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[[Category:Science Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Science Fiction]]==Science fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Eoin Colfer|title=And Another Thing ... Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Part Six of Three (Hitchhikers Guide 6) |rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Of all the big books announced for this year, this one must have raised more eyebrows than many. Why try and write a new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book, when way before the end, its creator Douglas Adams was proving quite hopeless at such a task? And why approach an Irishman, Eoin Colfer, when the originals <!- tempered with their humour which could only be described as Monty Python doing a sci-fi Terry Pratchett, and with their cups of tea and dressing gowns, could only be described as very English? Well the answer is most evident Remove - Colfer is a world-beater when it comes to knocking up a story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718155149</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Law AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Bringing Forth the End of Days|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Imagine the hell of a dying world, less than a generation from now. World War Three has been and gone - ended with conventional bombs galore but started by a plague on all plant-life, that removed all the oxygen from the planetAll Tomorrow's atmosphere. As a result, the few survivors must live in air-tight houses with special oxygenating equipment - the ultimate in air conditioning - or, they must have got in early with a special biomechanical adaptation Futures: Fictions that allows them mobility and independence, but at a freakish cost. Worse, religion has mutated - the Jehovah's Witnesses are now the most violent gang, rushing to nudge what's left of humanity towards its final judgment. Worse still - even worse than all of that - you're living in Crawley.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1608602036</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDisrupt|author=Peter Salisbury |title=Passengers to SentienceBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=3.5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Human beings are spread across the galaxy. The technology that allowed this to happen? Not faster than light travel, suspended animation or matter transfer but cloning. Want to start a ''Opening up new life elsewhere? Your mind and personality can be mapped as information. Unmanned ships are sent to inhabitable planets across ways of thinking about the furthest reaches shape of space and upon arrival, the automated cloning vats begin re-creating your body and entering your stored mind and personality datathings to come.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755211596</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Philip Palmer |title=Red Claw|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary=New Amazon, home to some of the most violent and deadly alien life imaginable, I've heard it said that 'technology' is due to be razed to the ground in order to make way for human habitationwhat happens after you're eighteen. A team of scientists, led by the charismatic Richard Helms Well, I must confess that there have been stationed on this planet under military protection, more than a few decades of technology in order my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to study and catalogue me but I'm left with the flora and faunafeeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of it is - frankly - quite frightening. However Of course, I could research the computer super brain handling all possibilities and the technology has inconceivably turned on her human charges, forcing soldier probabilities and scientist alike to abandon base head quarters. As if the planetend up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they's hostile environment (including bouts of acid rain) were not enough of a threat, re talking about or the characters are also pursued by legions of killer robotslatest conspiracy theorist. Life expectancy does not look good I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841496243</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=K S Turner Sylvie Cathrall|title=Before A Letter to the Gods (Chronicles of Fate and Choice)Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=''Before The Gods'' is presented as an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle and shrouded in mystery. The front is adorned by a beguiling image created by the author. A glance at the back cover serves only to tantalise rather than reveal what might be in store.
 
''This is where it all began. Everything. Love, hate, good, evil, us and them. This is before they were gods.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956224202</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Issui Ogawa
|title=The Lords of the Sands of Time
|rating=3
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=We're in the third century, Japan. A queen and her young retainer There are wandering to the edge of their territory, when few greater joys than a baddy appears - an alien seeming book which lives up to be some local creature. Handily enough a saviour, warrior hero appears too, from way in the future, complete with talking sword, and saves the daycompelling premise. This incident And this is bad news for the queen to take back to court and discuss, but it's even worse for the messenger - sent on a one-way ticket from his own life, to advise of timelines that need saved - and the people that might just save Earth from this cosmic battlethem.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1421527626</amazonuk>0356522776
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hiroshi Sakurazaka1803816759|title=All You Need Is KillThe Unravelling|author=Will Gibson
|rating=4
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=In a global war between humans It's 2038 and invading aliens, called Mimics, Keiji Joe is a trooper at bored cop policing the beginning wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a bit of his short career in the army. Despite his high-tech body armour, he's not destined adventure and to last long - he's quickly deadget stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But then he's quickly alive againsomething goes horribly wrong with the AI system that now runs everything, as somehow his making life is rewound a day. It only makes for prolonged horror easier for the rookiemany, but it happens again and againriots start to spread. Each time he Finally, Joe gets a better intelligence to do some real policing. In the aftermath of what his destiny might have been the rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to bring her home. Joe isn't the only one trying to save Suki - can he learn enough each time round to make Dylan, a differenceBritish superfan and tech nerd, and possibly break is also on the case. What went wrong? Did the loopsystem fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki's kidnapping connected?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1421527618</amazonuk>
}}
 [[Category:Science Fiction]]{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Luna and Joshua Luna B0CP95J1CG|title=Girls Volume 1: ConceptionOf Ghosts & Broken Promises|author=Mark Lingane
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic NovelsScience Fiction|summary=Ethan, we see with a great, broad comic stroke or six, Ronan's not entirely sure why he decides to go to the party but his interest is not piqued by the best when way it comes arrived. And it seems like a good opportunity to girls. Letting get out of his mouth run room and away with him too often, from the online activities he is not very successful makes a living at relationships. But let us look at what happens when So he drives away from an altercation at the local barmakes his way there, and sees a gorgeous - and very naked - young woman standing in dodging the middle buses that make up most of the roadtraffic and watching the local energy storage indicator lights. Should be enough power. Hopefully.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1582405298</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charles Stross |title=Wireless|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=In his introduction, Stross explains that one of the reasons he likes writing shorts stories is because they are the ideal format in which to focus on a particular concept of the future and play around with it. It doesn't matter so much if the idea doesn't ultimately work because neither the reader nor the author has invested in it the way they would in a novel. K P O''Wireless'' then, is something of an experiment. Stross employs many different styles, tackles many different subjects and is very skilful at creating mood. His stories are a strange blend of the technical and the archaic.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497711</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert Buettner Donnell|title=Orphan's Triumph The Vital Link (Jason Wander)|rating=4.5|genre=Science Fiction |summary=One of the major problems with science fiction series is that the titles aren't always terribly imaginative. At first glance, A Spark in the cover of ''Orphan's Triumph'' gives away exactly how the story is going to turn out. It's great credit to Robert Buettner that what I expected wasn't what happened.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497622</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stephen Woodworth |title=Through Violet Eyes (Violet SeriesAshes)
|rating=3.5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=To every generation, a few souls are born with violet-coloured eyes. These Violets can channel the dead. Viewed by the government as a commodity, they are taken into the care of the School from an early age and taught to use their abilities. While the School does teach them to control the souls constantly trying to invade their bodies from the black of death, it also trains them to serve the government – calling on the victims of murder and horrific accidents to ascertain exactly how they died or who killed them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749941278</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle
|title=Graphic Classics, Volume 17: Science Fiction Classics
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=So, an introduction. The Graphic Classics collection is a series whereby the best in genre fiction, from sources both highly likely and remarkably unexpected, is collected and dressed up for us in graphic novel form. This seventeenth edition, a belated best-of sci-fi volume, is their first foray into full colour, and is headlined by a version of The War of the Worlds. The supporting material ranges from a one-page strip to thirty-page stories.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0978791975</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Sean Williams
|title=Earth Ascendant (Astropolis)
|rating=4
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Science-fiction has come a long way since H G Wells first looked up at the night sky and thought how cool it would be to have giant Martian tripod war machines trampling all over the Home Counties. Now that the most daring innovations of even quite recent science-fiction can be found readily in your home - from videophones to genetically modified food - the genre continues to evolve and develop.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841495212</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Samantha Hunt
|title=The Invention of Everything Else
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Nikola Tesla, born in 1856, was a young engineering student in Croatia, a Serb with a ferocious talent for invention when he sailed to America armed only with a note of introduction from his former employer to Thomas Edison which said: ''I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man.'' Promised prodigious amounts of money to reorganise Edison's workshops, he was in the end cheated by Edison, who made a joke about the American sense of humour when Tesla asked to be paid.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099524007</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Jaine Fenn
|title=Consorts of Heaven
|rating=4
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Fantasy and science fiction are genres that mesh well togetherVL-15, a prototype robot, is desperate to understand who she is. Some authors have written successfully across both genresUnfortunately, before she could find any answers, but not usually the world ended, consumed in an apocalyptic war between the same storynations of Drexel and Renada. Over half-a-century later, civilisation is starting to rebuild. Jaine Fenn has managed Dr Amelia Wong is determined to combine both continue her father's legacy, building a world where machines and humans can live together in one book harmony, but internal frictions and external enemies might bring itall crashing down again. Craig Anderson, leader of a group of salvagers called the Exhumers, has his entire life turned upside down when he unearths a prototype combat robot: none other than VL-15 herself. Even after being buried for 65 years, her determination hasn't diminished in the slightest, and no errant machine, no savage human tribe and not even Drexel's an interesting read.ravaged ecosystem will stop her on her quest for answers…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0575083239</amazonuk>B0CKRYFRZM
}}
 {{newreview|author=Bernard Beckett|title=Genesis|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary=The reviewer sat down with the fancy hardback review copy of ''Genesis'' by Bernard Beckett and turned the pages, not knowing at all what to expect. * What did he find? * He found a science fiction tale set in a futuristic New Zealand. The setting of the book is based on current concerns - environmental problems, global oil wars and animosity, and so on, and a plague war has meant NZ is cordoned off with a Great Sea Fence. It is living under a strange Plato's Republic, based on a mix of ancient Greek life (naked wrestling and so on) with the modern (relationships arbitrated by rampant gene testing). One of the soldiers defending it, Adam, takes it upon himself, however, to betray his state, and let a young girl alone on a raft through the cordon, and befriend her. But it is not her that will provide the crux of the book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247296</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Neal Asher|title=Shadow of the Scorpion (Novel of the Polity) |rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary=''Shadow of the Scorpion'' is a better book than either the title or the cover (a cartoon-ish mechanical scorpion) might at first suggest. It's an engaging espionage-type thriller of course, but the emotional repercussions are sensitively dealt with.  The body of the novel is set during the aftermath of an interplanetary war between the Polity, humans as governed by benign AIs, and a vicious alien race named the Prador. Cormac, the protagonist, is a 22 year old recruit for Earth Central Security (ECS), the military arm of the Polity. He is assigned to guard a crash-landed Prador spaceship on a remote planet and prevent some alien weaponry from falling into the wrong hands. Due to circumstances outside of his Control, Cormac is required to infiltrate an underground network of Separatists, the Terrorists of the future, who rebel against the AI rule: a perfect set-up for some gripping interrogation and torture scenes of the technologically advanced type. But, there is more to the novel than that.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230738591</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=D J MacHale|title=Quillan Games (Pendragon)|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=I would like to start with an admission. I know by now, having read three earlier books in this series, the set-up. We have a demonic entity creating chaos and destroying life itself, territory by territory, and a young teen and his friends, originally scattered across said territories one by one, combatting the nasty and putting each and every world to rights. What I don't know is to what extent this is a religious allegory. I saw a lot of sloth in book four (or, if you prefer, the first commandment), and gluttony and covetousness in books five and six, which had similar plots. But I wasn't helped by the ending of book six, in wondering if this is a straightforward Christian tale, disguised as teen fantasy. Does acolyte equate to apostle? How messianic are the characters going to turn out to be? Do the ten planets and ten adventures here point us to the Decalogue?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847385060</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip K DickEmily Tesh|title=Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?Some Desperate Glory
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=World War Terminus is over, and ''While Earth is in ruins. While most people have emigrated to Mars's children live, some continue to live their lives on Earth while radioactivity slowly impairs their brain and reproductive function. the enemy shall fear us''
Upon emigrating to MarsFollowing the destruction of the Earth, all citizens were given amongst a highly sophisticated android servantrare number of survivors, Kyr has been raised on Gaea Station – the home of the last scraps of humanity – and now six trained relentlessly to avenge her people and the world that should have escaped from captivity and fled been hers. All her life, she has been conditioned to Earthfall in line, killing all in their path. Rick Deckard is the bounty hunter commissioned to track down fulfil her duty and destroy these androids, almost indiscernible from humans, in return for a feeensure that humanity perseveres.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0575079932</amazonuk>0356521834
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris WoodingM R Carey|title=Retribution FallsInfinity Gate|rating=4.5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Things are never quiet I'm annoyingly picky when it comes to life on science fiction. Not because it's a genre I dislike – nothing of the Ketty Jaysort. For Captain Frey My standards are high precisely because it's a hard genre to get right – and his mismatched band of friendswhen it's bad, colleagues, call them what you will, that make it's often terrible. But the raggle-taggle crew premise of the craft, will always find Infinity Gate had me hooked. A concept this intriguing felt like a dodgy scrapehigh-stakes gamble: if it was done well, a damsel in distress or some risky cargo to transport – and it'd be fantastic. So this is where I sum up til now have survived the consequencesthat premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0575085142</amazonuk>0356518043
}}
 {{newreview|author=Walter Jon Williams|title=This Is Not A Game|rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Dagmar is trapped in a hotel, with rioting Jakarta burning around her. When the conventional attempts to get her out fail, she decides to request help form the Group Mind: the on-line community of gamers who participate in Alternate Reality Games: games that happen in real life, not on the computer screen or over the Internet. Dagmar writes such games, working for Charlie, a phenomenally successful owner of a software company.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184149657X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Heath A HagueMichael Grothaus|title=The Unique CreationBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=Terrorism – a happenstance where one might truthfully say an unwitting heroism can be born''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. But And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never as in this bookhappen, or we can take steps to change it. ''
Steve Westerman is in a malaise after a car crash killed his wife and children, when a nuclear bomb is set off in ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the centre question of Londonidentity and acceptance. It all appears to our eyes Of what it means to be a mysterious techno-culthuman. Of what is real and what is artificial, but and whether the act has caused a big change to Westerman, and launched him as one development of the Uniquestechnology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1438928424</amazonuk>191458564X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Harry Harrison1739593901|title=Make Room! Make Room!22 Ideas About The Future|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=45
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=A young man practically living on the streets finds a change of fortune with a job as a messenger boy, but ''Our future will it lead to quite the right kind of luck? A political Mister Big Nasty gets killed, leaving behind a lovely and glamorous moll-type character, Shirlbe more complex than we expected. AndyInstead of flying cars, the policeman from the incredibly underwe got night-resourced police force, while surprised at the amount he is ordered vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to concentrate on this murder for, falls in love with Shirl. But the biggest character in this book remains the settingtrack grandma.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014119023X</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Robert Buettner |title=OrphanI've got a couple of confessions to make. I'm not keen on short stories as I find it easy to read a few stories and then forget to return to the book. There's Alliance (Jason Wander 4)|rating=3got to be a very compelling hook to keep me engaged.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=[[ Then there's science fiction:Category:Chris Bunch|Chris Bunch]] was far too often it's the first to make technology which takes centre stage along with the sciworld-fi space army genre his own, but Robert Buettner is certainly following close behindbuilding. Whilst I've always preferred BunchIt's work over Buettner's, that by no means makes Buettner a bad writer human beings who fascinate me: the technology and his work has always been enjoyablethe world scape are purely incidental. Once againSo, Buettner has included much what did I think of what makes his work so much fun to reada book of twenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, I loved it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497525</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marianne De Pierres Mark Lingane|title=Chaos Space (Sentients of Orion)Galaxy
|rating=4
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=I have to admit that when I first opened this book I was at a loss. It Spark, who is Book 2 of an elite pilot with the ''The Sentients of Orion'' seriesSpace Academy, barely makes it through a battle alive. His co-pilot was not so I did encounter some confusion as fortunate. Waking from a coma that lasted years, he remembers little and is in no physical shape to what had happened before to lead resume his duties. But Earth is under threat and he must. Returned by his superiors to the events I was reading about. I stuck with it thoughspace station, he finds himself amid a last ditch attempt to save humanity - and as I read along, things became much clearer though I would heartily recommend reading not just from the first book in the series before jumping into this onealien threats against it, as the plot has many threads and is quite complicatedbut also from its own sins against itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841494291</amazonuk>B09X3NZ76W
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael CobleyTade Thompson|title=Seeds of Earth (Humanity's Fire)|rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=It's a strange fact of the human psyche that while we send out our travellers in peace and exploration…we fear that whoever else is travelling out there, towards here, does so with malice aforethought. Cobley is no exception to this rule. In his future world Earth's first contact with aliens came with Far From the Swarm: a species Light of 'many reptilian similarities yet their appearance was unavoidably insectoid. With six, eight, ten or more limbs they could be as small as a pony or as large as a whale…' and they ravaged through our home galaxy like locusts destroying all in their path.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841496324</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ken MacLeod |title=Night SessionsHeaven
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=The Michelle 'Shell' Campion is fulfilling her lifelong dream of going to space. As first officer aboard the sleeper ship Ragtime, bound for the world post Faith Wars (or Oil Warsof Bloodroot, as she will essentially be a babysitter for the ship's AI captain. However, when she wakes up at the fundamentalists are inclined end of her trip to call them) is both very different find dozens of her passengers butchered and, at the same time Ragtime's AI almost non- responsive, she begins to realise that her first mission won't be going as smoothly as she hoped it should be in relatively close-future s-f - uncannily similar would. Down on Bloodroot, disgraced investigator Rasheed Fin and his android partner Salvo are sent up to oursdiscover exactly what went wrong on the Ragtime. ItMeanwhile, former astronaut and friend of Shell's father Lawrence Biz takes a world of the Second Enlightenmentshuttle to Bloodroot, where, at least half-alien daughter in Europetow, religion to see why the Ragtime has been truly separated from politics gone quiet, leaving behind the politicking and became a genuinely private and societaly marginalised activitybureaucracy of Space Station Lagos.What the five of them discover on the Ragtime has ramifications not just for Bloodroot, but potentially the entirety of human space…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841496510</amazonuk>0356514323
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert BuettnerClaire North|title=OrphanageNotes from the Burning Age
|rating=4
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=I recently enjoyed Chris BunchAt its core ''Notes From the Burning Age''s [[The Last Legion by Chris Bunch|Last Legion]] seriesClaire North is a spy thriller, with as many double crosses, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or Fleming. However, which told as with the story of trainingbest novels, combat it wears many masks and down time in an army marooned without help its most affecting one is that of a new and seemingly without hope in deep spacetimely genre, cli-fi, or climate change fiction. Robert BuettnerNorth's ''Orphanage'' promised more novel tells of a world devastated by climate change where humans have been forced to start anew and live alongside nature without any of the samemodern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuels, weapons of mass destruction, although based intensive farming). There is a little closer growing unhappiness with this limiting world, and one group, the Brotherhood, aims to home, so I was greatly looking forward master these processes no matter the cost to itthe Earth.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841497541</amazonuk>0356514757
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charles StrossAdrian Tchaikovsky|title=Saturn's ChildrenShards of Earth|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary=My first encounter with Charles Stross Eighty years ago, Earth was through [[Halting State destroyed, warped into an unrecognisable shape by Charles Stross|Halting State]], a William Gibsonthe moon-meets-Christopher Brookmyre near-future post-cyberpunk crime capersized aliens known as the Architects.''SaturnHumanity is scattered, constantly fleeing as world after world falls to the architect's Children'' is a different species within broadly reshaping. Then, just when they had the human race on the same habitatrun, a not-the Architects vanished. And so-near-future space-opera thriller, more the memories of the war fades, heroes are forgotten, and humanity begins to fracture and fight among themselves. Idris Telemmier, a Asimov-meets-Philip K Dick-man genetically engineered to try and communicate with-a-sprinkling-the Architects, does not want to be remembered. But, when he and the crew of-Douglas Adamsthe salvage ship he calls home discover what appears to be recent Architect activity, suddenly he is thrust back into the spotlight.As he and his allies bounce from star system to star system, chased by alien crime syndicates, human secret police and rich slavers, he slowly begins to realise that the real war is only just getting started…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841495670</amazonuk>1529051886
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sean Williams Terry Miles|title=Saturn Returns (Astropolis)Rabbits|rating=4.5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Imre is surprised Welcome to the world of The Game. Or should that be the game, for while it ought to be capitalised to wake up in a bunk in an alien spacecrafthigh heaven, it never leaves lower case throughout this book. It's an alien with also called Rabbits, although only as a hive-mindslangy term for it – as far as anyone knows, it has no official title, drifting around no official source, no hard and fast structure, and to the average person no obvious entry point. A bit like the outer rim game of life then. Yes, this is the Milky Way game of life for a certain tribe of people – the fan of the conspiracy, the computer game, the hack from the darkest of webs. People like our hero, K, named like that in the least Kafkaesque manner possible. K and his bezzies are trying to find Godbe historians of the game, and/or have studied amongst many things the first ever life-forms most unique of high score boards, for the galaxy. Imre quickly finds out he lists of who has a form of amnesia – quite unsurprisingsuccessfully won the game are in the most peculiar places, given that and are still very short. However this time it's different. This time the game seems the aliens have had to built him from scratchmost dangerous, using a stash of data contained within an iron casketnay lethal, sent into space millennia agothe most broken it's ever been – morally and otherwise. Imre also quickly finds Unfortunately for K, in trying to sort out what the game is doing, if it's even being played, and how his loved ones might be kept safe, he is now only to find out that the line between observing and learning about the game, and playing it, is a femalevery thin one indeed...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841495190</amazonuk>1529016932
}}
 {{newreview|author=Cherith Baldry |title=The Reliquary Ring|rating=4 |genre=Fantasy|summary=In an alternate Venice ruled by The Church, genetically engineered beings called genics are bought and sold as the servants and playthings of wealthy aristocrats. They are considered heretical, outside the laws of both man and God and even their touch is believed to be unclean.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330492071</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeff Somers C J Carey|title=The Digital PlagueWidowland
|rating=4
|genre=Science General Fiction|summary=I have It's April 1953, and Adolf Hitler's schedule includes going to Moscow to admit attend the previous book state funeral of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to be written aboutLondon, parading around a bit, and narrated bywatching over the sanctioned return to the throne of Edward VIII with his wife, Queen Wallis. For yes, killerBritain caved in the lead-for-hire Avery Catesup to the World War Two that certainly didn't happen as we know it, and we are now a protectorate – well, did not last long in we share enough of the same blood as the Germanic peoples on ''the memorymainland''. There But this is some gratitude most certainly a different Britain, for Nazi-styled phrenology, and ideas of female purpose, has put all of that this book mentions gender into a caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to the first literary outing in very oblique waysdrudges, and beyond those, right on down to maximise the way childless, the husbandless and the widows. Female literacy is actively discouraged. And in this adventure puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose Ransom, is a self-contained one, but I did need reminding employed with the task of the global scope bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of the first it – after all, not every bookcan be banned, where a world-stifling religionand not every story excised immediately from British civilisation, and so they just get a police force even more guilty hefty tweak towards the party line before they're stamped ready for reprint. That is her job, at least, until the first emerging signs of the samefemale protest come to light, were in conflictwith their potential to spoil Hitler's visit.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841497045</amazonuk>152941198X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Frederik Pohl Everina Maxwell|title=Gateway Winter's Orbit|rating=45
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Prince Kiem is a famous political disappointment. He''Gateway''s outgoing, by Frederik Pohlcarefree, is very much in and has gotten into many drunken scandals over the grand tradition of 'hard SF'past few years. Whereas much of what gets put in the science-fiction section of bookshops So when an important political alliance is actually little more than fantasy with lasers instead of swords, ''Gateway'' to be arranged – one that is part of the Arthur C Clarke, Bradbury and Asimov school that seeks supposed to prevent an interplanetary war – no one expects him to extrapolate fantastic worlds from real current science, and examines how science and technology could affect be chosen for the peoples role. Least of those worldsall him.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0575078995</amazonuk>0356515885
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=D B Shan Rob Winters|title=Procession of the Dead (The City Trilogy)His Name Was Wren
|rating=4
|genre=Science FictionConfident Readers|summary=Capac Raimi arrives In September 1944 something came down in Oban Woods, near the City full village of ambitionHurstwick. He intends to make a name for himself in his Uncle Theo's protection business. And, as he always knew he would It came down hard, Capac turns out to be good at it. He loves taking the seedy side spire of the City and he has no compunction in using any dirty tricks to climb the gangster ladder. Capac's ultimate aim is to work directly for the Cardinalvillage church with it, the City's godfather. The Cardinal is the City and the City is the Cardinal. But when Capac finally gets his wishdestroying a stone shack, things start to unravel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007261306</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Neal Asher |title=Line War |rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=This new addition to the Polity universe starts off where the ''Polity Agent'' left off. Polity is still suffering from the onslaught of Jain tech, and leaving a lethal nanotechnology designed to destroy civilisations. Jain-infested Erebus and all his subjugated AIs are at war with wide trail through the Polity and Agent Cormacwood, Orlandine and Dragon all are trying to their best, in their unique ways, to thwart Erebus's plans, whatever they might bebut no trace of what it actually was.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405055014</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Derek Gunn |title=Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder |rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Given the recent success of German secret weapon was the film version of Matheson's [[I Am Legend by Richard Matheson|I Am Legend]]local gossip, it's not a surprise that anything featuring humans fighting vampires but there should be optioned for have been an explosion and a film version. Admittedlycrater, the identity and there were neither of the enemy is really the only thing the two books have in common, but on reading this one, I can see exactly why the film industry would be interestedthose things.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>097679148X</amazonuk>B08KGVNVNB
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stephenie Meyer Mark Lingane|title=The HostNote to Self: An Education
|rating=4
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=The healer Fords Deep Waters is In Kry's world, the discovery that human cells replace themselves every seven years results in a Soulcascade of medical "advances": in 2030 it's found that radiation can return cells back to their regeneration state seven years before, so 'in 2035 it's possible to cure cancerous tumours but with the side effect of erasing seven years of memory, by 2045 the cosmetics industry is using the same technique to "de-age" their customers by nature he was all things good: compassionateseven years. In a society obsessed with image and youth, patientwho needs memories?|isbn=B08LY8J4KS}} {{Frontpage|author= Christopher Paolini|title= To Sleep in a Sea of Stars|rating= 5|genre= Science Fiction|summary= On the moon of a distant gas giant, honestXenobiologist Kira Navárez is helping with the efforts to make the planet habitable to human life. However, virtuous a discovery of an ancient alien bunker under the moon's surface leaves her bonded with a strange alien entity. After the entity bonded to her loses control and full kills half the staff of love… Howeverthe research station, the United Military Command cruiser Extenuating Circumstances arrives in the system to take Kira in for examination. Things go from bad to worse when the Extenuating Circumstances is attacked and destroyed by an alien ship, and she has to flee to the 61 Cygnus star system. She is revived aboard the freighter Wallfish, because Fords Deep Waters lived inside crewed by Captain Falconi and a rag-tag bunch of misfits, and the news is grim. The same aliens that destroyed the Extenuating Circumstances are now wreaking havoc across all of human body-occupied space, irritation was sometimes inescapableand only a mythical weapon known as the Staff of Blue can stop them.As the death toll climbs and more players are introduced into this war, Kira slowly begins to realise that she may have had a greater hand in the conflict than she could'' ve possibly imagined…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847441831</amazonuk>1529046505
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ken MacLeodLaura Lam and Elizabeth May|title=The Execution ChannelSeven Devils|rating=54|genre=Science Fiction|summary=In a post flu pandemic Britain not so far into Eris is one of the foremost operatives of the futureNovantae, a nuclear explosion rocks resistance movement fighting against the US base at RAF Leuchars. Several thousand people die. The War on Terror is being lostruthlessly expansionist Tholosian Empire – an Empire she was destined to inherit in her past life as Princess Discordia, perhaps whom everyone believed has already been lostdead for years. Russia and China are gradually reverting back to old-style CommunismClo, an ace pilot for the Novantae, Britain is has a seething mass of racial tension, and mission: hijack a goodly proportion of Americans are subsisting in FEMA camps, refugees from global warming and debtTholosian spacecraft to gather information vital to the war effort. Although she's less than pleased to discover that her former friend Eris is her partner on this mission. India leads Things get more interesting as the profitable race in designing technological consumer goods, China does mission commences; aboard the ship are three defectors with a secret that could potentially cripple the skilled manufacturingEmpire. Eris's brother Damocles, leaving the newlyrunner-impoverished American workers up heir to the Empire, is plotting to disrupt peace talks between Tholos and the crumbs last of slave-labour assembly workthe free alien species. Conspiracy theorists and state disinformation networks have become indistinguishable from one another and someone, somewhere has set up It's a race against time as the Execution Channelrebels move to put a stop Damocles' plans, which shows loop after loop with millions of lives hanging in the murder, execution and torture, nobody knows how.balance…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841496677</amazonuk>1473231140
}}
  {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Iain M BanksFrederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)|title=Matter|genre=Science FictionA Life Without End
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A king of Sarl dies - seemingly in battleI looked at the calendar the other week, but really by the hand of his right-hand man and frienddisappointedly realised I have a birthday this year – I know, yet another one. On It won't be one of his sons runs away with his trusty servant to seek help from the representatives of civilisations so advanced that they are practically gods. A Special Circumstances agentmajor numbers, once but the unruly princess and daughter of time when I have the king, same number as Heinz varieties looms on learning the horizon. And then a few of his demise decides to get dethe big 0-fanged numbers, and go back to a world which she thought she had left if all goes well, I'll be an OBE. (Which of course stands for goodOver Bloody Eighty. The other son, for now Prince Regent, dodges several assassination attempts while personally supervising ) Now if that's the discovery extent of a mysteriousmy mid-life crisis, I guess I have to be happy. Our author here doesn't use that exact phrase, unimaginably ancient and seemingly sentient artefactbut he might be said to be living one. Two of Determined to find out how to prolong life for as long as he wants – he would like to see 400 – he hops right into bed with the most advanced civilisations in assistant to the Galaxyfirst geneticist he interviews, the Morthanveld and The Culturethey end up with a child, dance round each other trying to figure out why exactly one which is at least a way of continuing the client cultures life of Morthanveld created his genes, and a phantom fleet of warshipsmotive to keep on going. But how can he get to not flick the 'final way out' switch, especially when foie gras tastes so nice?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841494178</amazonuk>1642860670
}}
{{newreview |title=The Serrano Succession|author=Elizabeth Moon|genre=Science Fiction|rating=3|summary=The politics of the empire of great noble families is still up in arms about the newish medical practice of rejuv – is the drug process at fault, or poisoned, and how far-reaching are its effects Move on the military officers that have been able over the past generation or so to afford this anti-aging process? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>184149674X</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Short Story Reviews]]

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