I remember reading Carolyn Ives Gilman's Halfway Human back in 1998, thinking it very good, and then being somewhat disappointed when no further novels appeared from her. I later discovered she'd had a number of short stories published - chiefly in F&SF - and even a novella, 'Arkfall' (now available from Phoenix Pick here). There are also a pair of ( Read more... )

When I put together my list of British SF Masterworks last year (see here), a number of eligible authors were suggested to me that I'd never heard of before. One such was Arthur Sellings who, I discovered, had written six novels and numerous short stories (many of which were collected in two collections) between 1953 and 1970. He died suddenly in ( Read more... )

If I've had trouble reading the books for my challenge in their proper months, it's not because reading them is proving a, er, challenge. On the contrary, it's because I've made a change in my reading patterns which makes the books I chose for the challenge less of a conscious or deliberate act of selection of reading material. I now read more ( Read more... )

There are those who believe science fiction is a predominantly pessimistic genre, and certainly many of the futures that sf novels posit can hardly be called utopias. Of course, much of this depends upon your personal politics - a neoliberal fantasy, for instance, would likely appeal to a plutocrat, or to someone so deluded they think they actually ( Read more... )

I had originally picked Beukes' Moxyland as one of my twelve books for this year's reading challenge, but then I met the author at the Eastercon back in April, and Zoo City won the Arthur C Clarke Award... So I swapped one out for the other, even though the latter says on the back, "File Under URBAN FANTASY". Although, of course, there was that ( Read more... )

When Kameron Hurley’s God’s War was published earlier this year, I took note of it, as I generally do of sf novels which feature Arabs or Arab-inspired backgrounds. I checked out the book’s website, and even read the first chapter, which was posted online. But I didn’t see anything there that made me want to buy and read the book immediately. At ( Read more... )

This post is a bit late because I had to reschedule my reading. I decided several weeks ago to make July a month of reading only women writers. But then I was sent three novels by men for review, with a deadline of the end of July. So I moved them to the top of the reading pile so I could finish them in June and not break my promise for July. ( Read more... )

China Mountain Zhang has been on my radar for a number of years - it's one of those books I've heard many good things about, but have never really got around to buying or reading. Until now. And, in one of those moments of serendipity that confirm you've chosen the right time to do something, no sooner had I picked the book for my reading challenge ( Read more... )

You'd have thought that with two four-day weekends in April, I'd have had plenty of time to read that month's book from my reading challenge. Unfortunately not. However, during April I did manage to pick up copies of China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F McHugh; The Year of Our War, Steph Swainston; and Zoo City, Lauren Beukes (which I'm going to read ( Read more... )

Marianne de Pierries is one of several Australian authors published in the UK by Orbit. Her first book, Nylon Angel, the first of the Parrish Plessis cyberpunk trilogy, was published in 2004. Dark Space is the first book of her second series, The Sentients of Orion. It is space opera.


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