First published 2018. Penguin, paperback, 2019, pp 339, c.120,000 words (main text). This book is to a degree an update of Kaku’s Physics of the Future, and that’s no bad thing. This volume is structured around the future of space travel, but covers a wide range of topics. Space travel is expected to move rapidly […]
Future of Humanity, The — Michio Kaku Read More »
First published 2005. Harper Collins, paperback, 2005, pp 317, c.120,000 words. This is the last Flashman book that MacDonald Fraser wrote, although not quite the last in terms of Flashman’s chronology: The second part of Flashman and the Redskins and Flashman and the Tiger record events a little later than this, the story of Flashman’s
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First published 2020. Penguin, paperback, 2021, pp 266, c.70,000 words (main text). This book gives a history of human interest in the planet Mars written by someone who developed a passion for the planet as a child, staring through her father’s telescope. She went on to work on NASA missions to Mars. The book, as
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First published 2020. Icon Books, paperback, 2021, pp 228, c.65,000 words (main text). Kate Greene was a member of a team who lived for four months in a Mars simulation on Hawai’i. The book describes how she came to be there, what it was like and what she felt about the experience afterwards. Her life
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First published 2019. Penguin, paperback, 2020, pp 366, c.90,000 words. This is classic Le Carré and one of his best. We are back in the world of MI6 and something smells bad. Our hero – for once not a public-school boy – is a former runner of agents in eastern Europe and is being shuffled
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First published 1982. Faber and Faber, paperback, 1991, pp183, c.60,000 words. An amazing debut. Ishiguro understands what Hilary Mantel once said about the need for a wobble in every sentence. There is an element of doubt in the veracity of every word which makes for a deeply unsettling read. This is the way we humans
Pale View of the Hills, A — Kazuo Ishiguro Read More »
First published 2020. Century, hardback, 2020, pp 478, c.160,000 words. Tim Peake was the second British person to go into space, and he spent six months on the International Space Station [ISS] in 2015. This book is his autobiography, written with the help of a ghost writer. Peake’s career follows that of the ‘typical’ astronaut:
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First published 2009. Faber paperback, translated by Maureen Freely, 2010, pp 734, c.230,000 words. OK, so you’ve just won the Noble Prize in Literature, what are you going to do next? As the worst health care is given to the very poor and the very rich, so with editorial help. No one is going to
Museum of Innocence, The — Orhan Pamuk Read More »
First published 2017. Black Swan, paperback, 2018, pp 461, c.130,000. Scott Kelly made four journeys into space. The first two on the space shuttle, the latter two using Soyuz. His first was a short mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble space telescope, the remaining missions were to the International Space Station, culminating in his
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First published 1937. Millennium, paperback, 1999, pp 272, c.105,000 words (main text). In his foreword, Brian W. Aldiss says that Stapledon stated that ‘this [book] is not a novel at all’, and one can see why. The protagonist is not described and there is only one other named individual. The arc of the story is
Starmaker — Olaf Stapledon Read More »