Category Archives: Writing & Reading

Alastair Reynolds: Aurora Rising I’m always on for one of Alastair Reynolds’ space operas, tinged as they are with a certain gothic menace, so imagine my delight when I came across two that I’d never seen before, Elysium Fire and … Continue reading →

One of the criticisms of my book A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth was that it lacked illustrations of the many creatures mentioned therein. To fill what seems to be a yawning chasm lacuna hole I’m pleased to … Continue reading →

Peter F. Hamilton: The Chronicle of the Fallers (The Abyss Beyond Dreams/ Night Without Stars) Another month, another enormous bonkbuster from Peter F. Hamilton. Back in June I reviewed the Commonwealth Saga (Pandora’s Star/ Judas Unchained) in which the prosperous … Continue reading →

Richard Fortey: Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind Richard Fortey is best known as an author (Life: An Unauthorised Biography) and palaeontologist (Trilobite!) but as his sparkling memoir A Curious Boy revealed, he’s been a skilled amateur mycologist since boyhood. … Continue reading →

Baoshu The Redemption of Time I generally don’t have time for fan fiction, but there’s fan fiction and fan fiction, and this one is of a superior sort. Baoshu (a pen name) is a fan, specifically of the cosmically successful … Continue reading →

Ken Liu (ed.) Invisible Planets Hungry as I am for more SF from China, and with birthday requests on the table, Mrs Gee ordered me this collection of contemporary Chinese SF, edited and translated by Ken Liu. Thirteen stories, all … Continue reading →

Cixin Liu: The Dark Forest This is the sequel to The Three-Body Problem, which I read last month. In that book, astrophysicist Ye Wenjie sends a signal into space that alerts another species to human existence. The species inhabits a … Continue reading →

Austin Wright: Nocturnal Animals Teacher Susan Morrow used to be married to a failed writer called Edward. Twenty years later, divorced with two children and comfortably re-married to a physician, she receives a manuscript from Edward, from whom she hadn’t … Continue reading →