Historians don’t have a lot of fun. Usually, the field requires countless hours of slogging through dusty old archives in search of that magical key to historical truth: a primary source. It’s taken for granted that original, contemporaneous materials are superior to anything that might have been...
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Graham Gooding is head of operations at Warlock & Co. He’s been with founder David Warwick longer than anyone else and is Warwick’s trusted go-to guy. So, when top coder Nessie Locke produces a promising new algorithm, Warwick turns to Graham to test it. According to Nessie, the...
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A quarter-century ago two widely read books by computer scientist Ray Kurzweil helped ignite a debate about humanity’s future. The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) and The Singularity Is Near (2005) envisioned a world then a half-century in the future in which homo sapiens would merge with...
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Consider telepathy, or “mental telepathy,” if you choose to belabor the obvious. Sounds like a great thing, right? What’s not to like about knowing what people think of you—or what they’re planning to do? That might stop a lot of fights. Wars, even. But wait. Could it...
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Most Americans remember the date 1492 as the year Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World. Europeans recall it for other reasons as well. Because in 1492 the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon conquered the Emirate of Granada, ending 800 years of Muslim rule on the...
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NASA has dreamed of sending astronauts to Mars for at least the past six decades. For a time in the late 1960s and early ’70s, agency officials advanced plans to do just that once the Apollo program had wound down. Those plans faltered, of course, foiled by political and budgetary pressures...
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Dystopian novels typically involve high-level drama and violence. People die. Usually lots of them. But dystopia doesn’t have to fit that mold. Helen Phillips ably demonstrates that proposition in her low-key story about one family in a near-future America who become caught up in the gears...
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We live in an era when breakthroughs in science and technology have immeasurably improved our lives. And we’re told by many of those in high tech that unimaginably new wonders are in store for us. Yet most of us are cautious, if not fearful—and for good reason. Our oceans are clogged by...
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When I read a techno-thriller, I expect a clever plot built around some whiz-bang technology. The device or process in question might either be currently operational or a reasonable projection into the near future. Runaway AI, for example. Genetic engineering, maybe. Or nanotechnology. The...
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Her name is Jasmine Bashara, but she hates it. Everyone calls her Jazz. She’s a Saudi National who has grown up since the age of seven in Artemis, the first city on the Moon. And there Jazz has built a thriving business as a smuggler with Kelvin Otieno, her partner who works in Kenya for the...
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Sergeant John Rossett is “a good man just doing a bad job.” A war hero, he returned to his prewar job as a cop in London only to be pressed into service in a distasteful job. The Nazis rule Britain, and they’ve forced him to work as a “Jew-catcher” in the Office of...
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Humanity’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been underway ever since the advent of radio early in the 1900s. But only in recent decades has the work taken on a systematic, broad-spectrum search involving a global network of SETI scientists and volunteers. And all so far to no...
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Most post-Apocalyptic novels portray a world gone irretrievably mad. Books such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, On the Beach by Nevil Shute, and Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon, depict human life reduced to its lowest common denominator. But Alice Sabo’s A Changed World series presents...
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Here’s what we’ve gotten ourselves into . . . “When the rationing first started the stipends were handed out for free, but as food became scarcer the government required a matching contribution. The amount seems to go up almost every month. There aren’t enough jobs anymore for...
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Estimated reading time: 4 minutes Martha Milano’s husband, Brett, is missing. Actually, she’s Martha Cavatone, because that’s his name. But Hank Palace remembers her as the girl in high school he had a crush on when she babysat him and his little sister. And now a tearful Martha...
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Apocalyptic visions abound in science fiction. From asteroid collisions to nuclear holocaust to super-volcanoes, there’s no lack of lurid images for the extinction of all life on Earth. But our planet’s 4.5-billion-year history tells us that something less extreme is much more likely....
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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Welga Ramirez is nearing her thirty-fifth birthday. She’s a veteran of the Marine Special Forces but a little long in the tooth for a shield—a bodyguard—though the pills increase her strength and the speed of her reflexes. And at thirty-five she’ll hit...
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Estimated reading time: 4 minutes Dystopian fiction seeks to illuminate the consequences of the bad choices we make today. Goodhouse follows in this tradition by extrapolating into the late 21st Century one of America’s most troublesome present-day realities. It satirizes our...
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Ten years ago millions of Americans and Soviet citizens had died in a nuclear war. Washington DC, Miami, San Diego, and several other cities lie in rubble. The United States is now a second-rate power, dependent on aid from Great Britain. Chafing under martial...
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes A solar flare so powerful that it threatens to extinguish all electronics on Earth inflicts little damage. But careful observers note two puzzling results. Fearing the worst, authorities on the island of Java had managed to turn off all electrical generating...
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Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.