Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

Human Iterations has posted a review from one of the pre-screenings of Serenity, the movie version of Joss Whedon’s shortlived science fiction western series Firefly. The review doesn’t give many details, but it is spoiler free.

It’s also overwhelmingly positive, but I’ll throw a big heaping of caution on that. The writer is just a little bit biased. By his own words, he was a huge fan of Firefly and he…

The cover of this book is filled with enthusiastic quotations. Its “astounding”, “engrossing”, “fascinating”,”vast”,”panoramic” and “intriguing”. Thats a lot of praise for a book. Does it deserve it?

By and large yes it does. “World War: In the Balance” is the first part of a sequence of books set in an alternate World War. In this 656 page book, Harry Turtledove sets up the scenario, winds all the characters up and…

I should start this review by stating that I’m a pretty big Doctor Who fan. So there is a built in bias in favour of this book. On the other hand who but a Who fan would read Doctor Who novels anyway?

This particular novel is somewhat special, helping to celebrate the thirty fifth anniversary of Doctor Who. It has a lovely white cover with an embossed Doctor Who…

I’ve read a number of fantasy books by this author now, but this is the first Science Fiction book I’ve seen so I wasn’t sure quite what to expect.

As it turns out Modesitt doesn’t change his style much. We have the usual (slightly annoying) sound effects. The hero spends a lot of time pondering “big issues” and the author specialises in the mundanities of life.

This makes it…

Book two of Martin’s fantasy epic “A Song of Ice and Fire” continues the high standard set in book one. As with the earlier book chapters are split up according to the view point of a character and different characters have very different knowledge and in some cases different perceptions of the same situation.

This isn’t a story with simple “good” and “bad” characters. None of the…