Seems like science fiction novels about Mars, once a cliche, are now in vogue again.

Recently I've read John Varley's ROLLING THUNDER and Joe Haldeman's MARSBOUND.

Now comes Ben Bova's MARS LIFE (Amazon) (Not to be confused with LIFE ON MARS, either version!), third in his Mars trilogy, after MARS (1992) and RETURN TO MARS (1999).

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THE ACCIDENTAL TIME MACHINE (Hardback August 2007, paperback July 2008, Amazon). The setup for this reminds me of Haldeman's 1976 novel MINDBRIDGE. A grad student in a MIT physics lab accidentally creates a device which will travel forward in time and take the person attached with it. But there's no control over it, and the time it travels ( Read more... )

I always liked Larry Niven's "Known Space" stories when I was a kid. Written mainly in the mid '60s through the '70s, various novels and short stories detail a future history which is somewhat Star Trekian, with humans getting faster-than-light spaceship drives, and encountering various alien races. It culminates with RINGWORLD (1970) and THE ( Read more... )

John Varley has written a lot of good science fiction over the years. The Gaean Trilogy (TITAN, WIZARD, and DEMON), MILLENNIUM, three novels set in his "Eight Worlds" universe, and an assortment of short stories and novellas (Many of which are collected in the 2004 volume THE JOHN VARLEY READEROf late he's been writing novels that are often ( Read more... )

QUANTUM OF SOLACE, Daniel Craig's second Bond movie, is still five months away, but there are two new James Bond novels out.

One is DEVIL MAY CARE (Here on Amazon), by Sebastian Faulks. The other is the third "Young Bond" novel, DOUBLE OR DIE (Here on Amazon), by Charlie Higson.


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I'm a fan of the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming. And, to various degrees, I've liked most of the Bond novels that have come since then by other authors, particularly the really strange and obscure COLONEL SUNIn 2004, the Ian Fleming estate commissioned Charles Higson to write a series of five "Teen Bond" books, no doubt trying to get on the ( Read more... )

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When I was a kid, I had this strange book (and still have) that nobody else ever seems to have read. FATTYPUFFS & THINIFERS, by Andre Maurois, 1930. Wonderfully illustrated by Fritz Wegner. My edition is 1968. The book seems to be out of print now, probably due to its rather politically incorrect plotline. I'm not even sure how I got it, it just ( Read more... )

There's a recent young adult novel in the U.K. called SILVERFIN by Charlie Higson. Authorized by the Ian Fleming estate, it details a 14 year old James Bond's adventures while attending Eton in the 1930's.

That's so odd, that I'm going to have to read it.