If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Intrusion, Ken MacLeod 2012, Orbit, 387pp, £18.99 Hope Morrison has refused – for reasons she can’t herself articulate – to take the Fix, a magic bullet taken by pregnant women to improve disease resistance, repair any genetic conditions, and generally [...]
Embassytown, China Miéville 2011, Pan, 405pp, £7.99 There can be little doubt that China Miéville’s is currently the poster boy for British genre writing. His novels routinely appear on award shortlists – he has won the Arthur C Clarke Award three times, a feat so far unmatched. He’s one of the few genre writers to [...]
Leviathan Wakes, James SA Corey Orbit, 561pp, £12.99 Leviathan Wakes, the first book of the Expanse series, landed with a substantial thud during the summer of 2011. According to George RR Martin, it is a “kickass space opera”, a quote prominently displayed on the front cover. There is another approving quote by Charles Stross on [...]
Solaris Rising, edited by Ian Whates Solaris, 325pp, £7.99 Subtitled “The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction”, Solaris Rising is precisely that – a reboot of the George Mann edited The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction under a new editor, and an anthology of nineteen stories by well-known contemporary science fiction writers. And like [...]
Infidel, Kameron Hurley Night Shade Books, 376pp, $14.99 Nyxnissa, the ex-bel dame, was introduced in God’s War, also published by Night Shade Books in 2011. Infidel is not a direct sequel to that book, though it does follow on from its story. In God’s War, Nyx was booted out of the bel dames – state [...]
Heaven’s Shadow, David S Goyer & Michael Cassutt Tor, 356pp, £12.99 Each year, a handful of science fiction novels arrive with a resounding thud. If these books have one thing in common, it’s that, though they appear to be aimed at sf readers, the marketing focuses on non-genre aspects. Heaven’s Shadow, the first of a [...]
Solitaire, Kelley Eskridge Big Mouth House, 352pp, £10.99 Some time in the near-future, planet Earth finally gets its act together and institutes a single global government. The children born in the first second of the EarthGov era are designated “Hopes”, trained from birth to be a credit, ambassador and example to the new age. Ren [...]
Cinco de Mayo, Michael J Martineck EDGE, 256pp, $14.95 Confession time: I’ve known the author of Cinco de Mayo for many years. We’ve swapped stories and novel excerpts, and commented on each other’s fiction, for over a decade. And I saw a few early chapters of this book about five years ago – in fact, [...]
The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi Gollancz, 448pp, £12.99 The science fiction debut of 2010 was apparently Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief. Almost a year before it appeared, it was being said Gollancz had bought it based solely on a synopsis and a single chapter. Rajaniemi’s few prior fiction sales had garnered much praise – three [...]
Music for Another World, edited by Mark Harding Mutation Press, 270pp, £8.99 Prominent on the cover of this first anthology from Mark Harding’s Mutation Press is the description “Strange Fiction”. I am not, I must admit, especially fond of that label. It seems too nebulous. Science fiction and fantasy, as labels, have their grey areas [...]
Terminal World, Alastair Reynolds Gollancz, 496pp, £18.99 There’s a pun in the title of million-Pound author Alastair Reynold’s latest novel. It’s not an especially good pun but, sadly, it’s somewhat characteristic of the book. Which is not say that Terminal World is a bad novel. If it disappoints, it does so in comparison to Reynold’s [...]
The Restoration Game, Ken MacLeod Orbit, 303pp, £18.99 Where does the end of a story belong? At the start of a book or, well… does it belong at the end? If the narrative is the journey to that end, should the story open with the destination? Isn’t the thrill of exploring new places one of [...]
Veteran, Gavin G Smith Gollancz, 391pp, £12.99 pbk I like Richard Morgan’s novels, and the cover of Gavin G Smith’s debut novel Veteran claims it is a debut on a par with Morgan’s. We all take such marketing with a pinch of salt but, conversely, without such comparisons readers might never find new books they [...]
The City and the City, China Miéville Pan, 373pp, £7.99 pbk Ever since the publication of Perdido Street Station ten years ago, China Miéville has been a darling of the UK genre literati. This is not entirely surprising – he’s intellectual yet commercial, a vocal Trotskyist but his books are not especially political, and a [...]
City of Dreams and Nightmare, Ian Whates Angry Robot, 427pp, £7.99 pbk On the back cover of Ian Whates’ debut novel, City of Dreams and Nightmare, it says “FILE UNDER FANTASY”, but I’m not convinced. City of Dreams and Nightmare is certainly genre fiction, but its best fit would be science fiction. Yes, there are [...]
The Rapture, Liz Jensen Bloomsbury, 341pp, £7.99 pbk Gabrielle Fox is a therapist, assigned temporarily to Oxbridge Adolescent Secure Psychiatric Hospital. She is also a T9 paraplegic – in her own words, “nothing works below the waist” – after a car accident two years earlier. Her chief patient at Oxbridge is Bethany Krall, a teenage [...]
Man of Steel teaser trailer released
If you’re sick of comic-book adaptations and film remakes, the last thing you might expect to get excited about is a new Superman film. That’s right: there’s a new Superman film scheduled for release in 2013. However, before you run off groaning at the idea of yet another mediocre cash-in, this one comes with caveats. [...]
Penguin owner buys ASI self-publishing company
According to the BBC, Pearson, which owns Penguin books among other things, has bought Author Solutions Inc in a £74 million deal. The deal means that Pearson now has control of a self-publishing interest. The news has raised concerns among some writers that intellectual property (IP) rights for new writers may be at risk, especially [...]
The Winner of our April 300 Word Writing Challenge is writer John J Brady, (known on these forums as alchemist). He wins a £10 voucher to spend at Amazon or The Book Depository, our quarterly prize. As usual, the challenge our members faced was to write a story of no more than 300 words, inspired [...]
Forum member Teresa Edgerton is the winner of our January 300 Word Writing Challenge. She wins a £10 voucher to spend at The Book Depository, our quarterly prize. As usual, the challenge our members faced was to write a story of no more than 300 words, inspired by an image selected by our moderators. For [...]
All Zombies Must Die hits the Xbox
At the weekend, All Zombies Must Die was unleashed on Xbox Live. As you can probably guess from the title, this is a rather tongue in cheek game developed by Doublesix with a focus on multiplayer zombie slaying. Set in the town of Deadhill, All Zombies Must Die offers a huge variety of weapons (such [...]
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