This was a fantastic book. Bill Bryson gives us a look at Britain from the perspective of an outsider, but one who really loves this country. His traipse around Britain before he returns to America for a couple of years is poignant and always very entertaining. Okay, so he has his rose-tinted glasses firmly on and at times presents a very Olde Worlde picture of the country, but it’s done with such love and affection that you don’t mind
ISBN: 9780771017049
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Year of publication: 1995
Gully Foyle spends 6 months trapped in the remains of a spaceship in deep space and manages to escape to get revenge on those who left him to die. This is a book that very successfully mixes another “what if” (what if the ability to teleport was inherent in every human?) with a very human story of revenge and self-discovery. Highly recommended.
ISBN: 9780679767800
Publisher: Vintage
Year of publication: 1955
This is a book about twin planets, on one of which the human colonists wiped out the native intelligent species. Or did they? Perhaps the natives wiped out the colonists and took their place as shapeshifters. Frankly, I still don’t know. There are three stories that make up this book and I didn’t really like or understand any of them. I don’t know if this is just me being a bit dense or what, but I didn’t enjoy this book at all.
ISBN: 9780312890209
Publisher: Orb Books
Year of publication: 1972
This was a much better fantasy than Simak’s earlier novel, Out of their Minds. The plot is quite slight with a quest and a heroic prince who gathers an eclectic band of followers, but the characters are all well-sketched and the journey is entertaining, although the end feels very rushed.
ISBN: 9780891905219
Publisher: Amereon Ltd
Year of publication: 1978
These are the political memoirs of Mo Mowlam, detailing her time in Northern Ireland (including the time before government when she was Shadow NI minister) and afterwards in the Cabinet Office. She’s a very good writer, with a personal style that still gets across everything that she wants to clearly. She pulls few punches and makes it clear that she was forced out of the Northern Ireland office while she still felt that she had a lot to contribute to the process. I was reading this just at the time that Sinn Fein announced that they were considering support for the PSNI and I thought how much she’s still missed. I hadn’t realised that people had wanted her to stand against Blair for leader of the party in 2001. That would have been very interesting. I wonder what Britain under its first woman PM would have been like?
ISBN: 9780340793954
Year of publication: 2002
I have to admit that I approached this book with some trepidation, having not really liked The Separation, but I enjoyed this quite a lot. It’s about a group of scientists who explore the nature of reality by creating their own “projected” world and living in it, with alternate personalities for months at a time. A nice little piece about the nature of reality, and a good human story of conflict with one of the participants having to deal with an abusive ex-boyfriend. The end was confusing, but when you get layers of reality like this, it often is. It could probably do with a re-read.
ISBN: 9780330255431
Publisher: Pan Books
Year of publication: 1977
Larry Niven opened up his Known Space universe to others to write about a war between Man and the Kzin, a warlike catlike race. This book contains four of the best of these stories. The first two are by Niven himself to introduce the universe and the war but the second two, by Greg Bear and Jerry Pournelle respectively (both co-authored with S. M. Stirling) are arguably the better, not having to set up the exposition with Pournelle’s novella (taking up about half the book) being the best of the bunch. An interesting universe and maybe worth digging into further.
ISBN: 9780441054831
Publisher: Ace Books
Another of Asimov’s classics that I hadn’t got around to reading until now. A chance encounter leads to a potentially limitless clean energy source, but is there a dark side that could destroy the world? This book gives Asimov a chance to show his chemistry background, and is science fiction at its purest: take one “what if” and run with it and see where it takes you. In this case, what if an element came into our universe from another where the laws of physics are ever-so-slightly different (a stronger Strong nuclear force). A very entertaining book and a great example of good science fiction.
ISBN: 9781857989342
Publisher: Millenium
Year of publication: 1972
Amber is the only ‘real’ world, casting ‘shadows’ that its royal family can manipulate to travel through. Now the King has vanished and the royal family is tearing itself apart for succession to the throne, whilst being menaced by powerful foes. Can they survive, or will the forces of chaos destroy the universe?
This series of five books started off slowly. I almost gave up after the second book, but I’m glad that I persevered since it picked up the pace with book three and got going. Worth reading, but you have to stick with it.
ISBN: 9781857987263
Publisher: Gollancz
Year of publication: 1978
I was introduced to Robert Sheckley some time ago as a very surreal and edgy author whose works left you feeling like like your mind had been through a washing machine on spin cycle. This collection of fairly early short stories is different. The edginess feels missing in a lot of these stories — they seem more ‘gentle’ than some of his other work. This is in no way a bad thing, but it wasn’t what I was expecting and surprised me. However, some observant jabs at capitalism and taking trends to extremes make for entertaining reading.
ISBN: 9780553129052
Publisher: Bantam
Year of publication: 1979
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