Category: Fiction
-
SF Classics – Blood Music by Greg Bear
Blood Music (1985) by Greg Bear, originally published as a novelette in the SF magazine Analog, portrays the frightening experiment of a biotechnologist who creates…
-
Horror Classics – The Fog by James Herbert
I read this novel (to be precise, and oddly enough, in its French edition) long time ago. I don’t remember what I thought at that…
-
SF Classics –The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
The Man in the High Castle (1962) by Philip K Dick is one of the most famous books of alternate history. In this dystopian…
-
Book Review – The Lives of Tao, by Wesley Chu
That SF is becoming less anglocentric is an exciting and much-welcomed novelty, and I’m not talking here (just) about language, but also culture and…
-
The myth of Planet X
…which is maybe not a myth after all. When I have written some time ago about Nemesis, or the Death Star, in fiction and in…
-
Book Review: The Martian – Andy Weir
Reviewing The Martian is not an easy task, for a series of reasons. The most important is that there has been a lot of hype around…
-
Classic ghost stories – M. R. James
I am not a great fan of supernatural per se, I have to say, and my favourite horror stories have generally a scientific explanation…
-
XXI CENTURY SCI-FI – The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Windup Girl (2009) by Paolo Bacigalupi is a SF dystopian / biopunk novel. It’s set in Thailand in the 23rd-century, where powerful biotech…
-
SF Classics – Rendezvous with Rama
Rendezvous with Rama (1973) is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke, set in the 2130s in the Solar System. Rama, initially mistaken for an…
-
Dangerous visions – a controversial SF anthology
In 1967, Harlan Ellison put together a short-story anthology titled Dangerous Visions. Mildly put, this collection made history and “almost single-handedly [it] changed the…
-
XXI CENTURY SCI-FI – 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
2312 (2012) by Kim Stanley Robinson is a SF novel about a (relatively) near future of interplanetary colonisation. Humanity has spread across the whole Solar…
-
Interview to Ken Liu, on Amazing Stories
An interview to Ken Liu, the SF Chinese-American writer, author of some excellent short stories (published on F&SF, Asimov’s, Analog, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld among others)…
-
SF Classics – The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard
The Drowned World (1962) is a SF novel by J. G. Ballard, an author that has written in other literary genres and became especially famous…
-
Science in SF – Articles for Amazing Stories
In addition to astrophysics and space exploration, I do also write articles about another of my favourite subjects, science in science-fiction, on this blog and…
-
BloodLight: The Apocalypse of Robert Goldner. A review
There are two things about this odd yet fascinating book worth mentioning straight away. The first is that, albeit featuring a seventeen-year old boy,…
-
SF Classics – The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
The Shadow of the Torturer (1980) is a fantasy novel by Gene Wolfe. It is the first of four volumes in The Book of…
-
SF Classics – The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
The Forever War (1974) by Joe Haldeman is a military science fiction novel, telling the story of William Mandella, a soldier of the United…
-
Guest post. City of Bones, City of Ashes – A review
This is a guest post by Chango (for contributing posts here have a look at this). The original version of these two book reviews,…
-
SF heroes and villains – a portrait gallery
I have been an avid manga reader (and anime fan) since childhood, and what I loved the most was to pick my hero and follow…
-
SF Classics – Steel Beach by John Varley
Steel Beach (1993) by John Varley, is a sci-fi novel where humans now live on the Moon after an alien invasion. Steel Beach, this…
-
SF Classics – Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell is a novel that needs no introduction. Difficult to imagine a dark, dystopian book that had a stronger…
-
SF Classics – Ringworld by Larry Niven
Ringworld (1970) by Larry Niven, is the first of a series of stories – including prequels and sequels – set in a version of…
-
Let the right one in – by John Ajvide Lindqvist. A review.
Vampires, we know, are a popular brand at least since John Polidori’s Lord Ruthven, allegedly inspired by Lord Byron during a fateful night at Villa Diodati I have…
-
SF Classics – The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
The Player of Games (1988) by Iain M. Banks is a SF novel belonging to the Culture series. It features the most skilful and…