The galaxy is reeling and planet Earth is no different – the status quo for the Star Wars universe has changed and for the better. When we last visited Star Wars, or at least when I last visited that galaxy far, far away things were… a little bloated. It was as bloated as Jabba on […]
Book Review: If Then by Matthew De Abaitua
October 16, 2015 by Leave a Comment
What if there was an equation to help us understand and ultimately eliminate war? That is one of the central themes of Matthew De Abaitua’s latest novel, If Then (Angry Robot Books). The title itself suggests the principles of certain formulae, such as computer coding (“if this…” “then that…”), although if, like me, you find […]
Book Review: Sexbot by Patrick Quinlan
September 25, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I know what you’re thinking. But despite the title and the cover, this isn’t Kindle porn. For one thing, I have a paperback copy of it. For another, Patrick Quinlan is an established author of thriller novels. That background shines through in Sexbot. Susan Jones and her partner Martin Wacker were robotics engineers who made […]
Book Review: Birdsnatch by C.J. Cummings and Mark Ryan
September 4, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Birdsnatch (also available at Amazon.co.uk) is apparently the first in a planned series called “A Tale Told Twice.” The idea behind the series is that two authors take the same title and build separate stories around only the title. This is the first result of that experiment. In C.J. Cummings’s novella, an irreversible computer error is causing […]
Book Review: Beyond Apollo by Barry N. Malzberg
August 12, 2015 by Leave a Comment
“I never had much use for science fiction… Science Fiction gave the program a bad name. It was so disreputable in the minds of most people that the program had to be as businesslike as possible in order to seem legitimate.” Beyond Apollo by Barry N. Malzberg was first published in 1972 by Random House. […]
Book Review: Private Midnight by Kris Saknussemm
July 29, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I first came across Kris Saknussemm’s work in The Bizarro Starter Kit (Purple). His contribution was a novella called Sparklewheel, which I described in my review as a “psycho-sexual fever dream.” It’s no surprise, then, that Saknussemm bills his second novel, Private Midnight, as “a pschoerotic noir fairytale.” Sparklewheel was a sort of picaresque that moved […]
Book Review: Terra Insanus by Edward Lee
July 3, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I’ve read three of Edward Lee’s novels and enjoyed them all. They were schlocky, exploitative and fun to read. Before mass market horror collapsed, Lee’s novels pushed the boundaries of good taste and earned him a spot as as a leading name in the splatterpunk movement. Outside of the mainstream, Lee was publishing even more […]
Review: The League of the Sphinx: The Purple Scarab by R.E. Preston
June 17, 2015 by Leave a Comment
If you enjoy pulp fiction and old-style Saturday morning serials, before they were reinvented by the Indiana Jones franchise, you will enjoy R.E. Preston’s The Purple Scarab (Westmarch Publishing). This first volume of a projected seven book series called The League of the Sphinx sees 15-year-old Edmund Peabody, his brother Chander and friend Amelia Tripp […]
Book Review: what if i got down on my knees? by Tony Rauch
May 15, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I really enjoyed Tony Rauch’s previous collection of short stories, eyeballs growing all over me …again. It was a strong collection of whimsical and strange stories with a science fiction thread running through it. When I saw that Rauch had released a new collection, I asked for a review copy of what if i got […]
Book Review: Gorel and The Pot-Bellied God by Lavie Tidhar
April 30, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Reading Gorel and the Pot Bellied God by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing) felt like discovering Michael Moorcock for the first time. That sense that something has shifted in my world and I’ve been transported to a strange yet weirdly familiar place with an antihero who is strange, complex and … someone you want to be with as long as […]
