Books shelved under “Science Fiction”

I missed my Xbox while I was in England. I had access to one for the first half the year, during which time I managed to be completely disappointed by Assassin’s Creed 3. Then I moved, and Xbox-playing became a faded memory for a while. So when I came back home for the summer, one of the first things I sat down to do was play Xbox—and specifically, to play Mass Effect through from…

Invisibility is one of the best superpowers, in my opinion, though it also requires a little wiggle room to be truly often. For instance, invisibility where you have to get naked to work the power can be … awkward. Similarly, I wouldn’t want to be invisible permanently, or invisible to myself! That would also lead to no end of problems. In Look’s case, he isn’t invisible per se (except on camera, for some reason that…

The novelette offers an opportunity to experiment in a way that short stories and novels don’t often do. You have much more room in which to create a world than a short story, where a glimpse at the larger picture is often all that you can afford. On the other hand, unlike a novel, there is no requirement to have a lengthy plot. With “Fade to White”, Catherine Valente depicts a world torn apart by…

So, here we are again. Mira Grant is back for one last kick at the Hugo novel can with Blackout, the last in her Newsflesh trilogy. All the mysteries are cleared up, all the questions answered. Georgia and Shaun Mason are reunited to kick zombie butt one last time and fight back against the government corruption that has put the entire world at risk. Sort of. I think.

Actually, this book is kind of…

Alternate history can often act like a soothing balm: science fiction, but of a very special type. It’s the ultimate “what-if” version of science fiction, the impossible attempt to create counterfactual stories. It is the logical conclusion to the lying that is the art of storytelling; taken to extremes, any story is alternate history. But with Other Earths, we’re on more conventional ground when it comes to alternate history. It’s exactly what it says…

We’ve just entered the tail end of 2013, fast approaching the middle of decade the second of the twenty-first century. Few of the changes Charles Stross lays out in this book have come to pass, which isn’t surprising. Many of them are still possible within our lifetime, though, which is interesting.

I’ve felt rather burnt out when it comes to posthuman SF ever since my last foray into the subgenre. Postsingular just left me feeling…

I need to give a shout-out to fellow reviewer Rob here, because I feel like I know Aliette de Bodard’s work mostly through him. I have quite a fair bit of her fiction knocking around in ebook form (thanks, Angry Robot), but I haven’t actually gotten around to reading much of it. So far I’ve only managed those stories nominated for Hugo Awards—and hey, look, another one. But seriously, if you want to get the…

Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire has been nominated in the novel, novella, and novelette categories for the Hugo Awards this year (and twice in the novelette category). All the more power to her! I admit that I’m not a fan of the Newsflesh series. (I read the first two books when they were nominated for Hugo Awards.) So I’m surprised that San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats, a prequel (told through flashbacks)…

One of the nice things about working in a school is that I can nick books from the English cupboard, bring them home for a day, or a week, or most of the year, and quietly return them without anyone complaining. It’s a perk that almost makes those times you accidentally stand under the bell worth it.... Anyway, earlier this year I was reaching for short stories to show my sixth form students, and it…

This year’s Vorkosigan novel is up for a Hugo nomination. The previous book, also a Hugo nominee, was my first exposure to Lois McMaster Bujold’s sprawling and successful series, although I wasn’t as impressed as I wanted to be. I went on to read the first two books, though, and those provided a firmer grounding in the series, not to mention better stories. I’m also glad I read them before reading Captain Vorpatril’s…

Roommates lending books they love can be a dicey proposition. It wasn’t that I was worried I would dislike Skallagrigg; I just worried I wouldn’t like it enough. This feeling stayed with me for the first part of the book, because it didn’t seem very straightforward at first. There was cryptic foreshadowing that would make sense towards the end. Thankfully, after the first few chapters, the book changes tack and becomes much easier to…

Back in Grade 7, we studied short stories and storytelling. We covered Freitag’s Pyramid: introduction, inciting force, rising action, crisis/climax, denouement, and resolution. We studied The Most Dangerous Game, and we listed the different types of conflict: man vs man, man vs himself, man vs nature, etc. It’s a simplistic way to analyze literature, but it does provide a good foundation to build upon in later years, once you have the ability to make…

Nancy Kress has fast become one of my favourite science fiction authors. Like most authors I’m a fan of, her works don’t always make it on my favourites list, but they always make me think. Kress often explores how technology affects humanity’s relationship with nature and our own biology. She continues to play with these themes in After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall while adding in an ineffable alien menace and the…

For the past three years, I’ve paid for the privilege of voting in the Hugo Awards. I do this not because I love voting in the Hugo Awards (though that’s cool) but because, for the past few years, they have made available a voter packet containing digital copies of most of the nominated works. All I need do is purchase a supporting membership at the year’s WorldCon, which is always cheaper than if I were…

I had trouble describing The Human Division to friends, because the Old Man’s War universe is military science-fiction, but this particularly novel isn’t so heavy on the “military” aspect. Following the events in The Last Colony (which I haven’t read yet), the Colonial Union has to let military operations take a back seat and resort to democracy to get what it wants. The State Department is suddenly important, meaning that even the diplomats who don’t…

I was kind of excited about Superpowers when I first added it to my to-read list, way back in the day. When I borrowed it from the library, that ardour of anticipation had cooled, and I braced myself for apathy or outright dislike. Superhero fiction just seems like a disappointing genre for the novel these days. It’s not that the superhero novels I’ve been reading are bad. No, it’s worse—they are bland. Soon…

The Quiet War is certainly what is advertised in the title: a war so quiet, no one knows it is happening. Not even me.

It’s the future. The not-so-distant but not-quite-near twenty-third century. No warp drive or United Federation of Planets, though. In fact, we can barely colonize the solar system without squabbling about it. The various powers of Earth—though we largely concern ourselves only with the Europeans and the more powerful Great Brasilia faction—are…

We all have triggers, certain topics in our beloved genres that instantly make us sit up and pay attention. Artificial intelligence is one such trigger for me; identity is another. (Both touch on philosophy of the mind, a field that fascinates me, and I suspect this is why they intrigue me.) There is scant AI in Chasm City, but there is plenty of reflection on identity and the ramifications of using technology to alter…

Journey into Space frustrates me. I didn’t like it very much. Its characterization is fractured and shallow. It is brief where it should be verbose, tarries when it should be moving on. About the only thing it has going for it is the fact that it takes place on a generation ship. This is where the frustration sets in, because as much as I didn’t enjoy this book, I can appreciate how Litt depicts some…

Darkness Falling chronicles the struggle of several survivors as they realize they probably should have paid attention to that last zombie movie. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and genre savviness is nowhere to be found.

I checked out about halfway through the first act. I love reading on my tablet, but it’s so easy to get into the rhythm of tapping to turn the page, skimming through each page as…