2015 SF, one of a loose series but intended to stand alone. Something very strange is happening around the top-secret teleportation project…
1991 SF, first in a series. "Star" Svensdotter is in charge of getting the American Alliance's first O'Neill colony ready for commissioning. Terrorists, bureaucrats and a potential military takeover will get in the way.
2018 anthology of novellas from Stewart's various universes.
2024 SF, second of its series. The crew of the greatship Athens has found out something about what's been going on. Now she has to make it home.
2024 romance/SF/mystery; 58th novel of Robb's In Death series (SF police procedurals). Someone's poisoning girls in public places; Dallas investigates.
2023 space-navy SF, third and last of its sub-series. Another ex-commonwealth state is under attack by an alliance of former naval commanders, and they appeal to the Dakotan Confederacy and the rump Commonwealth for help…
2004 romance/SF/mystery; second of its series. Lydia Smith and Emmett London are carrying on their relationship, but they both bave prickles that the other can brush against. Oh, and someone has just tried to kill Emmett's old friend…
2008 YA SF, third in its series. Ishmael Horatio Wang continues his career as space crew on a trading ship.
2023 romance/SF/mystery; 57th novel of J. D. Robb's In Death series (SF police procedurals). A retired Internal Affairs officer is found shot in his home, but Dallas sees right through the apparent suicide…
2023 SF. Enitan is a scribe and tea cultivator on Koriko, conquered a few years ago by the Vaalbaran Empire. But when her sibling disappears, and her highly-placed friend promises to help her in the search and promptly winds up dead, she volunteers to travel to the mother world as a hostage…
1987 sf. On the gas giant moons of Orestes and Electra, a harsh honour code has been mellowed by allowing "social death" to replace execution. But the system still isn't stable.
2024 short romantic SF novel, side story in Galactic Bonds. Zane Zimmer tries to juggle his position as chief hatchet-man to a psychotic emperor with the demands of his highly-placed family…
2020 science fiction, second in the Time Police sub-series in the Chronicles of St Mary's continuity (time travel). Team Weird continues to be the dangerous intellectuals of the Time Police.
2021 SF, first of a duology. Zetian's older sister died as a pilot-concubine, co-piloting a giant mecha to fight off the aliens from beyond the Wall. She knows she will also die, but she plans to take someone down with her…
2023 romance/SF/mystery; 56th novel of J. D. Robb's In Death series (SF police procedurals). The famous actress throws a party to celebrate a new project; then her husband drops dead of a champagne cocktail meant for her.
2020 SF, last of its trilogy. This time Thorn is mucking about with time.
2023 science fiction, last of its series. The Gods have withdrawn their protection from the planet Jai, just as the Keres is coming. What can Yasira Shien and her band of renegades do?
2000 romance/SF/mystery; first of a series. After an unfortunate incident in an alien tomb, Lydia Smith is finding it hard to get work. So she can't afford to turn down the one client who's willing to employ her, even if he clearly isn't telling her everything…
2021 YA SF, first of a trilogy. Tina has never been ordinary: she was left on Earth by aliens, and knows they'll come back for her one day. But when that day comes, it's far more dangerous than she expected…
2018 SF, second of a trilogy. Thorn comes back to civilisation to end slavery, and the long-running war.
2024 science fiction. Annie is a companion bot: getting dinner ready each night, cleaning the flat, and of course sex. But something seems to be going amiss.
2021 science fiction, second of its series. Productivity Hunt wasn't expecting to be a reality-bending revolutionary, but it turns out she's one of the more functional of the band…
2022 romance/SF/mystery; 55th novel of J. D. Robb's In Death series (SF police procedurals). Two girls escape from a "school" for sex slaves…
2020 science fiction, eleventh in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). A jump to see the Princes in the Tower changes everything…
2023 science fiction. In a mostly-recognisable near future, Cal is a police contractor who smooths the way in cases that involve Titans, the super-wealthy subjects of the life-extending drug T7. So when a Titan commits a dodgy-looking suicide, he investigates…
2018 SF. Thorn wanted to be a Battle Mage, but then things got complicated.
2020 SF. The two top-ranked new Interplanetary Marshals go to Delta sector, where crime is out of control…
2019 science fiction, first of a series though it stands well on its own. Yasira Shien's reactor design destroys a space station and kills a hundred people. But the gods give her a chance to redeem herself…
2023 SF novella, part of an ongoing series. Kiera Alexander, thrust before she was ready onto the throne of Mars, needs children to carry on a particular set of magic-wielding genes, but would really prefer a husband she actually likes too. Barry Carpentier is a failed mage turned shuttle thief, and it turns out the Queen's ship has a really interesting prototype shuttle on board…
2007 YA SF, second in its series. Ishmael Horatio Wang transfers from the galley to environmental maintenance on the intersteller merchant ship, and grows up a bit more.
2018 SF. A reporter and camera operator are embedded aboard a convoy taking troops and supplies to the front lines. In space.
1986 alternate history. While camped at Bactra and on the verge of the Indian campaign, Alexander the Great hears of a revolt among the Greek cities he left behind him. So he turns back…
2019 SF/romance, last in the Class 5 series. Ellie Masters wakes up in an abandoned installation. But someone out there is talking to her…
2022 SF, twelfth of its series. Naval forces and stealth ships are mustered in a joint operation to track down a breakaway force from the defeated enemy. But they will get unexpected help.
2019 SF/romance novella in the Class 5 series. Having been aboard ships for far too long, Rose McKenzie goes along with a planetary survey party. Then the rest of the party vanishes.
2023 SF. Destry is a terraformer on the planet Sask-E, which over thousands of years is being made into a luxury resort by the company. Then an anomaly shows up…
2021 SF, last of its trilogy that's also a sequel to the Indranan War series. Empress Hailimi prepares for the big fight against the godlike aliens.
2020 SF/romance novella, last of its trilogy. Queen Samara and Emperor Valentin go to a neutral space station for a meeting with the military commander who's been trying to kill them both. Everyone knows it's a trap…
2018 near-future suspense; first in a series. Dr Janet Watson lost an arm in the civil war; the substandard replacement won't let her go back to work as a surgeon. So while she waits in DC she's in the market for a roommate…
2019 science fiction, first in the new Time Police sub-series in the Chronicles of St Mary's continuity (time travel). Three new recruits join the Time Police…
2019 SF/romance, fourth of of its series. Lucy Harris has also been kidnapped from Earth into an alien civilisation…
2019 SF, second of its trilogy that's also a sequel to the Indranan War series. Believing almost all her advisors and friends dead, Empress Hailimi does her best to work towards peace rather than the big battle everyone else seems to want.
2019 SF/romance novella, second of a trilogy. Queen Samara is visiting Emperor Valentin to try to help him find the traitor among his advisors.
2021 SF, eleventh of its series. Roslyn Chambers is now a battlecruiser's XO, but not for long…
2016 SF/romance, third of of its series. Imogen Peters has also been kidnapped from Earth into an alien civilisation…
2023 short science fiction novel, seventh in the Murderbot series. After the events of Network Effect, Murderbot continues to help the Preservation mission to an alien-remnant-infected planet.
2018 SF, first of a trilogy that's also a sequel to the Indranan War series. Empress Hailimi is trying to keep her empire out of the war between two lots of highly advanced aliens… but why do all the factions want her working for them?
2019 science fiction, tenth in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). Time to deal with a problem once and for all.
2022 SF. The climate catastrophe has happened, and the survivors are rebuilding, whether it's the hollowed-out remnants of nation-states, the corporates on their bunker-islands, or the dandelion networks that are trying to make the environment back into something compatible with human thriving. None of them is expecting the alien scout ship.
2017 SF/romance novella, first of a trilogy. Two space empires are at war: the Rogue Coalition is caught in the middle.
2007 YA SF, first in a series. Ishmael Horatio Wang finds himself orphaned and penniless, and the only way of getting out of that seems to be to sign aboard an interstellar merchant ship.
1987 SF, third of its trilogy. With a new Hegemon established, Silence Leigh is finally ready to make another try at reaching Earth.
2016 SF/romance, second of of its series. Fiona Russell has also been kidnapped from Earth into an alien civilisation…
2021 SF, tenth of its series. As the cleanup from the rebellion continue, Lieutenant-Commander Roslyn Chambers is sent to a backwater world that may be hiding war criminals.
2017 SF, third of its trilogy. Hailimi has to take back her Empire, and think hard about the future…
1993 science fiction, dir. Steven Spielberg, Sam Neill, Laura Dern: IMDb / allmovie. How dare they do science!
2023 SF/romance, third of a trilogy. Lexi Bowen, professional thief, fell for human-adjacent hottie Nilo Shoren, but he dumped her and stole her job. But why does he have to be so nice?
2019 science fiction anthology collecting stories mostly in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel).
2015 SF/romance, first of a series. Rose McKenzie was kidnapped from Earth and was kept as a prisoner and experimental subject aboard a space battleship, until she managed to escape. Dav Jallan doesn't know why this battleship has turnd up in his region of space, or why its crew is dead, but…
2020 SF novella, side story in the Starship's Mage series. Ivan Halloway is a retired Mage who wanted to get away from the dangers of naval service; but he'll still help out his old buddy who's got himself into way too much trouble…
2016 SF, second of its trilogy. Hailimi has survived one plot to depose her, but there are more waiting their turn…
2022 SF/romance, second of a trilogy. Kee Ildez knows that human-adjacent hottie Varro Runkow isn't interested in her, and anyway she's got lots of hacking to do to track down the various conspirators left in the wind…
1987 science fiction, dir. Paul Verhoeven, Peter Weller, Nancy Allen: IMDb / allmovie. When do we start? As soon as some poor schmuck volunteers.
2013 military SF, eleventh of the Kris Longknife books. Kris has a planet to defend.
2016 SF, first of a trilogy. Hailimi left the court to become a gunrunner, but now the other heirs are dead and her mother the Empress is going mad…
2022 SF/romance, first of a trilogy. Octavia Zarola can't afford to turn down a retrieval mission. Even if it's from the people who were at war with humanity.
2020 SF, ninth of its series. The forces of Mars work to clear up the débris from the big rebellion; for one thing, nobody's actually found their government…
2018 science fiction, ninth in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). More adventures in history!
2022 SF/romance novelette, prequel to a trilogy. Captain Octavia Zarola is a bounty hunter with a heart of gold.
1991 SF, twelfth and last of its series. After three Observers go missing, the Time Corps protagonists travel to Tombstone, Arizona in 1881.
1986 SF, second of its trilogy. Silence Leigh, already a hyperspace pilot, has now had some training as a magus, and is ready to have another try at travelling to lost Earth.
2023 SF novella. Years before the events of Firebreak, the twelve-year-old cyber-enhanced SecOps 06 and 22 run away from the Company for the first time…
2023 space-operatic SF. Earth was destroyed in the great war, and its survivors scrape by on Gaea Station, an asteroid powered by the last salvaged warships. Kyr, a genetically enhanced "warbreed", has spent her life training for a chance to avenge the fourteen billion dead… "While Earth's children live, the enemy shall fear us."
1980 SF novella, in the same world as The Outcasts of Heaven Belt though set before the events of that book. In a system of gradually-decaying asteroid habitats, two self-loathing people go along on a rich man's self-promoting rescue mission.
1990 SF, eleventh of its series. The night before Caesar crosses the Rubicon, he's visited by a soothsayer who gives the names of those who will act against him…
2009 science fiction, dir. Duncan Jones, Sam Rockwell: IMDb / allmovie. Sam's coming to the end of his three-year shift supervising helium-3 mining robots on the moon…
2018 SF, third of its sub-series. David Rice and his subtly well-armed merchant ship are still doing covert intelligence gathering for the Protectorate.
2019 SF novella, placed in the Shieldrunner Pirates setting but not part of that series. Ku Nel-Aoki is the boss of level 2 of the Jane Jacobs residential module on Ceres. But the Syndicate she works for is not an easy employer.
1995 science fiction, dir. Terry Gilliam, Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt: IMDb / allmovie. After the plague, a man is sent back in time to try to get a sample of the original strain.
2012 SF short story, set in the same universe as the Imperial Radch series. The world of Ghaon can only be reached via the Crawl, which destroys ships that try to cross it in less than six months…
1962 shoft science fiction, dir. Chris Marker, Davos Hanich, Hélène Châtelain: IMDb / allmovie. After the war, a man is sent back to his memories of the past.
2023 military SF, last of its trilogy. The crew/found family of the not-Coast-Guard spaceship Zuma's Ghost are having to say goodbye to old members and welcome new ones.
2023 SF short story collection in the Planetfall universe.
2022 space-navy SF, second of its sub-series. The Dakotan Confederacy refuses to become the arsenal for a massive fleet being built by the admiral who's taken over the Commonwealth of which it used to be a part. Nobody there wants a fight, but military dictators aren't known for their understanding of differing opinions…
2017 military-adjacent SF, second of its series. Ian Dunlop the genetic experiment is trying to settle down to life with his new family, but not everyone has forgotten about him.
1978 short SF novel. After its civil war, the Heaven system (gas giant and trojans, asteroid belt, some very marginal planets) has split into multiple polities, and the machinery that sustains life is gradually breaking down. Then a ramscoop starship arrives from a nearby system…
2023 romantic SF, second of a planned trilogy. Vesper Quill is trying to pretend she doesn't have an unbreakable psychic bond with Kyrion Caldaren, so that the Emperor doesn't eat their souls (he has form). But to get through all the things being thrown at them they'll need to use not only their own powers but each other's.
1990 SF, tenth of its series. It's 1765 in Boston, and the Sons of Liberty are being threatened by a headless horseman.
2020 SF, third and of its series. Adda and Iridian have been captured by the law, and the rogue AIs are still out there and trying to manipulate them…
2023 SF, set in the same universe as the Imperial Radch series but not in Radchaai space. Three people get involved in the mystery of a Presger Translator who went missing hundreds of years ago.
2017 science fiction anthology collecting stories in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel).
2018 SF, second of its sub-series. David Rice is still being hunted by people trying for the bounty posted by the crime lord he killed. Fortunately his covert-ops backers want those guys taken off the table too.
1989 SF, ninth of its series. In 1702 Lemuel Gulliver is drinking himself to death, having encountered tiny men after a shipwreck. Obviously a job for the Time Commandos.
2014 SF short story, set in the same universe as the Imperial Radch series. Her-Breath-Contains-The-Universe is is a junior monk in a monastery (on a space station) that also trains players for something like the Mesoamerican ballgame, which has political significance too…
1987 science fiction action, dir. Paul Michael Glaser, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Dawson: IMDb / allmovie. The only real game is the game of death.
2021 science fiction in the Diving Universe series. Everything lands in the same place all at once.
1987 science fiction action horror, dir. John McTiernan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers: IMDb / allmovie. There's something out there waiting for us, and it ain't no man.
2013 military SF novella, side story to Furious in the Kris Longknife series. The detective who failed to catch Kris does some investigation on her behalf.
1995 SF. Joe wakes up in a hospital with serious memory loss: he overdid things, it seems, and had a major breakdown. But bits of the world are wrong.
2021 military SF, second of its trilogy. The crew/found family of the not-Coast-Guard spaceship Zuma's Ghost are having to say goodbye to old members and welcome new ones.
2017 SF, first of its sub-series. David Rice lost his merchant ship, but the Mage-King of Mars has given him a new one. And there almost isn't a price…
2023 space-operatic SF, second of a planned trilogy. Sun Shan and the Chaonian forces have won their first great victory over the Phene Empire, but domestic complications arise.
2012 military SF, tenth of the Kris Longknife books. Exiled to a significant but powerless position and surrounded by spies, Kris has to get back to her homeworld and start planning out how to deal with the alien menace that people aren't being told about.
1988 SF, eighth of its series. People are being torn apart in Victorian London, or simply drained of blood. How will the Time Commandos solve the problem?
2021 SF, dir. Lana Wachowski, Keanu Reeves, Jessica Henwick; IMDb / allmovie. What if we ignored the films that were not so good?
1964 SF. Douglas Hall is working on a simulated reality to make product test-marketing cheaper. But all of a sudden things aren't the way he remembers them being… UK vt Counterfeit World.
2003 SF, dir. Wachowskis, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne; IMDb / allmovie. See Neo fight. Fight, Neo, fight.
2003 SF, dir. Wachowskis, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne; IMDb / allmovie. OK, so you're God. Now what?
1999 SF, dir. Wachowskis, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne; IMDb / allmovie. What if it were all, like, a simulation, man?
2020 SF, eighth of its series. The Mage-King of Mars has been assassinated; Damien Montgomery takes over as Lord Regent for the young Mage-Queen.
2016 science fiction novelette, in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). Things have gone well for a change, so the historians and other of St Mary's go on an outing to see one of the first run performances of Hamlet. Of course, things go wrong.
2021 science fiction, short novella in the Diving Universe series. A backwater planet's moon has a complicated hazard; what happened to the ship that famously vanished?
1985 SF, first of a trilogy. Space pilot Silence Leigh is stuck on a world in which women are literally second-class citizens, marooned by the death of her grandfather and legal entanglements over his will. And there's a starship in the balance…
2020 science fiction, tenth in the Diving Universe series. Contemporary with Boneyards, Squishy's various sabotage teams destroy stealth tech research stations across the Empire.
2019 military SF, thirteenth and to date last of this series. As the truce continues to hold, the Far Traveller explores a forgotten section of space.
1987 SF, seventh of its series. With a parallel timeline thought to be causing disruptions, the Time Commandos are sent to join Jason in his voyage to retake the Golden Fleece.
2018 military SF, twelfth of this ongoing series. Roy Olfetrie's father was caught on the take, so Roy had to leave the Academy; but a chance meeting puts him aboard Daniel Leary's latest venture…
2019 SF, seventh of its series. Roslyn Chambers ends up as a flag lieutenant in the big fleet trying to win the war; Damien Montgomery follows the clues to uncover something the enemy's keeping secret even from their own people.
2020 military SF, first of a series. Max Carmichael, younger daughter of a super-rich family, is trying to get away from their influence. Meanwhlie the Near Earth Orbital Guard is just trying to keep space safe for honest travellers…
2021 science fiction, ninth in the Diving Universe series. As "Boss" explores deeper into the Boneyard, the Fleet of the present day finally organises a response.
2017 SF, dir. Denis Villeneuve, Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford; IMDb / allmovie. Turns out slaves may think they're people.
2012 military SF, novella in the Kris Longknife series. As the news of Kris's return from a scouting trip leaks into civilised space, various factions react to it.
2016 SF, dir. Denis Villeneuve, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner; IMDb / allmovie. The alien ships arrive, but nobody knows how to communicate with their occupants.
2017 science fiction, eighth in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). Everything is finally going well for Max. But not for long.
2016 science fiction, seventh in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). A young Historian gets emotional, and the others throw aside good sense to support him.
1986 SF, sixth of its series. A soldier sent back to 1897 to fight in the Hindu Kush meets his exact twin…
2022 space-navy SF, first of its series but following the six-book Castle Federation series. Admiral James Tecumseh came off worst against the Alliance, and was given a "safe" posting in a backwater sector. But now all the FTL communicators have gone dark, and he's the man in charge…
2016 military SF, eleventh of this ongoing series. Another neutral star cluster, where one arm of the enemy Alliance seems to be fomenting a rebellion against another. So Leary is sent in to be a mercenary…
2017 SF/mystery, first of an ongoing series. Caelin Morrow is an Inspector in the Professional Compliance Bureau, dedicated to rooting out dirty officials (even among the police). But when an alien ambassador is murdered, that lands on her plate too.
2020 science fiction novelette, in the Diving Universe series. An incident during the voyage of The Renegat.
2021 children's SF. Jillian is eleven, and going to visit her parents for Take Your Children To Work Day. Her parents explore other planets…
2019 SF, a loose sequel to Mainline. Kes is the top dominatrix at the top club on the planet, but one of her clients has attracted the wrong sort of attention.
1984 SF. The Empress is dead… and, lacking an heir, has left the Empire to her latest favourite. But can he force the nobles to take him seriously?
2020 space-navy SF, stand-alone novella in the Castle Federation series. Before the last big war, an admiral has to decide who set up the obvious trap.
2014 science fiction, dir. Doug Liman, Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt; IMDb / allmovie. Groundhog Day meets Aliens.
2017 SF/thriller, first of an ongoing series. Mark Warren is a researcher in a top secret facility which gets attacked by terrorists, and things spin out from there.
2009 science fiction, dir. J. J. Abrams, Chris Pine. Zachary Quinto: IMDb / allmovie. A franchise reboot, but yet another civilisation-scale threat.
2022 SF/fantasy novel in the Innkeeper series. In what seems like an obvious trap for Dina and Sean, Sean's mentor is kidnapped and taken to a planet that's almost certainly fatal to get to. Someone else can provide safe transport, but there's a price…
2013 science fiction, dir. Alfonso Cuarón, Sandra Bullock, George Clooney; IMDb / allmovie. Kessler syndrome is not your friend.
2018 SF, sixth of its series. Everyone was expecting the newly-seceded Republic to attack the Proctecorate, but it's been eighteen months without any movement…
2014 military SF, tenth of this ongoing series. A variety of missions, well outside the scope of anything official, brings Daniel and crew to a planet in rebellion.
1996 SF. Reva is an assassin with a strange power: she can jump between similar timelines, so that chance is always on her side. She'll need more than that to survive her latest entanglements, though.
2019 science fiction, eighth in the Diving Universe series. A crew of Fleet misfits is sent on a suicide mission to find out what's happening in one of the stockpiles of abandoned ships.
1985 SF, fifth of its series. A stolen ballistic missile submarine is somewhere out there in time…
2012 military SF, ninth of this ongoing series. After the events of the previous book, Daniel Leary and the Princess Cecile are sent to get a privincial admiral moving in the right direction to head off a war-starting coup. Of course it's always more complicated than that.
2011 science fiction, dir. Joe Cornish, John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker: IMDb / allmovie. The aliens picked on the wrong gang.
2017 SF, fifth of its series. Montgomery and the Mage-King's forces are cleaning up the conspiracy… but someone else is ahead of them.
2021 SF, first of a series. Marca Nbaro has committed various forms of fraud to get aboard one of the nine treading Greatships that link human worlds (and the enigmatic aliens). This turns out to be a very good thing.
2018 science fiction, seventh in the Diving Universe series. Cooper the captain and Vash the engineer deal with isolation from their original time in a variety of ways.
2010 military SF, eighth of this ongoing series. There's an election coming up, so famous commander Daniel Leary should be got away from the capital of the Republic before he accidentally endorses someone. But backwater postings never stay backwaters for long.
2010 SF romance, dir. Mark Romanek, Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley: IMDb / allmovie. The generic love triangle plays out over a dark background. Spoilers.
2011 military SF, ninth of the Kris Longknife books. Kris leads an expedition in search of an alien menace.
2009 horror, dir. Neil Blomkamp, Sharlto Copley, David James; IMDb / allmovie. The people who don't look like us have to be moved on.
2022 fantasy, third of what was going to be a trilogy but has now expanded. Nona is a child living in a city at war, but still just about managing to go to school, while Camilla and Pyrrha look after her.
1985 SF, fourth of its series. After Rudolf Rassendyll gets poisoned on a train in Germany, our heroes have to provide a substitute double for Rudolf V of Ruritania.
2017 space-navy SF, sixth of its series. The Federation is doing a good job on the battlefield, but it's simply a smaller economy than the Commonwealth, and those numbers are starting to tell. So Admiral Kyle Roberts comes up with a plan to end the war now, win or lose…
2009 military SF, seventh of this ongoing series. An irked senator, a shaky ally, and a major defeat for the RCN…
2015 science fiction novelette in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). When an historian leaves a gun behind in ancient Egypt, Max decides to retrieve it herself rather than calling in the Time Police.
2016 SF, fourth of its series. On an archaeological site light years from Earth, an academic magician makes an interesting discovery… and is promptly murdered.
2014 science fiction novella in the Diving Universe series. When the Ivoire is attacked and disappears, Captain Sabin and the Geneva lead the search mission…
2022 romantic SF, first of a planned trilogy. Vesper Quill is a designer working on various high-tech products for the penny-pinching Kent Corporation. Kyrion Caldaren is the Emperor's right hand, head of his elite forces. There's no reason they would ever even meet…
1995 military SF, sequel to A Small Colonial War. The rebellion on the colony world ended up with an independent civilian government, and the Japanese Empire doesn't like that…
2018 SF, continuation of the Poor Man's Fight series. Tanner Malone left the Navy with a reputation as a bloody-handed butcher, and went to university to study planetary surveying. The reputation won't leave him behind, and neither will the corporate assassins, so he joins a xenoarchaeological expedition…
2017 space-navy SF, fifth of its series. An ally of the Federation calls for help against pirates; they can't spare many ships, but they can send Captain Roberts, a hero with a reputation for winning against the odds.
2017 space-marine SF, side story in the Poor Man's Fight series. Alicia Wong keeps getting tapped for special missions that she's not allowed to talk about…
2017 space-navy SF, second of its series. War has broken out in earnest, and Captain Barron and Dauntless are rushed out of the repair yard to join the desperate defence.
2008 military SF, sixth of this ongoing series. Another small war, another planet.
1984 SF, third of its series. After Percy Blakeney gets trampled to death while trying to leave Paris, our heroes have to provide a substitute Scarlet Pimpernel.
2016 SF, fourth of its series. Captain Roberts pulled off a daring rescue, but he also brought back a badly-broken ship, and he has powerful enemies. So he's not getting another combat command… but the Intelligence division has a use for him.
2011 SF, last of its trilogy. Fifty years after the events of Dust and Chill, the generation ship Jacob's Ladder has finally got to a habitable world. Alas, it's inhabited…
2016 SF, third of its series. Damien Montgomery, one of the few troubleshooters for the Mage-King of Mars, is bounced from one crisis to another. But he hadn't expected to be sent to his old homeworld.
2010 science fiction novella in the Diving Universe series. The Spires are an enigmatic artifact built by a now-vanished civilisation. Meklos Verr is a security consultant hired to guard the archaeological expedition… but nobody is quite what they appear.
2016 space-navy SF, third of its series. The war drags on, and Archangel's government tries to hold on militarily while it makes diplomatic and undercover pushes. For both of which, reluctant hero Tanner Malone is the right tool…
2004 science fiction horror, dir. Shane Carruth, David Sullivan: IMDb / allmovie. Uh-oh, we've invented time travel.
2009 SF, middle volume of its trilogy. The colonisation ship has been restored, and the voyage can continue! Only not.
2015 humorous science fiction, third and to date last of its series. Lord Thomas Kinago, foppish distant cousin of the Emperor, is travelling to watch the enigmatic alien Zang bonsai a star system. Meanwhile the rocky Kail may be trying to open diplomatic relations with the Imperium.
2002 science fiction, dir. Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Max von Sydow: IMDb / allmovie. Precrime stops murders before they happen. But what happens when its boss is named as a future murderer?
2014 urban fantasy, self-published, sixth of its series. A mysterious Something comes to Singapore Three and makes its home in a largely-disused temple. And the Emperors of Heaven and Hell have both gone missing…
2010 military SF, eighth of the Kris Longknife books. Kris is hunting pirates and slavers beyond the edge of human-claimed space.
2001 science fiction horror, dir. John Carpenter, Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube: IMDb / allmovie. It's just a routine prisoner transfer.
2014 space-navy SF, second of its series. Tensions are rising between Archangel's government and the corporations of the interstellar Union of which it's a member. Which doesn't bode well for Tanner Malone's wish just to put in his time and then get out of the Navy.
2016 SF, third of its series. Kyle Roberts commands the new carrier Avalon as the war against the Terran Commonwealth continues.
2007 SF, first of a trilogy. Rien is a castle servant, told off to look after the prisoner Perceval. Only it's all much more real than that.
2015 science fiction, sixth in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). In an effort to rebuild the History department, Max is put in charge of a new batch of trainees.
2006 military SF, fifth of this ongoing series. Dunbar's World is being invaded from Pellegrino, and the RCN is called on by their allies to help. But they don't really care that much, so they send one underarmed ship and Daniel Leary.
2010 urban fantasy. The Book that created the universe is missing, and may be getting Ideas; Detective Inspector Chen investigates. Meanwhile Zhu Irzh is finding himself drawn to the Great Khan.
2004 fantasy/SF, fourth of its series. Rowan the Steerswoman returns to the port town of Donner, to try to learn more about the fallen Guidestar and the wizard who made it fall.
2020 SF/romance, last of a trilogy. Catarina von Hasenberg, the youngest of the heirs to one of the three Great Houses, has a public persona as a partying idiot… and some of the time even she believes it. But she'll still go undercover at a rival House's summer retreat to try to get proof relating to the kidnapping of her brother.
1999 SF noir, dir. Alex Proyas, Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland,; IMDb / allmovie. When you wake up a bath with no memories and a murdered hooker, you don't stop to ask questions.
1984 SF, second of its series. The Timekeepers are terrorists who are trying to prevent time travel – by threatening to cause a catastrophic split in the timestream. In France in 1625?
2015 SF, second of its series. Damien Montgomery and Alaura Stealey, two of the most powerful mages in human space, are sent to the planet Ardennes to deal with its escalating rebellion…
2017 science fiction, sixth of its series. "Boss" is leading dives in the Boneyard, the stockpile of abandoned Fleet ships, in the hope of recovering hardware and learning more.
2019 SF/romance. Bianca von Hasenberg, a rich widow (rumour has it, by her own hand), spends her resources trying to save other women from the grinder that is Consortium social life. But when she's attacked and the heir to von Hasenberg is kidnapped…
2013 space-navy SF, first of a series. On Archangel, your final exam determines how much you owe the company for your education. Tanner Malone messed that up, but joining the Navy will help pay the debt back faster. Meanwhile the local pirates are getting bolder…
1995 SF noir, dir. Kathryn Bigelow, Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett; IMDb / AllMovie. Paranoia's just reality on a finer scale.
2003 fantasy/SF, third of its series. Rowan the Steerswoman comes to the seaside town of Alemeth, searching the Annex for evidence of a wizard who doesn't seem to exist…
2020 young adult SF, last volume of its trilogy. Maseo Kaytu and Anvil Squad are being sent into space, and nobody's even telling them why…
2016 space-navy SF, first of an 18-book series. Everybody knows that another war is coming, and Captain Barron and the battleship Dauntless are getting a refit a long way from the front lines. Until a third power gets involved.
2006 alternate-history war story, last of six books. The Malwa have been pushed back but still hold their home territory; Belisarius and allies must finish the job.
1985 horror, dir. Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott: IMDb / allmovie. New medical student Herbert West is dedicated to his work…
2009 military SF, seventh of the Kris Longknife books. Kris, continuing her exploration mission, meets an oddly peaceful Iteeche ship (the aliens who almost wiped out humanity during the last big war), and doesn't get to act on what she learns.
2008 urban fantasy. Detective Inspector Chen's partner has disappeared, finding himself stalked by tiger-demons. And someone is trying to assassinate the new Emperor of Heaven.
2016 science fiction, fifth of its series. In the heyday of the Fleet, one of the great Sector Bases is scheduled for closure – in thirty years, but that still affects people's lives now as they plan their futures. And outside the base odd things start happening, such as two pairs of shoes left at the top of the big local waterfall…
2019 science fiction novella. Four interstellar explorers discover wonders.
2015 SF, second of its series. Kyle Roberts, former fighter jock now forced by neural implant damage into the big-ship navy, has both a good popular reputation and highly-placed enemies. Which means that his command of the new carrier is going to be more complicated than it needs to be.
2019 science fiction, a direct sequel to After Atlas. Dee made it onto the evacuation ship at the last moment, and is one of the few people who knows what happened to Earth as they left. But a mysterious someone seems to want to help her with her quest for justice.
2020 young adult SF, middle volume of a trilogy. Maseo Kaytu has done the previously impossible and operated one of the mysterious CAV weapons as its pilot rather than as a remote controller. What next?
2022 SF/mystery; 54th novel of J. D. Robb's In Death series (SF police procedurals). The woman's body, throat slit, is dumped on a playground bench, neatly dressed and made up but decades out of style. And the note reads Bad Mommy.
2017 SF horror, dir. Dagen Merrill, Sarah Habel, Dominic Monaghan: IMDb / allmovie. Something's amiss at a nuclear power plant… of the future.
2001 alternate-history war story, fifth of six books. Belisarius and his allies take the war to the Malwa, invading the subcontinent and pushing them back into their heartland.
1919 dystopian science fiction. Three friends accidentally inhale a strange dust, and find themselves in a Philadelphia… of the future!
1991 science fiction, dir. James Cameron, Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger: IMDb / allmovie. Two more soldiers from the future, and a different target to kill or protect.
1903 anthology of short stories (first published in Pearson's Magazine), in which various catastrophes are visited upon London.
1984 science fiction, dir. James Cameron, Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger: IMDb / allmovie. Two soldiers from the future fight to kill, or save, the mother of the revolution.
2019 SF/romance. Ada von Hasenberg, younger daughter of one of the three Houses that together rule human space, has been on the run for two years from an arranged marriage. She's finally been caught… but then they made the mistake of putting her in a cell with the man-monster.
1990 science fiction/comedy, dir. Robert Zemeckis, Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd: IMDb / allmovie. You're just not thinking fourth dimensionally!
1891 fantasy (perhaps 1885). Tourmalin, bored on a long sea voyage, discovers the Anglo-Australian Joint Stock Time Bank, into which he can deposit his unwanted time, only to reclaim and spend it later.
1989 science fiction/comedy, dir. Robert Zemeckis, Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd: IMDb / allmovie. We've got to do something about your kids!
1985 science fiction/comedy, dir. Robert Zemeckis, Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd: IMDb / allmovie. You built a time machine? In a DeLorean?
1992 fantasy/SF, second of its series. Rowan the Steerswoman and Bel the barbarian travel into the Outskirts to try to find the source of the mysterious blue jewels…
1897 SF short story. A massive volcanic fissure opens in the Thames Valley; London and the home counties are flooded with lava.
2018 science fiction, concurrent with After Atlas. Anna Kubrin, geologist and painter, arrives on the Mars base to join the four-person scientific crew there. But then she finds a painting, in her own distinctive style, warning her not to trust one of them; equipment is missing from what she remembers packing, though the inventory matches what's there; an inscription is absent from the inside of her wedding ring; and worst of all, she knows just what paranoia looks like, because she saw it in her father's breakdown.
2020 superheroic SF. Even supervillains need office workers, and like everyone else they hire through a temp agency. Anna didn't expect to find herself holding a mind-control device to the mayor's kid's head, but she still became collateral damage when the superheroes came in to rescue him. Then it gets interesting.
1899 collection of variously SF, polemic, and whimsical stories.
2021 SF, third of its series. Fergus is just trying to settle back down with more family than he thought he had, but this time he's not even surprised when he gets involved in world-saving…
2021 SF. Mallory and Jessa are orphans of the corporate wars, streaming their VR gameplay in the hope of getting more water credits. But the real prize in the game is finding the SecOps NPCs, automated avatars of real-world corporate supersoldiers…
2013 science fiction, fourth of its series. The Empire is attacking: "Boss" goes to a cluster of abandoned ancient ships to try to get some of them back into service, while Captain Cooper tries to hold off the initial wave with the ships they have.
2021 science fiction novella, first of a planned series. Dex is a monk who feels hemmed in in the city; going out and serving tea-and-relaxation to villagers seems like a reasonable change. But it's not the answer.
2005 military SF, fourth of this ongoing series. With riots breaking out after an officer who lethally suppressed a mutiny is found not guilty at his court-martial, Daniel Leary ends up serving under him. This is unlikely to end well.
1993 SF, last of its trilogy. Saint Butterflies-are-free Peace Sincere has a new job: stop the war by killing the man who's starting it. But of course things are going to get much more complicated.
1986 science fiction, dir. James Cameron, Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn: IMDb / allmovie. Game over man, game over.
1979 science fiction horror, dir. Ridley Scott, Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver: IMDb / allmovie. Nobody listens to the woman, and as a result they all die.
2007 urban fantasy. Detective Inspector Chen and his demonic partner Zhu Irzh just want to get on with solving crime. But they're set to escort a celestial diplomat from Heaven on a visit to Hell…
1958 science fiction, dir. Edward L. Cahn, Marshall Thompson, Shawn Smith: IMDb / allmovie. The last survivor of the first Mars expedition is being brought back to face a court-martial for killing all the others. But his mad story of a monster might just be true…
2001 alternate-history war story, fourth of six books. Belisarius delays the Malwa's best general in the Zagros Mountains to stop him reaching Mesopotamia; his wife Antonina forges an alliance with the Axumites.
2019 young adult SF, first of a trilogy. Maseo Kaytu is a former child terrorist, who enlists because he feels a need to make up for some of the harm he did. But it's a crapsack world, and the only way he can get in at all is by volunteering for the suicide units…
2021 science fiction, second in a projected series. The huge Teixcalaanli Empire is going to war, thanks largely to the actions of Mahit Dzmare, Ambassador from the independent polity of Lsel Station. But of course a war that might end with extinction that isn't going to stop everyone from playing politics…
2010 SF/fantasy, sequel to Soul Purpose. Alan Reece has coped with his experiences as the Conduit, a link between this universe and the space outside it, by trying to ignore them. Unfortunately there are things out there that aren't going to ignore him.
1982 science fiction horror, dir. John Carpenter, Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley: IMDb / allmovie. So the antarctic scientists find an alien spaceship in the ice…
1951 science fiction, dir. Christian Nyby, Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan: IMDb / allmovie. So the arctic scientists find an alien spaceship in the ice…
2020 SF, second of its series. Fergus has got back to his found-family, the Shipmakers of Pluto; but when he goes to Earth to tie off one last bit of unfinished business, things suddenly get desperately complicated again.
1938 science fiction novella. A group of Antarctic researchers finds a spaceship in the ice, wrecked millions of years ago. But something of its crew/cargo seems still to be alive, and able to take over humans…
2021 science fiction comedy, 10 episodes. The Cerritos continues to do all of Starfleet's trivial and boring jobs (and they continue to be surprisingly dangerous).
2020 science fiction comedy, 10 episodes. On the USS Cerritos, the bridge crew think they're the stars of the show, but we follow the ensigns as they go about their daily grind (plus adventure).
2018 young adult SF, first of its series. Darrow is a Red, lowest of the colour-coded castes, mining helium-3 on Mars to power the terraforming project. One day the work will end and everyone will live on the surface… but it's all a lie.
2016 SF, last of its trilogy. Jak needs to get back to her homeworld of Haefen for specialised medical attention, and to hunt down the sniper who killed her brother; Torrin needs to go there because her sister and business partner has been kidnapped.
2021 SF/mystery; 53rd novel of J. D. Robb's In Death series (SF police procedurals). A woman is found dumped on a demolition site; while Eve Dallas is investigating that, another body turns up nearby, but it's been walled up for forty years.
1992 SF, middle volume of a trilogy. Saint Butterflies-are-free Peace Sincere, a smuggler pilot without a ship, has nearly got her inconvenient protégé back to safety… but it's never that simple.
2018 SF, second of its series. Adda the hacker and Iridian the engineer travel with the infamous pirate Captain Sloane to his base on Vesta… which has been grabbed out from under him while he was away.
2018 YA science fiction, last of its trilogy. When Kerenza IV was invaded, some of the inhabitants escaped; a few survived on the surface. Now the escapees' only option is to come back, but the invaders are still there…
2008 science fiction, dir. Scott Derrickson, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly: IMDb / allmovie. The aliens land with a message for humanity, and the humans immediately shoot one of them.
2021 science fiction. Three travellers get stranded at an inn by bad weather, and for once don't pass the time by telling each other stories.
1959 science fiction, dir. Ed Wood, Gregory Walcott, Bela Lugosi: IMDb / allmovie. The aliens land with a message for humanity, but that message is apparently "Your stupid brains!" Original vt: Grave Robbers From Outer Space.
1951 science fiction, dir. Robert Wise, Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal: IMDb / allmovie. The aliens land with a message for humanity, and the humans immediately shoot one of them.
1989 fantasy/SF. In a primitive world, Rowan is a Steerswoman, a wandering scholar sworn to answer any question she can. She tries to learn more about strange jewels found in the Outskirts, but it seems that the wizards object…
2015 SF, first in a series. Avalon is a famous space-fighter carrier with plenty of battle honours, but outdated and due for scrapping. But first she's due one last goodwill tour of border systems.
2006 SF/fantasy. Alan Reece is a vet who hates his job, who's just seen something downright strange on a late night call. Kate is an ex-medium turned physics student whose models of the new particle accelerator show some disturbing possibilities. It's not the end of the world. If we're lucky.
1977 science fiction, dir. Steven Spielberg, Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon: IMDb / allmovie. The aliens are coming! The aliens are coming!
2014 SF, first in a series. Interstellar travel is possible only because of Jump Mages, the magicians who were the byproduct of the Eugenics Wars centuries ago. Damien Montgomery has the talent, and has just finished training, but without the backing of a powerful family, he doesn't have much chance of getting a ship posting soon. Unless he meets a truly desperate captain…
1984 SF, first of a series. In the 27th century, the economic benefits of war are realised without danger to the warring countries themselves, by sending soldiers into the past to join in historical conflicts: referees count the killed and wounded. But time travel is never simple…
2018 fantasy/SF, sequel to Archivist Wasp. The Catchkeep-priest has been overthrown, and the former acolytes and Archivist are an uneasy part of the post-apocalyptic community of Sweetwater. But bad things are coming…
2008 military SF, sixth of the Kris Longknife books. Kris is sent to the back of beyond, in another vain attempt to keep her out of trouble. Good thing she has a pocket warship and quite a few Marines.
2012 science fiction, third of its series. "Boss" goes into abandoned ancient bases in search of clues to the present location of a nomadic fleet; her former employee "Squishy" is back working in the Empire's stealth technology project, as the only way of shutting it down once and for all.
2014 humorous science fiction, fifth in the Isambard Smith series. The Lemming men are invading the British Space Empire, and must be stopped!
2010 science fiction, last of its trilogy. Ariane Kedros is testifying at the trial of surviving terrorists, and someone seems to be trying to blow her up, but at least the enigmatic aliens have a new job for her. Oh good…
2015 SF, second of a trilogy. Torrin has got her new love Jak back to Torrin's home world, but that isn't by any means going to be the end of their problems.
2021 science fiction novella, sixth in the Murderbot series. On Preservation Station, one of the largest polities that's not part of the Corporate Rim, someone's been murdered. And it's Murderbot who finds the body.
2016 science fiction, in the same universe as Planetfall but not a sequel to it. Carlos Moreno's mother abandoned him to go on the Atlas mission; forty years later he's a detective, looking into the murder of the leader of an anti-tech cult… of which he used to be a member.
2015 science fiction, fifth in the Chronicles of St Mary's series. Max tries to get down to the business of investigating major historical events in contemporary time (don't call it time travel), but old enemies are an ongoing problem, even out of order.
2014 action/SF, first of a series. Cas Russell is a retriever of missing things in a world of action and adventure. Naturally, her latest job is going to get terribly complicated.
1901 SF. Lord Redgrave has built the first spaceship, and with his new wife (the daughter of the late inventor) goes on a tour of the solar system.
1999 alternate-history war story, third of six books. Belisarius takes an army to help the Persians throw the invading Malwa out of Mesopotamia; his wife Antonina suppresses civil unrest in Alexandria.
2021 SF, fantasy and horror anthology, 30 very short stories.
2020 SF. Humanity can travel to parallel worlds! But only pretty close parallels; and the only people who can do it are people whose other-world counterparts have died. Which means that the high-tech city has a use for people from the warlord-run town next door…
2019 SF, first of a series. Fergus is a finder, a probably-reformed thief turned repo man for (in this case) a stolen starship.
2016 SF. Simon Forrester is rather forgotten beside his mother the warship captain and his sister the space marine, even if he is unreasonably good with computers. So he sets off to make his own way…
2021 SF/mystery; sixty-third story or 52nd novel of J. D. Robb's In Death series (SF police procedurals). A sculptor is killed in her studio; it looks as though her lover did it. But there's more to be found behind the obvious case.
2005 alternate-history science fiction war story. The "uptimers" from 2021 are helping their Allied counterparts from 1942, but both sides have future tech and people to exploit.
2015 military SF, last of its trilogy. James Shelley has abandoned friends and family to be a covert soldier for The Red, the mysterious AI that's now a power in the world. But just because he thinks the things he's doing are important, that doesn't necessarily make him valuable.
2003 military SF, third of this ongoing series. Peace has broken out between Republic and Alliance, which means that Leary's command, the captured corvette Princess Cecile, is being sold out of service. But she's bought by a foreigner who needs a ship and a crew for his expedition to backwater space.
2003 SF romance, first of an ongoing series. Captain Ryland Miller volunteered to become a psychically-enhanced soldier, but he's ended up in a cage. Lily Whitney, daughter of the scientist running the project, has abilities of her own, and when her father disappears she has to work out who might be trustworthy.
2020 SF/mystery; sixty-second story of 51st novel of J. D. Robb's In Death series (SF police procedurals). The latest murder victim whom Lt Eve Dallas is investigating was killed by a professional assassin… who's a figure from her husband Roarke's criminal past, and who may be out to get him too.
2016 YA science fiction, middle volume of a trilogy. As the survivors of the Kerenza colony fled towards safety, they sent distress calls to the jump station that was their destination. They got no replies. This book explains why.
2014 science fiction, fourth in the Chronicles of St Mary's series. Dr Madeline Maxwell is dead, and that's not even the hardest problem she's got to deal with.
2018, dir. James Franco/Bruce Thierry Cheung, Jeff Wahlberg, Suki Waterhouse: IMDb / allmovie. After the androids were used to fight the Last War and civilisation fell, all is sand and motorcycles, and hawt babes are a far more jealously-guarded resource than leather or petrol.
2013 humorous science fiction, fourth in the Isambard Smith series. Smith and his crew take on an unbeatable prototype warship, protect a peace conference, invade a planet of religious fanatics, and visit Europe.
2000 military SF, second of this ongoing series. With a heroic reputation from the previous book, which can be both good and bad depending on who has power over him, Leary waits to learn his next assignment… then gets sent to a volatile allied world where political games are rapidly becoming deadly.
1906 SF. Professor Marmion has, by an excess of abstract thought, accidentally conquered the Fourth Dimension. And the tragedies of ancient Egypt shall be tragedies again.
1998 alternate-history war story, second of six books. Belisarius is a guest of the Malwa empire in India, as they try to bribe him to turn against Justinian's Constantinople; meanwhile his wife Antonina works on developing a military force to use crude gunpowder weapons, which will be tested sooner than they expect.
1988 SF. The survey team on the planet Lassti is under pressure to declare it free of native sentients so that the colonisers can move in. The "sprookjes" mimic human speech, but that alone is not enough. One of the surveyors dies in what's probably an accident. And then the Hellspark arrives…
2009 science fiction, second of a trilogy. Ariane Kedros was involved in finding an alien artefact that lots of people want a look at. Some of them aren't planning to be polite.
2020 space-operatic SF, first of a planned trilogy. Sun is the daughter and heir-presumptive of Queen-Marshal Eirene, who turned the Chaonian Republic from a defeated mess into a strong if fragile interstellar power. She's just won her own first naval victory. But there are enemies both internal and external…
2013 collection of new SF stories set on pre-space-probe ideas of the planet Mars.
2015 SF, first of a trilogy. Torrin is an interstellar smuggler, planning to ship her high-tech weapons to anyone on the Fringe World of Haefen with a budget to buy them. Jak is a sniper, disguised as a man in a military that doesn't allow women, waiting for a chance at revenge on the man who killed her brother, but for now on a solo mission to kill the smuggler the other side is dealing with.
2009 crime/SF. In future Glasgow, serious criminals are "halfheaded", lobotomised and their lower jaws removed, to work as simple labour and serve as an example to others. But, to nobody's surprise, that isn't much of a deterrent to some.
2008 science fiction, second of the two books of Lords of Creation. The first Mars and Venus landers found breathable air and human life. Forty years later, Jeremy Wainman is on an archaeological expedition looking for a lost Martian city.
2014 humorous science fiction, second of its series. Lord Thomas Kinago, professional fop, is sent on another mission for his cousin the Emperor: this time a neighbouring power, defeated in the big war a few years back, is putting unreasonable restrictions on trade, not to mention arresting a whole host of merchants as smugglers.
1991 SF, first of a trilogy. Saint Butterflies-are-free Peace Sincere was happy as a smuggler pilot, but she had to go and save an inexperienced mercenary from the local lowlife, and then things just got complicated.
2015 collection of new SF stories set on pre-space-probe ideas of the planet Venus.
2014 military SF, first of a trilogy. Ben Mason tried to kill himself when the PTSD got too much for him… but instead, They recruited him to go up against an alien invasion that most of humanity doesn't even know about.
2018 young adult/crossover SF, first of its series. The aliens arrived, brain-clamped all the adults, and implanted some kind of parasite in the children. Then things got bad.
2016 Lovecraftian SF, first of a series. Owen Merrill is a student at Miskatonic, doing his thesis on Rhetorics of Otherness in the Horror Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft…
Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.
2020 fantasy novelette, prequel to the rest of the Locked Tomb series. When a study sealed for 400 years is to be opened, the young Palamedes Sextus and Camilla Hect are part of the investigating team. But someone has been in there since it was sealed.
2020 fantasy, second of a trilogy. Harrowhark is now an imperial Lyctor, more or less. Which means she gets to fight an unwinnable battle with profoundly unreliable allies.
2017 SF, first of its series. Adda the hacker and Iridian the engineer hijack a colony ship and take it to her brother and the infamous Captain Sloane, who are living the high life on Barbary Station. Only it's not like that, and the station's AI is trying to kill them.
2018 space opera, fourth book (first of a new trilogy) of Dread Empire's Fall. Seven years on as the empire tries to recover after the civil war, things start to fall apart all over again.
2011 science fiction, second of the "Wreck Diving" series. "Boss" moves from exploring derelict spaceships to exploring underground ruins in the quest to find ancient stealth technology before the bad guys do.
2018 mystery with science-fictional elements. A man wakes up in mid-shout with no memories, in the grounds of a decaying country house during a weekend party, nineteen years after the young son of the house was murdered. And someone is going to be murdered now. US vt The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.
1979 science fiction. Rob Merlin is the world's best engineer, but he's being given his most challenging project yet.
2010 science fiction, first of a trilogy. Jean le Flambeur is a thief, broken out of prison to steal something very special. But first he must steal back his own history…
1998 military SF, first of an ongoing series. Lt Daniel Leary of the Republic of Cinnabar (space) Navy is the impoverished fifth wheel on a diplomatic mission to the new government of Kostroma. Adele Mundy's family on Cinnabar was disgraced and put to death, largely by Leary's father, and now she's working as librarian to the new Kostroman ruler. Neither of them is expecting a revolution fomented by the Alliance of Free Stars.
2014 military SF, second of the trilogy. After the illicit mission in the last book, James Shelley and his squad are on trial. So, elsewhere, is the person they winkled out of their bunker. But other factions are still out there.
1991 cyberpunk science fiction. In a future California recovering from the Semi-Medium One (the Big One is still waiting to happen), music video creators, VR artists and corporate greed collide.
2007 military SF, fifth of the Kris Longknife books. Kris is sent to show the royal flag on a minor diplomatic mission to one of Earth's first colonies.
2009 science fiction. The Erasmus system is run on debt-slavery, water monopoly, and a panopticon, but it seems they're going to launch a war against Earth. So Earth's government sends a team of Guardians to work out what's happening, and stop it. Of course it's not as simple as that.
1998 alternate-history war story, first of six books. In 528 AD, the young Byzantine general Belisarius is given a message from the, or a, future: a powerful enemy is rising in India, and will subjugate the world with massive armies and devastating weapons if not prevented. And he's the man to prevent it.
2015 fantasy. In the city of Dresediel Lex, the run-down area down by the docks is to be redeveloped, and everyone will make a lot of money. Except for the locals, but who cares about them?
2009 humorous science fiction, third in the Isambard Smith series. The insectoid Ghast have enlisted the lemming-people of Yull as allies in their war against the British Space Empire. Are Isambard Smith and his motley crew really the only people who can save the day?
2020 science fiction, fifth in the Murderbot series (though the previous four were novellas). Kidnapping, aliens, space battles, and meditations on ethics and the nature of consciousness.
2019 science fiction. The rebellious Martian colonists wiped out São Paulo in a devastating surprise attack. Dietz, whose family was among the dead, joins up with the corporate armies to fight them off – and maybe end up with citizenship.
2019 young adult fantasy, first of a planned trilogy. In a decaying interplanetary empire powered by necromancy, Gideon is a foundling brought up by the Ninth House, guardians of the Locked Tomb. But the Empire has required all the houses to send their necromancer-heirs, and a necromancer needs a bodyguard…
2018 science fiction, second of its series. Oichi Angelis and Medusa are now among the leaders of the generation ship Olympia, but that hasn't solved their problems; it's just given them new ones.
The nomination results are out.
2019 SF/mystery; sixty-first (roughly, or 50th novel, hence presumably the title) of J. D. Robb's In Death series (SF police procedurals). Someone beloved by everyone who knew him is killed by a cunning gas bomb.
2016 science fiction novel, fanfic in the Vorkosigan universe (set around and among the events of Captain Vorpatril's Alliance). The narrative follows Byerly Vorrutyer, agent of Imperial Security, as he negotiates politics, bomb threats, and his personal life.
2019 science fiction, first in a projected series. The Teixcalaanli Empire is huge, and Lsel Station has only just managed to maintain its independence from it. So when the Empire requires a new ambassador, Mahit Dzmare is sent. Then she discovers that her predecessor has been murdered…
2019 SF/mystery; sixtieth (roughly, or 49th novel) of J. D. Robb's In Death series (SF police procedurals). Someone's torturing and killing abusive men.
I'm not planning to vote in the Hugos this year, but I am eligible to nominate. Nominations close early on Saturday morning, UK time.
2019 space opera, first in a projected series. Haimey Dz is the engineer on a salvage tug; her latest job uncovers both a terrible crime, and alien supertech.
2019 SF. On a tidally-locked colony world that's slowly decaying, a few people will make a difference. But not necessarily in a good way.
2017 science fiction, 10 episodes. Kirsten Clark continues to have her consciousness inserted into the minds of the recently-dead.
2019 science fiction. There have always been the Machines: nobody knows how they work or where they came from, but they let people travel back in time, and return. Tess is a traveller from 2022, studying history and making illicit changes to it. In 1992, Beth is trying to work out the right thing to do as her life goes out of control.
1984 science fiction, re-read. For the Fuzzies to be able to testify against the people who kidnapped and enslaved them, they need to be veridicated… which means they need to be able to lie. But that's not a thing that Fuzzies do…
2020 SF novella in the Innkeeper series. During Treaty Stay, an annual holiday, Dina has to cope with yet more potentially-lethal alien guests.
2017 science fiction, 10 episodes. The space bounty hunters rapidly shift into preparations for all-out war.
2019 short SF novel in the Innkeeper series. Dina's sister Maud turned down a marriage proposal from the vampire Lord Arland, but she's travelling to his homeworld anyway…
1964 science fiction, re-read. The Fuzzies are legally recognised as sapient, and that means big changes to the government of Zarathustra.
2006 science fiction, first of the two books of Lords of Creation. The first Mars and Venus landers found breathable air and human life. Twenty years later, Marc Vitrac is assigned to the American base on Venus, studying the planet and its natives.
1990 collection of SF stories and speculation about solar sails.
1962 science fiction, re-read. Zarathustra was an uninhabited planet when humanity arrived, so the Company owns it and everyone's happy. Until Jack Holloway the old sunstone prospector comes along with some crazy story about the animals he's found being intelligent natives…
2019 collection of short science fiction stories featuring light sails.
2019 collection of short science fiction stories set in the universe of the Heptarchate/Hexarchate.
2019 Australian science fiction comedy audio drama in eight parts, by John Richards. Dr Anastasia Black, Eddie Jones and Sue Denholm continue to travel through time and space in a suburban house, fixing problems and getting into trouble.
Strange Horizons is a weekly on-line magazine edited by Vanessa Rose Phin.
Uncanny is a bimonthly on-line magazine edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.
2018 SF anthology, 14 short stories; all except the last have been published previously.
2019 science fiction romance novella. Red and Blue are soldiers on opposite sides in a war that ranges across worlds and up and down the timelines. But then Red finds a letter in the ashes of a battlefield, that reads: Burn Before Reading.
2018 clockpunkish science fiction, third and probably last in the series. With Napoleon defeated, the Prince Regent decides that it's time to conquer (and profit from) all of Mars. Arabella, who grew up there and feels herself Martian at heart, sets out to prevent him.
2009 short collection of science fiction stories. In steampunk Victorian England a young woman learns to fly; in the distant future the heir to the Phoenix Empress learns to control her powers.
1980 fantasy with SF elements. On the colony world of Nova Mars, the blood-drinking Sabella lives on her own… but her aunt has just died, and seems in her will to be set on outing her as a vampire.
2014 science fiction, third in the Chronicles of St Mary's series. The St Mary's team of time-travelling historians continue their highly dangerous observations of historical events, this time visiting Troy and Agincourt among other places.
2013 science fiction, third in The Expanse series. The mysterious plot-device-producing alien supertech has built a ring out past the orbit of Neptune, which seems to be a gate to Somewhere Else. In spite of his best efforts, James Holden will get involved again.
2018 Lovecraftian SF, second in the series. Aphra Marsh is in New York, trying to track down any relatives who might have survived the Innsmouth Raid. But other forces are at play.
This is my ballot for the 2019 Hugo awards. I've talked about some of it already; see the "Hugo 2019" tag.
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated short stories. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so.
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated novelettes. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so.
2018 SF novella, set in what I now learn is known as the Xuya Universe, the Vietnamese empire in space with mindships. A ship who's working as a blender of mildly psychoactive teas has an odd new client, a "consulting detective".
2018 SF novella. In a world where environmental collapse has forced everyone underground (how they ate while there is not explored), Minh is of the generation that came up and started to reclaim the surface. But time travel has apparently taken all the funding away.
2018 steampunk SF/fantasy novella. The American Civil War ended in a peace treaty, and New Orleans is a neutral city. But in among the airships and steam-powered walkers, someone's planning to deploy the ultimate terror weapon.
2018 Hugo-nominated science fiction novella in the Binti series. Binti is back on Earth with Strange Things in (and on) her head.
2018 science fiction. When the aliens arrive on Earth, it turns out that they have a standard process for determining whether a race is truly sentient. So now, to save humanity, Decibel Jones, has-been glam-rock star, has to avoid coming last in Space Eurovision.
Apex was a monthly on-line magazine edited by Jason Sizemore among others.
2017 post-apocalyptic science fiction, ten episodes. The virus that nearly wiped out humanity has mutated into a crop-destroying plague.
2019 Australian science fiction comedy audio drama in eight parts, by John Richards. Dr Anastasia Black used to save the universe every week, but now she's enjoying a comfortable retirement. Until Eddie Jones comes to her door to sell her a new electricity contract…
2018 science fiction, distant prequel to the Hugo-winning novelette The Lady Astronaut of Mars. In 1952, a huge meteorite hits the east coast of the USA; the resultant climatic shift is enough to push for quicker development of a space programme, because it looks as if Earth will soon be uninhabitable. Elma York, mathematician, tries to become one of the astronauts, but it's still the 1950s and everyone knows women can't do that.
2018 SF-horror, dir. Jon Turteltaub, Jason Statham, Li Bingbing: IMDb / allmovie. Five years ago, submarine rescue expert Jonas Taylor had to make a hard decision and leave some of his men behind to save the rest. Now, not only is there another submarine lost, his ex-wife is aboard. (A giant shark will also feature.)
2018 science fiction, stand-alone continuation of the Wayfarers series. Five inhabitants of the Exodus Fleet live parts of their lives.
2018 SF-horror, dir. Darin Scott, Danielle Savre, Rob Mayes: IMDb / allmovie. Another offshore research station, another giant shark. Must be Thursday.
Apex is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Jason Sizemore among others.
1999 science fiction horror, dir. Renny Harlin, Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane: IMDb / allmovie. On a remote floating shark research station, things are going to go very badly wrong.
2018 Hugo-nominated science fiction, third in a trilogy. The last thing Shuos Jedao remembers is being seventeen… but now he's been woken into a much older body, and apparently the Hexarch Nirai Kujen is relying on his military skills to reassemble the shattered empire. But Kujen, as always, is playing a very deep game…
2017 SF, 10 episodes. The civilisation-ending plague was just part of the bigger plot, and nobody's loyalties are clear even before time travel comes into the picture.
2016 science fiction, 13 episodes. The motley crew of the Raza continues to try to stay alive, and maybe even do something worthwhile.
2019 alternate-history audio drama in six parts, by Robert Valentine. In 1979, both USA and USSR have lunar bases packed with nuclear missiles aimed at Earth. But Jack Sloper, former MI5 agent now in a dead-end job in the Space Liaison Department, is just concerned about an inventory mismatch…
2013 science fiction, six short pieces in The Company series; five were previously published, and the last was written by Baker's sister for this collection.
2012 steampunk SF short novel, very loosely connected with the Company series. The finest brothel in 19th-century Whitehall… goes on holiday to Torquay. At least, that was the plan.
2009 steampunk science fiction in The Company setting. Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax is born, grows up, is trained to be a spy, and in 1850 goes on his first mission for the Gentlemen's Speculative Society.
2007 science fiction, eighth of The Company series. As 9 July 2355 approaches, all the forces determined to take advantage of the Silence, the point after which no information has flowed back in time, put their pieces on the board and ready their plans.
2007 science fiction, seven short stories in The Company series (five of them previously published 2001-2004).
2019 SF/mystery; fifty-ninth (roughly, or 48th novel) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. Lyle had cleaned up and got out of the gang life, and things were starting to look up for him. So when he's found dead of an overdose, Lieutenant Eve Dallas is already suspicious.
2006 science fiction, seventh of The Company series. Alec Checkerfield forges ahead with his plan to rescue the Botanist Mendoza and take on the might of Dr Zeus and the Company. But he's not entirely himself, because his two past lives are sharing residence of his mind and body…
2017 military SF. In the near future, pilots have been made obsolete by a wide variety of drones, but there's still plenty of employment for soldiers as private military companies fill the gaps left by failing states. Former pilot True Brighton works for one of the "good" PMCs, but information picked up on a mission suggests that there's more to the death of her son than she'd thought…
2017 superhero-related, 8 episodes. David Haller is schizophrenic, or so everybody tells him; but maybe that's what having world-shaking superpowers does for you.
2005 science fiction, sixth of The Company series. Executive Facilitator General Labienus muses on his long life.
2004 science fiction, fifth of The Company series. The Botanist Mendoza has been imprisoned in time, left to fend for herself in 150,000 BC. But a man crashes a stolen time-shuttle on her island… a man she's met before, though he hasn't met her.
2014 military science fiction, twelfth novel in the Legion of the Damned series (and last in the prequel sub-series). "McKee" is still hiding from the usurper Empress.
2002 science fiction, fourteen short stories in The Company series.
2001 science fiction, fourth of The Company series. Mendoza has been disappeared by the Company, the same organisation that made her an immortal cyborg slave in the first place. Her recruiter Joseph, and former co-worker Lewis, try to find out what happened to her.
2013 military science fiction, eleventh novel in the Legion of the Damned series (and second in the prequel sub-series). "McKee" is still hiding from the usurper Empress, but after winning the fight in the previous book she has to go to Earth to get a medal… and she might well be recognised.
2000 science fiction, third of The Company series. In 1862, Mendoza is collecting plant samples from what will one day be Los Angeles, working out of a stagecoach stop in the Cahuenga Pass run by fellow immortal cyborg agents of the Company; she's still trying to cope with her post-traumatic stress. That won't go well for her.
2018 short science fiction novella in the Vorkosigan universe (set between Captain Vorpatril's Alliance and Cryoburn). Ekaterin, Lady Vorkosigan, is supervising an experiment in cleaning up radioactive contamination round the former city of Vorkosigan Vashnoi; but something's going awry, and old secrets will come to light.
2012 military science fiction, tenth novel in the Legion of the Damned series (but first in the prequel sub-series, which is why I'm reading it first). Catherine Carletto is the spoiled daughter of industrialist nobles. But when the Emperor's sister assassinates the Emperor and takes over, she purges all his supporters. Cat will have to grow up fast just to stay alive, never mind getting her revenge.
1999 science fiction noir. Vincent Rubio is a private investigator in Los Angeles: down on his luck, partner dead in an "accident", car repossessed, and a growing substance habit. But down these mean streets a man must walk who is not himself a man… Vincent is a velociraptor.
1999 science fiction, second of The Company series. The immortal cyborg Facilitator Joseph finds himself with the task of talking a Chumash village into coming to work for the Company rather than hanging around to be wiped out when the Spanish arrive in California.
2013 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. Breq is less than she was; she has memories of being the AI controlling the huge troop transport spacecraft Justice of Toren, and of being one of its "ancillaries", human bodies with personalities overwritten by said AI and used as soldiers. But she still has a job to do.
1997 science fiction, first of The Company series. In sixteenth-century Spain, Mendoza is plucked from the dungeons of the Inquisition by time-travellers who have need of local labour.
2013 science fiction, second in the Chronicles of St Mary's series. Max, time-travelling historian, kills Jack the Ripper, sorts out an attack from the future, and puts history back on course by making sure Mary Queen of Scots gets married on schedule to Bothwell.
2017 science fiction, final volume of the trilogy. As Disconnected Worlds and Fusion combine, reluctantly, to fight the rebel AIs, politics continues.
1984 SF. In a distant future, humans are desperately settling worlds as their alien-donated FTL ships become increasingly unreliable. Only native human-level life will prevent the colonisation of a new planet, and no life has ever been judged to be human-level. But the evaluation team on Belthannis is faced with something entirely new.
2017, 2-hour film: AniDB, follow-up to 2012's Sword Art Online and 2014's Sword Art Online II. Two years after the SAO Incident, virtual reality is out of fashion as a new augmented reality game has become hugely popular. But Kirito reckons there's something just a bit odd about it.
2018 science fiction novella, fourth and final volume in the Murderbot series. Murderbot has some key data that will expose dodgy activities by one of the corporations… but the person to whom it would do some good seems to have been kidnapped. It's definitely not an emotional decision to rescue her. That would be a system error.
2011 young adult steampunk SF, final volume of a trilogy. The living airship Leviathan crosses Russia en route to Japan; will Nikola Tesla's latest terror weapon end the Great War?
2013 science fiction, first in the Chronicles of St Mary's series. St Mary's Institute for Historical Research is rather more hands-on in their observation of history than anyone suspects; Dr Madeleine Maxwell is their newest recruit.
2018 SF/mystery; fifty-eighth (roughly, or 47th novel) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. Someone wears an explosive vest into a meeting to finalise a corporate merger; Lieutenant Eve Dallas has to find out why he did it, and whether someone else is pulling the strings.
2018 steampunk SF, second of the Signal Airship series. The war continues, and Josette Dupre, captain of the scouting airship Mistral, will go on fighting it… if she can survive the politics of her own side.
2010 young adult steampunk SF, second of a trilogy. As an alternate Great War is beginning, the airship Leviathan visits Istanbul to give a British bribe to the Ottoman Sultan. But much more is going on behind the scenes.
2010 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. Historians from Oxford in 2060 are visiting England in 1940, but things are going oddly wrong. Warning: this is going to be a bit of a rant.
2018 science fiction, first of a planned series. On the generation ship Olympia, life is stratified into the Executives and everyone else. Oichi Angelis is an everyone else, but one with a hidden asset.
2009 young adult steampunk SF, first of a trilogy. In an alternate 1914, the German Clanker powers build massive legged war machines, while the English Darwinists engineer creatures to serve their purposes. But none of that stops the Archduke Franz Ferdinand from being assassinated.
1953 science fiction, first of a series. Joe Kenmore goes to work on the construction of the space platform, the first step in humanity's road to the stars, but finds it beset by sabotage.
2018 science fiction novella, sequel to Artificial Condition. People are asking questions about the mysteriously vanished SecUnit from the planetary survey incident, and Murderbot (that same SecUnit) reckons the best way to distract attention is to bolster the case against the company which caused the incident.
2018 short science fiction. Marie has done something bad at work; now she's undergoing therapy by virtual reality.
2017 steampunk SF, first of a series. The war between Garnia and Vinzhalia grinds on; Lieutenant Josette Dupre commands a scouting airship.
2017 Lovecraftian SF. In 1949, Aphra Marsh, one of the last survivors of the internment camps that came after the Innsmouth Raid, is just trying to make a life for herself. But her knowledge of magic makes her a powerful piece on the board even if she doesn't want to play the game.
2009 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning biopunk science fiction. Some time in the future, after peak oil and the crop blights, Thailand is one of the few countries that's still hanging on. But in Bangkok various factions are about to collide.
2015 young adult science fiction. After the Omniwar, civilisation in the USA is just barely holding on; large swathes of country are still unlivable. The main entertainment is car racing, and the Widowmaker is the biggest race of all: and Cassica and Shiara, from a small town on the edge of the Rust Bowl, are going to try to win it.
2015 young adult science fiction, short story in the Earth Girl setting. Drago Tell Dramis is a young pilot, in an awkward social situation, and having to perform a desperate and dangerous mission.
Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke. After seeing where some of my favourite Hugo novelette nominations had been published, I decided to take a look at the current issue.
2008 science fiction, first of a trilogy. Ariane Kedros was involved in a mission that's often regarded as a war crime; under her new identity she prospects in new star systems. But Intelligence still has jobs for her.
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated novelettes. I'm not voting this year, but if you are, you may wish not to read these notes until you have read the stories.
2014 post-apocalyptic SF. A famous actor dies during a performance of King Lear; outside, the world is ending in pandemic.
1975 science fiction, broadly in the same universe as Dreamsnake. In the last city on a post-apocalyptic earth, Mischa the thief is trying to get passage off-world for herself and her brother before their telepathic talents doom them both.
2007 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning alternate-world noir. In 1940, refugee Jews from Europe were granted a temporary homeland in Alaska; sixty years later it's about to be handed back to the USA. But for homicide detective Meyer Landsman, that can't get in the way of solving the latest murder.
2017 SF, set in the same universe as the Imperial Radch series but not in Radchaai space. Ingray Aughskold is a low-ranking political daughter, trying for a major coup to get herself some status. But her plans are going to go comprehensively wrong.
2018 SF, 12 episodes: AniDB, in the same setting as Sword Art Online but sharing no characters with it. People come to the virtual reality game for various reasons, and most of them find what they're looking for.
2011 young adult science fiction, first of the Australia Trilogy. Chan lives on the generation ship Australia, built in haste after Earth collapsed; they didn't find a new planet, so they've kept going. But its society is breaking down. Spoilers.
2016 modern fantasy. Dina Demille's magical inn will be the site of another meeting: a dying species has hired a group mind to work out where to find their new home world. But there's another species out there which regards slaughtering the first one as a religious obligation. Oh, and Dina's sister has just sent a message, asking for help.
2017 clockpunkish science fiction, sequel to Arabella of Mars. With her fiancé captured by Bonaparte, Arabella Ashby travels to Venus to rescue him.
2018 science fiction novella, sequel to All Systems Red. Murderbot is going to try to make a new life for itself… but it first it needs to get to the truth about that human fatality incident it was involved in.
2011 military science fiction, first of an ongoing series. In 2029, previously-unknown aliens destroy three cities, with a warning: "Never again attempt to develop this kind of technology." Earth responds in the only way possible: space battleships! Spoilers.
2016 science fiction, second of a trilogy. Michigan Long continues to serve aboard the analogue ship Fives Full as tensions brew up into interstellar war.
1989 science fiction. In the City, it's always two-thirty in the morning, and raining. Mickey Rooney sells the papers and Barton MacLane is Captain of Detectives. All the noir films happen at once… and the guy behind it all needs to be taken down.
2015 modern fantasy short novel, originally published as blog posts on the author's web site; second in the series. Dina Demille's magical inn needs guests; she's offered the chance to host an interstellar peace conference. But only because everyone else has turned it down…
2015 science fiction short novel. Ship-owner Caleb Shepperd, pilot and spy Francesca, and the android Number 1001 continue to be badly messed up people dancing around each other, and only one of them has an excuse.
2015 YA science fiction, first of a trilogy. This morning Kady broke up with her boyfriend Ezra. But as their mining colony is invaded and everyone has to flee for their lives, that fight starts to seem less important.
2009 science fiction. Gaia Jones just wants to run her snack stand, on the strange alien-human space station orbiting Mars. But one of the aliens dies in her shop, and things start to get extremely complicated.
2015 science fiction, first of a trilogy. After the AI catastrophe, there are two sorts of colony world: the ones where computers are strictly regulated and monitored, and the ones where they aren't allowed at all. The "analog ship" Fives Full is navigated by slide-rule and sextant.
2018 SF/mystery; fifty-seventh (roughly, or 46th novel) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. A woman is stabbed while watching Psycho in a cinema; there's no obvious motive for killing her. Homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas soon discovers roughly what's going on, but it'll still be a long twisty road to catching the killer.
2016 short space opera novel, postscript to the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy. Having won battles by means that weren't approved of, Caroline Sula is promoted to a backwater post: Earth. That's fine; it gives her scope to study Terran history. But she's also a large pebble being thrown into a deep pond of convenient arrangements…
1997 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning military science fiction. Sergeant Julian Class runs a "soldierboy" infantry drone through a neural link, in an eternal war against "rebels". But bigger and more frightening things are going on.
2004 space opera novella, postscript to the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy. Three years after the Naxid War, new star systems are being opened up for development. Which means that there's lots of scope for serious money to be made, legally or otherwise.
2005 space opera, third and final book of Dread Empire's Fall. Gareth Martinez fights the civil war as a naval officer; Caroline Sula leads the resistance on the conquered capital world.
2017 science fiction. In a world with cheap and easy cloning and memory transfer, it makes sense to crew the first interstellar ship with clones: when they die of old age on the voyage, they can renew themselves. But now they're all waking up at once, with no memories since the start of the trip, to find their previous bodies messily murdered.
2004 space opera, second book of Dread Empire's Fall. As the civil war continues, Gareth Martinez and Caroline Sula continue to fight both to keep the Empire going and to save their own careers.
2017-2018 science fiction, 15 episodes. Ten years before original Star Trek, the USS Discovery has a unique advantage in the war with the Klingons.
2017-2018 science fiction comedy, 12 episodes. Captain Ed Mercer of the Planetary Union hit a rough career patch after his divorce, but now has command of an exploratory ship. But his ex-wife will be his new first officer.
2017 science fiction, second in a trilogy. The rebel and revenant general Shuos Jedao has taken over a war fleet… and is using it to fight the invaders better than anyone else could. How many layers deep does his planning go?
1992 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. At Oxford University in 2054, a history student is being sent back in time to the Middle Ages. But things are going to go about as wrong as they possibly could.
2017 SF/mystery; fifty-sixth (roughly, or 45th novel) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. Homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas is out with a colleague when another patron of the bar is cut and bleeds to death in front of her. She may not have much time for gossip journalists, but solving murders is still her job.
2013 science fiction. Some time late in the twenty-first century, Jayna is an analyst for a predictive agency, teasing trends out of disparate data. But there's something a bit different about her. Spoilers.
2013-2017 science fiction web series, 11 episodes; a fan production extends the original Star Trek.
2009 science fiction, first of a series. "Boss" finds derelict spacecraft, investigates, and either salvages them or takes tourists round them. But now she's found the claim of a lifetime…
2017 science fiction. Ciudad de Cielo, the space habitat where the first generation ship is being constructed, has just had its first murder. Two unlikely investigators will need to work together to solve it, and the bigger plots behind it.
1986 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. Having gone from universally loved to universally reviled, Ender Wiggin continues to suffer for your sins.
2017 science fiction/investigation, 13 episodes; a tech billionaire, obsessed with finding the murderer of his daughter, builds a crowd-sourced crime-solving system.
2017 science fiction. Jazz Basshara smuggles contraband into Artemis, the city on the Moon. She gets an offer too good to be true… and of course things go wrong.
2017 military science fiction, first of a series. Gunnery Sergeant Tachikoma is about to have a very bad day… repeatedly.
2017 science fiction novella. Murderbot is an AI running a light-duty security robot, trying to keep the humans of a planetary survey expedition alive, though it would much rather spend its time catching up on episodes of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Unfortunately its job is going to get rather harder.
2017 science fiction/investigation, 5 or 12 episodes; H. G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper into the modern day.
1985 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction, expansion of an earlier short story. Ender Wiggin is brought up to be the tactical genius necessary to fight off the alien invaders.
2015 science fiction. Captain Caleb Shepperd runs a rustbucket interplanetary freighter, trying to make enough money to keep going. Number 1001 is a synth, supposedly built to be some rich woman's immortal body, but in practice sent off as an assassin. Things aren't going to go well.
2015 military SF. Catherine Blackwood is a privateer ship's captain, which in practice means mercenary; a new contract has her employed by her estranged father to haul her idiot brother back out of whatever trouble he's got himself into.
2017 science fiction disaster film, dir. Dean Devlin, Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess: IMDb / allmovie. Earth's climate problems have been casually solved by a network of weather-control satellites, but now they seem to be going wrong.
1984 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. Case used to be a hacker, but stole from the wrong people, and they took hacking away from him; now he's a hustler on an arc towards suicide by street. But someone wants him for a very special job.
2017 SF/mystery; fifty-fifth (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. (Or 44th novel, I think. At some point I may renumber these reviews.) On the road on a snowy night, Homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband Roarke find a naked, blood-stained and delirious woman who claims to have been attacked by the Devil.
1983 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction, second book of the Uplift series. In a universe where every known intelligent species has been "uplifted" to sapience by an earlier species, humanity is the sole exception, and it's breaking interstellar politics; if humans hadn't already uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees before first contact, it would be even worse. An exploration vessel from Earth (mostly dolphin-crewed, with some humans and one chimpanzee) has found something amazing, but has made a forced landing on an unknown world while evading alien fleets.
2016-2017 science fiction, 16 episodes. A time machine has been invented, and stolen, by someone whose goals are unclear but probably bad; a team is assembled in haste to take the second machine to try to catch him.
2012 modern fantasy short novel, originally published as blog posts on the author's web site. Dina Demille keeps a faded bed-and-breakfast in small-town Texas. But it's actually a way station for travellers from other worlds.
1979 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. Vannevar Morgan is determined to build a bridge linking Earth to geosynchronous orbit, but humans and physics are going to get in his way.
1965 classic English detective fiction; eighteenth of Allingham's novels of Albert Campion. Someone seems to be developing mechanically-assisted telepathy, but what does it have to do with Campion's nephew?
2016 SF/mystery; fifty-fourth (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. A sniper is shooting people in New York – at random, or with specific targets in mind? Lieutenant Eve Dallas investigates.
2009 steampunk SF novella, very loosely connected with the Company series. The finest brothel in Whitehall is also a nest of spies, but very discreet ones.
1978 Hugo-, Nebula- and Locus-award-winning science fiction. On a post-apocalyptic earth, various small groups of people scratch out a living; Snake is a healer, using bioengineered venomous serpents to produce drugs that cure ills and relieve pain.
Why do science fiction fans have a reputation for caring about nitpicky details that no normal person would regard as important?
2014 young adult science fiction, collection of short stories in the Earth Girl setting.
2016 clockpunkish science fiction. In 1812 Arabella Ashby, daughter of a Martian plantation owner, is sent Home to Earth to learn proper ladylike behaviour; but she'll soon need to find her way onto a Marsman to return to the planet of her birth.
2015 science fiction. Zack Lightman is a dreamer and geek with anger management problems. But his video gaming skills are going to be needed to fight off a real alien invasion. Spoilers.
1977 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction (and the Locus and Campbell too). The mysterious and vanished aliens known as Heechee left behind a space station in solar orbit, and lots of small FTL spacecraft attached to it. But humans haven't really worked out how to navigate them yet.
2014 SF anthology consisting of short stories in the form of crowdfunding pitches and site updates.
1974 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning military science fiction. William Mandella is a conscript in Earth's first interstellar war; it starts off looking an awful lot like Vietnam.
These are my thoughts on the Campbell Award-nominated authors (yes, I know it's not a Hugo) based on the material provided in the voter pack. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so.
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated novels. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so.
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated series. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so.
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated novellas. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so.
2016 science fiction, 10 episodes. At the Westworld holiday resort, the android "hosts" exist to be shot, slept with, and generally taken advantage of. But some of them are starting to remember.
1974 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. Shevek is a physicist working on a new theory of time, but he finds political obstruction even in an anarchist utopia. He travels to the mother world to continue his work.
2016 Hugo-nominated science fiction, first book of Terra Ignota. Even in a techno-utopia, there are people who are unhappy with the rules.
2012 military science fiction, first of a planned five-book series. Private Andy Moralee has passed Dropship Infantry training, but it didn't prepare him for a unit posting and battle itself.
2016 cyberpunk drama, 10 episodes. Ben Larson, corporate climber, is secretly a climate-change refugee under a false identity, trying to find and save the woman he grew up with and lost.
2016 Hugo-nominated science fiction. In a world defined by belief, Kel Cheris won a battle against heretics… by using a heretical technique. That makes her the perfect leader for a really important mission.
1973 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. In 2131, an object falls into the inner Solar System at high speed: it turns out to be an alien artefact, and only one ship is in a position to take a look before it falls out again.
2016 mecha science fiction, 26 episodes: AniDB, vt Black Relic. In the near future, a UN research station at the Kurobe Dam is looking into some ancient artefacts… and enigmatic aliens start to invade Earth.
2014 military SF, first of a series. Ian Dunlop thinks he might be going mad, but he's the product of an illegal experiment. That secret has been well kept for years, but now it's getting out.
2013 military SF, first of a trilogy. In the near future, Lieutenant James Shelley commands a Linked Combat Squad of tech-enhanced soldiers in a desert war everyone knows is pointless, but profitable to the right people. Lately he seems to have developed a reliable sense of imminent danger. (vt The Red in 2015 revised release.)
2016 political science fiction, 13 episodes. Alien insects are taking over American politicians. This causes surprisingly little disruption.
2016 science fiction, 13 episodes. As the world starts to rebuild after the megaplague, some people decide they prefer it the way it is.
1972 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. The Electron Pump has brought limitless free energy to Earth, by exchanging matter with a parallel universe where the physical laws differ. But one or two people think there might be a worm in this apple.
2016, 10 episodes. Space bounty hunters fight what looks at first like political oppression, but which turns out to have more behind it.
2008 alternate-history science fiction war story. During the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942, two antiquated four-stacker destroyers sail into a squall… and come out somewhere else.
1970 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. A motley crew of explorers travels to an immense, star-girdling ring.
1989 swashbuckling science fiction. Against the background of the thousand-years' war between the Hanoverian Monopolity and the Jendyne Empery-Cirot, Arran Islay fights for freedom and revenge.
2016 SF, 13 episodes. The plague that wiped out human civilisation is still a problem for the post-apocalyptic time travellers to solve, but other time travellers are a greater threat.
2016 science fiction, stand-alone sequel to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. A new AI in an illegal human-shaped body, and the human who's getting it out of a bad situation, work together to build new lives.
1969 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. Genly Ai is a human emissary to the world of Winter, sent to bring it into star-travelling civilisation. The natives change gender as part of their life cycle. And this is a problem for him.
2004 alternate-history science fiction war story. In the near future, an American-led multinational naval force is approaching an Indonesia turned muslim-fundamentalist, when it finds itself hurled through time to 1942, just before the Battle of Midway.
2016 science fiction, 10 episodes. Kirsten Clark continues to have her consciousness inserted into the minds of the recently-dead, while hunting for more information about her father.
2015-2016, 22 episodes. Brian Finch is an unemployed slacker, until he's introduced to a brain-boosting drug. Naturally he goes to work for the FBI to catch crooks.
1965 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. In the distant future, plots whirl within plots, and the control of the most valuable planet in the universe is a poisoned chalice.
2011 science fiction, dir. Neil Burger, Bradley Cooper, Robert de Niro: IMDb / allmovie
Eddie Morra is a struggling writer, until his ex-brother-in-law offers him a new drug that makes him smarter.
2016 alternate history mecha science fiction, adaptation of a manga spinoff of a visual novel, 12 episodes: AniDB. In 1983, the 666th Tactical Surface Fighter Squadron of the East German Army is the only force between the invading alien hordes and the rest of Germany.
2015 science fiction. Ren works as the 3D printer engineer in a colony on an extrasolar planet, right next to the alien biotech artefact known as God's City. Then a stranger shows up, a descendant of the people thought to have been lost in an accident during planetfall.
2016 science fiction, 12 episodes: AniDB. In a world where all power is provided by "coils" that draw from a parallel dimension, Mabuchi Kyouma is a "collector" who gets hold of the illegal ones.
2008 humorous science fiction, second in the series. Captain Isambard Smith of the British Empire in space is sent to the Didcot system, where a revolutionary movement threatens the Empire's supply of tea.
2016 mecha science fiction, 12 episodes: AniDB. In a very changed world, Kazuki Azuma leaves an island in the sky to return to Japan, and gets involved with power struggles and giant robots.
2003 space opera, first book of Dread Empire's Fall. The Shaa subjugated the galaxy, binding all the races they met – including humanity – under their universal philosophy, the Praxis. But ten thousand years later, the last Shaa has chosen to die.
2014 young adult science fiction, third in the Earth Girl trilogy. Jarra is Handicapped, unable to leave Earth for any of the colony worlds where most of society now happens, but she's also a famous hero. Which means she's now become a symbol, both for those who want to bring the Handicapped more into society and for those who resist that trend.
2014 science fiction. A nameless scholar of the Second Chinese Republic looks back from the year 2393 on the Penumbral Age that brought western civilisation to its close.
2014 military SF, first book of the Alexis Carew series. Barred by her sex from inheriting the family estates, Carew signs aboard a ship of the Royal Navy as a midshipman… in space.
2003 military SF, second book of Succession. Captain Laurent Zai tries to win a space battle; Senator Nara Oxham tries to survive imperial politics.
2003 military SF, first book of Succession. Captain Laurent Zai of the Imperial frigate Lynx is attempting to rescue the Child Empress from invading cyborgs. Only that makes it sound dire, and it's actually rather good.
2009 SF, loosely connected with the Company series. The British Arean Corporation sponsored the colonisation of Mars… then it turned out that short-term profits weren't possible, and they lost interest. Mary Griffith runs the only place to buy a beer on the Tharsis Bulge.
2015-2016 science fiction, 10 episodes. When the ice-hauler Canterbury gets destroyed, the Belters blame Mars, Mars blames Earth, and Earth blames the Belters.
2015 science fiction comedy, 10 episodes. In a corrupt neon future, the Moonbeam City Police Department tries to keep the peace. More or less.
2014 SF, first of the Solarian War Saga. Elfrida Goto works for the Space Corps, persuading asteroid-dwellers to accept resettlement before their asteroids are dropped into Venus as part of the terraforming project. But her telepresence robot is acting up, and then the space station she's living on comes under attack.
2006 military SF, fourth of the Kris Longknife books. Kris finally gets an independent command: a single-world "naval district" on the far end of anywhere.
2015 short science fiction, dir. Luke Gilford, Pamela Anderson, Dree Hemingway: IMDb.
An ageing fitness instructor is dissatisfied with her life, in particular feeling disconnected from the world, and looks for a way to fix it.
1994 science fiction, sequel to The Ring of Charon. This review contains spoilers for that first book.
2016 science fiction crime drama, 11 episodes. Jimmy Pritchard is a 75-year-old, corrupt, disgraced, but unrepentant former sheriff. When he's murdered, secretive tech billionaire twins restore him to life, youth and extreme vitality (as a side effect of their own plans). Formerly known as Frankenstein, The Frankenstein Code and Lookinglass.
2016 science fiction drama, 10 episodes. Aliens have landed and conquered Earth, ruling through drones and human trusties. But there is, of course, a resistance.
2016 SF/mystery; fifty-third (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. Dennis Mira went to confront his cousin Edward over plans to sell the family house, but found him tied up in a chair; then someone knocked Dennis on the head. Now Edward's missing. Fortunately Dennis is married to Charlotte Mira, police profiler and friend of Lieutenant Eve Dallas.
2013 science fiction/romance. Finn is a robot who looks and acts human; he arrives in young Cat Novak's life as her tutor, and stays as the years pass.
2007 science fiction. The starship Fenrir was lost ten years ago to a misjump, but its warp engine has just reappeared in open space… embedded in coral, and accompanied by three dead bodies and a fishing boat. Captain Mikhail Ivanovich Volkov takes the frigate Svoboda to find out where the Fenrir has been.
1937 feminist alternate history. Seven centuries after Nazi victory, women are uneducated cattle, and men have eliminated history, books, and creativity.
2015-2016 children's science fiction, 26 episodes: the five Tracy brothers pilot a variety of vehicles to rescue people in trouble.
2011 military SF novella, a later insertion into the Kris Longknife series. After the triumph of the Battle of Wardhaven, Kris and crew go out to train allied fast patrol boat commanders.
1964 science fiction, sequel to The Survivors/Space Prison. The survivors of the hell-world Ragnarok have handily won the war against the Gern, but they don't seem to be able to talk sensibly with either Earth or the former Gern-slave colony of Athena. And there's a new threat approaching…
2005 military SF, third of the Kris Longknife books. As a victim of fallout from a political attack against her family, Kris gets sent on a diplomatic mission, then comes back to a desperate struggle in defence of her homeworld.
2015 science fiction, 26 episodes: AniDB. Mecha pilots fight against the corruption of words.
1990 science fiction. Larry Chao is a junior scientist at a gravity research station on Pluto, that's about to be shut down. He's just made a remarkable improvement in gravity manipulation, but the chief administrator won't take it seriously, so he fires off an unauthorised experiment to prove to the scientific community that there's real progress being made. At which point something very unexpected happens.
2015 SF/mystery novella; fifty-second (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death series, published as part of Down the Rabbit Hole, a multi-author anthology of stories loosely inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Apparently Darlene Fitzwilliams fatally stabbed her brother, then jumped off his fifty-second floor balcony. But there's no sign that she was the sort of person who'd do that.
2012 science fiction. Amy Peterson is a self-replicating ("von Neumann") humaniform robot, who has been growing up slowly as part of a mixed human/android family. Then her grandmother shows up, and she has to eat her.
2008 humorous science fiction; first in its series. In the 25th Century the British Empire will soon be fighting the insectoid Ghast; but Captain Isambard Smith, square-jawed, courageous, and perhaps a bit dim, is called on to take an elderly refitted freighter on a courier mission.
2015 SF mini-series, adapted by Matthew Graham and directed by Nick Hurran. In 2016, alien ships arrive on Earth, with the aliens saying they're come to bring utopia. But not everyone agrees that that's what they're offering.
2014 science fiction. The mixed human and alien crew members aboard a wormhole-building ship move from world to world, on their way to the job that'll let them move into the big time.
2016 science fiction, sixteenth novel in the Vorkosigan universe. Three years after the death of Aral Vorkosigan, his widow Cordelia starts to move her life in a new direction. Oliver Jole, Admiral of Sergyar Fleet, finds himself caught up in unexpected ways.
1958 science fiction. When the aliens capture a colony ship, they take the slaves who can work and abandon the rest on an uninhabited world. That's their error. (Also published as Space Prison.)
2015 science fiction, ten episodes, sequel of sorts to the 2002 film. After the PreCrime programme is shut down, the three precognitives try to live normal lives. Of course, one of them ends up Fighting Crime.
2012 science fiction, second in The Expanse series. Ganymede, the main supplier of food to the outer system, is attacked and its fragile artificial ecosystem destroyed; Earth and Mars seem likely to go to war again.
2015 SF/mystery; fifty-first (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. Two serial killers have crossed the USA and landed in New York; Lieutenant Eve Dallas tracks them down.
2008 alternate-history suspense/thriller, last in the "Small Change" trilogy. In the fascist Britain of 1960, former Inspector Carmichael still runs the Watch, the secret police charged with rounding up Jews, Communists, and other undesirables; his adopted niece, Elvira, is looking forward to her début.
2016 SF and fantasy. Patricia is a witch who can sometimes talk with animals, and Laurence is a budding mad scientist. Having met and split up during their hellish schooldays, they meet again as the world seems to be winding towards its end.
2002 military SF, long-delayed final volume in the Antares trilogy. The combined human fleets are taking on the Ryall menace, to remove it once and for all. But is there any option short of extermination?
2013 modern occult secret service novelette, between The Apocalypse Codex and The Rhesus Chart in the Laundry Files series. Bob Howard is sent to inspect a livery stables, because they're buying a worrying amount of meat.
2007 alternate-history suspense/thriller, second in the "Small Change" trilogy. Eight years after the "peace with honour" of 1941, as Mark Normanby's new government is cracking down on Jewish communist terrorists, a bomb goes off in a Hampstead suburb. Inspector Carmichael, compromised but useful to his political masters, investigates.
2012 modern occult secret service, fourth in the Laundry Files series. Bob has been promoted to management, and has to supervise a couple of freelance agents. Seems an American televangelist is getting too much into favour with the Prime Minister…
2000 military SF, first in the Valor/Confederation series. Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr's platoon of Marines is just back from a hard fight when their liberty is cancelled and they're sent off to escort a group of diplomats as they try to get a recently-discovered world to join the Confederation. Then things get worse.
2010 modern occult secret service, third in the Laundry Files series. Bob Howard becomes entangled in a cultist plot to steal the Eater of Souls.
2009 modern occult secret service novelette, between The Jennifer Morgue and The Fuller Memorandum in the Laundry Files series. The Laundry is down to a skeleton staff for Christmas… so Bob Howard is the one man who might be able to prevent the annihilation of the world.
2015 science fiction, 13 episodes. The crew of the destroyer USS Nathan James works to distribute the cure for the plague that killed most of the world's population. But not everyone thinks that's a good idea.
2008 modern occult secret service novelette, between The Jennifer Morgue and The Fuller Memorandum in the Laundry Files series. Bob visits the asylum where broken Laundry agents go; all, unsurprisingly, is not well.
2005 futuristic fantasy. Detective Inspector Chen is a cop in the franchised city Singapore Three, in charge of magical and supernatural investigations. When a missing girl's soul turns up demonstrably in Hell, rather than Heaven where it should be, that's the first thread of a long and political investigation.
2006 modern occult secret service, second in the Laundry Files series. Bob Howard is sent to a Caribbean island to stop a billionaire from destroying the world with magic.
2004 modern occult secret service, first in the Laundry Files series; a short novel of the same title coupled with the novella The Concrete Jungle. Bob Howard is a techie working for an extremely secret part of the British intelligence community, trying to suppress knowledge that could destroy the world… and clean up when it gets out.
1987 SF, second in the Antares trilogy. The Altan and Sandarian space navies won't be able to fight the alien menace on their own, but they have a plan for getting back in contact with Earth.
2015, 13 episodes. A motley crew wakes up on a spaceship with skills but no memories. They try to find out who they were and what happened.
1996 SF/fantasy short story collection of some of Drake's more humorous short stories.
2015, 10 episodes. Space bounty hunters discover that being apolitical is really hard work if you have even the vestiges of a conscience.
2011 science fiction, first in The Expanse series. With the asteroid belt colonised, tensions are rising between Belt, Mars and Earth. When ships start getting destroyed, war is inevitable; but who actually kicked it off, and why?
2015 science fiction. In the near future, helium-3 mining on the Moon is big business, but the shipments back to Earth are being hijacked.
2015 science fiction, 11 episodes. Kirsten Clark suffers from "temporal dysplasia" and can't feel the passage of time, but that makes her the ideal subject to be inserted into the memories of the recently dead.
2015 science fiction. At a regional American SF convention, things are going with the usual level of chaos… until the entire con hotel gets kidnapped by time-travelling androids.
2013 young adult science fiction, sequel to Earth Girl. Jarra is Handicapped, unable to leave Earth for any of the colony worlds where most of society now happens, but after a daring rescue she's a hero. Now her archaeological and historical skills will be tested in an entirely new field.
2015 vaguely steampunk science fiction. In Rapid City on the Pacific Northwest coast, Karen Memery is one of the "seamstresses" at Hôtel Mon Cherie (sic). It's not a bad life, but she's about to get in the way of a powerful man on his way up even higher.
2006 alternate-history mystery, first in the "Small Change" trilogy. In 1949, Britain is at peace with the Reich, which is still fighting in Russia. At Farthing, a country house in Hampshire, one of the architects of that peace is murdered. Jews and Bolshevists are immediately blamed, but Inspector Carmichael thinks it's more complicated than that.
2015 fantasy/SF. Wasp is an Archivist, hunting, studying and binding ghosts for the goddess Catchkeep and Her priest in a world that has suffered some great catastrophe in the distant past.
2004 military SF, second of the Kris Longknife books. Thanks to deft political manoeuvres, Kris is now a princess as well as a naval lieutenant. But when a friend goes missing while they're both on leave, she can't really do anything else but go and look for him.
2013-2015 science fiction, manga adaptation, 4 or 10 episodes: AniDB and here.
In a world of cyborgs and poor data security, Major Motoko Kusanagi tries to catch the bad guys. A prequel of sorts to Ghost in the Shell.
2015 science fiction. The people of a small English town cling on to life after an economic collapse, under the protection of the Process, an ultimate allocating algorithm. But the Process seems to be spending scarce resources on recreating a battlefield of the First World War…
1981 science fiction. In the Todos Santos arcology, life is much safer than outside in Los Angeles, if somewhat sanitised: but it's still right next door.
1986 SF, first in the Antares trilogy. The colony world of Alta has been cut off from other planets for more than a century, since Antares exploded into a supernova. Now a ship has come through where there wasn't supposed to be a jump point…
2015 science fiction; a team of scientists is assembled to explore a newly-discovered planet. Saraswati Callicot is an exoethnologist, and the planet's uninhabited, but she's sent along to keep an eye on Thora Lassiter, the daughter of one of the powerful families who went a bit mad on her previous mission; she's been cured, but she might still be an embarrassment. Then things start to go bizarrely wrong.
1964 children's SF. Nik Colherne's face was badly burned in an accident, and as a resident of the Dipple he can't afford the advanced surgery that might fix it. The Thieves' Guild offers him a new face, if he impersonates a boy's fantasised hero. But it's all rather more complex than that.
2015 science fiction, manga adaptation, 13 episodes: AniDB.
The Giftia androids look and act like humans, but they have a limited lifespan: 81,920 hours. After that, they need to be retrieved and shut down before bad things happen. Mizugaki Tsukasa goes to work for Terminal Services, and is partnered with the Giftia called Isla…
1963 children's SF. Naill Renfro sells himself into servitude to get drugs to make his mother's dying easier. After that, things improve slightly. Well, they'd have to, wouldn't they?
1961 children's SF. Troy Horan was thrown off his planet during the big war. Now he lives hand-to-mouth in the Dipple. But a casual job with an importer of exotic pets leads to unexpected intrigue and danger.
2015 SF, sequel to Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword. Fleet Captain Breq is still on Athoek Station, but there are plenty of problems even without the civil war coming closer.
2015 SF, sequel to Lines of Departure. The alien Lankies have moved into the solar system, and a random assortment of ship crews from the two previously-warring powers must decide what to do next.
2014 SF/mystery; forty-ninth (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. Just before Christmas, a personal trainer is found in his home, with a nasty head wound and a knife in his chest. He seems to have been a thoroughly nasty person, but for Eve Dallas the homicide cop's job is still the job.
2012 young adult science fiction. Jarra is Handicapped; something in her immune system revolts at alien worlds, so she's limited to living on Earth with the other people who can't go to the stars and be part of proper civilisation. What's worse, all the offworlders look down on "apes". But that's not going to stop her doing her best to have a good life.
1954 science fiction juvenile. Lummox is the Stuart family pet, brought back a hundred years ago from who-knows-where by great-grandfather the space explorer. He's large, and occasionally hazardous to property, but basically docile. But now he's gone on a rampage, and the forces of law and order want him put down…
2011 humorous science fiction. Lord Thomas Kinago, foppish distant cousin of the Emperor and son of the First Space Lord, is sent on his obligatory short tour of military service. Meanwhile, a cluster of worlds on the edge of the Imperium is being taken over…
2015 science fiction. Jacob Kelley's old friend shows up at his house, babbling about artificial intelligences in the quantum computer that is the universe. Later, the old friend is found dead – having apparently been murdered the night before he turned up – and Kelley is put on trial for his murder.
1999 thriller. On board the International Space Station, a microbiological experiment has gone wrong. Dr Emma Watson tries to keep the rest of the crew, and herself, alive in an increasingly challenging environment. (Nothing to do with the 2013 film of the same name.)
2014 science fiction, seventh in the Alex Benedict series that began with A Talent for War. Alex Benedict the relic-dealer and Chase Kolpath the pilot go hunting for the last cache of artefacts from Earth's early space age.
2001 military SF, third in the Jump Universe series. At the same time as the events of The Price of Peace, Ray Longknife's exploration ship has comprehensively misjumped to where a much earlier lost ship founded a colony. But they aren't the only things on the planet.
2000 military SF, second in the Jump Universe series. The Unity War is over, but that doesn't mean things are peaceful; Commander Izzy Umboto of the cruiser Patton is chasing down pirates, and worse.
2013, dir. Mike Slee, Mark Strong, Jock McLeod; IMDb / Wikipedia
A brief history of the Great Martian War, combining interviews with veterans and archive footage.
1999 military SF, first of a series that comes both chronologically and in publication date before the Kris Longknife books. Four soldiers on opposite sides of the war between the Society of Humanity and the Unity do their best to stay alive in the face of enemies both of the conventional kind and in their own ranks.
2004 military SF, first of a series of twelve books so far with at least two more planned. Kris Longknife, daughter of the Prime Minister of the long-settled world of Wardhaven, joined the Navy to get away from politics. But as the old alliance of humanity falls apart, it's not going to be that easy.
2009 military SF, last in a five-book series. Ky Vatta has her fleet, and is ready to move against the pirates as soon as they attack. But she doesn't know all their plans.
2011 SF. Nyx is a bel dame, an assassin tracking down and killing deserters for the government of Nasheen. Then things go wrong. Now she's being employed for a covert recovery mission, but everyone's hand is against her.
2014 SF anthology about the run-up to the end of the world.
2007 military SF, fourth in a five-book series. Kylara Vatta is putting together an anti-pirate navy while her cousin Stella is rebuilding the family firm.
2014 SF, sequel to Terms of Enlistment. Humanity is losing the war against the aliens, but Andrew Grayson might as well re-enlist: there's nothing else for him to do.
2014 technological fantasy. On the island of Kavekana, the main business is idols: all the convenience of a god, but none of the commitment or free will of the real thing. One of them has died thanks to a bad financial deal, but the priestess Kai tried to save her, and heard something odd as she did.
2013 science fiction. Six months' hyperspace travel from Earth, a small scientific team explores the lightless under-ice ocean of the planet Ilmatar.
2013 SF. Andrew Grayson is a long-term welfare recipient, and there are only two ways out: hope to win a lottery for the colony worlds, or sign up with the military. He's going for option B.
2014 military SF, second in the Ark Royal series. The outdated and over-armoured carrier Ark Royal did what the newer ships couldn't, taking the war to the alien invaders and even capturing an enemy starship. Now it's time for a larger raid into alien space.
2013 SF, by the only non-slate nominee for the Campbell this year. Unaging aliens and their human hosts struggle across the Earth.
2006 SF, third in a five-book series. With the space pirates moving in earnest to extort protection money from interstellar trading polities, Kylara Vatta starts to build a fleet to take them on.
For this year's Hugo awards there are three semiprozines in contention that satisfy my voting criteria. One didn't bother to provide a sample in the Hugo packet. This is one of the other two.
2011 SF, first of a five-book series. Ia is a precognitive who foresees the collapse of human civilisation… unless she takes a specific path, which starts with becoming a space marine.
2015 science fiction. On an island off the Washington coast, there's a disease outbreak, but a religious community living there doesn't seem to be worried about it. And it all has something to do with the immortals.
2004 SF, second in a five-book series. Kylara Vatta survived her first solo trading venture, but now someone's taking on the family firm. UK vt Moving Target.
There's only one non-slate novelette on the ballot this year, so that's what I'm reviewing here: The Day The World Turned Upside Down, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.
2003 SF, first in a five-book series. Kylara Vatta is thrown out of space navy academy, then gets a job taking one of the family firm's oldest ships on its final voyage to the scrapyard. Of course it all gets more complicated than that.
2014 translation of 2006 SF from China. In the long shadow of the Cultural Revolution, various people try to work out why scientists are committing suicide.
2015 SF, 13 episodes. In the future, humanity has been nearly wiped out by a plague. James Cole is sent back in time to 2015, just before it started, to try to prevent it.
1990 military SF. In the 22nd century, the Japanese empire which controls Earth and the colony worlds sends a task group to suppress a three-way colonial revolt. It doesn't help that many of the colonists are exiled Boers.
1999 SF. More than a thousand years after Greatwinter destroyed civilisation, new cultures have grown up in what was once Australia. But what is the secret at the heart of the Library?
2005 SF, sequel to The Getaway Special. With cheap hyperdrive available to the world, things are falling apart; two people try to work out their options.
2015, 12 episodes: AniDB
Mecha series, continuation of last summer's Aldnoah Zero. The Martians are still invading Earth, but things have bogged down.
2014-2015, 25 episodes: AniDB; vt Cross Ange: Rondo of Angel and Dragon.
In a magical/tech society, the princess is discovered to be a non-magic-user, stripped of her rank, and exiled to the high-casualty, low-empathy defenders of the kingdom.
2015 SF/mystery; fiftieth (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. At the end of 2060, Homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas comes up against a new threat: a murderer who's such a fan that he's killing people who've offended Dallas. And there are a lot of them.
1990 SF. On a passenger liner in hyperspace, the speed of light is a mere ten metres per second. But humans are still humans.
2013 SF, seventh in the Academy series and a prequel. Priscilla Hutchins is just completing interstellar pilot training, but already demand for pilots is dropping. And terrorists are threatening the terraforming project. Spoilers.
2014, 11 episodes: AniDB
The perfect society of 2012-2013's Psycho-Pass encounters a new threat.
2008 SF/romance, second in the Grimspace series. In the previous book, Sirantha Jax was instrumental in bringing down the evil corporation that ran everything. But nature abhors a power vacuum.
2014 SF mini-series. In the 1950s, a project was begun to build an interstellar generation spacecraft as a lifeboat for humanity should the Cold War turn hot. Now they're half-way through the mission and they've just had their first murder. Meanwhile, on Earth, someone's looking into long-buried secrets. Possible spoilers ahead.
2014, 13 episodes: AniDB Mars was seeded with engineered cockroaches and mould. Five hundred years later, they ate the first manned mission. The second one had only two survivors. Now it's time for the third.
2001 SF, expansion of 1985 short story. A scientist invents a hyperspace drive that's easy to build and use, and tells the world. Things don't go as smoothly as he expects.
2014, 24 episodes: AniDB, follow-up to 2012's Sword Art Online. The survivors of the VR MMO Sword Art Online go on to new adventures.
2008 SF/romance. Sirantha Jax is a jumper, one of the rare humans who can navigate FTL ships through grimspace. But her ship crashed, her pilot/lover died (along with everyone else on board), and she may be going mad.
2014 SF; sequel to Honour's Knight. With most of the powers in the known universe arrayed against her, Devi is still infected with the virus that could solve everything (or bring it all crashing down).
2014 SF; sequel to Fortune's Pawn. Devi is now security chief on the tramp space-freighter she signed on with, but clearly something very strange is going on.
2005 SF/mystery. Turing Hopper, an AI emergent from research assistant software, looks into the affairs of a techie who's been hit by a car and is now in intensive care. Was it an accident?
2004 SF/mystery. Turing Hopper, an AI emergent from research assistant software, follows up on a lead to an old enemy.
Some people may review the new Star Wars trailer. I find this one more interesting.
2003 SF/mystery. Turing Hopper, an AI emergent from research assistant software, has just lost a friend and employee: he's been murdered. The police reckon it was random drug-related violence; she tries to find out more.
Some time in the future, two convicts working on the Moon discover something strange: a flower, blooming on the surface. Then things get weird.
Sequel to Ancillary Justice. Breq, now a Fleet Captain, travels to a backwater world to help assure its survival in the civil war.
Ross Baker is having a bad day. He'd just lain down for an experimental brain scan, and now he seems to be a cyborg soldier in an endless war. And it's going to get a lot stranger than that. If you plan to read this book, know that I thought it fairly good (I'd rate it with Pandæmonium as minor but worth reading, much better than When the Devil Drives) and stop reading now to avoid the spoilers.
2014, 12 episodes: AniDB
Mecha series. The Martians are invading Earth, and their technology is overpowering. But some Earthlings are able to fight back.
2014, dir. Gabe Ibañez, Antonio Banderas, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen: IMDb / allmovie
After the vast majority of humanity has been killed by solar storms, robots keep the remainder alive in a small numer of cities. But some robots seem to be breaking their rules.
2014, 13 episodes: AniDB
After civilisation is nearly destroyed by an invasion of virus-controlled creatures, only the children born with a small dose of the virus are an effective weapon against them. So they're paired with adult handlers, and sent off to the fight.
While the destroyer USS Nathan James is on exercise in the Arctic, a plague has killed over 80% of the world's population. Now her captain must decide how to proceed.
A nostalgically strange series about the dandiest man in space.
Technological fantasy. Sixty years after the Aztec-like city-state of Dresediel Lex was "liberated" and its gods killed, someone seems to be trying to break the hold of the company that replaced those gods.
SF/mystery. Turing Hopper, an AI emergent from research assistant software, is worried about her programmer: he seems to have vanished, and the records she can find aren't helping. So she turns for help to the two humans who are aware of her nature.
2012, dir. Brandon Cronenberg, Caleb Landry Jones: IMDb / allmovie
In a world where the cult of celebrity involves taking on their diseases… pretty much everything that can go wrong with such a setup does.
Self-published industrial fantasy romance. The relict of a bishop inherits her mother's great airship, and tries to avoid becoming the mistress of the Emperor.
Last of a six-book series. In the distant future, a long-frozen space-navy captain tries to lead his fleet home. I'm going to deal in spoilers both for this book and for the whole series.
In a city powered by steam heated by a fire-god, that fire-god has suddenly died. An inexperienced mage looks into what happened. Gladstone is nominated for the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer.
These are my thoughts on the remaining Hugo packet submissions for Best Editor, Short Form. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so. There will also be spoilers here.
SF anthology edited by John Joseph Adams. Twenty-two stories on the general theme of mad scientists. Nominated for Best Editor (Short Form).
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated novellas. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so. There will also be spoilers here.
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated novelettes in 2014. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so. There will also be spoilers here.
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated short stories in 2014. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so. There will also be spoilers here.
Fifth of a six-book series. In the distant future, a long-frozen space-navy captain tries to lead his fleet home. Spoilers will follow.
Fourth of a six-book series. In the distant future, a long-frozen space-navy captain tries to lead his fleet home.
2013, dir. Bong Joon-ho, Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton IMDb / allmovie
After the world has frozen, all that's left of humanity lives aboard a train eternally circling the planet.
Third of a six-book series. In the distant future, a long-frozen space-navy captain tries to lead his fleet home.
2013, dir. Francis Lawrence, Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson: IMDb / allmovie
After winning the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen is a post-traumatic wreck. The perfect time to send her on a publicity tour! Spoilers for book and film will follow.
Second of a six-book series. In the distant future, a long-frozen space-navy captain tries to lead his fleet home.
First of a six-book series. In the distant future, a long-frozen space-navy captain may tip the balance in a century-long war.
Astronaut Mark Watney is on Mars. Alone; the rest of the crew thought he'd died in the dust storm that they were escaping from. Now he's trying to work out how to survive.
2013, dir. Ruairi Robinson, Liev Schreiber, Elias Koteas: IMDb / allmovie
Towards the end of a manned mission to Mars, things start to go wrong.
Anthology from 1998 of alternate histories based on different decisions by military leaders; edited by Harry Turtledove, Roland Green and Martin H. Greenberg.
2013, dir. Caradog W. James, Caity Lotz, Toby Stephens: IMDb / allmovie
Some time in the nearish future, researchers try to build a self-directed robot soldier/assassin. It doesn't go well.
2011, dir. Gonzalo López-Gallego, Warren Christie, Lloyd Owen: IMDb / allmovie
The found-footage story of the secret final Apollo mission in 1974.
2012, dir. Colin Trevorrow, Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass: IMDb / allmovie
A journalist and two interns, trying for a human-interest story, interview a man who's placed an advertisement for a companion in time travel.
Concealed in Death is the forty-eighth story of J. D. Robb's In Death series, and a huge improvement on its immediate predecessor Thankless in Death. It drops many of the science-fictional trappings of the setting to deliver a powerful and well-told story.
After the total nuclear war, the captain of a missile destroyer leads his crew through the irradiated world and towards a new life.
I am going to talk about plot details, so if you care about not knowing that sort of thing you probably shouldn't read this review.
Some time in the future, most major countries have space fleets and interstellar colonies. Ark Royal is an outmoded carrier left in a parking orbit, not broken up only because of her famous past, and her captain's a drunken embarrassment. Then the aliens arrive, and blow straight through the more modern fleet…
Young adult novel, read because a film based on it is coming out soon and I want to be able to complain about the film-making separately from the writing. (And because last time I did this I read The Hunger Games, which I quite enjoyed.) Here be spoilers.
First of a projected trilogy. I learned about it from a half-chapter free sample in the back of Ancillary Justice.
This first novel marks Leckie as someone to watch.
I picked up this collection of novellas for the Robb story, as I was clearly intended to. All the stories here are loosely based on, or more properly inspired by, fairy stories (something of a coincidence given the Elemental Masters series I've also been reading).
Ready Player One is a young adult SF novel, the first by this author. Set in the future, it deals with its protagonist's efforts in a pervasive virtual world to win a contest based in the videogaming and related culture of the 1980s.
Thankless in Death is the forty-sixth of J. D. Robb's In Death series. It's also, for me, the first disappointment.