Another one in the Panopticon series. Bouncy sci-fi which scattershoots its plots all over the place. VR, Mission to Mars, evil AI, underwater cities, eyeless technomages - this has it all. It probably has a little too much crammed in. But, hey, it's a great ride. A cliffhanger every other chapter, vaguely plausible science, and mortal danger at every turn. It looked like I was about to be part of my first space battle, and it would be fought with blunt instruments. The series are a great…
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This is a decent slice of sci-fi. It's the sort of story that probably could have been written any time in the last 100 years. The sole survivor of the human race is picked up by friendly aliens and spends his life as a specimen of scientific and cultural curiosity. And then... events occur! It's all rather silly fun. The aliens are all pacifists and spend more time negotiating rather than blasting. We bounce from world to world looking for remnants of civilisation. There's mild peril and…
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This is a fascinating story told on an almost geological timescale. It is a tantalisingly glimpse, into a much larger world. It is a story of contradiction - there's an epic universe, but we're stuck in a parochial backwater. It is full of un-human creations - yet its politics are firmly a reflection of the 2020s. I loved the story - it's almost impossible to describe how wild it gets - but found myself continually frustrated with the po-faced nature of the characters. The protagonists are…
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The 2016 film "Passengers", with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, is a gruesome study in "because of the implication". JLaw's character wakes on a spaceship to discover that only Pratt's character is alive and has prematurely roused her from her slumber. She has, in effect, been murdered and the only way she can pacify this dangerous man is to sleep with him. It is a grim film. WHAT IF THAT WERE A ROM-COM!?!?!?! Anthony Mackie and Zoe Chao are stuck on a spaceship a million miles from…
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Is it possible to write a time-travel story which makes sense? Probably not - but this comes close! It's a bit of a slow-burn; not revealing its secrets until it is good and ready. If you've read a lot of time-hopping sci-fi you won't find anything too surprising; nothing can escape the long shadow of La Jetée. It is a lushly plotted and surprisingly prosaic look at the reality of living on the moon and investigating the nature of reality. Even for a sci-fi book, I found some of the leaps a …
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The best thing about Shakespeare is that you can endlessly redefine the stories. Romeo & Juliet works as well set in NYC to a musical score as it does set in fair Verona. The Tempest is just as good whether the action takes place on an island or an alien planet. Shakespeare can be set in any number of high-schools without dampening its power. And so, Hamlet is now HAM(let) - Humanoid Artificial Mind (learned emotive type) - with V1 being the dead king and V2 our titular Danish Prince. …
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I don't usually back Kickstarter campaigns - but I love sci-fi & fantasy, and I don't think I've previously read any from Ukraine. So this was an instant buy - and it is a delight. As with any translation, you have to accept that the phrasing may sound a little "foreign" and you won't immediately get all the idioms and references - but that's all part of the fun, right? A tiny drumming sound grew alongside him, like chubby old fingers on glass, like rain on a coffin. He would here die, too, …
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Imagine a world with inter-city rockets, where tourists still use film cameras. Where self-driving trucks sport a wide array of sensor apparatus and record all their data onto miles of magnetic tape. Where the latest Androids are life-like and can perfectly clone a dead man's speech, yet are powered by punch-cards. People make video calls from public booths which eagerly accept coins as payment. At the heart of nearly every story is paranoia and poor mental health. Perhaps I am a robot? Or…
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Everyone smokes in the future. It is such an obvious truism that sci-fi writers can predict faster-than-light travel, yet fail to see that manly men won't be smoking pipes on board their spaceships. Someone recommended that I read "Autofac" which is the sci-fi version of "The Magic Porridge Pot". But the story was surprisingly hard to find. Originally published in a magazine in 1955, it was subsequently republished in a collection called "The Variable Man" in 1957. It is impossible to find a …
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I'm a little behind on my reading - I've been busy, OK! This is a collection of tales from 2014. Which means it isn't in the shadow of a damned pandemic, lunatic president, or any of the other modern horrors which have caused shockwaves to authors' psyches. I love short stories. There's absolutely no commitment. I'm not going to be tricked into buying endless sequels of declining quality. There's no vast universe for me to get invested in. And if one's a bit disappointing, never mind; turn…
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This is a modern Arabian Nights. Eight Middle Eastern tales of adventure and magic, infused with a startling modernity. I loved the world-building in this. The creeping horror in some of the tales was offset by the delicious exploration of what it means to inhabit a world with Djinn. Interestingly, it seemed very scripture-heavy to me- with characters reciting little prayers and quoting from the Qur'an. Would I noticed that if the characters were Christians? It shows just how deeply embedded…
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Yet another compendium of Chinese sci-fi stories - and there are some great stories in this collection. There are also some essays about what makes Chinese science fiction Chinese. Based on my (limited) experience, I'd say one of the defining characteristics of the Chinese SF I've read is the way exposition is dispensed with and replaced by poetry. Mankind streamed across the river of time, aiming straight for the Door Into Summer. In that moment, our tiny planet was falling like a single…
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