I have been thinking recently that a lot of the science fiction books I’ve read in the last few months are particularly cruel about the lives of ordinary people. Take this passage by James Lovegrove in Redlaw, which attacks The Daily Mail reader mentality: “There’s a reason why that rag is as popular as it […]
Well, I nominated four of the five shortlisted novels for this year’s BSFA Award (and Kim Lakin-Smith’s Cyber Circus came close to getting a nod too) so I can’t complain about the shortlist. Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith (Newcon Press) Embassytown by China Mieville (Macmillan) The Islanders by Christopher Priest (Gollancz) By Light Alone by […]
If you’re a member of the BSFA and you didn’t get around to nominating your favourite novels, short stories, non-fiction and artwork for this year’s awards then you’ve got a final chance… You can email your nominations to awards@bsfa.co.uk or you can go here and fill in the form. You have until 10:00pm Thursday 19 […]
So it’s that time of year again, the deadline for nominations to the BSFA Awards is fast approaching (midnight on 13 January, if you haven’t done your duty yet) so it’s time to think about what I’d like to see on the shortlist. You can see what others have nominated here. NOVELS As usual lots […]
So I was going to look back at the books I’d read last year, but everyone does that and why the hell would you be interested anyway? Instead, here’s a list of some of the books I’m looking forward to reading during 2012… any suggestions about what I might be missing are welcome.
I’m going to spend some of this review taking issue with elements of Adam Roberts’ new novel, By Light Alone, so I think I should start off by staying up front that I thought this was both a thought-provoking and immensely enjoyable book. Indeed one of the reasons I’m going to spend so much time […]
Don’t judge a book by its cover is sound advice. Even wiser words might be a warning that readers shouldn’t judge a book by the blurb a publisher puts on the cover. Even so, Audrey Niffenegger ‘s prominently displayed claim that Charles Yu’s first novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, was […]
There is no point mincing my words. As a work of fiction, Bernard Beckett’s Genesis is a bit of a disaster. While there are interesting philosophical points raised, Beckett has made the fundamental mistake of forgetting that the first task of a novelist is to engage and entertain. If instruction is the author’s goal – […]
Before starting this review I want to congratulate artist Chris Moore and the (uncredited) designer at Penguin responsible for the cover of this book. It was a brave design choice to park the title and author’s name on the little spaceship in the bottom left hand corner of the cover, but the masses of negative […]
Does anyone need another reworking of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness? It’s not like there’s ever going to be a re-imagining of the story that’s more balls-to-the-wall than Apocalypse Now, so what more needs to be said.