What happens when you mix Great Expectations with a bit of early Stephen King and a handful of Robin Cook? She has a Broken Thing Where her Heart Should Be, of course. A totally effective mashing of all my favorite 1980s books with the 1861 Dickens tale. I guarantee youContinue Reading
In Providence, Mankind is fighting an alien race that acts nothing like mankind. The derogatory label of Salamanders is applied to this exoskeletal species. They appear to live in hives the size of planets out in the far, far universe. When we first run into them, they kill the majorityContinue Reading
I’ve been a Trekker from way back. I also adored anything written by Robert Heinlein. Trigor is another optimistic space opera. It has a multitude of love, adventure, and world-building within it. Pilot X had destroyed three civilizations, including his own in the self-named previous book in the series. SoContinue Reading
It’s 2072 and most people have Augmented Reality lenses in their eyes allowing them to watch televised shows in their head. One network gets the brilliant idea of making a reality show where the winner is decided by a public vote. What is the criteria to be a contestant? JustContinue Reading
In Parable of the Sower, Lauren is a preacher’s daughter living in the broken world of the Los Angeles’ suburbs in 2024. Climate change has left the world short of water. The class battle has been fought—and won by the rich. Hope for the future is non-existent. But Lauren hasContinue Reading
Set on a foreign planet, Vanished Birds begins by telling the tale of Kaeda. Kaeda falls in love with Nia at age 7. There is only one problem. She is an alien from an alternate timeline where Earth lays dead. Unfortunately, she visits Kaeda’s planet only once every fifteen yearsContinue Reading
In New York City circa 2034, the city has been devastated by climate change. Coastal areas have been nearly leveled by massive storms. Refugees from low-lying areas have congregated in slums sporting their own money. On the morning of April 19, it is 114 in the shade. Down these meanContinue Reading
An interesting collection of twenty hard science-fiction tales selected by the author is located in the Best of Greg Egan. The longish stories deal with what it means to be human and how technology is going to change both us and our outside environment. They were originally created between 1990Continue Reading
Toyo Harada was nine when his world in Hiroshima Japan was blown apart by an atom bomb. His father died during the war and his mother died in the bombing. Harada was somehow saved. But he came back changed in the Life and Death of Toyo Harada. Harada has newContinue Reading
The Empire of Lies is an incredibly detailed alternative history. What if a time traveler helped the Ottoman Empire win the 1682 Battle of Vienna? How would it impact present-day life? The answer is it would be a completely different scenario. A Sultan rules over the entire world except inContinue Reading
Take a large portion of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, add some additional pure absurdity and bad puns, and whirl madly in the blender of the author’s brain and you have Battle Beyond the Dolestars. A laugh-out-loud novel of when machines take over the world and humanity’s greatest hope isContinue Reading
An outer space fungus wakes up due to global warming and attempts world takeover. It reads like a cheesy b-movie script and that’s a compliment. Even the characters in Cold Storage seem to be in on the joke. “What are you, all science-y and shit?” It takes some time toContinue Reading
Abbie is beautiful, creative, and smart. But is she the Perfect Wife? Tim is the intelligent and driven founder of a tech firm designing robots that include state-of-the-art artificial intelligence. First, the robots are used for phone call centers. The next step is shopbots to replace salespeople in high-end clothingContinue Reading
There it was—in the middle of the sidewalk. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. It was “a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor, its huge barrel chest lifted up to the sky a good four or five feet above my head.” April May didn’t know what to do. She’s aContinue Reading
Jake is slowly losing his memories. Is it mental illness or early-onset Alzheimer’s disease? On a plane trip to Denver, he meets the Dead Girl in 2A and she seems familiar. The girl, Clara, says the same about Jake. It won’t matter much longer because Clara is going to ColoradoContinue Reading
With 29 stories, 624 pages, and a recommended reading list, the Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 4 is definitely worth its $13.99 cost. This collection includes the gamut of subgenres within the field. Hard science, soft space opera, spacemen, aliens, and robots populate these pages. I’m positive thatContinue Reading