Author Archive: Gareth D Jones
Invisible Ecologies by Rachel Armstrong (book review).
Rachel Armstrong’s second novel ‘Invisible Ecologies’ is subtitled ‘Songs Of The Ecocene II’ although, from what I could tell, it is unrelated to last year’s ‘Origamy’, which is now volume I of the series. The interesting thing about this series title, I thought, is that actually when you step back and think about what you’ve […]
No Way by S.J. Morden (book review).
Last year’s Martian thriller ‘One Way’ introduced us to Frank Kittridge, a convicted murderer who was offered a one-way ticket to Mars as part of an all-convict crew who would build a base for NASA’s astronauts to use in the future. It didn’t seem such a bad deal, it would just mean Frank serving out […]
Shattermoon (The Long Game book 1) by Dominic Dulley (book review).
Dominic Dulley’s debut novel ‘Shattermoon’ is a non-stop, action-packed space opera that’s full of entertainment and all of the classic ingredients of adventure you might want. On the surface it’s a regular mix of bandits, smugglers and imperial navy ships with a sassy heroine, but it quickly takes on a character and charm of its […]
Broken Stars edited and translated by Ken Liu (book review).
Like much of the Science Fiction community, I’ve become very excited about Chinese Science Fiction of late. I read Ken Liu’s first collection of translated works, ‘Invisible Planets’, and the four Liu Cixin novels that have been translated so far, as well as meeting Liu Cixin for an interview. This new collection ‘Broken Stars’, which […]
Binti: The Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor (book review).
The first ‘Binti’ novella was truly wonderful and made a real impression when I first read it. The story constantly challenges the preconceptions of the reader even as it challenges the preconceptions of the characters within it. Binti comes from the Himba tribe in Namibia(?), a people who rarely leave their homeland and are looked […]
2001: An Odyssey In Words edited by Ian Whates and Tom Hunter (book review).
To celebrate the centenary of Arthur C. Clarke’s birth, NewCon Press has produced a volume of stories that all contain exactly 2001 words. It’s a fantastic concept, giving rise to a great selection of brief yet entertaining stories but, even with a page count of around 200 pages, that still amounts to rather a lot […]
Rejoice, A Knife To The Heart by Steven Erikson (book review).
The arrival of an alien intelligence to intervene in Earth’s affairs signals an end to violence, illness and environmental degradation. You would think this would be good news, but a lot of the rich and powerful, as well as the violent and sadistic, are not very happy at all. As force fields spread across the […]
Nebula Awards Showcase 2018 edited by Jane Yolen (book review).
This is my second ‘Nebula Award Showcase’ in quick succession, a volume that presents a mixture of excerpts from and complete winning and shortlisted stories, novelettes, novellas and novels from the prestigious award voted for by members of the SFWA. I generally read only Science Fiction but, of course, there’s a second, silent ‘F’ in […]
Nebula Awards Showcase 2017 edited by Julie E. Czerneda (book review).
I’ve enjoyed reading a lot of the Nebula Awards winning novels over the past few years, so it seems like the members of the SFWA who vote for the awards have pretty good taste. The annual ‘Nebula Awards Showcase’ volumes contain the winning novellas, novelettes and short-listed short stories, as well as excerpts from the […]
The Consuming Fire (Interdependancy book 2) by John Scalzi (book review).
Last year’s book, ‘The Collapsing Empire’ by John Scalzi, was a riotous, no-holds-barred imperial space opera that was a lot of fun and introduced us to the intriguing setting of the Interdependancy. The sequel is ‘The Consuming Fire’, which follows on with the same set of characters as they face up to the imminent collapse […]
