Books tagged with: mars

Resilient is the second book in Allen Stroud's Fractal series, picking up right after the events of Fearless. As such it's impossible not to provide some minor spoilers about Fearless while talking about Resilient. I will however try my best to give away as little as possible, and anything mentioned...

38 000 years in the future and the greatest, most terrible war humanity has ever faced rages across the galaxy as the forces of chaos look to spread terror to every corner and man fights fellow man. On the home world of the human race preparations have begun to defend the Imperial Palace and get rea...

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...

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 anarc...

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

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...

After saving the world twice, the fight continues for Flynn "Fly" Taggart and Arlene Sanders! Hugh and Linaweaver do a lot of things right with the series. As an obvious fan of the franchise since childhood, I will do my best to highlight the best aspects of the novel. Despite my opinions, this rev...

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 u...

DOOM is a recognizable brand to any 90s kid or true gamer from the PC age of first person video gaming. One of my most vivid memories as a kid is sitting in my underwear at the large IBM PC a kid, around the age of six, blasting away demons, boneys, and hell-princes until late into the night. DOOM c...

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....

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...

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....

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...

Pattern Seeker is the first volume in the Random Happenings series of novels by L Keith Wheeler. Set in the near future, Pattern Seeker follows the privileged life of Jason Armond who possesses the rare talent of being able to see patterns where others just see chaos. This talent has led him to a s...

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 gain...

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 l...

The front page of this book has a quote from Arthur C. Clarke saying "[Red Mars]...It should be required reading for the colonists of the next century" – not sure about making it required reading, maybe it can be used as a test. If you can read this book without falling asleep, you will probably be...

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...

Renewal is a stand alone novel set after the events of the Darwinian Extension series by by the science fiction author Hylton H Smith. Phoenix is a colossal space vessel, built in the Mars Docks by three races (The Axis, Symbiants and Sapients), it's the size of a city and is currently in it's 43rd...

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...

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 publ...

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

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, rese...

The Darwinian Extension: Transition is the second volume in the science fiction trilogy from author Hylton H Smith, and follows on from the events in Initiation. Transition begins in the year 2038, 2 years have passed since the return of the Copernicus, the ship carrying the first Mars colonisation...

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...

The Long Mars is the third novel in the Long Earth series and is set in the years following the events of the cataclysmic finale of The Long War. The world has now been changed not just by the continued expansion of humanity into the Long Earths but also by recent events. Populations begin to migrat...

The Martian is one of those books that if many authors had attempted it, wouldn't have worked. The majority of the novel follows one man surviving on Mars with little more than a shelter, 2 rovers, a few space suits, air, water and potatoes. There are no monsters, no antagonists (unless you count t...

A collaboration between Science Fiction greats,  Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds, The Medusa Chronicles picks up the story of Arthur C. Clarke's A Meeting with Medusa a Nebula Award winning novella published in Playboy in 1971. It takes the story of Howard Falcon, from his shattered afterma...

The Nexus Odyssey is an omnibus featuring the Darwinian Extension series along with the follow-on novel "Renewal", a series that presents a bold vision for the human race. It begins in 2033 with a planned mission to populate the red planet, Mars. But rather than a simple plan to create a settlement...

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

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

The Stone Canal is the second volume in the Fall Revolution Series, following on from the events of the Star Fraction, written by Ken Mcleod. The third book from this soon to be grand master (if I have anything to say about the matter). Stone Canal takes place in two threads, the first one takes pl...

To Open The Sky is a science fiction novel by Robert Silverberg. This book could have been titled "To Eternity and The Stars through Religion" – it may not be catchy, but it's a lot more accurate then the original title, which is a bit nondescript. It's the 22nd century and the Vorsters are the fas...

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

War of the Worlds: Aftermath is a novel written by Tony Wright that expands on the novel by HG Wells. The original War of the Worlds was first published in 1898, 113 years ago and told the story of the alien invasion of Earth - narrated from the first person perspective of a philosophical writer wh...

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 t...

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

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...

Being an author there are hard decisions to be made. Do you stick with the same characters or try to be someone who writes about different times and places in each book? After the original Red Rising trilogy, author Pierce Brown had the option to stop writing about Darrow’s rise...

No Way is the follow up to the gripping thriller One Way.  A perilous journey to the Red Planet by a group of convicts. Deciding that it was much more economically viable to train people that would have otherwise rotted in a jail rather than a group of experienced and highly trained Astronauts...

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

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 successful life. Converting the likes of Mars into a liveable environment will be dirty, cold and dangerous wo...

Imagine the sacrifice required to sign up for a long-term mission into the depth of space. You are to be cryogenically frozen for 80 years and will awake to a new world. It could be that this is what you wanted all along. A chance at a new life free from the Old Earth, but they have only gone and br...

I am a massive fan of the Target imprint of Doctor Who books. Recently they have been filling in the gaps from the older series and producing new adaptations based on the past few Doctors. Taking stories out of any given season is a risky business. It could be a standalone monster of the week story,...

When we have finally managed to destroy Earth, some of us may already be living on Mars. If you stay inside the domes, I hear it can be quite pleasant. However, what happens when we start to destroy Mars? The issue with all these planets is not the landscape or the lack of oxygen, it is the fact tha...

One of the best things about Science Fiction is that it also works as Science Fact. Much of the science and fantasy in the books are based on real research; taken to the nth level, but with a basis in truth. Exiles by Mason Coile layers this with some fundamentals in philosophy. Occam’s Razor...

What differentiates a short story series from episodes? Allen Stroud’s The Fractal Series comes in a collection or can be read separately. There are twelve individual stories, that sounds like a short story collection, but there is a difference as they all take place within the Fearless univer...