Book Reviews
First published 2019. Baen, paperback, 2019, pp 312, c.110,000 words.
This book arose out of a symposium held by the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop in 2016. It is a collection of science fiction stories and essays on aspects of interstellar...
First published c.29 B.C. Penguin, paperback, 2002, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt, pp 488, c.155,000 words (main text).
Roman historians of Livy’s period apparently valued literary style above historical accuracy, which may be just as well...
First published 1947. Fontana, paperback, 1988, pp 272, c.90,000 words.
This story was originally written as a radio serial and later re-written into book form. It retains some of the distinctly episodic structure of the original which makes...
2nd edition first published 2015. Praxis Springer, paperback, 2015, pp 277, c.120,000 words (main text).
Vulpetti seems to be the primary writer of this book, judging by the Italian-accented English. He seems to have spent his professional...
First published 1965. Vintage, paperback, 2005, pp 275, c.70,000 words.
This novel was a great success when first published, making Margaret Forster’s name, and was made into a successful film.
The story is contemporary, and covers the...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...