An anthology of authentic and realistic hard science fiction
Haven’t done one of these for a while, so it’s about time I did. The books below have arrived here in the past week or so. There’s nearly a theme to this book haul – five books on space exploration, plus The Hard SF Renaissance. Mars 1999, The Case for Mars and Space Station Friendship [...]
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Gwyneth Jones has been one of my favourite authors since I first read Kairos back in the late 1980s (see my review of it here). I’m not alone in considering her one of the best British science fiction writers currently being published. She has appeared on the Arthur C Clarke Award short list six times [...]
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In 1941, Wilson Tucker coined the term “space opera” to describe the “the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn”. Sixty-nine years later, space opera is still going strong. Not only that, it’s often seen as the defining form of science fiction. It might even be the most successful form of science fiction. Because it is [...]
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Some people think science fiction is all spaceships and robots and aliens. Some people think science fiction needs real proper extrapolated science or technology in it. Some people think it should be called “speculative fiction”. They’re wrong. Science fiction is not about science. Nor is it the garden in which its stories play. It’s not [...]
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Not so many books and films for this update, since I’ve been working on, well, stuff. Incidentally, after the nonsense pulled by Amazon in the US, I’m trying a bit of an experiment here and using affiliate links to Book Depository – for the books, anyway. Books Chimpanzee Complex 2: The Sons of Ares, Richard [...]
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February’s VideoVista is now available, containing my reviews of Hatchet For The Honeymoon (see here), Heart Of Fire (see here) and Secrets Of Sex (see here). I can recommend Heart Of Fire, and Secrets Of Sex has a sort of weird charm – although it might appeal more to fans of William S Burroughs as [...]
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These days, the phrase “customer service” has become less a corporate philosophy and more a swear word uttered by consumers. From what I remember of management theory, making teams of complete idiots available to customers twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Now, normally I wouldn’t bother [...]
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