Science fiction
Extras by Scott Westerfeld
In the future city of this book, many people live with what is called a reputation economy. With everybody practically a cyborg, they're online permanently, using optical and brain implants to see everybody's status, output and more. Many people have hovercam companions, to make their own documentaries and film their own lives. They rely on metablogs to interact and keep their popularity up. They continuously spread their opinions and interests in order to become more well-known. A girl called Aya is struggling to get any renown, but things change, when she meets other people doing incredibly notorious things, but in complete secrecy and anonymity. Full review...
Specials by Scott Westerfeld
In the un-named city of the future, all the adults are living in the delusion that their city is right. After a teenage life as an ugly, they all undergo a welter of medical procedures, to make their minds and bodies conform to the bland, but gorgeous, society norm. But one young woman is not like that. She is going to a party, looking ugly, and she knows it is not what we look like, but how special we feel inside, that is of most importance. The good news is that this woman is our returning heroine, Tally. The bad news is that her ugliness is a temporary disguise, and worse than that - she knows how to feel special inside, because she IS A Special. Full review...
Pretties by Scott Westerfeld
In the unnamed city of the future, all the adults are pretty. They've had mental and physical surgery to make them calm, placid and perfectly aesthetic human beings. If they have any trouble as young adults it is the problem of what to wear at parties, or how to get rid of their hangovers when they wake up at 5pm. Unfortunately, one of these bright young things is our heroine, Tally, one of the few people in the world to have learnt how damnably horrid and sapping the life of Riley can be. Full review...
The Eternal Prison by Jeff Somers
This book stands out in the high-energy, hard-edged sci-fi adventure/thriller genre, in that it covers two stories at the same time. In one chapter we have Avery Cates, practically the best gun-for-hire in his post-apocalyptic North America, being told to kill one of the most protected and important people left in the world, by other, almost as important people, in the cruel mix of powerplays that make up the current politics. In the other corner is Cates, being thrown in prison - one of those basic, hell-on-earth, surrounded by miles of desert, prisons. Here, too, he will be told to do jobs for other people... Full review...
Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
'Ender in Exile' is the most recently published in the series set in the universe of 'Ender's Game', a long standing and one of the best known series of science-fiction by Orson Scott Card. It's been defined as an 'interquel', fitting chronologically between 'Ender's Game' and the 'Speaker for the Dead', the first two (and probably the best two) novels in the sequence. Technically speaking, 'Ender in Exile' actually fits in-between the last chapters of 'Ender's Game' and describes in more detail events outlined in the resolving sections of 'Ender's Game'. Confusingly for the uninitiated, 'Ender in Exile' is also a sequel to the 'Shadow of the Giant', a parallel sub-series from the universe of the 'Ender's Game'. Full review...
WE by John Dickinson
Paul Munro has been disconnected from the World Ear in readiness for a mission that will last a lifetime. Sent to man a tiny station built at enormous effort and expense on a desolate moon in the outer reaches of our solar system, he will never be able to return. Gravity is one-tenth that of Earth and his flesh has wasted, his bones enbrittled without the strength of calcium. 'If he stood on the Earth now... his skeleton would splinter under his weight.' It took eight years to get there and the rest of his life stretches before him fearfully. Full review...
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin
It's hard to believe that The Left Hand of Darkness dates back to 1969: forty years on, it reads as well, or even better, then when it was originally written, and - deservedly - enjoys a classic status in the science-fiction canon, as well as being perhaps the best known sci-fi novel by Ursula LeGuin. Full review...
And Another Thing ... Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Part Six of Three (Hitchhikers Guide 6) by Eoin Colfer
Of all the big books announced for this year, this one must have raised more eyebrows than many. Why try and write a new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book, when way before the end, its creator Douglas Adams was proving quite hopeless at such a task? And why approach an Irishman, Eoin Colfer, when the originals - tempered with their humour which could only be described as Monty Python doing a sci-fi Terry Pratchett, and with their cups of tea and dressing gowns, could only be described as very English? Well the answer is most evident - Colfer is a world-beater when it comes to knocking up a story. Full review...
Bringing Forth the End of Days by Simon Law
Imagine the hell of a dying world, less than a generation from now. World War Three has been and gone - ended with conventional bombs galore but started by a plague on all plant-life, that removed all the oxygen from the planet's atmosphere. As a result, the few survivors must live in air-tight houses with special oxygenating equipment - the ultimate in air conditioning - or, they must have got in early with a special biomechanical adaptation that allows them mobility and independence, but at a freakish cost. Worse, religion has mutated - the Jehovah's Witnesses are now the most violent gang, rushing to nudge what's left of humanity towards its final judgment. Worse still - even worse than all of that - you're living in Crawley. Full review...
Passengers to Sentience by Peter Salisbury
Human beings are spread across the galaxy. The technology that allowed this to happen? Not faster than light travel, suspended animation or matter transfer but cloning. Want to start a new life elsewhere? Your mind and personality can be mapped as information. Unmanned ships are sent to inhabitable planets across the furthest reaches of space and upon arrival, the automated cloning vats begin re-creating your body and entering your stored mind and personality data. Full review...
Red Claw by Philip Palmer
New Amazon, home to some of the most violent and deadly alien life imaginable, is due to be razed to the ground in order to make way for human habitation. A team of scientists, led by the charismatic Richard Helms, have been stationed on this planet under military protection, in order to study and catalogue the flora and fauna. However, the computer super brain handling all the technology has inconceivably turned on her human charges, forcing soldier and scientist alike to abandon base head quarters. As if the planet's hostile environment (including bouts of acid rain) were not enough of a threat, the characters are also pursued by legions of killer robots. Life expectancy does not look good. Full review...
Before the Gods (Chronicles of Fate and Choice) by K S Turner
Before The Gods is presented as an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle and shrouded in mystery. The front is adorned by a beguiling image created by the author. A glance at the back cover serves only to tantalise rather than reveal what might be in store.
This is where it all began. Everything. Love, hate, good, evil, us and them. This is before they were gods. Full review...
The Lords of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa
We're in the third century, Japan. A queen and her young retainer are wandering to the edge of their territory, when a baddy appears - an alien seeming to be some local creature. Handily enough a saviour, warrior hero appears too, from way in the future, complete with talking sword, and saves the day. This incident is bad news for the queen to take back to court and discuss, but it's even worse for the messenger - sent on a one-way ticket from his own life, to advise of timelines that need saved - and the people that might just save Earth from this cosmic battle. Full review...
All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
In a global war between humans and invading aliens, called Mimics, Keiji is a trooper at the beginning of his short career in the army. Despite his high-tech body armour, he's not destined to last long - he's quickly dead. But then he's quickly alive again, as somehow his life is rewound a day. It only makes for prolonged horror for the rookie, but it happens again and again. Each time he gets a better intelligence of what his destiny might have been - can he learn enough each time round to make a difference, and possibly break the loop? Full review...
Girls Volume 1: Conception by Jonathan Luna and Joshua Luna
Ethan, we see with a great, broad comic stroke or six, is not the best when it comes to girls. Letting his mouth run away with him too often, he is not very successful at relationships. But let us look at what happens when he drives away from an altercation at the local bar, and sees a gorgeous - and very naked - young woman standing in the middle of the road. Full review...
Wireless by Charles Stross
In his introduction, Stross explains that one of the reasons he likes writing shorts stories is because they are the ideal format in which to focus on a particular concept of the future and play around with it. It doesn't matter so much if the idea doesn't ultimately work because neither the reader nor the author has invested in it the way they would in a novel. Wireless then, is something of an experiment. Stross employs many different styles, tackles many different subjects and is very skilful at creating mood. His stories are a strange blend of the technical and the archaic. Full review...
Orphan's Triumph (Jason Wander) by Robert Buettner
One of the major problems with science fiction series is that the titles aren't always terribly imaginative. At first glance, the cover of Orphan's Triumph gives away exactly how the story is going to turn out. It's great credit to Robert Buettner that what I expected wasn't what happened. Full review...
Through Violet Eyes (Violet Series) by Stephen Woodworth
To every generation, a few souls are born with violet-coloured eyes. These Violets can channel the dead. Viewed by the government as a commodity, they are taken into the care of the School from an early age and taught to use their abilities. While the School does teach them to control the souls constantly trying to invade their bodies from the black of death, it also trains them to serve the government – calling on the victims of murder and horrific accidents to ascertain exactly how they died or who killed them. Full review...
Graphic Classics, Volume 17: Science Fiction Classics by H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle
So, an introduction. The Graphic Classics collection is a series whereby the best in genre fiction, from sources both highly likely and remarkably unexpected, is collected and dressed up for us in graphic novel form. This seventeenth edition, a belated best-of sci-fi volume, is their first foray into full colour, and is headlined by a version of The War of the Worlds. The supporting material ranges from a one-page strip to thirty-page stories. Full review...
Earth Ascendant (Astropolis) by Sean Williams
Science-fiction has come a long way since H G Wells first looked up at the night sky and thought how cool it would be to have giant Martian tripod war machines trampling all over the Home Counties. Now that the most daring innovations of even quite recent science-fiction can be found readily in your home - from videophones to genetically modified food - the genre continues to evolve and develop. Full review...
The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt
Nikola Tesla, born in 1856, was a young engineering student in Croatia, a Serb with a ferocious talent for invention when he sailed to America armed only with a note of introduction from his former employer to Thomas Edison which said: I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man. Promised prodigious amounts of money to reorganise Edison's workshops, he was in the end cheated by Edison, who made a joke about the American sense of humour when Tesla asked to be paid. Full review...
Consorts of Heaven by Jaine Fenn
Fantasy and science fiction are genres that mesh well together. Some authors have written successfully across both genres, but not usually in the same story. Jaine Fenn has managed to combine both in one book and it's an interesting read. Full review...
Genesis by Bernard Beckett
The reviewer sat down with the fancy hardback review copy of Genesis by Bernard Beckett and turned the pages, not knowing at all what to expect.
- What did he find?
- He found a science fiction tale set in a futuristic New Zealand. The setting of the book is based on current concerns - environmental problems, global oil wars and animosity, and so on, and a plague war has meant NZ is cordoned off with a Great Sea Fence. It is living under a strange Plato's Republic, based on a mix of ancient Greek life (naked wrestling and so on) with the modern (relationships arbitrated by rampant gene testing). One of the soldiers defending it, Adam, takes it upon himself, however, to betray his state, and let a young girl alone on a raft through the cordon, and befriend her. But it is not her that will provide the crux of the book.
Shadow of the Scorpion (Novel of the Polity) by Neal Asher
Shadow of the Scorpion is a better book than either the title or the cover (a cartoon-ish mechanical scorpion) might at first suggest. It's an engaging espionage-type thriller of course, but the emotional repercussions are sensitively dealt with.
The body of the novel is set during the aftermath of an interplanetary war between the Polity, humans as governed by benign AIs, and a vicious alien race named the Prador. Cormac, the protagonist, is a 22 year old recruit for Earth Central Security (ECS), the military arm of the Polity. He is assigned to guard a crash-landed Prador spaceship on a remote planet and prevent some alien weaponry from falling into the wrong hands. Due to circumstances outside of his Control, Cormac is required to infiltrate an underground network of Separatists, the Terrorists of the future, who rebel against the AI rule: a perfect set-up for some gripping interrogation and torture scenes of the technologically advanced type. But, there is more to the novel than that. Full review...
Quillan Games (Pendragon) by D J MacHale
I would like to start with an admission. I know by now, having read three earlier books in this series, the set-up. We have a demonic entity creating chaos and destroying life itself, territory by territory, and a young teen and his friends, originally scattered across said territories one by one, combatting the nasty and putting each and every world to rights. What I don't know is to what extent this is a religious allegory. I saw a lot of sloth in book four (or, if you prefer, the first commandment), and gluttony and covetousness in books five and six, which had similar plots. But I wasn't helped by the ending of book six, in wondering if this is a straightforward Christian tale, disguised as teen fantasy. Does acolyte equate to apostle? How messianic are the characters going to turn out to be? Do the ten planets and ten adventures here point us to the Decalogue? Full review...
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
World War Terminus is over, and Earth is in ruins. While most people have emigrated to Mars, some continue to live their lives on Earth while radioactivity slowly impairs their brain and reproductive function.
Upon emigrating to Mars, all citizens were given a highly sophisticated android servant, and now six have escaped from captivity and fled to Earth, killing all in their path. Rick Deckard is the bounty hunter commissioned to track down and destroy these androids, almost indiscernible from humans, in return for a fee. Full review...
Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding
Things are never quiet when it comes to life on the Ketty Jay. For Captain Frey and his mismatched band of friends, colleagues, call them what you will, that make the raggle-taggle crew of the craft, will always find a dodgy scrape, a damsel in distress or some risky cargo to transport – and up til now have survived the consequences. Full review...
This Is Not A Game by Walter Jon Williams
Dagmar is trapped in a hotel, with rioting Jakarta burning around her. When the conventional attempts to get her out fail, she decides to request help form the Group Mind: the on-line community of gamers who participate in Alternate Reality Games: games that happen in real life, not on the computer screen or over the Internet. Dagmar writes such games, working for Charlie, a phenomenally successful owner of a software company. Full review...
The Unique Creation by Heath A Hague
Terrorism – a happenstance where one might truthfully say an unwitting heroism can be born. But never as in this book.
Steve Westerman is in a malaise after a car crash killed his wife and children, when a nuclear bomb is set off in the centre of London. It all appears to our eyes to be a mysterious techno-cult, but the act has caused a big change to Westerman, and launched him as one of the Uniques. Full review...
Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison
A young man practically living on the streets finds a change of fortune with a job as a messenger boy, but will it lead to quite the right kind of luck? A political Mister Big Nasty gets killed, leaving behind a lovely and glamorous moll-type character, Shirl. Andy, the policeman from the incredibly under-resourced police force, while surprised at the amount he is ordered to concentrate on this murder for, falls in love with Shirl. But the biggest character in this book remains the setting. Full review...
Orphan's Alliance (Jason Wander 4) by Robert Buettner
Chris Bunch was the first to make the sci-fi space army genre his own, but Robert Buettner is certainly following close behind. Whilst I've always preferred Bunch's work over Buettner's, that by no means makes Buettner a bad writer and his work has always been enjoyable. Once again, Buettner has included much of what makes his work so much fun to read. Full review...
Chaos Space (Sentients of Orion) by Marianne De Pierres
I have to admit that when I first opened this book I was at a loss. It is Book 2 of the The Sentients of Orion series, so I did encounter some confusion as to what had happened before to lead to the events I was reading about. I stuck with it though, and as I read along, things became much clearer though I would heartily recommend reading the first book in the series before jumping into this one, as the plot has many threads and is quite complicated. Full review...
Seeds of Earth (Humanity's Fire) by Michael Cobley
It's a strange fact of the human psyche that while we send out our travellers in peace and exploration…we fear that whoever else is travelling out there, towards here, does so with malice aforethought.
Cobley is no exception to this rule. In his future world Earth's first contact with aliens came with the Swarm: a species of 'many reptilian similarities yet their appearance was unavoidably insectoid. With six, eight, ten or more limbs they could be as small as a pony or as large as a whale…' and they ravaged through our home galaxy like locusts destroying all in their path. Full review...
Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod
The world post Faith Wars (or Oil Wars, as the fundamentalists are inclined to call them) is both very different and, at the same time - as it should be in relatively close-future s-f - uncannily similar to ours. It's a world of the Second Enlightenment, where, at least in Europe, religion has been truly separated from politics and became a genuinely private and societaly marginalised activity. Full review...
Orphanage by Robert Buettner
I recently enjoyed Chris Bunch's Last Legion series, which told the story of training, combat and down time in an army marooned without help and seemingly without hope in deep space. Robert Buettner's Orphanage promised more of the same, although based a little closer to home, so I was greatly looking forward to it. Full review...
Saturn's Children by Charles Stross
My first encounter with Charles Stross was through Halting State, a William Gibson-meets-Christopher Brookmyre near-future post-cyberpunk crime caper. Saturn's Children is a different species within broadly the same habitat, a not-so-near-future space-opera thriller, more of a Asimov-meets-Philip K Dick-with-a-sprinkling-of-Douglas Adams. Full review...
Saturn Returns (Astropolis) by Sean Williams
Imre is surprised to wake up in a bunk in an alien spacecraft. It's an alien with a hive-mind, drifting around the outer rim of the Milky Way trying to find God, and/or the first ever life-forms of the galaxy. Imre quickly finds out he has a form of amnesia – quite unsurprising, given that the aliens have had to built him from scratch, using a stash of data contained within an iron casket, sent into space millennia ago. Imre also quickly finds out he is now a female. Full review...