Books tagged with: flashbacks

Broken is a speculative fiction novel by Susan J Bigelow. When Broken lost her ability to fly, she thought she was finished with being an extrahuman, a superhero. Then the world around her started to break apart and the mysterious teenager Michael found her, bringing with him the promise of rebirth...

I’m always guilty of making snap judgements of books and their covers. Sci-fi covers don’t tend to help. Andrew Bannister’s The Creation Machine is not going to draw you in with its generic spaceship framed by a generic planet, and the woefully reductive, sensationalist logline of ‘It helped create...

Crow Road is a novel by the noted British author Iain M Banks. Craving for more books by Bank and needing a few books to bring with me on my holiday (mostly consisting of doing nothing but reading and being on the beach) I started by taking a trip to my local library. I didn't really find anything i...

Originally published in 1964, Greybeard is a post apocalyptic vision by Brian Aldiss, the version reviewed here is for the Gollancz SF Masterworks collection. Greybeard is all about the human ageing process, growing old (and being old) - an idea that reminds me of something a pessimistic friend once...

I've been meaning to grab this series for quite some time — the combination of Atwood's evocative prose and a post-apocalyptic setting is a highly promising one. Oryx and Crake tells the story of an altered world through the eyes of a man once known as Jimmy. Now known as Snowman and clothed in dete...

Painkillers is a thought provoking read. I completed it in less than three days, which is something I haven’t done with a book for nearly fifteen years. During that time, I tried to work out what was keeping me absorbed as it is a very atypical Science Fiction novel, but perhaps that’s it. There is...

Sunshine Republic is a dystopian science fiction novel by Ted Brownstein. It's the year 2130 and the newly independent Republic of Florida is deeply divided over the use of technology, the Futurist party believe that their society could be vastly improved by the use of cheap, abundant robot labour a...

The Firestorm Conspiracy is a science fiction novel by Cheryl Angst. Fleet Commander John Thompson is on long term leave from the USEF and is pretty much just drifting through life until an old friend tracks him down and forces him to confront some very uncomfortable truths that he has been burying...

While many stories depict the fight between man and machine, Sea of Rust shows a future where the machines have already won. Humankind has been wiped off the face of the Earth by the very robots that were built to serve them. Now the planet is controlled by vast intelligences (known as One World Int...

Elysium Fire is the sequel to Aurora Rising (also known as The Prefect), set in Reynold's Revelation Space universe but before events of his previous novels. Like Aurora Rising, it can be read as a stand-alone novel. It's the 25th century (with no Buck Rogers in sight) and humanity has, in many ways...

Star Wars is a franchise rich with great characters, but who to choose? It is tricky writing a cannon book on the likes of likes Han Solo or Rey lest you impinge on the films themselves. Thankfully, with such an abundance of history to choose from, there is always an interesting character to expand...

There are many things that I want to be in life, but I don’t want to be the relation of a famous Star Trek character. You are only there to be killed off at some point  e.g.  Kirk’s Son or  Father depending on what Universe you are in. Now in  Star Trek : The  Captain ’s  Daughter  by Peter David it...

When an intellectual property becomes huge it can go one of two  ways,  a homogeneous blob of the same stories on repeat, or a vibrant  universe full of different adventures. Star Wars was already massive, but  recently has branched out even wider. This included a reset of the tie in novels and rath...

I have done my time at university where I drank too much and stayed out too late. Looking back now I can only think about my poor liver and the crazy never die attitude that many of the young have. I was never that adventurous and stuck to beer and whatever was on offer at the Student Union. I certa...

In the aftermath of the global pandemic, there is a darkness to the world that has yet to retreat. The way in which writers approach their craft in this moment is crucial. Some are electing to ignore it in the stories that they create, whilst others embrace the context directly in their work. In gen...

Any story of colonial rescue, involving cryosleep spaceships and small crews operating to solve a crisis far from Earth has all the ingredients to be an exciting read. However, the way in which a writer organises these elements and makes them palatable as a story remains an issue at hand. Refraction...