August 2011
10 posts
Isaac Asimov's Inferno
Roger MacBride Allen Millenium, 244pp, 1994, £14.99 Everyone has heard of the Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. We’ve seen how he used them to create stories based around paradoxical interpretations of these laws, including a trilogy of intriguing science-fiction who-dunnits. Now Isaac has passed his torch onto Roger MacBride Allen, through the graces of the Byron Preiss sharecropping...
Aug 19th
Science Fiction: The Multimedia Encyclopedia Of...
Format: PC CD-ROM ISBN 0-7172-3999-3 Publisher: Grolier Electronic Publishing Price: £44.99 John Clute and Peter Nicholl’s award winning The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction is possibly the best book written about science fiction. There’s one problem: it’s 1400 hundred pages (and more than 4 lbs) of bookcase filling small print. Luckily for those of us who’re running out of book space this new,...
Aug 19th
2 notes
Picturing Tabitha: an interview with leading SF...
The Hugo award winning Jim Burns is one of Britain’s best known science fiction artists. His smooth organic curves and photo-realistic style have made him one of the industry’s most sought after cover illustrators. We caught up with him in the art show at Intersection, the 1995 World Science Fiction Convention, and asked him about one of his most recent works: the striking cover for...
Aug 19th
The Reality Dysfunction
Originally published in SFX Author: Peter Hamilton Publisher: Macmillan Price/page count: £16.99/951pp ISBN: 0 333 63427 6 Peter Hamilton is vying to be one of the big names in British SF, and with this big book - well over 900 pages long - painted on the big canvas of classic space opera’s wide-screen baroque, he may just have made it. It’s the end of the 26th century. The human...
Aug 19th
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The Pavilion Of Frozen Women
Originally published in SFX S.P. Somtow £16.99/272pp Victor Gollancz Once heralded as one of SF’s best young writers, Somtow Sucharitkul changed his name to S.P. Somtow, and discovered dark fantasy - and fame and fortune. The Pavilion Of Frozen Women is his first short story collection, ten finely crafted masterpieces of dark fantasy. Each eye-witness story treads the fine line between the...
Aug 19th
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The Bloody Red Baron
Originally published in SFX Author: Kim Newman In February 1918 the fates of nations hung in the balance.  The Allied powers faced Germany across a tattered no mans land, knowing that Russia had left the war, and now all Germany’s might was ready for the final push. But this isn’t the world we know, where flesh and blood died in the stinking mud. Here the quick and the undead will decide the fate...
Aug 19th
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Seasons Of Plenty
Originally published in SFX  Author: Colin Greenland Publisher: HarperCollins hardcover Price/Page Count: £15.99, 403pp ISBN: 0 00 224208 7 Even though she’s so stubborn and selfish that you want to knock some sense into her, Tabitha Jute is the modern Alice. Beneath the hard bitten space captain is the eternal innocent, struggling to keep a grip on her crumbling wonderland. She...
Aug 19th
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Nano!
Originally published in Vector Ed Regis Bantam Press, 307pp, 1995, £16.99 We’re all familiar with the machines that both make up and manufacture our 20th century world. The engines of industry are large and visible. Now take a step into tomorrow, where a box in the corner of the room provides all your daily needs. Tomorrow’s engines of creation are going to be so small as to be invisible: the...
Aug 19th
Kairos
Originally published in SFX Author: Gywneth Jones Publisher: Gollancz Price/Page Count: £5.99/262pp ISBN: 0 575 00607 2 There’s a tradition in British science fiction of the cosy catastrophe. In these tales the world ends with a whimper, not a bang. With Kairos, James Tiptree award winner Gywneth Jones gives us her version of the great British disaster novel. Originally published in...
Aug 19th
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Endymion
Originally published in SFX Endymion Author: Dan Simmons Publisher: Headline Feature Price/Page Count: £16.99/441pp ISBN: 0 7472 0525 6  Raul Endymion is about to die - again. Sealed in an orbiting box, waiting for the quantum flicker that will kill him, he’s passing the time by telling us his story. It’s a tale of messiahs, of endless chases, of fallen worlds and a river that...
Aug 19th