Tag Archives: speculative fiction

Jodi Taylor’s Doing Time (The Time Police #1)

Posted on 1st February 2023 by Lis Carey

The invention of time travel led to the Time Wars, which led to the Time Police, who solve problems by ruthless, thorough, application of force. Stop the illegal time travelers, bring home for prosecution any who are unaccountably still alive, … Continue reading →

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R F Kuang’s Babel

Posted on 25th June 2022 by Paul Weimer

R F Kuang’s Babel is an audacious and unrelenting look at colonialism, seen through the lens of an alternate 19th century Britain where translation is the key to magic. Kuang’s novel is as sharp and perceptive as it is well written and … Continue reading →

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Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140

Posted on 21st May 2022 by Gary Whitehouse

So I’m going about this backward. I’ve already read and reviewed Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 speculative fiction tome The Ministry for the Future, in which likeable and powerful people grapple with the climate crisis in the near future. Now I’m … Continue reading →

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Jo Walton’s Half a Crown

Posted on 8th November 2021 by Lory Hess

In the conclusion to her Small Change trilogy, which began with Farthing and continued with Ha’Penny, Jo Walton returns to a postwar Britain that has negotiated peace with Hitler in exchange for a supposed autonomy. In reality, fascism has infiltrated … Continue reading →

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Jo Walton’s Ha’Penny

Posted on 8th November 2021 by Lory Hess

Jo Walton’s 2006 novel Farthing was set in an imagined Britain-as-it-might-have-been, if instead of battling Hitler the British had let him have continental Europe in exchange for leaving them their island of autonomy and freedom. As the story unfolded, though, … Continue reading →

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William Gibson’s Zero History

Posted on 29th June 2011 by Gary Whitehouse

Zero History is the third book in William Gibson’s series that began with Pattern Recognition and continued in Spook Country. The best-selling series brought Gibson out of the ghetto of genre fiction into the limelight of more mainstream fiction, which … Continue reading →

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Neal Stephenson’s Anathem

Posted on 15th September 2009 by kestrell

One of the joys of Anathem is the way it unfolds slowly, bit by bit, with every newly revealed detail exposing another unsuspected layer of complexity beneath. Stephenson’s world-building is on the truly fantastic level in Anathem, but it is … Continue reading →

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William Gibson’s Spook Country

Posted on 9th September 2007 by Gary Whitehouse

One of the characters in William Gibson’s new book Spook Country is addicted to a particular kind of tranquilizer. During the book’s course he takes two slightly different versions of it, with different brand names. I was curious about just … Continue reading →

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William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition

Posted on 12th January 2003 by Gary Whitehouse

Folklore used to be songs, dances and tales told around the fire, in the inns, before the hearth, that connected us with our past. The first mass media, radio and television, put the hearth in an electrical box that we … Continue reading →

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Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon

Posted on 15th September 2000 by Diverse Voices

Wes Unruh wrote this review. Not your average technothriller, Cryptonomicon has nothing to do with the eldritch gods of H. P. Lovecraft. Instead, it is the best treatment of cryptography since Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Gold Bug,” and a hundred … Continue reading →

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