|
|
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady MartineThe problem with Martine's fiction debut is that she makes the two commonest errors in SF writing: she tries to be too clever and she wants her fictional languages to be complex and rich and errs on the side of making them unpronounceable by most readers. I can see why she does both, but it's a disappointment because they're the blocks against which the brilliance of the book stumbles. Full Review |
|
|
The Rose, the Night, and the Mirror by Mark LinganeJulian's family are getting pretty fed up with his perma-student status. They feel that the maths PHD candidate should start earning some money. To that end, they have managed to find him a job tutoring the children of a highly regarded politician. Julian bowls up at their strange, austere mansion with little in the way of expectation. Victor, the politician is not at home. But Esis, his wife, is. A beautiful but isolated woman, Esis shows little interest in her children and not much more in Julian. She directs him towards his room, the library in which he will teach the children, and the kitchen, whose chefbot will provide him with food. Full Review |
|
|
Betrayed by Geoffrey ArnoldIn an extension of the story begun by Geoffrey Arnold in Ripped Apart, he continues to tell the story of the Quantum twins. Born on a parallel world, these genetically identical twins interfered with an experiment and were hurtled through space-time to our earth - and a series of adventures ensued in the following books. When we rejoin them in Betrayed we find Tullia struggling to adapt to life in the bush - adopted by a Bushman family and made part of a tribe. Twin Qwelby however, is not doing so well - shocked by the violence on the earth. Rescued by an old friend, he then tries to help a girl called Xaala - but her ulterior motives may well prove to drive a wedge between the twins as they try to reconnect... Full Review |
|
|
The Passengers by John MarrsIn the near future, self-drive cars are the norm - a convenient and easy way of transport. However, when someone hacks into the systems of eight self-drive cars, their passengers are set on a fatal collision course. As everyday commutes turn into terror-filled journeys, the public have to judge who should survive. But with every aspect of these passangers being examined by the public - will they turn out to be what they seem? Full Review |
|
|
Beneath the World, A Sea by Chris BeckettSouth America, 1990. Ben Ronson, a British police officer, arrives in a mysterious forest to investigate a spate of killings of Duendes. These silent, vaguely humanoid creatures - with long limbs and black button eyes - have a strange psychic effect on people, unleashing the subconscious and exposing their innermost thoughts and fears. Ben becomes fascinated by the Duendes, but the closer he gets, the more he begins to unravel, with terrifying results... Full Review |
|
|
Zero Bomb by M T HillMeet Remi. He's a fan of running, and indeed has been – from the wife and life he abandoned when they buried their seven year old daughter. Now working in London as a courier, he's taking a routine piece of samizdat literature across town when he's seemingly attacked by a driverless car. Struggling to keep to his schedule, he takes to the Tube, where mysterious people sit with him – and regale him with cryptic clues that mention his dead child. Slowly, woozily, he's drawn into a completely surreal scenario, as he tries to find out what is wanted of him, and by whom – and indeed, who he himself even is. Full Review |
|
|
The Dragon's Harvest by Jason F BoggsYoung Nelson Jones was a young and gifted military cadet in the fascist new world order called the 'New Era'. As his experiences led him on a path of conflict and self-discovery, he became a changed man. Picking up 20 months after the events of The Devil's Dragon, Nelson is on an expedition to uncover the mystery of the sungates, when a terrible secret leads to horrifying discoveries for all involved. Meanwhile, the humans and the Aesini fight for their very existence, as Nelson's nemesis, Major Ira Billis, finds a terrifying new ally in a quest to restore the New Era to glory. As Nelson and his friends race against the clock in order to defeat this new threat, they find themselves facing a power beyond imagination… Full Review |
|
|
The City In The Middle Of The Night by Charlie Jane AndersJanuary is a dying planet. It wasn't exactly pleasant to begin with. One half is scorching sunlight, pure, blazing heat, and totally uninhabitable. The other half is pure darkness and ice, where a creature can freeze to death in seconds, and totally uninhabitable. In the middle is a brief twilight that is barely survivable. Life is a knife-edge, stray too close to one side you die, to close to the other, you die and yet the heat from the sun and the water from the ice are necessary for life. Life for the inhabitants of January is long, and hard, and arduous, will anything ever change? Full Review |
|
|
Salvation by Peter F HamiltonApparently the term space opera was coined in 1941 as a pejorative. It was borrowed not from the high-brow musical art form, but from the common or garden 'soap opera'. It related to a particular kind of science fiction which the coiner (one Wilson Tucker) described as a hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn". It would be fifty years later before the term started to be re-appropriated to cover – if still the same themes of distant futures, military conflict, heroism and a simplistic set of values – more literary, more expansive works. The term is now taken as compliment. Full Review |
|
|
XX by Angela ChadwickAngela Chadwick's debut novel explores the possibility of two women being able to produce a baby girl through a process called Ovum-to-Ovum fertilisation. It centres around Rosie and Jules who take part in the first ever clinical trial that would allow them to have a child of their own without the need for a sperm donor or any other male intervention. What follows is a story that shows the harshness and at times disgraceful behaviour of the media, and the general public, when faced with a controversial technique that could lead to the demise of men. Full Review |
|
|
Rosewater by Tade ThompsonRosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless - people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumoured healing powers. Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again - but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realisation about a horrifying future. Full Review |
|
|
Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi
Imagine a world in which death was no longer something to fear but something to aspire to. After discovery of the afterlife, the British Empire has extended its reach into Summerland, the Big Smoke for the recently deceased. In 1938 the British Empire is caught up in a race against Soviet spies and dealing with a mole buried deep in the heart of Summerland. When Rachel White, an ambitious SIS agent, becomes suspicious about the potential rogue agent, she must decide how far she is willing to go and how much she is willing to risk to uncover the truth. Full Review |
|
|
The War in the Dark by Nick SetchfieldEurope – 1963. The world is used to the constant tensions between the West and Russia, with the Cold War a seemingly never ending threat in the lives of everyday people. What they don't know however, is that the real cold war is fought on the borders of this world, far from prying eyes at the edges of the light. British Intelligence agent Christopher Winter is forced to flee London when an assassination attempt goes horribly wrong, and is forced into a tense, unwelcome alliance with the lethal Karina Lazarova. As the threats rise, Christopher finds himself caught in a quest for centuries old hidden knowledge – an occult secret that will give instant supremacy to whichever nation possesses it. Racing against the enemy, Christopher is taken from ruins in Bavaria through to the haunted Hungarian border, all in search of something unholy – born of the power of white fire and black glass. It's a world of treachery, blood and magic. A world at war in the dark. Full Review |
|
|
Ascension by Victor DixenSix girls, six boys. Each in the two separate bays of a single spaceship. They have six minutes each week to seduce and to make their choices, under the unblinking eye of the on-board cameras. They are the contenders in the Genesis programme, the world's craziest speed-dating show ever, aimed at creating the first human colony on Mars. Leonor, an 18 year old orphan, is one of the chosen ones. She has signed up for glory. She has signed up for love. She has signed up for a one-way ticket. Even if the dream turns to a nightmare, it is too late for regrets. Full Review |
|
|
Empire of Silence (Sun Eater) by Christopher RuocchioHadrian Marlowe sits in the distant future writing the true account of his life to add context to a tale everyone in the Empire knows already. Empire of Silence is a hero's quest but it is made clear from the start that it will not end that way. We are millennia in the future, Earth has been lost and great houses rule portions of a vast empire. Hadrian Marlowe is set to inherit one of the great houses but following some terrible news he decides upon a new path instead. Full Review |
 |
Elysium Fire by Alastair ReynoldsWhat happens when Utopia is achieved? When everyone is linked neurologically to everyone else and people vote on each minor decision so every aspect of life is truly democratic? Everyone knows everything and everyone decides everything so what can possibly go wrong? Except people are dying, melting to be precise, and no one knows how, or why, or who could be next. In such a circumstance who can be trusted to solve this crime and do so without spreading panic? What if the only people who can be trusted have already let you down once before? Full Review |
 |
The Beasts of Electra Drive by Rohan QuineMeet Jaymi. He's a world-class video games designer, and fresh to a new mansion in the Hollywood Hills on the basis of some recent success. But he's seen the future and he doesn't like it. His current employers, able to bring any amount of class, skill and culture to the world of gameplay, are beset on appealing to the most lunkheaded and lowest common denominators instead. Indeed, their next big thing will change the world for the worse – it will be a massively disturbing environment, where people progress through the world of the entity by spreading fake news about anyone and everyone else on the planet, whether they're playing along or not, and by getting kind of prestige points on spoiling and shaming anything beyond a user-accepted, algorithm-designed, status quo. With a much more Reithian approach, Jaymi goes freelance, and sets up a way of restoring the balance with a launch of his own, where aspects of his more humanitarian mind are played out by avatars of him in the game. He sees this as a way to improve society and get his own back – but the chance of getting revenge more quickly comes about when those avatars leave their encoded background, and become fully playable characters in reality… Full Review |
 |
William Shakespeare's the Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh by Ian DoescherA long time ago, in a galaxy far away, there was a man called William Shakespeare, who was able to create a series of dramatic histories full of machinations most foul, rulers most evil and rebellious heroes and heroines most sturdy. You may or may not have noticed the cinematic version of his original stage play for The Force Doth Awaken, but here at last we get the actual script, complete with annoying-in-different-ways-to-before droids anew, returning heroes from elsewhere in his oeuvre, and people keeping it in the family til it hurts. And if you need further encouragement, don't forget his audience only demanded three parts of Henry VI – here the series is so popular we're on to part seven – surely making this over twice as good… Full Review |
