Eclipse by K. A. Bedford
(Calgary: EDGE Press/Tesseract Books, 2006; $14.95 tpb; 311pages)
Less Than Human by Maxine McArthur
(New York: Warner Books, 2004; $6.99 pb; 387 pages)

Earlier in the year Australian writer Ben Peek reviewed the short fiction finalists for the Aurealis Awards in a piece called ‘Scalpels And Surgical Masks’ for the online ( Read more... )

Max Barry is a gamekeeper turned poacher, an ex-marketing man who in an attempt to redeem his soul is putting the boot into the world of marketing. His second novel - the first, Syrup, is unpublished in the UK - sketches a world where the borders of the USA encompass Australia and the UK, corporatism runs rampant and the government has been reduced ( Read more... )

The totalitarian world of Unation is ruled over by the omnipresent Mother Necessity. In this rigidly hierarchical society people carry out their duty as designated by Mother in order to climb the ladder of status levels and be materially rewarded. Against this dystopian background Ersatz Nation tells the story of two citizens who find themselves ( Read more... )

Suddenly Jupiter appears above the Earth, "magnified so as to fill half the horizon." It hangs there, portentiously, triggering an existential crisis in those below it. Stina Ekman is one of the many people to live through this event, in a Swedish university town with her boyfriend, a man she passively dislikes. She is a washed-up poet who earns ( Read more... )

Appearances can be deceptive. Jad is the court jester in the romanticised psuedo-medieval feudal society of Urba where the general populace, serf and noble alike, are ruled over by the Elite, a dictatorship of beautiful magicians. He thinks the world he lives in is a pocket of emptiness in a universe of solid rock; in fact, he is onboard a ( Read more... )

Cole and Lee are refugees from higher academia who have found temporary shelter in a shared office at Southwest Connecticut Community College. Lee is a literal refugee; having fled persecution in China he was a Distinguished Professor of Higher Mathematics at MIT before leaving under a cloud. Cole, an American Studies Associate, was similarly ( Read more... )

Serena Freeman was a child prodigy who has now grown up to become a professor of mathematics at Cambridge by the tender age of 24. She is also the inventor of a type of time machine that allows the user to project themselves into the consciousness of anyone, throughout history. Not only does the time machine allow the user to experience another's ( Read more... )

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.
So begins the most exhilarating adventure I have read in a long time. Mortal Engines is set in a post-apocalyptic future, a thousand years after the Sixty Minute War wiped out civilisation as we know it. ( Read more... )

Detective Livingstone works for the Metropolitan Police and is investigating a missing persons case. He has been assigned this particular case because the person in question is the 18 year old daughter of Lord Trafalgar, the Minister for the Judiciary. A break in the case soon appears when someone who looks a lot like Danielle Trafalgar is spotted ( Read more... )

Oryx And Crake isn't about Oryx or Crake, or even their Children: it's about Jimmy ( Read more... )