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Newest Science Fiction Reviews (view source)
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{{Frontpage
|author= NMark Lingane|title=Chimera|rating=4.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=''The survivor stumbles forward, her steps echoing in the oppressive silence. Her heart pounds like a jackhammer. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All she remembers is running. Terror chasing. Everything lost.'' ''Broken and fragmented recollections tumble around her head. Fear courses through her body. Her breaths come in shallow, ragged gasps as desperation claws at her throat. Dehydration consumes her, and a raging thirst feels unquenchable.'' ''There must be a way out. As she moves through the foreign area, memories begin to gel. Disaster had ploughed through her life—not just hers, everyone’s.'' As our survivor struggles to orient herself, she's guided by a robot, which looks human-made, but she can't be sure. It says it is. It says she must try not to injure herself. Guided to an interview with an eerie, terrifying group of aliens, she desperately tries to make sense of flashes of memory - environmental degradation, deals done and then betrayed, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts to survive - and to attempt to explain how she came to be here, apparently the last human being alive.|isbn=B0DNVWMYP2}}{{Frontpage|isbn=AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.'' I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sylvie Cathrall|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.|isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1803816759|title=The Unravelling|author=Will Gibson|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary=It's 2038 and Joe is a bored cop policing the wealthy and peaceful New York City.Joe longs for a bit of adventure and to get stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But then something goes horribly wrong with the AI system that now runs everything, making life easier for many, and riots start to spread. Finally, Joe gets to do some real policing. In the aftermath of 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 - Dylan, a British superfan and tech nerd, is also on the case. What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki's kidnapping connected?}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0CP95J1CG|title=Of Ghosts & Broken Promises|author=Mark Lingane|rating=4.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= Ronan's not entirely sure why he decides to go to the party but his interest is piqued by the way it arrived. And it seems like a good opportunity to get out of his room and away from the online activities he makes a living at. So he makes his way there, dodging the buses that make up most of the traffic and watching the local energy storage indicator lights. Should be enough power. Hopefully.}}{{Frontpage|author=KP O'Donnell|title=The Vital Link (A Spark in the Ashes)|rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=VL-15, a prototype robot, is desperate to understand who she is. Unfortunately, before she could find any answers, the world ended, consumed in an apocalyptic war between the nations of Drexel and Renada. Over half-a-century later, civilisation is starting to rebuild. Dr Amelia Wong is determined to continue her father's legacy, building a world where machines and humans can live together in harmony, but internal frictions and external enemies might bring it all 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 ravaged ecosystem will stop her on her quest for answers…|isbn=B0CKRYFRZM}}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Tesh|title=Some Desperate Glory|rating=4.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=''While Earth's children live, the enemy shall fear us'' Following the destruction of the Earth, amongst a rare number of survivors, Kyr has been raised on Gaea Station – the home of the last scraps of humanity – and trained relentlessly to avenge her people and the world that should have been hers. All her life, she has been conditioned to fall in line, to fulfil her duty and ensure that humanity perseveres. Jemisin|isbn=0356521834}}{{Frontpage|author=M R Carey|title= Infinity Gate|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= I'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 get right – and when it's bad, it's often terrible. But the premise of Infinity Gate had me hooked. A concept this intriguing felt like a high-stakes gamble: if it was done well, it'd be fantastic. So this is where I sum up that premise.|isbn=0356518043}}{{Frontpage|author= Michael Grothaus|title=Beautiful Shining People|rating=4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.'' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1739593901|title=22 Ideas About The City We BecameFuture|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=''Our future will be more complex than we expected. Instead of flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to track grandma.'' I'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 got to be a very compelling hook to keep me engaged. Then there's science fiction: far too often it's the technology which takes centre stage along with the world-building. It's human beings who fascinate me: the technology and the world scape are purely incidental. So, what did I think of a book of twenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, I loved it. }}{{Frontpage|author=Mark Lingane|title=Galaxy|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Spark, who is an elite pilot with the Space Academy, barely makes it through a battle alive. His co-pilot was not so fortunate. Waking from a coma that lasted years, he remembers little and is in no physical shape to resume his duties. But Earth is under threat and he must. Returned by his superiors to the space station, he finds himself amid a last ditch attempt to save humanity - and not just from the alien threats against it, but also from its own sins against itself. |isbn=B09X3NZ76W}}{{Frontpage|author=Tade Thompson|title=Far From the Light of Heaven|rating=4.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=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 the Ragtime's AI almost non-responsive, she begins to realise that her first mission won't be going as smoothly as she hoped it would. Down on Bloodroot, disgraced investigator Rasheed Fin and his android partner Salvo are sent up to discover exactly what went wrong on the Ragtime. Meanwhile, former astronaut and friend of Shell's father Lawrence Biz takes a shuttle to Bloodroot, half-alien daughter in tow, to see why the Ragtime has gone quiet, leaving behind the politicking and bureaucracy 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…|isbn=0356514323}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire North|title=Notes from the Burning Age|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary=At its core ''Notes From the Burning Age'' by Claire North is a spy thriller, with as many double crosses, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or Fleming. However, as with the best novels, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that of a new and timely genre, cli-fi, or climate change fiction. North's 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 modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuels, weapons of mass destruction, intensive farming). There is a growing unhappiness with this limiting world, and one group, the Brotherhood, aims to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earth.|isbn=0356514757}}{{Frontpage|author= Adrian Tchaikovsky|title= Shards of Earth
|rating= 4
|genre= Science Fiction
|summary= New York Eighty years ago, Earth was destroyed, warped into an unrecognisable shape by the moon-sized aliens known as the Architects. Humanity is being bornscattered, constantly fleeing as world after world falls to the architect's reshaping. Then, just when they had the human race on the run, the Architects vanished. And so, the memories of the war fades, heroes are forgotten, and humanity begins to fracture and fight among themselves. Idris Telemmier, a man genetically engineered to try and communicate with the city has reached critical mass Architects, does not want to be remembered. But, when he and has matured the crew of the salvage ship he calls home discover what appears to be recent Architect activity, suddenly he is thrust back into a living almost-breathing entity 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 ready only just getting started…|isbn=1529051886}}{{Frontpage|author=Terry Miles|title=Rabbits|rating=4.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Welcome to make it's way out into the worldof The Game. Before it can Or should that be establishedthe game, an ancient evil appears for while it ought to attempt be capitalised to destroy high heaven, it just never leaves lower case throughout this book. It's also called Rabbits, although only as a slangy term for it – as far as anyone knows, it destroyed Atlantis has no official title, no official source, no hard and fast structure, and other forgotten placesto the average person no obvious entry point. A bit like the game of life then. The city Yes, this is not alone through the birthing processgame 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, people who embody K, named like that in the values least Kafkaesque manner possible. K and his bezzies are selected trying to become the living embodiment be historians of the citygame, some cities and have onestudied amongst many things the most unique of high score boards, some have twelve and New York for the lists of who has six. Together these human-embodiments must defeat successfully won the woman game are in white the most peculiar places, and save New York from are still very real destructionshort. But these are five However this time it's different boroughs which don. This time the game seems the most dangerous, nay lethal, the most broken it't always see eye s ever been – morally and otherwise. Unfortunately for K, in trying to eyesort 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 learning about the game, and playing it, is a very thin one indeed...|isbn=1529016932}}{{Frontpage|author=C J Carey|title=Widowland|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=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 bit, and watching over the sanctioned return to the throne of Edward VIII with his wife, Queen Wallis. For yes, Britain caved in the lead-up to the World War Two that certainly didn't happen as we know it, and we are now a personality clash protectorate – well, we share enough of the same blood as the Germanic peoples on an epic scale ''the mainland''. But this is most certainly a different Britain, for Nazi-styled phrenology, and ideas of female purpose, has put all of that gender into a caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to the drudges, and beyond those, right on down to the childless, the husbandless and unity the widows. Female literacy is actively discouraged. And in this puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose Ransom, is both critical employed with the task of bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of it – after all, not every book can be banned, and not remotely guaranteedevery story excised immediately from British civilisation, and so they just get a 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 female protest come to light, with their potential to spoil Hitler's visit.|isbn=0356512665152941198X
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Cixin LiuEverina Maxwell|title=DeathWinter's EndOrbit
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary= If IPrince Kiem is a famous political disappointment. He'd been paying more attention when I picked this book ups outgoing, carefree, I would have put it back on and has gotten into many drunken scandals over the shelfpast few years. Not because I didn't want So when an important political alliance is to read it, but because I'd have figured out be arranged – one that it was is supposed to prevent an interplanetary war – no one expects him to be chosen for the final part role. Least of a trilogyall him. Coming |isbn=0356515885}}{{Frontpage|author=Rob Winters|title=His Name Was Wren|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=In September 1944 something came down in part way through a saga is never Oban Woods, near the easiest thing to do and it's particularly true in science fiction because without knowing the back-story there are not just people whose names mean nothing to you (when it's assumed they will) but there are whole concepts that you won't understandvillage of Hurstwick. This latter is particularly true It came down hard, taking the spire of Cixin Liu's work – his range is phenomenal. George R R Martinthe village church with it, who knows destroying a thing or two about world-creationstone shack, described it as '' and leaving a unique blend wide trail through the wood, but no trace of scientific what it actually was. German secret weapon was the local gossip, but there should have been an explosion and philosophical speculationa crater, conspiracy theory and cosmology''. All there were neither of that and morethose things.|isbn=1784971650B08KGVNVNB
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Andy BriggsMark Lingane|title=Ctrl+SNote to Self: An Education|rating=54
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary= In Kry's world, the near futurediscovery that human cells replace themselves every seven years results in a cascade of medical "advances": in 2030 it's found that radiation can return cells back to their regeneration state seven years before, lifein 2035 it's pretty goodpossible 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 seven years. Climate change has been brought under controlIn a society obsessed with image and youth, who needs memories?|isbn=B08LY8J4KS}} {{Frontpage|author= Christopher Paolini|title= To Sleep in a Sea of Stars|rating= 5|genre= Science Fiction|summary= On the bee population has been brought back from near-extinctionmoon of a distant gas giant, and 3D printing has made things cheaper and quicker than ever before. But Xenobiologist Kira Navárez is helping with the biggest triumph has got efforts to be SPACE, a simulated world that has make the ability planet habitable to mimic emotions as well as imageshuman life. ButHowever, as a discovery of an ancient alien bunker under the moon's surface leaves her bonded with every technologya strange alien entity. After the entity bonded to her loses control and kills half the staff of the research station, there is the potential United Military Command cruiser Extenuating Circumstances arrives in the system to take Kira in for it 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 be abusedthe 61 Cygnus star system. Every dayShe is revived aboard the freighter Wallfish, crewed by Captain Falconi and a rag-tag bunch of misfits, people and the news is grim. The same aliens that destroyed the Extenuating Circumstances are being kidnappednow wreaking havoc across all of human-occupied space, plugged into SPACE and have their emotions and feelings harvested for only a mythical weapon known as the richest and sickest members Staff of society. And now Theo's mum has gone missingBlue can stop them. As he follows the trail left by herdeath toll climbs and more players are introduced into this war, he uncovers Kira slowly begins to realise that she may have had a vast conspiracy that would use any means necessary to stop him from finding out where his mum has gone...greater hand in the conflict than she could've possibly imagined…|isbn=14091846411529046505
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Stephen BaxterLaura Lam and Elizabeth May|title= World Engines: DestroyerSeven Devils
|rating= 4
|genre= Science Fiction
|summary= The last thing Colonel Reid Malenfant remembers Eris is his Space Shuttle crashing - until he wakes up 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 the mid-24th Centuryher past life as Princess Discordia, whom everyone believed has been dead for years. Clo, on an Earth massively depopulated and patiently waiting ace pilot for the coming apocalypse. Suffering from severe culture shockNovantae, he tries has a mission: hijack a Tholosian spacecraft to adjust gather information vital to this new worldthe war effort. But all of Although she's less than pleased to discover that her former friend Eris is her partner on this is changed when he receives a message from his wife Emmamission...who died on Things get more interesting as the mission commences; aboard the ship are three defectors with a mission to Phobos all secret that could potentially cripple the way back in 2004Empire. As it slowly dawns on him that their timelines donEris't match s brother Damocles, the runner-upheir to the Empire, he resolves is plotting to find disrupt peace talks between Tholos and the last of the free alien species. It's a way race against time as the rebels move to Phobos. Butput a stop Damocles' plans, this new society doesn't believe with millions of lives hanging in space travel and no-one is willing to help him, until he meets a driven young woman who desperately wants to explore as much as he does...the balance…|isbn=14732231721473231140
}}