Books tagged with: solar system

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

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

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...

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

Adam Roberts is one of those rare authors who not only manage to create a rewarding, entertaining story but also does so in a way that challenges your perceptions, encourages you examine that which you take for granted and often plays on accepted norms of the genre. Jack Glass is no exception. We be...

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

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 se...

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

First published in 1972, Rendezvous with Rama is set in the 22nd century, and the story involves a cylindrical thirty-mile-long alien starship that passes through Earth's solar system. This story is told from the perspective of a group of human explorers, who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlo...

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

The 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...

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...

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 Honour of the Knights is the first volume in the space opera series The Battle for the Solar System by Stephen Sweeney. The Honour of the Knights is quite an accomplished novel, a grand story on a fairly epic scale with some good dialog and well rounded, engaging characters. The author has a ver...

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 aftermath i...

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

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...

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

I've been reading Reynolds books since he began writing them and have seen him grow over the years from a seriously talented writer to one of the best in his field. Revenger was one of his finest works to date, Shadow Captain eclipses it easily. It's the second in a planned trilogy but manages to av...

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 and instead concen...

Bone Silence is the third book in Alastair Reynolds Revenger series and follows on from the events of Shadow Captain and Revenger . First off, if you haven't read the first two books in the series, I suggest you do before starting Bone Silence. You could read it stand alone but it wouldn't make as m...

Death is not something that people like to think about, but without death how are we to live? Within all of us in the unspoken knowledge that one day we will die. For this reason, we venture forth, live, breath, love and laugh. Some of us more than others, but without death would we even bother? We...

It's 2118 and humanity has not only got over the coronavirus, but have reached out into space - colonising the Moon, Mars, Ceres and Europa. It's still early days of mankind's expansion though and the ship Khidr is part of a small fleet who travel between the different colonies, assisting the huge c...

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...

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 universe tha...

Many of us do not really know what is going on in Space, and not everyone really cares. It is all so far away and beyond our control. However, even the layman would think twice if the planets in our Solar System started to disintegrate one after the other and strange new discs appear in Space that b...