This is a fun bit of sci-fi. A bit tropey in places, but an excellent sense of world-building and a vicious cast of double-crossers. The protagonist is best described by one of the character's off-hand remarks about her being “The very best space fascist girl scout of them all.” Can you feel sympathy for someone who has been manipulated into being evil? What about if given every chance to change, they turn back to their abusers? Is it OK to use sexism to your own advantage? If you had the cha…
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This starts out as a delightfully silly and charming book about the bureaucracy of Time Travel and ends up as something darker and more thought provoking. What would happen if the UK Civil Service had access to TIME TRAVEL!?!?! It's a brilliant idea for a novel and is written with a seemingly-real understanding of the number of forms, systems, emails, and subterfuge needed to set up such a premise. It is perfectly observed - both in terms of the protagonists' lived experience and their…
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Neal Stephenson's "Seveneves" is one of those massive, crushing, momentous, century-spanning and era-defining hard sci-fi novels. It starts with the immortal line "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." Classic! It dives into a world plagued with Kessler syndrome and the grimly inevitable consequences for the future of humanity. Scalzi's latest book is cheesy homage - fromage if you will - to that giant of literature. It asks an equally important question. What if,…
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Asbestos was the material that built the future! Strong, long lasting, fire-proof, and - above all - completely safe for humans. Every house in the land had beautiful sheets of gloriously white asbestos installed in the walls and ceilings. All the better to keep your loved ones safe. The magic mineral was woven into cloth and turned into hard wearing uniforms. You could even get an asbestos baby-blanket to prevent your child from going up in flames. That was, of course, unlikely because…
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As every good geek knows, Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope was originally called… "Star Wars". That's it. No subtitle. No episode number. When Empire Strikes Back came out, it was called "Star Wars Episode V" - which necessitated rewriting history and calling the original film "Episode IV". But at what point did the second Star Wars movie become known as Episode V? I've been reading "The Making of the Empire Strikes Back" by J. W. Rinzler, which I shall quote from extensively. Originally, i…
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Everyone on the spaceship was dead. And I can't help wondering if it was my fault. "So, Macy, I understand something funny happened to you while you were filming a scene on your latest movie, right?" The talk-show host is warmly genial and his generous smile hides the dead eyes of boredom. "Hey, yeah! So, me and Hank were trying something new and he turns and says to me..." The starlet bursts into a well rehearsed anecdote. I know it is well rehearsed because I've been running lines with…
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Throughout November I'll be releasing new weird sci-fi short stories. Each one is a campfire horror yarn, with a technological twist. Your feedback is highly appreciated. Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Chapter 4 - The Guerilla Information Team The GITs didn't mean to cause all this trouble. It is just a sad fact the trouble seemed to follow all their dubiously-legal-but-morally-justified schemes. Jitney was first radicalised by a…
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I gently lowered my face into the autoshave. A hundred AI blades started re-sculpting my beard into this month's mandatory fashion. The snug rubber vacuum seal held tight against my skin while the microbots collected the discarded hairs and applied antiseptic to the few areas where the blades had misfired. Johanna, my partner, thought they collected the beard hairs so that they could run drug tests on them. It was that paranoia which made me love her all the more. Personally, I didn't worry…
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Throughout November I'll be releasing new weird sci-fi short stories. Each one is a campfire horror yarn, with a technological twist. Your feedback is highly appreciated. Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Chapter 2 - The Myth of the Fall of Icarus Icarus had quarrelled with his father the night before their inaugural flight. "Beware, my son" the ancient Daedalus intoned, "These wings are temporary. We may not make landfall." Icarus…
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Throughout November I'll be releasing new weird sci-fi short stories. Each one is a stand-alone story. Think of them as technological campfire horror yarns, each with a little twist. Your feedback is highly appreciated. Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Chapter 1 - Are Memories Made Of This? "Holly, I don't mean to be rude but you're not my best friend any more!" That was the bullet which ripped through my world. A moment before the…
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Turns out, you can just relive your childhood for £2.99 on eBay! I was exactly the right age when this book came out, and I was the perfect target audience. A boy in a sleepy suburb finds a mysterious device which allows him to understand every language. Could it be… Aliens?!?!?! It's all biking to the woods, arguing with siblings, navigating growing up, and living in a diverse community. Oh, and aliens, obviously. The book is slim - 130 small pages - and easy to finish in an hour. Although …
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A glistening pool of blood gently wept from the body. Crimson gore sparkled under rapid flash photography as it loosely clung to the wounds. So many wounds. Too many for this to have been an accident. "Bite marks," said the forensics officer. "A lot of bite marks." The detective peered at the ragged corpse. It was barely recognisable as human; just a series of holes where flesh ought to be. "Please tell me a wild animal did this." The forensics officer pointed at a series of incisions…
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