He is credited with at least twenty-six science fiction novels and seven collections of short stories. And Stephen King reportedly called him “the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.” So, I have to believe that The Engines of God is an outlier in Jack McDevitt’s...
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Late in March 1945, six weeks before Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender, then-Lieutenant-General George S. Patton set in motion a bold initiative to rescue several hundred American officers from a POW camp forty miles behind enemy lines in Germany. He ordered twenty-three-year-old...
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Big Science has made monumental strides over the past seven decades. Massive investments in scientific research have given birth to nuclear power, the unlocking of the genetic code, a deeper understanding of the structure and origin of the universe, and ever more insight into the interaction of...
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Back in 1859, a coronal mass ejection from the sun showered Earth with a torrent of highly charged subatomic particles. The widespread use of electricity was decades in the future, so the impact of what came to be called the Carrington Event was limited. But scientists—and some science fiction...
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Perhaps this has happened to you, too. You read a book that you know is supposed to be funny, but it just doesn’t work for you. The story is absurd, so the author’s intent is clear, and the complications that ensue are worthy of the Marx Brothers. It seems as though it all should be...
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Hanno sailed the Mediterranean in the days before Carthage battled the Roman Republic in the Punic Wars (264-146 BCE). Inspired by the writings of the Greeks, he sets out on a voyage of discovery to fabled far-north Thule at the edge of the world. Yet this is but the first of Hanno’s grand...
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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced he will split the company in two. This will leave Facebook itself to throw off a gusher of cash dividends every year while he funds Meta Platforms out of the disproportionate share he receives. Meta Platforms, of course, is...
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You may think you can imagine what these six astronauts will experience on their journey to one of Saturn’s smallest moons. After all, this novel is one in a series of First Contact tales describing what might happen when human beings finally encounter extraterrestrial intelligence. The...
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Geraldine Brooks is a 21st Century phenomenon in the world of historical fiction. In Year of Wonders, the first of her six novels published to date, she tackles the familiar territory of the bubonic plague. Brooks adds great emotional depth to the reader’s understanding of its impact...
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Fast forward to . . . whenever. The Religious Right has won. Ten years earlier Congress had passed the CHRIST Act, which declared Christianity as the official religion of the United States of America. “The Twenty-Eighth Amendment, which repealed part of the First Amendment, made it possible...
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Once upon a time they were known as Mannahata, Breukelen, Bronck’s Farm, Staten Eylandt, and Queens, after Queen Catherine of Braganza, wife of the seventeenth-century King Charles II of England. Of course, now the five boroughs of New York City have more familiar names. But that was...
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The city-state of Philadelphia. Late twenty-second century, more than a hundred years after the Conflict. The federal government has little clout now, and the United States of America is no more. The city’s poor crowd the Combs, an overpopulated slum in the immense crater carved out by a...
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For millennia, the huge peninsula we call India today has been Asia’s pivot. South of the central Asian steppes, midway between the European trade routes of the Middle East, the Chinese behemoth, and the East African coast, India has long been one of the most diverse places on the planet....
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Octavia Butler was the author of three cycles of science fiction novels—two Parable books, the Xenogenesis trilogy, and five books in the Patternmaster series—as well as two standalone novels. She is also credited with seven graphic novels (including Black Panther) produced in collaboration with...
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On January 30, 1649, after seven years of the English Civil War, England’s King Charles I was beheaded by order of a Parliament crowded with anti-Catholic religious extremists. They governed as a republic for a decade under a dictatorship. But their experiment in government guided by a...
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A reader alerted me to Bob Shaw’s award-winning 1975 novel, Orbitsville, reporting that it had appeared on some critic’s list of the best science fiction of all time. Not only that, but it’s a First Contact story, a category I love to explore. How could I resist? I’d never...
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For the record, what follows is not a list of the best popular fiction published during the past year. Instead, I’ve rejected the practice of those reviewers who imply they’ve read and reviewed the many thousands of popular (or trade) novels published in any given...
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No serious student of English language or literature can live long without the Oxford English Dictionary. The twenty-volume second edition, published in 1989, contains 290,000 main entries on 21,728 pages. (A third, bigger and more up-to-date edition is now in progress.) Since 1857, when a small...
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At what point does hard science fiction cross the line into fantasy? Read the work of any of the field’s most revered practitioners—Arthur C. Clarke is the most prominent among them—and you’ll see that any story which ventures into the far reaches of advanced alien technology becomes...
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To be clear, what follows is not a list of the best science fiction published during the past year. Instead, I’ve chosen not to copy those reviewers who imply they’ve read the many thousands of science fiction novels published in any given year. Nobody, and no team of reviewers, can possibly...
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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.