Backlist

Most of my books are on Amazon – you can browse or buy them through my author page.

The Sigil Trilogy
The Universe is dying from within. No one knows how to save it, so the Elders give a young Drover a last ditch chance to stop the rot. If only she knew where to begin.

Jack Corstorphine, archaeologist, has an intuition that the landscape of Europe had been civilized for millions of years … an intuition realized by the incisive intelligence of his protegée, Jadis Markham. Neither is prepared for the size and scale of the surprises they let loose on the world.

Ruxhana Fengen Kraa, Admiral of the 17th Rigel Fleet, is about to be cashiered for a stupendous tactical mistake. But Special Ops has another job for him – something far, far stranger.

The Brethren at a remote desert monastery are preparing for the Apparition of the Goddess, an event that occurs only once every 2,058,416 years. But will the Goddess arive in time to save them from an apparition of an altogether more hostile kind?

Mr Haraddzjin Khorare, trader in fine textiles from the Very Great and Ancient City of Axandragór, is on a routine business trip. But when his vessel is overtaken by pirates, his adventure takes an altogether more astonishing turn.

From the Publisher: The Sigil Trilogy traces the lives of compelling characters – people, entities, and species – through time and space. It’s magnificent in background, beautifully written, and with the most memorable characters. The Sigil Trilogy is spellbinding, funny, thoughtful, and touching all at the same time. Complete with complex mysteries, massive battles, romance, hot aliens, steampunk cities, armageddon – and good scotch – it’s all here. You won’t be able to put it down.

The Sigil is available either as an omnibus edition or as separate volumes – Siege of Stars, Scourge of Stars and Rage of Stars – in a variety of formats, both electronic and paperback.

Great stuff. Touches reminiscent of Douglas Adams, Barrington Bayley and David Britton only emphasise the splendid originality of this book. Thoughtful. Funny. Like nothing else before it. And pretty thoroughly mind-expanding. In fact everything you always hope a very good SF novel will be. It’s hilarious. It’s wonderfully written. You guessed it. I’ve become a Henry Gee fan. – Michael Moorcock

Henry Gee stakes his claim to excellence with these startling, beautifully written tales of cosmic adventure. Brisk, funny, triumphant – and utterly compelling. – Greg Bear

The Sigil is in the grand tradition of Stapledonian space opera, and provides not only an explanation for why this universe is the way it is, but gives us the many vivid wild adventures on the part of some (very appealing) conscious characters acting to make it that way. Awesome stuff, and a true pleasure to read page by page. – Kim Stanley Robinson

What amazing breadth and vigour and inventiveness! Everything you knew about Earth’s prehistory is completely wrong, and the truth is key to a dark secret of our galaxy that will come to roost in the nearish future. I’ve read all three parts of the Sigil trilogy by now because it’s so compulsively well written that I simply couldn’t stop. So cosmically deep and sensually rich, with splendid characters, what a warm and enthusiastic and deeply human book it is — as well as being chillingly scary and horrifying at times. The climax is absolutely unforeseeable. Sigil will live in my memory long after I’ve forgotten what happens in many other novels. - Ian Watson

I found myself stuck to my iPad screen much longer than I planned to be more than once, and on both weekend days I woke up and dove right back into the trilogy instead of my usual routine of reading the New York Times with my coffee. I really admire the reach of these books, and the many subtle and excellent nuances in the writing.  It’s classic-SF award-worthy. – Brenda Cooper

Fast-moving, insanely inventive science fiction in the grand manner—seldom has the fate of the galaxy been handled on such a large scale. Gee draws on archeology, geology, physics, and biology to create a rich tapestry with surprises woven into every thread. – Nancy Kress

If you like science fiction with a sweeping scale, and can cope with a mix of sex, violence, philosophy and religion in your SF, this is unmissable. – Brian Clegg

Gee’s writing is simply dazzling. The Sigil is a debut novel by an already accomplished author. His characters feel like real people, his story premise is bold and yet founded on actual science, and his fictional universe dares to encompass the issues of our day. Here’s a writer to watch. - David Marusek

I was amazed and delighted by part one of The Sigil. Exploding galaxies; million-year-old aliens with super powers; huge, ancient prehuman civilisations. The best sensawunda SF I’ve come across for years. – Elizabeth Counihan

Siege of Stars is compelling, grandiose, and breathtaking in its spacetime and its characters are intriguing, personal, and complex . …This book is going to be high on the charts. —Greg Laden

Echoes of Olaf Stapledon and Arthur C. Clarke, with more interesting characters than either of them. — John Gribbin

Henry Gee serves up a tasty stew of sex, science and space opera. Or should that read romance, rationality and retro-SF? Either way, the book is great entertainment. —Vaughan Stanger

A great very-wide-screen story, with many interesting characters I cared about … the writing—and the palaeontology—are beautifully executed — Jack Cohen

Reminiscent of Peter F. Hamilton’s SF epics in its scope and ambition, Siege of Stars is a wildly imaginative book set against the vivid locales scattered throughout time and space. Gee masterfully paints his protagonists in engaging, realistic and very human light. Their personalities and relationships drive the story forward as much as its grandiose scale, making Siege difficult to put down. —Alex Shvartsman

Henry Gee’s crackling prose and fast-paced storytelling pull the reader right in, but it’s the vividness of his characters that creates such a sense of intimacy in this large-scale cosmic tale. It’s an impressive fiction debut, a page-turner that delivers the goods!
— Mercurio D. Rivera

Henry Gee’s Sigil Trilogy is everything that good science fiction should be: ambitious, sweeping in scope, well-crafted, intelligently plotted and, above all, thoroughly, thoroughly readable. — Ian Whates

Henry Gee paints a stunning, thriving universe in which readers will delight. —Shelly Li

Siege of Stars is terrific — a highly original mash-up of wild archaeology and advanced aliens, with sympathetic characters, comedy and tragedy. — Ian Stewart

The Sigil Trilogy is magnificently panoramic in breadth — a quirky, erudite and often hilarious tale of adventure mingling epic science fiction, archaeology, palaeontology and romance. Vividly entertaining! — Cecilia Dart-Thornton

Siege of Stars is a fascinating story from start to finish, with great ideas, neat set pieces, and interesting characters. Gee knows his stuff. — Eric Brown

I got so engrossed in it that I could not put it down. Siege of Stars is a very good Sci-Fi novel, in the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury. It spans space and time on a grand scale, but at the same time delves into the questions of what it means to be human. I recommend this book. —Lee Gimenez   

The Science of Middle-earth
The Science of Middle-earth is the most unexpectedly Tolkienian book about Tolkien that I have ever come across. – Tom Shippey, New York Review of Science Fiction

[Gee's] unique position as author, scientist and fan converge to create unique insights, some of breathtaking power and beauty … readers will almost certainly leave this book with an increased respect for Tolkien, science and the wonders of Middle-earth. - Tolkien Studies

Describing science as the application of the fantastic, Gee places Middle-Earth under the microscope and reports some surprising results. - BBC Focus

This is a deeply serious book which is both accessible and has surprisingly valid things to say about both science fiction and science fact. - SFX

Gee has a huge respect for his source material. He seeks not to ridicule or demystify Tolkien’s fantasy but simply to add another dimension. This book will give die-hard fans another reason to spend a few more hours exploring Middle-earth. - The Guardian

A revised, updated edition of The Science of Middle-earth is now available for you to download from Amazon’s Kindle Store in the US and UK.

By The Sea

Bram Stoker meets Tom Sharpe in this hugely entertaining romp. Henry Gee may just have invented a new genre –not Science Fiction but Science Gothick – John Gribbin, author of In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat

This Gothic novel is a cracking good story, with an intricate and unpredictable plot. There are two stories in parallel: a scientific story and a detective story, with a hefty dose of intrigue and mystery thrown in. It starts with a death – is it murder or misadventure? – and more deaths follow. All are connected to the mysterious research institute at the heart of the novel. The characters have well-drawn back stories and unexpected interconnections that all make sense in the end, but keep us guessing in the meantime. It is a finely wrought and compelling novel, with a pleasing mixture of suspense, the grotesque and laugh-out-loud humour – Frank Norman in Mill Hill Essays

This novel is definitely Gothic, very Gothic, downright Gothic  - Pat Shipman, author of The Man Who Found The Missing Link and The Animal Connection

Available an an eBook or paperback. 

Jacob’s Ladder: The History of the Human Genome

Henry Gee, a science writer for the leading journal Nature, has produced a beautifully written account of the history of the genome. What sets Jacob’s Ladder apart from the slew of other recent volumes on the subject is that it explores the antecedents, whose researches dealt with the very questions that tantalize us today and who set the stage for deciphering the genetic code. - New York Times

Read this account of development even if you never thought you would read a book about biology. Jacob’s Ladder is an engagingly written and informed account of what is probably the most important science of our times. - New Humanist

In his immensely enjoyable new book Henry Gee concerns himself with the forces ‘that take a formless speck and shape it into what is recognisable as a human being.’ It is Gee’s contention that the history of biology can be retold as the story of the search for this agency, the genome. - London Review of Books

This book is filled with gems, educating and entertaining as well as introducing its own bold ideas. - The Times

To make complicated scientific discoveries intelligible to non-scientists requires great skill and this is possessed by Mr Gee, a senior editor at Nature magazine. - Contemporary Review

A sophisticated, fluid presentation that leaves general readers knowledgeable about the genome’s past and positioned to make sense of the future of genetic engineering. - Booklist

The crowning gem of this work is the last section on the new network theory of genomics. Gee draws the reader into the new field of computational biology and shows that having the sequence of the human genome is just the beginning. - Publishers Weekly

A Field Guide to Dinosaurs (Illustrated by Luis V. Rey)

‘One thing must be made clear from the start: this is a work of fiction.’ Having gotten that admission out of the way at the very beginning of his text, paleontologist Gee, a senior editor at the prestigious journal Nature, goes on to explain that picturing the outsides of dinosaurs known to us only by their bones is inherently an act of imagination, but one based on scientific realities… Rey, a leading dinosaur artist, pictures his subjects in action, climbing trees, chasing prey, baring their fearsome fangs in habitats ranging from jungle to seaside. At the end of his introduction, Gee returns to the question of veracity-the dinosaurs probably didn’t look as pictured here, he admits: ‘they were far, far stranger.’ But dinophiles will enjoy this excursion into a vividly illustrated possible past world. - Publishers Weekly

If there are field guides for birds and flowers, why not one for the giant creatures that roamed Earth until 65 million years ago? In A Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Henry Gee delivers … Browsing a field guide has seldom been this fun. You may never spot an actual dino in the wild, but it would nice to have A Field Guide to Dinosaurs on hand…just in case. - Discovery Channel Book Club

This new book is not Luis’ first but it is his masterpiece … Gee provides very thorough info and in combinations with Rey’s illustrations, this is the perfect book for dinosaur enthusiasts (and artists) of all ages. Field Guide gets the PT guarantee of satisfaction. - Prehistoric Times

A Field Guide to Dinosaurs does not aim to be factual so much as to be an enjoyable and provocative exercise in dinosaur biology, something the authors have made as clear as water. Thus, if you are ready for a trip to the Mesozoic, get comfortable, fasten your seatbelt, and don’t worry if you forget your binoculars – you may not need them after all! - PLoS Biology

Deep Time: Cladistics, The Revolution in Evolution

If you’ve been reading newspaper and science magazine accounts of contentious issues in paleontology and evolutionary biology and wondering what’s really behind so much of the debate, this is the book for you. - Scientific American

The two great strengths of Gee’s account are its iconoclastic destruction of many popular evolutionary scenarios and the author’s intimate knowledge of the personalities and events surrounding the revolution. - American Scientist

[A] model of good science writing, not only making a desperately arcane subject comprehensible but entertaining. - Seattle Weekly

Gee’s book is terrific and should be read by anyone with an interest in the history of science. - Ibis

As Gee’s brilliant analysis shows, viewed afresh, evolution proves a more interesting and exciting — if more complex — story than we ever thought. - The Scotsman

Gee’s corrective arguments at once ground his science in humility and liberate thinking about Deep Time through their invitation to chart a seamless topology of life then and now. - Kirkus Reviews

In Deep Time, Henry Gee eloquently and entertaining explains exactly why this ‘Revolution in Evolution’ is both interesting and important to our understanding of the past. - The Herald

Henry Gee’s fascinating book explains how a relatively new method of classifying life revolutionises our picture of the world. - Literary Review

The author … is a master of the English language. Reading sentences such as ‘[a]n hypothesis without a test is like a spare groom at a wedding: he may be decorative, but his utility ends there’ one is likely to miss one’s station on the commute, as almost happened to me. - Quarterly Review of Biology

Cladistics has the reputation of being abstruse and severely technical … [b]ut Gee explains the basics with exemplary clarity and frequent help from his cat, Fred (they are related, but distantly). - New Scientist

Futures from Nature

Hard SF fans should revel in Gee’s unusual anthology of 100 speculative miniatures created by scientists, journalists and top SF authors worldwide and originally published as recent one-page features in the science journal Nature. Each vignette centers on a wondrous or devastating or simply mind-boggling what if, carried to an unsettlingly original logical conclusion—or left spinning in an extraterrestrial mental orbit. A sampling of the treasures illustrates their remarkable range: Gregory Benford’s poignant A Life with a Semisent explores the human need for love; Paul McCauley’s Meat tackles the nasty human trick of twisting technology to immoral purposes; Robert Sawyer faces religion with the gobsmacking Abdication of Pope Mary III; and Ian Watson lets fly with his hilarious Nadia’s Nectar, one of the best bathroom tales around. All in all, this is a perfect volume to awaken startling new thoughts on old SF themes, giant leaps into the future in delectably palatable tiny packages. - Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

The stories are just the right length for those brief interludes with which life abounds. They come from a highly respectable science journal (Hey, Nature published the Watson & Crick paper that spelled out the structure of DNA and won a Nobel Prize). Therefore, QED, this SF is highly respectable too! It won’t a hurt a bit that the stories are good as well. - Analog

Worthwhile for anyone. A satisfying selection…occasionally quite profound. This book does just what we hope for. - Locus

Shaking The Tree

If the scientific arena is analogous to the sports field, then Gee provides the expert commentary. He has all the necessary attributes, an encyclopaedic knowledge of the players, their history in earlier encounters, the rules of the game and most importantly an obvious enthusiasm for the subject matter… All in all, this book is a highly accessible, engaging and illuminating collection of works, a real “page-turner”. It is a must for the bookshelves of everyone with more than a passing interest in palaeobiology. - Australian Geologist

I welcome the book and its celebration of the journal Nature and the fact that this journal devotes a large number of its pages to palaeontology each year. - The Geological Journal

There is a popular perception that the historical sciences are a compendium of accumulated facts, rather than an open-ended and multifaceted way of pursuing knowledge of the historical development of our physical and biological environment. This volume clearly dispels that view, and presents science as a process, not a product. Controversy, disagreement, changing hypotheses, and unanswered questions are the core of the scientific endeavor. These should be embraced as Gee so enthusiastically does. This is what makes science exciting and what will captivate future generations of students. - Journal of Geoscience Education

Henry Gees Buch ist eine lohnende Anschaffung für alle, die sich für Evolutionsbiologie interessieren. - Zentralblatt fuer Geologie und Palaeontologie

Readers with a serious background in biology … will find in this collection sustained pleasure and interest. - Publishers Weekly

Rise Of The Dragon

One of the most exciting biology books ever. - The Biologist

The palaeontological riches revealed are little short of staggering … the real strength of this book lies both in the beauty of the fossils and the way they can continue to revolutionize our views of the evolution of ancient life. - Geological Magazine

This book makes descriptions and detailed discussions of these important finds available in one convenient volume for palaeontologists and serious fossil fans. - Ethology, Ecology and Evolution

Particularly poignant is Zhe-Xi Luo’s foreword which provides a wonderful, yet all too brief, snapshot of social, political, and economic factors with the emergence of Chinese paleontology. - Canadian Palaeobiology

Before The Backbone
[The] problem of the origin of the vertebrates remains an important one for the simple reason that many zoologists have tried to solve it and all have failed. What makes this failure especially interesting is that over the past 150 years someone, somewhere, has probably hit on the answer: it is just that he has been unable to convince all his colleagues of it. Henry Gee has written an excellent book explaining why this is so. - London Review of Books

Gee’s scholarly treatment of all theories of vertebrate origins is admirable. The central themes of each theory are clearly and simply outlined and placed within a historical context that allows a naive reader to trace the genesis of these ideas and to appreciate how they still constrain our thinking. The treatment is sufficiently rich, however, to delight even veteran readers of the literature and to provide new insights into the complexities of vertebrate origins and theories of same. - Science

A thorough, scholarly and highly readable book which will become a classic. - Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society

In dealing with this often dense subject, Gee adopts a breezy, light-handed but sure style. - Paleobiology

Henry Gee has admirably mastered a formidable library of scattered reference to bring this timely book together…Palaeontologists, zoologists and geneticists should read this book and learn from it. - Endeavour

The book is a true mine of information. - Ethology Ecology & Evolution

Before the Backbone is certainly a valuable addition to my bookshelf, and I commend it to all of those interested in vertebrates in particular or in metazoan phylogeny as a whole. - Geological Magazine

Defiant the Guinea Pig – Firefighter! by Henry and Rachel Gee

Defiant the Guinea Pig is a lazy lump who spends all day in bed eating carrot pies and reading his Captain Extraordinary comics. When Defiant’s mother tells him to leave home and find a job, he becomes the smallest and unlikeliest new recruit in the City Fire Service. Defiant’s new life as a firefighter begins just as a new wave of fires sweeps the city.

Can Defiant and his firefighting friend Vermifuge the Armadillo find the firestarter?

Can they save the city from going up in smoke?

And will Defiant make his Mum proud?