The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar
Review by David Harris Lavie Tidhar seems to be amazingly productive just now, publishing The Circumfernce of the World, an SF novel that really gets to grips with the fact that…
Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
Translated by Elena Bormaschenko Illustrated and Introduced by Dave McKean Reviewed by Annabel I have long meant to read this SF classic by the Strugatsky brothers, published in 1972, and…
Psalms for the End of the World by Cole Haddon
Review by Annabel It took mere seconds to say yes please to a review copy of this book – I read the words ‘1962’ and ‘physics’ on the publicity blurb…
A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel
Reviewed by Max Dunbar The Age of Acceleration In 2019, the Unherd website carried an article by Gerard DeGroot, about the Chang’e 4 moon landing. ‘Whenever something big happens in space,…
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
Reviewed by Annabel With The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, Becky Chambers brings her Wayfarers series to a close. The quartet began in 2015 with The Long Way to a…
One Billion Years to the End of the World by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Translated by Antonina W. Bouis Reviewed by Karen Langley Science fiction writing often gets a bad press; dismissed as lightweight genre writing, mocked for some of the horrendous cover art…
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
Review by Annabel Those who’ve visited Shiny New Books before may know of my passion for the novels of Becky Chambers, one of the most distinctive new voices in Science…
By the Pricking of Her Thumb by Adam Roberts
Reviewed by David Harris Roberts seems to have been very busy lately so I’m glad he managed to include a return to the world of The Real-Town Murders, one of my favourite books…
Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
Review by Annabel Becky Chambers’ third novel is set in the same galactic milieu as her first two. It can be read as a standalone and marks her out as…
The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
Reviewed by Annabel The first thing you need to do with this sparkling debut novel is to suspend your disbelief. Just accept that time travel was invented by a quartet…
Science Fiction: A Literary History edited by Roger Luckhurst
Reviewed by Annabel Once upon a time SF was a subculture haunted by small populations of nerds and geeks. Star Wars (1977) changed that, … SF author Adam Roberts says…
Artemis by Andy Weir
Reviewed by Annabel Those who read Weir’s debut novel, The Martian (which Dan reviewed for us here), tended to fall into two camps. As SF novels go, it was funny,…
Pan Books at 70: The SF Edit
Reviewed by Annabel Pan, founded in 1944, published its first mass market paperback in 1947 – Ten Stories by Rudyard Kipling with the famous Pan logo designed by Mervyn Peake…
Mortal Engines by Stanislaw Lem
Edited and translated by Michael Kandel Review by Karen Langley Polish author Stanislaw Lem is probably best known for his novel “Solaris”, a book that’s been filmed twice – once…
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
Reviewed by Annabel. Although this is the second book in a series, given that its two main characters were subsidiary supporting ones in its predecessor, you could read it as…
Revenger by Alastair Reynolds
Reviewed by David Harris Alastair Reynolds has a reputation as a prolific writer of SF and made waves a few years ago when he signed a ten book deal with…
The Autobiography of James T. Kirk edited by David A. Goodman
Reviewed by Annabel I still have a huge affection for Star Trek in all its incarnations and, as time goes on, although Jean-Luc Picard is the man for me, I prefer the…
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Reviewed by David Harris The first thing to say about this book – and it’s the first thing you will notice – is that it’s long. Massive. An 861 page…
Reading for Other Worlds
By Stefanie Hollmichel It has been a great year for space travel: the Philae Comet Lander, NASA’s test of its new Orion spacecraft, the ongoing discoveries of the Mars rover,…
The Martian by Andy Weir
Paperback Review by Dan L. The Martian by Andy Weir took the Sci-Fi reading populace by storm with the release of the hardback. So much so, that Ridley Scott decided he…