Newest Science Fiction Reviews
Science fiction
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...
The Reliquary Ring by Cherith Baldry
In an alternate Venice ruled by The Church, genetically engineered beings called genics are bought and sold as the servants and playthings of wealthy aristocrats. They are considered heretical, outside the laws of both man and God and even their touch is believed to be unclean. Full review...
The Digital Plague by Jeff Somers
I have to admit the previous book to be written about, and narrated by, killer-for-hire Avery Cates, did not last long in the memory. There is some gratitude that this book mentions the first literary outing in very oblique ways, to maximise the way this adventure is a self-contained one, but I did need reminding of the global scope of the first book, where a world-stifling religion, and a police force even more guilty of the same, were in conflict. Full review...
Gateway by Frederik Pohl
Gateway, by Frederik Pohl, is very much in the grand tradition of 'hard SF'. Whereas much of what gets put in the science-fiction section of bookshops is actually little more than fantasy with lasers instead of swords, Gateway is part of the Arthur C Clarke, Bradbury and Asimov school that seeks to extrapolate fantastic worlds from real current science, and examines how science and technology could affect the peoples of those worlds. Full review...
Procession of the Dead (The City Trilogy) by D B Shan
Capac Raimi arrives in the City full of ambition. He intends to make a name for himself in his Uncle Theo's protection business. And, as he always knew he would, Capac turns out to be good at it. He loves the seedy side of the City and he has no compunction in using any dirty tricks to climb the gangster ladder. Capac's ultimate aim is to work directly for the Cardinal, the City's godfather. The Cardinal is the City and the City is the Cardinal. But when Capac finally gets his wish, things start to unravel. Full review...
Line War by Neal Asher
This new addition to the Polity universe starts off where the Polity Agent left off. Polity is still suffering from the onslaught of Jain tech, a lethal nanotechnology designed to destroy civilisations. Jain-infested Erebus and all his subjugated AIs are at war with the Polity and Agent Cormac, Orlandine and Dragon all are trying to their best, in their unique ways, to thwart Erebus's plans, whatever they might be. Full review...
Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder by Derek Gunn
Given the recent success of the film version of Matheson's I Am Legend, it's not a surprise that anything featuring humans fighting vampires should be optioned for a film version. Admittedly, the identity of the enemy is really the only thing the two books have in common, but on reading this one, I can see exactly why the film industry would be interested. Full review...
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
The healer Fords Deep Waters is a Soul, so by nature he was all things good: compassionate, patient, honest, virtuous and full of love… However, because Fords Deep Waters lived inside a human body, irritation was sometimes inescapable. Full review...
The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod
In a post flu pandemic Britain not so far into the future, a nuclear explosion rocks the US base at RAF Leuchars. Several thousand people die. The War on Terror is being lost, perhaps has already been lost. Russia and China are gradually reverting back to old-style Communism, Britain is a seething mass of racial tension, and a goodly proportion of Americans are subsisting in FEMA camps, refugees from global warming and debt. India leads the profitable race in designing technological consumer goods, China does the skilled manufacturing, leaving the newly-impoverished American workers the crumbs of slave-labour assembly work. Conspiracy theorists and state disinformation networks have become indistinguishable from one another and someone, somewhere has set up the Execution Channel, which shows loop after loop of the murder, execution and torture, nobody knows how. Full review...
Matter by Iain M Banks
A king of Sarl dies - seemingly in battle, but really by the hand of his right-hand man and friend. On of his sons runs away with his trusty servant to seek help from the representatives of civilisations so advanced that they are practically gods. A Special Circumstances agent, once the unruly princess and daughter of the king, on learning of his demise decides to get de-fanged and go back to a world which she thought she had left for good. The other son, for now Prince Regent, dodges several assassination attempts while personally supervising the discovery of a mysterious, unimaginably ancient and seemingly sentient artefact. Two of the most advanced civilisations in the Galaxy, the Morthanveld and The Culture, dance round each other trying to figure out why exactly one of the client cultures of Morthanveld created a phantom fleet of warships. Full review...
The Serrano Succession by Elizabeth Moon
The politics of the empire of great noble families is still up in arms about the newish medical practice of rejuv – is the drug process at fault, or poisoned, and how far-reaching are its effects on the military officers that have been able over the past generation or so to afford this anti-aging process? Full review...
