battlefield burning your enemies to a smoking crisp. If that wasn’t enough, he also adds a variety of fun and...

Flatland is a novel by Edwin Abbott Abbott about a two dimensional world. The story tells the tale of a humble square as he guides us through some of the idioms of life in two dimensions. He has a dream about visiting Lineland, a one dimensional world and while there try's to convince the worlds lea...

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...

I found this book on Amazon while generally having a browse around and put it on my wish list for Christmas (yes, last Christmas). I finally got round to reading it, I'm glad I did! Shovel Ready is set in a near future New York that has suffered much since a dirty bomb hit Times Square and the refus...

It's funny how you can read books as far afield as China and Australia and not realise there are talented authors on your own doorstep. I  discovered the author Robert Gibson in Morecambe bay, only a few miles from my home. Robert has been writing science fiction stories for a number of years, The S...

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

I have always been a fan of Roger Zelazny. When I was a teenager, The Chronicles of Amber were a library book quest to find the whole set, which never quite happened, so it wasn’t until later in adult life that I was able to purchase the bumper edition that contained them all. Doorways in the Sand w...

After Atlas is Newman’s follow up to her science fiction debut, Planetfall . This story is not a sequel, instead it focuses on our future Earth, that has been left behind by the colonists on the Atlas mission. This aftermath is the setting for a murder mystery plot involving a selection of those lef...

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...

A new fantasy series from Stephen Donaldson, the author of the Thomas Covenant chronicles and the two Mordant’s Need novels. The first book, The Seventh Decimate tells the story of the war between the nations of Amika and Belleger that has raged for generations. Its roots lie in the distant past, be...

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...

Empire of Silence is the debut of Christopher Ruocchio and the first in the Sun Eater series. It describes the early life of Hadrian Marlowe, an infamous figure who is remembered galaxy-wide as both hero and monster. The man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. The man who destroyed a s...

People have been imagining life on Mars for hundreds of years but it seems to becoming an increasingly popular destination at the moment. We've got a growing number of films, games, VR "experiences" and of course books. NASA has it's own "Journey to Mars" program of sending humans there in the 2030'...

From Distant Stars is the follow-up to Sam Peter's impressive debut From Darkest Skies . Detective Keon Rause has mostly come to terms with the death of his wife five years previously and his illegally created AI Liss has gone - presumably destroyed. He's tasked with investigating the death of milit...

Fire fighter Sean Grigsby’s near future debut sees the world infested with dragons risen from beneath the ground. The wingless wyverns rise up to destroy cities and take lives, leaving only the shadows of people - ‘wraiths’ - behind. It’s up to the ‘smoke. Cole Brannigan, a patriotic, hard-working f...

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

Raft was originally a short story published in Interzone back in 1989. Baxter admitted struggling to contain the story to such a short space however and eventually Raft  became the authors first published novel. It's also the first book in the authors Xeelee sequence (although no Xeelee make an appe...

Mecha Samurai Empire follows on from the United States of Japan , an alternative history novel which continues the story of Philip K Dicks seminal novel The Man in the High Castle (now an established TV series). For those who are aren't aware, the idea is that the "Allies" lost World War two and as...

We are told to live in the moment; don’t worry about the past or the future, it is now that you should care about, but how many of us really do? We spend endless hours checking our phones or having meaningless arguments online. If someone walked in on you right now and said that you are not actually...

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...

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....

In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, a meme boiled up to the surface of our cultural dialogue about us having entered an age of “post-truth.” As the election showed us, we have arrived into a societal configuration, in which two major ideological groups do not just vote for different pa...

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...

With the new films, TV shows and cartoons it is sometimes hard to keep up with the Star Wars Universe and all its moving parts. Some of the less fashionable elements could be ignored in favour of big flashy characters like Han Solo or Boba Fett. Thankfully, the Star Wars books are continuing to expl...

Science fiction is a minefield for any author. So many others genres are available that have a set of rules that you can follow. Crime has it, even most fantasy books follow a pattern, but science fiction can be almost anything. It can be set in an alternative today with only a tiny tweak to our way...

To anyone who has seen the latest Avengers movies you will know that Thanos is not a nice chap. He single handily (infinitely glovely) creates an intergalactic genocide. Despite this, the films try to give him some sympathetic elements; he only wipes out so many to save the whole. The Thanos of Stua...

When the Star Wars sequels were announced a world of fandom got very excited. What happened to Han Solo, Luke and Leia et al? Many Star Wars fans already had an inkling having read the many Star Wars tie in book that released from the early 90s onwards. However, like many a Star Wars film, there was...

A surreal science fiction story, ostensibly set in 1992, Ubik tells the story of an alternative Earth where a range of telepathic abilities have manifested amongst all aspects of society and to counter them, a series of anti-talents have emerged that dampen and suppress these new gifts. Philip K. Di...

Failed science writer Alex Dolan is just floating along, struggling to find work when multi-billionaire Stanislaw Clayton provides a surprising, well-paid offer out of the blue. He wants Alex to write a book about the world's first privately funded high-energy physics facility - the Sioux Crossing S...

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...

There is an inherent problem with superheroes. Sometimes they are just too super. How is any mortal person meant to take down a being that can fly into the sun or bounce bullets off their bracelets? It is up to the comic creators to come up with an enemy that will match the super heroics with super...

There are many things that I want to be in life, but I don’t want to be the relation of a famous Star Trek character. You are only there to be killed off at some point  e.g.  Kirk’s Son or  Father depending on what Universe you are in. Now in  Star Trek : The  Captain ’s  Daughter  by Peter David it...

Despite repeated and continued efforts by the UK government (amongst others) of turning it into a reality, I still enjoy the odd dystopian fiction. More and more often though it does feel like things that will be rather than things that may . 84K is a good example. Set in a future where the inevitab...

The Butterfly Effect is a device used to explore alternative  versions of our world. The simple action of a time travellers going back to the time of the dinosaurs and standing on a butterfly would alter everything that followed, ripples expanding from that one point. Robert Ferrigno  decided to exp...

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...

The way that humans treat each other in real life is far darker and harrowing than any science fiction book that you can create, but this does not stop some authors from exploring the depths of the  human  condi tion. If we are only as good as how we treat the weakest in society, the people who inha...

When we colonise the planets will they send out the best and the brightest? I’m not so sure as many of the best and the brightest will be quite happy on Earth leading a succes sful life. Converting the likes of Mars into a  liveable   environment  will be dirty, cold and dangerous work. It is more l...

I have conversations with my colleagues and a surprising number of them are dismissive of Science Fiction as being too farfetched and complicated. This is not true, as it is such a wide genre. There are Sci Fi books that will cater for readers who only want a touch of the unreal, but there are also...

Are you playing the game? Made you look. The idea of a metagame that embroils a hero is not a new one, but it is hard to pull off. The amount of financial resources and secrecy that is required to convince Michael Douglas to jump off a building is beyond what the average person can afford, unless yo...

For many  people,  the leading writer of speculative fiction i n the 90s  and 00s  was Michael Cr ic h t on who was able to marry a level of scientific reality with some  outrageous  ideas. A theme park full of dinosaurs, intelligent apes, nanobots that can kill? He was able to deliver on all of the...

The Alien franchise can be seen as one of two things: an awesome series of Space based horror and action stories, or a textbook example of Corporate Malfeasance. The Aliens may be the most reoccurring characters, but the second is not Ripley, it is Weyland Industries. This corporation pops up in var...

Asimov’s ‘Three laws of Robotics’ have become synonymous with any book that contains robots. Nearly all these books will not allow their robots to hurt humans, but what happens if these rules broke? In C. Robert Cargill’s  Day Zero  the millions of robots that exist have full artificial intelligence...

One of those books I missed the first time around, The stone man is the first in a series of science fiction thrillers. It looks like it's already become a bit of a self-published success story and the second in the series, The empty men is out now. The story begins on one July afternoon in a busy c...

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...

If you had the chance to start over again from an early age and know what you do now, would you take it? A chance to live your life again; buy those shares in Apple, know some of the exam questions and football results? The answer for me is no. 80 years more life is not worth risking my family. What...

Space is for the few. You may have been trained as a professional astronaut and pushed the boundaries of science. Maybe you are a geek done good and decided to spend your billions on the vanity project of commercial space travel. Maybe, just maybe, you are a celeb or competition winner who won the c...

There is something magical about the idea of a circus, the lights, the action, the antics, and the acts. The reality in my youth was a little different with a threadbare tent being erected in a local muddy play field. Khan Wong has thankfully decided to capture the majesty that the idea evokes in Th...

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...

I think the pessimistic among us see a future of raised water levels and the UK losing plenty of its coastal land and anything close to our rivers. However, even the most resigned will not have imagined the world that Martin Mulligan and Jack D. McLean have created in The Drowning Earth . Not only a...

Comedy combined with Science Fiction is rare because it is so hard to do. When it clicks though it is worthwhile as you get some absolute classics such as Red Dwarf or Hitchhiker's . Those are mighty large shoes to try and fill, but Chris Panatier is giving it a go in Stringers , a book that feels l...

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...

It starts off sensibly with tweaking a DNA strand here or there to prevent a hereditary illness. Who could argue against that? However, it is not long before people realise that they can use the same tools to make sure that a child has their father’s eye colour and Mother’s hair. Why even bother pic...

Think too long on the multiverse and your mind will explode. Every tiny action you take splits off into another multiverse, then extrapolate that with everything making tiny actions. There will be an infinite number of universes that only differ from the way you tied your shoelace that morning. Popp...

Most of us have a subject at school that we struggled with more than others and for me that was languages. Maths, English, Science, I was fine, but my brain does not feel designed for languages. So, if someone offered me a chip that would allow me to instantly understand all languages on Earth, I wo...

I have never wanted to travel to space. THUD. Not only would it be physically challenging, but also mentally tough. THUD. The knowledge that the only thing between you and the infinite void is a sheet of metal. THUD. The great expanse making you question your tiny existence and the insignificant lif...

What would you do to protect those that you love? What is The Price of Safety ? This is a question that Michael C. Bland poses in the first of a trilogy set in a troubling future. It is a story about a genius, but also a family man whose inventions gets them all into danger. At what point do you dec...

Inheritance should never be something that you look forward to, but when you receive some, it can make a huge change to your life. I may be enough to pay a deposit on a house or pay for a child to go to university. It can also be a real pain in the bureaucracy. Think of the taxes that need paying, t...

There is a knack to adaptation, we have all seen a film made from a book. Many have read an adaptation of a film, but can you make a prose adaptation of a comic book? We see superheroes in the cinema every month, the action and colour sparks on the big screen, but bringing forth all that imagery in...

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

I have a soft spot for cyberpunk, the gritty noir feel mixed with high end science fiction. Like many subgenres it can be dismissed as a passing phase, in this case from the 80s, but fans know that there are still exceptional stories out there written today about crying androids or buildings that mu...

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 is no doubt that Tchaikovsky is a prolific author - I'm counting at least 38 novels and many novellas and short stories. Every few months, there seems to be a new book on the horizon. But that regularity of releases doesn't seem to impact the quality of his writing or the sharpness of his visi...

There is more than one tradition in science fiction. You can have your epic space battles, but here in Blighty we have the tradition of an every person getting wrapped up in something far above their pay grade. Arthur Dent had his towel, and Johnny Gomez has his mop and bucket. It can’t just be spac...

War, what is it good for? Not a lot, but depressingly it is a real driver of innovation. What better way to inspire the greatest minds in the country than to task them with more efficient ways to kill the enemy? Arms races happen all over the place from conventional gun and bullets to newer types of...

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

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...

I stumbled across this one at WorldCon in Glasgow last year. You know how it is, wandering the dealer's room, picking up flyers, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone who looks like they want to talk about their self-published epic. But I’d previously attended a panel about Scottish sci-fi and saw...

Science Fiction and Westerns have a long history, many stories are your classic stranger coming to a new town, but instead of carrying a six-shooter, they carry a Ray Gun. Fresh Start by Johnny Worthen is the latest and this is one strange stranger. Is Qays Mendoza a monk or a marine? Is his mission...

Last night a DJ saved my life. It can feel like that for some people as they crave the weekend, those hot sweaty nights dancing with the people they feel closest to. The community not of family or work colleagues, but the friends and family that you pick up on the way. In the case of The Disco at th...