Tag archives for Hugo Award
Warlords of Llantatis by Dominic Green [Book Review]
Warlords of Llantatis by Dominic Green My rating: 5 of 5 stars The author emailed to ask me to review this, unusually I bought the book rather than accepting a freebie. There were two reason for this, one was that the reviews were really good, and the other was that it was only 99p for the kindle version. I'm pleased to report that it lived up to the promise in the reviews. Warlords of Llantatis At first sight this looks like a fantasy, but it's definitely science fiction. Set a couple of decades in the future most of the action takes place in a virtual game world. There are very brief interludes of real world that contrast the player life with that of their characters. The story is a combination of a detective mystery and also a heroic quest. Inside…
Eligibility for the 2014 Hugos
My novelette Crisis Point is eligible for the Best Novelette category of the 2014 Hugos. Weighing in at about 13k words it is a near future science fiction techno thriller set in the middle of the 21st Century. So if you want to grab a free copy here are the links Crisis Point on Crisis Point on Amazon UK Crisis point widens the world view from that presented in Perfects (due Summer 2014, but you can read extracts from it elsewhere on the blog). It tells the story of a military conspiracy to overthrow the democratically elected US President. This is a future where space travel has got cheaper and major corporations have used the FAI treaty that establishes space as non-national from 100km above the Earth. This gives them a guaranteed tax free haven, and also allows them to establish…
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Book Review: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie My rating: 5 of 5 stars A refreshing take on space opera, and a fascinating main character (a self-aware spaceship AI that inhabits multiple bodies simultaneously). We are introduced to the main character, who is a spaceship AI in multiple bodies, through the events of an annexation of a world. We see things from multiple points of view which all represent the same character. Through this story, told as flashbacks from another sequence, we find out about how the Radch works, and the values that empire has. The scenes are well written and avoid grand expositions, instead there is a gradual burn towards the climax. One of the interesting features, which I liked, was that in the Radch language there is no gender pronoun, everyone is 'her/she'. This is used to indicate when the speech…
Book Review: Equoid by Charles Stross
Equoid by Charles Stross My rating: 5 of 5 stars My daughter has just brought home a sparkly unicorn, and I am very This is a Laundry files short story featuring Bob Howard. In this outing Bob has to deal with a report from a well qualified DEFRA vet who harbours suspicions of a potential outbreak of Equoids. The file Bob is given as briefing contains the letters of one HP Lovecraft that tell of HPL's own experience of contact with an Equoid outbreak. This is a highly entertaining story that provides a twist on unicorns and gives them an interesting life cycle which is truly horrific. It also has some laugh out loud points too. UPDATE: this has been nominated for a 2014 Hugo Award, which is well deserved. One of the best I read in 2013. View all…