Much grimdark fantasy deals in the harsh poetry of killing, but in ‘Court of Broken Knives’ Anna Smith Spark elevates it to a religion. If the High Priestess doesn’t kill someone (man, woman or child) then it is held that the end of days will come for all. Given that the temple in question is […]
Drew Wager is the author of ‘Elite Dangerous: Reclamation’, the first novel based on the online reboot of 80s classic computer game ‘Elite’. When game developer Frontier selected one of Drew’s Megaship stories for the online experience, the completed work included another first: that of an actor playing one of the characters. The character is […]
I read a lot of great SF books in 2016, but this is the only one that had me thinking, ‘I fancy being that character’ or ‘I could do that, if only I was good at flying and the fictional universe existed’. Well, in a way it does, because this novel is the first official […]
Any writing career has its highs and lows; literally in Dave Hutchinson’s case, when following unemployment after graduating from Nottingham with a degree in American Studies he applied to be an air traffic controller. He credits the absence of planes falling from sky to the fact he didn’t get the job, but it’s intriguing he […]
Jeff Noon has always been fascinated by borders. He describes his first novel, ‘Vurt’, as something brought across the frontier between this world and another. His early work was full of characters traversing portals, whether formed by physical structures or drugs. It’s an obsession that includes his writing process. Many writers listen to music while […]
‘If Then’ is a deeply original, compelling and often disturbing piece of very English science fiction. The mysterious title suggests early code with the variables removed and the book’s structure hints at the binary; it’s divided in two with the first part titled ‘If’ (suggesting the future), the other titled ‘Then’, (suggesting the past). The […]
Emma Newman is one of our most consistently intriguing, original and compelling storytellers. Able to switch from Regency fantasy (the Split Words novels) and Hugo Award-winning genre comedy (the Tea & Jeopardy podcast) to the otherworldly beauty of her first SF novel ‘Planetfall’; she now turns detective in a book I didn’t expect, […]
In this extraordinary first novel, the British Empire attempts to exert its commercial and cultural influence into the Faelands, also known as Arcadia, with predictably disastrous results. Narrated by Catherine Helstone, sister of missionary Laon, the story at first channels and then pretty much becomes a sublimation of Romantic ideals as the siblings attempt to […]
@BSFA #writers interview: #Fantasy author @faithdlee is being interviewed by fellow novelist @AndrewWallaceDR live.… https://t.co/JtQoKsmTbP — Chad Dixon (@lapswood8) July 26, 2017
Art reproduced with kind permission of the artist, in this case my six-year-old daughter: Before telling a story, there are seven questions you should ask: 1: Who is the story about? 2: What do they want? 3: Why do they want it? 4: What is stopping them? 5: Why is it stopping them? 6: What […]
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