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[[Category:New Reviews|Science Fiction]]==Science fiction==__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom HoltAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Blonde BombshellAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=4.5

|summary=The blonde bombshell in question in Tom Holt's latest book 'Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.'' I've heard it said that name 'technology' is Lucy Pavlovwhat happens after you're eighteen. If you are reading this review Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in 2017 of course you will know who Lucy Pavlov ismy lifetime. She I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the beautiful, talented, wealthy, CEO feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of PaySoft Industries it is - the revolutionary operating system that is running on every computer in the worldfrankly - quite frightening. Of course, if that is indeed I could research the possibilities and the case, then weprobabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I've got a problem. A very big problem. Because m reading someone who knows what Lucy doesnthey't know is that she is literally a blonde bombshell - well she knows she's blonde, just not that her body is a shell for a bombre talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. A very big I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a very smart bomb, but nevertheless a bomb. And she's been sent to destroy the planet. It kind of makes Bill Gates seem OK for the time beingway I could understand.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497789</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Scott WesterfeldSylvie Cathrall|title=ExtrasA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=4.5|genre=TeensScience Fiction|summary=In the future city of this There are few greater joys than a book, many people live with what is called a reputation economy. With everybody practically a cyborg, they're online permanently, using optical and brain implants to see everybody's status, output and more. Many people have hovercam companions, to make their own documentaries and film their own which lives. They rely on metablogs to interact and keep their popularity up. They continuously spread their opinions and interests in order to become more well-knowna compelling premise. A girl called Aya And this is struggling to get any renown, but things change, when she meets other people doing incredibly notorious things, but in complete secrecy and anonymityone of them.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847389228</amazonuk>0356522776

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Scott Westerfeld1803816759|title=SpecialsThe Unravelling|author=Will Gibson

|genre=TeensScience Fiction|summary=In It's 2038 and Joe is a bored cop policing the un-named city of the future, all the adults are living in the delusion that their city is rightwealthy and peaceful New York City. After Joe longs for a teenage life as an ugly, they all undergo a welter bit of medical procedures, to make their minds adventure and bodies conform to the bland, but gorgeous, society normget stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But one young woman is not like then something goes horribly wrong with the AI system that. She is going to a partynow runs everything, looking uglymaking life easier for many, and she knows it is not what we look likeriots start to spread. Finally, but how special we feel inside, that is Joe gets to do some real policing. In the aftermath of most importance. The good news the rioting global pop star Suki is that this woman kidnapped and Joe is our returning heroineassigned to bring her home. Joe isn't the only one trying to save Suki - Dylan, Tally. The bad news is that her ugliness is a temporary disguise, British superfan and worse than that - she knows how to feel special insidetech nerd, because she IS A Specialis also on the case.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847389082</amazonuk>What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki's kidnapping connected?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Scott WesterfeldB0CP95J1CG|title=PrettiesOf Ghosts & Broken Promises|author=Mark Lingane

|genre=TeensScience Fiction|summary=In Ronan's not entirely sure why he decides to go to the unnamed city of party but his interest is piqued by the future, all the adults are pretty. They've had mental and physical surgery to make them calm, placid and perfectly aesthetic human beingsway it arrived. If they have any trouble as young adults And it is the problem of what to wear at parties, or how seems like a good opportunity to get rid out of their hangovers when they wake up his room and away from the online activities he makes a living at 5pm. UnfortunatelySo he makes his way there, one of these bright young things is our heroine, Tally, one dodging the buses that make up most of the few people in the world to have learnt how damnably horrid traffic and sapping watching the life of Riley can local energy storage indicator lights. Should beenough power. Hopefully.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847389074</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeff SomersK P O'Donnell|title=The Eternal PrisonVital Link (A Spark in the Ashes)

|summary=This book stands out in the highVL-energy15, hard-edged sci-fi adventure/thriller genrea prototype robot, in that it covers two stories at the same timeis desperate to understand who she is. In one chapter we have Avery CatesUnfortunately, practically the best gun-for-hire in his post-apocalyptic North Americabefore she could find any answers, being told to kill one of the most protected and important people left in the worldended, by other, almost as important people, consumed in an apocalyptic war between the cruel mix nations of powerplays that make up the current politicsDrexel and Renada. Over half-a-century later, civilisation is starting to rebuild. In the other corner Dr Amelia Wong is Catesdetermined to continue her father's legacy, being thrown building a world where machines and humans can live together in prison - one of those basicharmony, hell-on-earthbut internal frictions and external enemies might bring it all crashing down again. Craig Anderson, surrounded by miles leader of a group of desertsalvagers called the Exhumers, prisonshas his entire life turned upside down when he unearths a prototype combat robot: none other than VL-15 herself. HereEven after being buried for 65 years, tooher determination hasn't diminished in the slightest, and no errant machine, he no savage human tribe and not even Drexel's ravaged ecosystem will be told to do jobs stop her on her quest for other people...answers…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841497053</amazonuk>B0CKRYFRZM

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Orson Scott CardEmily Tesh|title=Ender in ExileSome Desperate Glory|rating=34.5

|summary='Ender in Exile' is the most recently published in the series set in the universe of 'Ender's Game', a long standing and one of the best known series of science-fiction by Orson Scott Card. It's been defined as an 'interquel', fitting chronologically between 'Ender's Game' and the 'Speaker for the Dead', the first two (and probably the best two) novels in the sequence. Technically speaking, 'Ender in Exile' actually fits in-between the last chapters of 'Ender's Game' and describes in more detail events outlined in the resolving sections of 'EnderWhile Earth's Game'. Confusingly for the uninitiated, 'Ender in Exile' is also a sequel to the 'Shadow of the Giant'children live, a parallel sub-series from the universe of the enemy shall fear us'Ender's Game'. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841492272</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=John Dickinson|title=WE|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Paul Munro Following the destruction of the Earth, amongst a rare number of survivors, Kyr has been disconnected from raised on Gaea Station – the home of the World Ear in readiness for a mission that will last a lifetime. Sent scraps of humanity – and trained relentlessly to man a tiny station built at enormous effort avenge her people and expense on a desolate moon in the outer reaches of our solar systemworld that should have been hers. All her life, he will never be able she has been conditioned to return. Gravity is one-tenth that of Earth and his flesh has wastedfall in line, his bones enbrittled without the strength of calcium. 'If he stood on the Earth now... his skeleton would splinter under his weight.' It took eight years to get there fulfil her duty and the rest of his life stretches before him fearfullyensure that humanity perseveres. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385617895</amazonuk>0356521834

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ursula K Le GuinM R Carey|title=The Left Hand of DarknessInfinity Gate

|summary=ItI'm annoyingly picky when it comes to science fiction. Not because it's a genre I dislike – nothing of the sort. My standards are high precisely because it's a hard genre to believe that get right – and when it's bad, it'The Left Hand s often terrible. But the premise of Darkness'' dates back to 1969Infinity Gate had me hooked. A concept this intriguing felt like a high-stakes gamble: forty years on, if it reads as was done well, or even better, then when it was originally written, and - deservedly - enjoys a classic status in the science-fiction canon, as well as being perhaps the best known sci-fi novel by Ursula LeGuin'd be fantastic. So this is where I sum up that premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841496065</amazonuk>0356518043

 {{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 - Colfer is a world-beater when it comes to knocking up a story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718155149</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon Law Michael Grothaus|title=Bringing Forth the End of DaysBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Science Literary 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 planet'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 that allows them mobility 'But fearing something and independence, but at a freakish costhaving it come to pass are two different things. Worse, religion has mutated - the JehovahAnd I's Witnesses are now the m willing to bet most violent gangof what we fear will never happen, rushing or we can take steps to nudge whatchange it.'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>}}

{{newreview|author=Peter Salisbury |title=Passengers to Sentience|rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Human beings are spread across ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the galaxyquestion of identity and acceptance. The technology that allowed this Of what it means to happen? Not faster than light travel, suspended animation or matter transfer but cloning. Want to start a new life elsewhere? Your mind and personality can be mapped as informationhuman. Unmanned ships are sent to inhabitable planets across the furthest reaches of space Of what is real and upon arrivalwhat is artificial, and whether the automated cloning vats begin re-creating your body and entering your stored mind and personality datadevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755211596</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philip Palmer 1739593901|title=Red Claw22 Ideas About The Future|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=45

|summary=New Amazon, home to some of the most violent and deadly alien life imaginable, is due to ''Our future will be razed to the ground in order to make way for human habitationmore complex than we expected. A team Instead of scientistsflying cars, led by the charismatic Richard Helms, have been stationed on this planet under military protection, in order to study we got night-vision killer drones and catalogue the flora and fauna. However, the computer super brain handling all the technology has inconceivably turned on her human charges, forcing soldier and scientist alike automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to abandon base head quarterstrack grandma. As if the planet's hostile environment (including bouts of acid rain) were not enough of a threat, the characters are also pursued by legions of killer robots. Life expectancy does not look good.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841496243</amazonuk>}}'

{{newreview|author=K S Turner |title=Before the Gods (Chronicles I've got a couple of Fate and Choice)|rating=5|genre=Fantasy|summary=confessions to make. I''Before The Gods'' is presented m not keen on short stories as an enigma, wrapped in I find it easy to read a puzzle few stories and shrouded in mystery. The front is adorned by a beguiling image created by then forget to return to the authorbook. A glance at the back cover serves only There's got to tantalise rather than reveal what might be in storea very compelling hook to keep me engaged.  Then there's science fiction: far too often it'This is where it all begans the technology which takes centre stage along with the world-building. Everything It's human beings who fascinate me: the technology and the world scape are purely incidental. Love So, hatewhat did I think of a book of twenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, good, evil, us and themI loved it. 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 are wandering to the edge of their territory, when a baddy appears - an alien seeming 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 day. This incident 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 battle.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1421527626</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hiroshi SakurazakaMark Lingane|title=All You Need Is KillGalaxy

|summary=In a global war between humans and invading aliensSpark, called Mimicswho is an elite pilot with the Space Academy, Keiji is barely makes it through a trooper at the beginning of his short career in the armybattle alive. Despite his highHis co-tech body armour, he's pilot was not destined to last long - he's quickly deadso fortunate. But then he's quickly alive again, as somehow his life is rewound Waking from a day. It only makes for prolonged horror for the rookiecoma that lasted years, but it happens again and again. Each time he gets a better intelligence of what his destiny might have been - can he learn enough each time round to make a difference, and possibly break the loop?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1421527618</amazonuk>}} [[Category:Science Fiction]]{{newreview|author=Jonathan Luna remembers little and Joshua Luna |title=Girls Volume 1: Conception|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Ethan, we see with a great, broad comic stroke or six, is not the best when it comes in no physical shape to girls. Letting resume his mouth run away with him too often, he is not very successful at relationshipsduties. But let us look at what happens when Earth is under threat and he drives away from an altercation at the local bar, and sees a gorgeous - and very naked - young woman standing in the middle of the roadmust.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1582405298</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Charles Stross |title=Wireless|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=In Returned by his introductionsuperiors to the space station, Stross explains that one of the reasons he likes writing shorts stories is because they are the ideal format in which finds himself amid a last ditch attempt to focus on a particular concept of the future save humanity - and play around with it. It doesn't matter so much if not just from the idea doesn't ultimately work because neither the reader nor the author has invested in alien threats against it the way they would in a novel. ''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 archaicbut also from its own sins against itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841497711</amazonuk>B09X3NZ76W

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert Buettner Tade Thompson|title=Orphan's Triumph (Jason Wander)Far From the Light of Heaven

|summary=Fantasy Michelle 'Shell' Campion is fulfilling her lifelong dream of going to space. As first officer aboard the sleeper ship Ragtime, bound for the world of Bloodroot, she will essentially be a babysitter for the ship's AI captain. However, when she wakes up at the end of her trip to find dozens of her passengers butchered and science fiction are genres the Ragtime's AI almost non-responsive, she begins to realise that mesh well togetherher first mission won't be going as smoothly as she hoped it would. Some authors have written successfully across both genresDown on Bloodroot, but not usually in disgraced investigator Rasheed Fin and his android partner Salvo are sent up to discover exactly what went wrong on the same storyRagtime. Jaine Fenn has managed Meanwhile, former astronaut and friend of Shell's father Lawrence Biz takes a shuttle to combine both Bloodroot, half-alien daughter in one book tow, to see why the Ragtime has gone quiet, leaving behind the politicking and it's an interesting readbureaucracy 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>0575083239</amazonuk>0356514323

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bernard BeckettClaire North|title=GenesisNotes from the Burning Age

|summary=The reviewer sat down with the fancy hardback review copy of At its core ''GenesisNotes From the Burning Age'' by Bernard Beckett and turned the pages, not knowing at all what to expect. * What did he find? * He found Claire North is a science fiction tale set in a futuristic New Zealand. The setting of the book is based on current concerns - environmental problemsspy thriller, global oil wars and animositywith as many double crosses, interrogations and so on, and a plague war has meant NZ is cordoned off with a Great Sea Fencenight time escapes as Le Carre or Fleming. It is living under a strange Plato's RepublicHowever, based on a mix of ancient Greek life (naked wrestling and so on) as with the modern (relationships arbitrated by rampant gene testing). One of the soldiers defending it, Adambest novels, takes it upon himself, however, to betray his state, wears many masks and let a young girl alone on a raft through the cordon, and befriend her. But it its most affecting one 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|a new and timely genre=Science Fiction|summary=''Shadow of the Scorpion'' is a better book than either the title , cli-fi, or the cover (a cartoon-ish mechanical scorpion) might at first suggestclimate change fiction. ItNorth'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 tells of an interplanetary war between the Polity, a world devastated by climate change where humans as governed by benign AIs, have been forced to start anew 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 live alongside nature without any of the Polity. He is assigned to guard a crash-landed Prador spaceship on a remote planet modern and prevent some alien weaponry from falling into the wrong hands. Due to circumstances outside of his Controlcorrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuels, Cormac is required to infiltrate an underground network weapons of Separatistsmass destruction, 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 typeintensive farming). But, there 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 a growing unhappiness 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 territorylimiting world, and a young teen and his friends, originally scattered across said territories one by onegroup, 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 sixBrotherhood, in wondering if this is a straightforward Christian tale, disguised as teen fantasy. Does acolyte equate aims to apostle? How messianic are master these processes no matter the characters going to turn out cost to be? Do the ten planets and ten adventures here point us to the Decalogue?Earth.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847385060</amazonuk>0356514757

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip K DickAdrian Tchaikovsky|title=Do Androids Dream Shards of Electric Sheep?Earth|rating=4.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=World War Terminus is overEighty years ago, and Earth was destroyed, warped into an unrecognisable shape by the moon-sized aliens known as the Architects. Humanity is in ruinsscattered, constantly fleeing as world after world falls to the architect's reshaping. While most people have emigrated to MarsThen, just when they had the human race on the run, the Architects vanished. And so, the memories of the war fades, heroes are forgotten, some continue and humanity begins to live their lives on Earth while radioactivity slowly impairs their brain fracture and reproductive functionfight among themselves.  Upon emigrating Idris Telemmier, a man genetically engineered to Marstry and communicate with the Architects, all citizens were given a highly sophisticated android servantdoes not want to be remembered. But, when he and now six have escaped from captivity and fled the crew of the salvage ship he calls home discover what appears to Earthbe recent Architect activity, killing all in their path. Rick Deckard suddenly he is thrust back into the bounty hunter commissioned spotlight. As he and his allies bounce from star system to track down star system, chased by alien crime syndicates, human secret police and destroy these androidsrich slavers, almost indiscernible from humans, in return for a fee.he slowly begins to realise that the real war is only just getting started…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0575079932</amazonuk>1529051886

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris WoodingTerry Miles|title=Retribution FallsRabbits

|summary=Things are Welcome to the world of The Game. Or should that be the game, for while it ought to be capitalised to high heaven, it never quiet when leaves lower case throughout this book. It's also called Rabbits, although only as a slangy term for it comes – as far as anyone knows, it has no official title, no official source, no hard and fast structure, and to the average person no obvious entry point. A bit like the game of life on then. Yes, this is the Ketty Jaygame 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. For Captain Frey K and his mismatched band bezzies are trying to be historians of friendsthe game, colleaguesand have studied amongst many things the most unique of high score boards, call them what you willfor the lists of who has successfully won the game are in the most peculiar places, that make and are still very short. However this time it's different. This time the raggle-taggle crew of game seems the craftmost dangerous, will always find a dodgy scrapenay lethal, the most broken it's ever been – morally and otherwise. Unfortunately for K, a damsel in distress or some risky cargo trying to transport – sort out what the game is doing, if it's even being played, and how his loved ones might be kept safe, he is only to find out that the line between observing and up til now have survived learning about the consequencesgame, and playing it, is a very thin one indeed...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0575085142</amazonuk>1529016932

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Walter Jon WilliamsC J Carey|title=This Is Not A GameWidowland|rating=3.54|genre=Science General Fiction|summary=Dagmar is trapped in It's April 1953, and Adolf Hitler's schedule includes going to Moscow to attend the state funeral of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to London, parading around a hotelbit, and watching over the sanctioned return to the throne of Edward VIII with rioting Jakarta burning around herhis wife, Queen Wallis. When For yes, Britain caved in the conventional attempts lead-up to get her out failthe World War Two that certainly didn't happen as we know it, and we are now a protectorate – well, she decides to request help form we share enough of the Group Mind: same blood as the Germanic peoples on''the mainland''. But this is most certainly a different Britain, for Nazi-line community styled phrenology, and ideas of female purpose, has put all of gamers who participate in Alternate Reality Games: games that happen in real lifegender into a caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to the drudges, and beyond those, not right on down to the childless, the computer screen or over husbandless and the Internetwidows. Female literacy is actively discouraged. Dagmar writes such games And in this puritanical existence, our heroine, working Rose Ransom, is employed with the task of bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for Charliefemale emancipation out of it – after all, not every book can be banned, and not every story excised immediately from British civilisation, and so they just get a phenomenally successful owner 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 a software companyfemale protest come to light, with their potential to spoil Hitler's visit.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184149657X</amazonuk>152941198X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Heath A HagueEverina Maxwell|title=The Unique CreationWinter's Orbit|rating=45

|summary=Terrorism – Prince Kiem is a happenstance where one might truthfully say an unwitting heroism can be bornfamous political disappointment. But never as in this bookHe's outgoing, carefree, and has gotten into many drunken scandals over the past few years.  Steve Westerman So when an important political alliance is in a malaise after a car crash killed his wife and children, when a nuclear bomb to be arranged – one that is set off in the centre of London. It all appears supposed to our eyes prevent an interplanetary war – no one expects him to be a mysterious techno-cult, but chosen for the act has caused a big change to Westerman, and launched role. Least of all him as one of the Uniques.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1438928424</amazonuk>0356515885

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Harry HarrisonRob Winters|title=Make Room! Make Room!His Name Was Wren

|genre=Science FictionConfident Readers|summary=A young man practically living on In September 1944 something came down in Oban Woods, near the village of Hurstwick. It came down hard, taking the streets finds a change spire of fortune the village church with it, destroying a job as a messenger boystone shack, but will it lead to quite the right kind of luck? A political Mister Big Nasty gets killed, and leaving behind a lovely and glamorous moll-type characterwide trail through the wood, Shirlbut no trace of what it actually was. Andy, the policeman from German secret weapon was the incredibly under-resourced police forcelocal gossip, while surprised at the amount he is ordered to concentrate on this murder forbut there should have been an explosion and a crater, falls in love with Shirl. But the biggest character in this book remains the settingand there were neither of those things.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>014119023X</amazonuk>B08KGVNVNB

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert Buettner Mark Lingane|title=Orphan's Alliance (Jason Wander 4)|rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=[[:CategoryNote to Self:Chris Bunch|Chris Bunch]] was the first to make the sci-fi space army genre his own, but Robert Buettner is certainly following close behind. Whilst I've always preferred Bunch's work over Buettner's, that by no means makes Buettner a bad writer and his work has always been enjoyable. Once again, Buettner has included much of what makes his work so much fun to read.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497525</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Marianne De Pierres |title=Chaos Space (Sentients of Orion)An Education

|summary=I have to admit In Kry's world, the discovery that when I first opened this book I was at human cells replace themselves every seven years results in a loss. It is Book 2 cascade of the medical "advances": in 2030 it''The Sentients of Orion'' series, so I did encounter some confusion as s found that radiation can return cells back to what had happened their regeneration state seven years before , in 2035 it's possible to lead to the events I was reading about. I stuck cure cancerous tumours but with it though, and as I read along, things became much clearer though I would heartily recommend reading the first book in the series before jumping into this oneside effect of erasing seven years of memory, as by 2045 the plot has many threads and cosmetics industry is quite complicatedusing the same technique to "de-age" their customers by seven years.In a society obsessed with image and youth, who needs memories?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841494291</amazonuk>B08LY8J4KS}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael CobleyChristopher Paolini|title=Seeds To Sleep in a Sea of Earth (Humanity's Fire)Stars|rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=ItOn the moon of a distant gas giant, Xenobiologist Kira Navárez is helping with the efforts to make the planet habitable to human life. However, a discovery of an ancient alien bunker under the moon's surface leaves her bonded with a strange fact alien entity. After the entity bonded to her loses control and kills half the staff of the human psyche that while we send out our travellers research station, the United Military Command cruiser Extenuating Circumstances arrives in the system to take Kira in peace for examination. Things go from bad to worse when the Extenuating Circumstances is attacked and exploration…we fear that whoever else destroyed by an alien ship, and she has to flee to the 61 Cygnus star system. She is travelling out thererevived aboard the freighter Wallfish, towards herecrewed by Captain Falconi and a rag-tag bunch of misfits, does so with malice aforethought. Cobley and the news is no exception to this rulegrim. In his future world Earth's first contact with The same aliens came with that destroyed the Swarm: Extenuating Circumstances are now wreaking havoc across all of human-occupied space, and only a species mythical weapon known as the Staff of 'many reptilian similarities yet their appearance was unavoidably insectoidBlue can stop them. With sixAs the death toll climbs and more players are introduced into this war, eight, ten or more limbs they Kira slowly begins to realise that she may have had a greater hand in the conflict than she 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.ve possibly imagined…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841496324</amazonuk>1529046505

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ken MacLeod Laura Lam and Elizabeth May|title=Night SessionsSeven Devils|rating=4.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=The world post Faith Wars (or Oil WarsEris is one of the foremost operatives of the Novantae, a resistance movement fighting against the ruthlessly expansionist Tholosian Empire – an Empire she was destined to inherit in her past life as Princess Discordia, whom everyone believed has been dead for years. Clo, an ace pilot for the fundamentalists are inclined Novantae, has a mission: hijack a Tholosian spacecraft to gather information vital to the war effort. Although she's less than pleased to call them) discover that her former friend Eris is both very different andher partner on this mission. Things get more interesting as the mission commences; aboard the ship are three defectors with a secret that could potentially cripple the Empire. Eris's brother Damocles, at the same time runner- as it should be in relatively close-future s-f - uncannily similar up heir to the Empire, is plotting to oursdisrupt peace talks between Tholos and the last of the free alien species. It's a world of race against time as the Second Enlightenmentrebels move to put a stop Damocles' plans, where, at least with millions of lives hanging in Europe, religion has been truly separated from politics and became a genuinely private and societaly marginalised activity.the balance…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841496510</amazonuk>1473231140

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert BuettnerFrederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)|title=OrphanageA Life Without End

|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=I recently enjoyed Chris Bunchlooked at the calendar the other week, and disappointedly realised I have a birthday this year – I know, yet another one. It won's [[The Last Legion by Chris Bunch|Last Legion]] seriest be one of the major numbers, which told but the time when I have the same number as Heinz varieties looms on the story horizon. And then a few of trainingthe big 0-numbers, combat and down time in if all goes well, I'll be an army marooned without help and seemingly without hope in deep spaceOBE. (Which of course stands for Over Bloody Eighty. ) Robert BuettnerNow if that's the extent of my mid-life crisis, I guess I have to be happy. Our author here doesn''Orphanage'' promised more t use that exact phrase, but he might be said to be living one. 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 assistant to the first geneticist he interviews, and they end up with a child, which is at least a way of continuing the samelife of his genes, although based and a little closer motive to homekeep on going. But how can he get to not flick the 'final way out' switch, especially when foie gras tastes so I was greatly looking forward to it.nice?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841497541</amazonuk>1642860670

{{newreview|author=Charles Stross|title=Saturn's Children|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary=My first encounter with Charles Stross was through Move on to [[Halting State by Charles Stross|Halting StateNewest Short Story Reviews]], a William Gibson-meets-Christopher Brookmyre near-future post-cyberpunk crime caper.''Saturn's Children'' is a different species within broadly the same habitat, a not-so-near-future space-opera thriller, more of a Asimov-meets-Philip K Dick-with-a-sprinkling-of-Douglas Adams.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841495670</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sean Williams |title=Saturn Returns (Astropolis)|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Imre is surprised to wake up in a bunk in an alien spacecraft. It's an alien with a hive-mind, drifting around the outer rim of the Milky Way trying to find God, and/or the first ever life-forms of the galaxy. Imre quickly finds out he has a form of amnesia – quite unsurprising, given that the aliens have had to built him from scratch, using a stash of data contained within an iron casket, sent into space millennia ago. Imre also quickly finds out he is now a female.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841495190</amazonuk>}}