Alfred Hitchcock once described opening a film by following a car being made in an automated factory; at the end of the process, the boot opens to reveal a dead body. Hitch never made the film because the idea was too impossible even for him, so Adam Roberts has taken up the challenge and transferred […]
This collection, chosen by friends, colleagues and admirers of the late author, is a great introduction to one of our great speculative short story writers. Tanith Lee effortlessly blends myth, fairytale, science fiction and erotica in a way both subversive and compelling. The stories are also often very witty; in ‘Red as Blood’, for example, […]
This extraordinary, big-hearted novel looks at life in and around the titular space port in Tel Aviv from a range of perspectives. Past, present and future blend in the sensuously-rendered ‘real’ world and the virtual environs of a post-Internet system called the Conversation. The book references many other science fiction writers, from the phrasing and […]
Joe is a private investigator tasked with finding Mike Longshott, author of the novel ‘Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante’ in this eerie book that perfectly nails the sense of dazed disconnect following the terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September 2001. As in ‘The Man in the High Castle’ ‘Osama’ (the book I’m reviewing, not […]
There are many factors that make the short stories in the extraordinary collection so compelling. One is that you aren’t quite sure what genre you’re reading, which makes the outcomes unpredictable. That you’re still not sure by the end is no failing of the author; rather it’s that he mixes a uniquely beguiling cocktail […]
The first of Stuart Aken’s ‘Generation Mars’ books takes three major contemporary social drivers – capitalism, religious fundamentalism and liberalism – and transplants them to Mars following economic and environmental collapse on Earth. The story takes the innovative form of a study based on recordings made by representatives of all three drivers with the most […]
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 […]
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, […]
The deft poetry of this striking and very readable debut fantasy novel is no less affecting for its simplicity. A trio of agents lead a gang of disposable mercenaries across an uncanny wasteland called The Misery in pursuit of two heretics. The agents are led by former nobleman Galharrow, whose disgrace in a battle between […]
This is a densely-written novel, whose rhythmic narrative is as much of an accomplishment as the convincing world-building; the latter detailed with such invention you forget it’s not, in fact real. Links to our realm – stupid attitudes towards refugees, the desperate politics of smaller countries who want to go their own way without some […]
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