Book Reviews

(Books XXI to XXX) First published c.20 B.C.  Penguin, paperback, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt, 1972, pp 711, c.270,000 words (main text). We all know that Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants, but what else can we remember about these...

First Published 1961.  Pan, paperback, 1971, pp 237, c.90,000 words. This was Lyall’s first novel, and it was an immediate success.  It allowed him to give up journalism and become a full-time writer.  It is a classic thriller of the...

First published 2018.  Titan, paperback, 2018, pp 411, c.120,000 words. An entertaining space opera: big guns, faster-than-light travel and communications, weird aliens, disillusioned misfits.  All the usual elements of the genre are here,...

First Published 1965.  Vintage, paperback, 2011, pp 176, c.55,000 words. What a quaint book this is.  It has very old-fashioned feel and was almost out of date when it was written.  A thick fog permeates London during the action, which...

First published, 1960.  Pan, paperback, 1971, pp. 285, c.85,000 words. What a charming book this is.  How unusual to find a story that has real narrative drive but where no one is truly bad; actually they are all decent people. The hero...

First published 1986.  Voyager, paperback, 1998, pp 238, c.75,000 words. According to a biography of Clarke, one of his jobs was a futurist, and it is in this that he really excels.  He clearly had a keen interest in physics and followed and...

First published 1984.  Abacus, paperback, 2013, pp 244, c.75,000 words. This was Banks’ first published novel, although he had written a number of unpublished science fiction books prior to this.  He was then aged thirty and had spent much...

First published 1972.  Harper Collins, paperback, 2020, pp 312, c.85,000 words. This is another ‘almost Bagley’.  Along with Juggernaut and Night of Error, he didn’t publish this and it was only found in his document archive, held at the Boston...

First published 1953.  Pan, paperback, 1957, pp 192, c.75,000 words. This book provides a snapshot of how the West viewed the possibility of space travel in the early 1950s.  Leonard had been Science Editor of Time magazine for ten years at...

First published 1968.  Harcourt, paperback, 1990, translated by Louis Iribarne, 1979, pp 206, c,75,000 words. What a good writer Lem was.  Here, there are some beautiful descriptive passages, original stories and an engaging hero who is neither...