Science Fiction

Review: Synthesis by J. A. MacLeod

Don’t you just hate it when you’re at a subway stop and you hear someone calling for help from the tunnel? Then when you venture into the tunnel to see what’s happening, you stumble upon a hideous monster. Okay, that hasn’t happened to me. But after reading Synthesis by J. A. MacLeod, I’m now terrified of subway tunnels. And of monsters.

In MacLeod’s novel, Jack Gray can’t turn a deaf ear to someone calling for help in a Cambridge subway station. The monster that he encounters doesn’t seem to be from this world. After a terrible fight, Jack wakes up […]

2012-12-28T14:29:41+02:00December 28th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

Review: Galactic Exploration by Peter Cawdron

Peter Cawdron’s Galactic Exploration contains four novellas: Serengeti, Trixie & Me, Savannah, and War. All of the stories are loosely connected and deal with the exploration of the Milky Way. Like Christopher Columbus, the intrepid explorers set out in three ships, of course they are space ships. Unlike Columbus and his crews, every crew member is a clone, or to be more exact, Homo sapiens replicas. Cawdron’s format reminded me of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. While Asimov’s short stories analyzed the limits and injustices robots had to contend with living among humans, Cawdron discusses some of the […]

2012-12-26T13:18:34+02:00December 26th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |

Review: Aeternum Ray by Tracy R. Atkins

William Samuel Babington, the protagonist of Aeternum Ray, by Tracy R. Atkins, was born in the twentieth century and spent his youth in the same world we now inhabit. But by the time Babington succumbs to the heart defect he inherited from his father, the world and humans have changed dramatically. Told in the form of Babington’s letters to his son, Benjamin, Aeternum Ray recounts the personal history of Babington and the larger history of humanity from the late twentieth century until the birth of Benjamin in 2161. The main action of the book is set after humanity has […]

2014-05-09T21:29:54+02:00November 20th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |

Review: The Rogue Navigator by E. Steven Newby

E. Steven Newby’s The Rogue Navigator is an exemplar of a genre I’ve never encountered before. I guess you might call it YA Fantasy Space Opera. When one thinks of YA these days, naturally books like the Harry Potter series, the Twilight books, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy come to mind.  And of course the Chronicles of Narnia are always hovering nearby. These are all fantasy of one form or another. When one thinks of Space Opera, works like Ian M. Banks’ Culture novels and Verner Vinge’s Fire Upon the Deep (as well as less literary works like […]

2014-05-09T21:55:40+02:00August 20th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

Review: A Searcher Summoned by Perrin Pring

A Searcher Summoned by Perrin Pring“The universe, as we know it, was created as a result of an exercise of thought.  In another dimension, far away from here…”

Do you feel like escaping into a new world?  Perrin Pring’s world in A Searcher Summoned (The Ryo Myths) is filled with lossals, ringers, zombies, dream searchers, Eoans, Afortiori, and the Chozen.

Before the universe was created, the Eoans and the Afortiori were one.  They were not human, but clouds of raw elements.   They constructed the universe as a challenge.  The introduction of free will drastically changed the fate of the universe.  Some of the Eoans developed […]

2019-01-23T13:04:19+02:00May 18th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

Review: 21 Erased by Barbara Rayne

The code is your identity, your bank account, your credit card, the bus fare… your existence. When they take it away, you disappear like you never lived at all. All it takes is a moment and you’re no longer a human being…you’re nothing. Everything you thought you owned is shattering into pieces in front of your eyes, you’re disappearing without leaving a single trace of your existence. You were that insignificant. The system had you that much, nothing was yours but the illusion. They own your life. When you got in their way, they spat you out like a chewing […]

2019-01-21T09:40:14+02:00January 29th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

Review: Shark & The Wolf: Predators and Prey by Daniel D. Shields

I would classify this as a sci-fi thriller.  The science fiction genre allows us to go anywhere we want and create anything we can imagine.  Mr. Shields has successfully created an alternative earth where animals have been genetically altered to be human while retaining, to various degrees, their animal appearances and nature.  Mr. Shields works this throughout the novel, giving them very human appearance and attributes, but never too much!

The story follows Shark and his friends.  Shark is a completely believable character.  An expert billiard player (read that great-white pool shark) who embarks on an adventure to help his […]

2011-12-27T13:55:48+02:00December 27th, 2011|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |
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