Author Archive: Gareth D Jones
Ancestral Night (White Space: Book One) by Elizabeth Bear (book review).
A sentient salvage ship named Singer and its crew encounter ancient alien technology and evidence of a terrible crime in ‘Ancestral Night’, the first volume of Elizabeth Bear’s new space opera series ‘White Space’. It’s written in the first person in a cheery, informal voice presented as the record of Haimey Dz, the ship’s engineer. […]
WorldCon Dublin 2019 (convention report)
I’ve driven past the Dublin Convention Centre numerous times while I’ve been in Dublin on business, but this was my first time venturing into the huge glass edifice that features endless zigzagging escalators that seemingly reach for the stars. There were 6000 people expected at WorldCon, which meant it was almost impossible to find anyone […]
The Redemption Of Time (A Three-Body Problem Novel) by Baoshu translated by Ken Liu (book review).
The ‘Three Body’ trilogy was an epic tale of alien invasion, stunning large-concept feats of engineering, long-scale social development and tragic tales of the individuals caught up in events beyond their control. It was a cult phenomenon in China when first published and, like many popular books, spawned its own fan fiction. The best known […]
Cage Of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky (book review).
In the very far future, the remnants of mankind live in the city of Shadrapur. It’s a ruin of a city, eking out the leftovers of technology and knowledge as the sun begins to fail overhead. It’s a city whose inhabitants have entered a Vancian age of manners, stratification of society, strange customs and stranger […]
All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka (book review).
‘Groundhog Day with aliens,’ is how one might describe the Tom Cruise film ‘Edge Of Tomorrow’. Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel translated by Alexander O. Smith as ‘All You Need IS Kill’, it was an intelligent and entertaining slice of military SF. As you might expect, the film didn’t follow the book exactly, but it […]
Waste Tide by Chen Quifan translated by Ken Liu (book review).
Award-winning Chinese Science Fiction author Chen Quifan is the latest to have his work opened up to the anglophone world via Ken Liu’s translation of his novel ‘Waste Tide’. Two of Chen Quifan’s stories appeared in last year’s collection ‘Broken Stars’ and one in the earlier collection ‘Invisible Planets’, both of which were also translated […]
Alliance Rising (Alliance-Union Universe) by C.J. Cherryh & Jane S. Fancher (book review).
I‘ve read all of C.J.Cherryh ‘s ‘Alliance-Union’ books in recent years, including the ones that were only vaguely related in that they were also somewhere in space but bore no relation whatsoever to the main sequence of books. ‘Alliance Rising’ takes place in the main setting, a string of space stations spaced several light years […]
Children Of Ruin (The Children Of Time novels book 2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky (book review).
In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s 2015 novel ‘Children Of Time’, we followed some of the descendants of humanity as they travelled among the stars on voyages of hundreds or thousands of years, looking for earlier colonies of humans that had been sent out from a now dead Earth. This sequel, ‘Children Of Ruin’, follows a similar format, […]
Beneath The World, A Sea by Chris Beckett (book review).
When I read the cover blurb for Chis Beckett’s new novel ‘Beneath The World, A Sea’, it seemed vaguely familiar. A British policeman is sent to investigate the killings of the indigenous species of the Submundo Delta, the Muendes, whom the local human populace do not consider to be sentient. The Muendes mess with their […]
Morhelion (The Long Game book 2) by Dominic Dulley (book review).
‘Morhelion’ follows on from Dominic Dulley’s debut novel, the breezy space opera adventure ‘Shattermoon’, bringing back the roguish and mismatched crew of the Dainty Jane to mix it up with a new batch of criminal gangs, opportunists, charming conmen and villainous authority figures. Grifter Orry, her younger brother Ethan and grizzled veteran Mender are once […]
