SFBook Reviews

Parallel universes are like a giant delicious vanilla slice. Each universe is its own layer, some are thin flaky pastry, others are lines of yummy custard, all of them unknown to one another, but working in parallel. However, squash them altogether and you get a custardy, flaky mess. Still tasty, but a mess. Glenn and Vivy are part of an interdimensional peace for...

The Salt Oracle is a particular kind of post-apocalypse fiction that British and Northern European writers seem unusually good at.

Quiet, unnerving and constrained, set against a backdrop where the light of the world might have gone out, but the survivors are still recognisably themselves. People who still try to keep the institutions runni...

There used to be a pretty clear distinction between literary fiction and science fiction, with critics and prize committees firmly policing the border between the two. Heaven forbid someone would try to dilute the DNA. That distinction has been quietly eroded over the last ten or twenty years, on occasion without these literary police even noticing.

But sci...

I came to Silvia Park's Luminous the way I've come to a lot of sci-fi books this year: as a judge for the 40th Arthur C. Clarke Award and a deadline rather than the luxury of putting it down for a fortnight. That kind of reading sharpens you up and prevents you from being as polite about your reactions. By the time the deliberatio...

I've been reading for over 40 years, and writing about reading for over 20 of them. In that time I've read widely, even dipping my toe into non-fiction on occasion. I don't expect much to surprise me. There Is No Antimemetics Division surprised me. It surprised me by just how different it is. It surprised me by how clever, witty ...