As the conspiracy theorists would have it, an extraterrestrial spaceship crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. Government agents took custody of the aliens who’d survived the crash and rushed them to a secret base in Nevada called Area 51—and covered up the incident for decades...
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Marketed as a book for young readers, but science fiction at its best for readers of any age. A thrilling, post-apocalyptic story.
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This is a big book as science fiction novels go, and it doesn’t fit it in any one of the standard categories. First Contact novel? Check. Space opera? Yes. Adventure story? That, too. Travelogue? Even that. Political novel? Oh, yes. But at its hard SF heart, Poul Anderson’s The Avatar...
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Spatial compression had already made unmanned spaceflight obsolete. The stars were now within easy reach for any probe, camera or radio link. Interstellar travel for humans was not yet possible, but one step at a time. Earth was now connected into a vast web of alien civilizations.” So we...
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Alternate history typically answers a what-if question about a single pivotal event or decision. What if Nazi Germany won World War II. What if Japan hadn’t surrendered. And so forth. But Josh Weiss’ unconventional alternate history thriller, Beat the Devils, hinges on a much broader...
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As you may be aware, I’ve pledged to review here only those books I’ve read from cover to cover. But I’m going to make an exception now. Three times I’ve tried to read Cixin Liu’s celebrated novel, The Three-Body Problem—and three times I failed. On my third attempt,...
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Why do some novels win Hugo or Nebula Awards while thousands of others don’t? Is it because they’re the “best?” Of course not. You and I know better than that. Like the Academy Awards or those in any other field, other factors enter the picture. Sometimes, how long the...
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War makes no sense. Yet if any single thing defines the human experience, it may be the tendency of tribes and organized states alike to rush to arms against those they perceive as enemies. For example, the United States has been engaged in military action almost from the day the country gained...
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You probably think this novel is science fiction. After all, that’s how Amazon categorizes it, and I’m following suit. Many of its reviewers have called it that, too. But it’s not science fiction, not really. There’s barely a hint of science in its 350 pages. Try...
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You can generally dismiss any blurb on the cover of a novel as hype. But a quote featured on the Kindle edition of Ice Revelation, the concluding volume of Kevin Tinto’s Ice Trilogy, leaps over the top. “A paragon of speculative fiction” boasts someone named Ed Stacker—who turns...
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Most portrayals on film or in novels of an alien invasion are along the lines of the Will Smith blockbuster Independence Day or H. G. Wells’ 1898 science fiction classic, The War of the Worlds. There are a lot of explosions, and millions die. So, it may come as a pleasant surprise if you...
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Quantum mechanics puzzled even Einstein, and string theory later added layers of complexity. Just try imagining ten dimensions, or, for that matter, even four-dimensional space. And, no, time is not the fourth dimension. They’re all spatial dimensions, like height, width, and depth. Try it....
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Pick up any one of those sci-fi epics with a lurid cover that promises a story of combat in space. What do you see? Probably, humans battling evil aliens resembling lizards or spiders—or something undefinable. You can be sure there’ll be lots of battles, with heroic space jockeys stressed to...
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Charles Dickens’s semi-autobiographical novel, David Copperfield, appeared in 1850. The book, his favorite among the nineteen novels he published during his lifetime, plumbed the depths of his difficult upbringing in Victorian England. It has been adapted to film or television fourteen times...
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A review of Robopocalypse, by Daniel H. Wilson. @@@@ (4 out of 5). This is a science fiction novel, to be sure, and as the title suggests it depicts an apocalyptic future, but it’s a future with a difference. This is a treatment of robots and automation from an entirely different perspective. It’s engaging. And it’s very, very scary.
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Fair warning: don’t even think about reading this book unless you’ve already gotten through Ice, the first book in Kevin Tinto’s trilogy. The story is rewarding—thrilling from beginning to end—but it’s complicated. Oh, so complicated. Mix Native Americans from the Middle...
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Drill down into the root causes of today’s political dysfunction, and you’ll find the problem—unsurprisingly—in the human mind. In the United States, and no doubt throughout the world, untold millions of people are in the thrall of irrationality. They indulge in magical thinking and...
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As a tourist in London you may have visited Churchill’s War Rooms seventy-three feet below Whitehall. There, Winston Churchill and as many as five hundred other people worked for six years directing Britain’s effort to defeat Nazi Germany. It’s one of London’s most popular...
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This dinosaur survived the Cretaceous Extinction. His name is Sweet Blood of Easy Prey Just After Slaughter, but they don’t know that. He’s Charlie to them. He’s only about five feet tall, so he’s not unmanageably large. And now they’ve got him locked up deep...
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Wild theories about the multiverse abound among the physicists who think about such things. And of course science fiction writers have had a field day building stories based on as many of these theories as they can get their heads around. So far in this century alone, authors John Scalzi, Neil...
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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.