Science Fiction Books > 5 GBP to 9 GBP Science Fiction Books

It is not just about football!

Advantages: It's very funny, and oh so true!
Disadvantages: None

The Disc, for those who don't know, continues to float in space, supported by the elephants who ride the back of the great swimming turtle A'tuin. The Hub about which the planet spins is a centre of great magic, and best avoided if you want to live a happy and contented life. At the outer perimeter is the great circle sea which unendingly streams over the rim into the void, which is best avoided if you want to continue to live at all. Most Discians ...
...Smeems, for instance, is the Candle Nave at the Unseen University. He has to worry about keeping the candles not just alight, but properly melted, artistically, gothicly, dribbled, as it were. Of course, there's Trevor to help. And there's Nutt. With two t's. Trevor Likely has a tendency to skive off work whenever possible, and to kick a tin can around. His dad was a legend. Nutt is… well, no-one's quite sure what Nutt is, even him. Goblin isn't ...

hiker 07.12.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett

After The God Squads

Advantages: convincing world-building, complex plot and thought-provoking ideas
Disadvantages: flat characters

The world post Faith Wars (or Oil Wars, as the fundamentalists are inclined to call them) is both very different and, at the same time - as it should be in relatively close-future s-f - uncannily similar to ours. It's a world of the Second Enlightenment, where, at least in Europe, religion has been truly separated from politics and became a genuinely private and societaly marginalised activity. Terrorism is history and the global warming has been ...
...of churchgoer-bashing God Squads in the aftermath of the Faith wars. But it's all about to change when a priest and then a bishop are killed in what hints at a return of fundamentalist violence. But is it really? Soon the godless join the religious on the list of targets and the plot thickens, connecting Scottish clubs, an Australian creationist theme park and outer space, with new Gnostics, cyber-veterans and Christian fundamentalists figuring prominently. ...

magdadh 28.05.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Night Sessions - Ken MacLeod

Its not cricket

Advantages: Very funny
Disadvantages: none

...word processor of Douglas Adams Life, make reading Life, the Universe and Everything a very pleasurable experience This is the 3rd (but not final) book in the Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy Trilogy, but don’t worry you don’t have to have read the preceding books to make sense of this one, just remember it’s not meant to make sense. The story starts with Ford and Arthur stranded in Earth’s pre-history, however they ...
...at Lords cricket ground just as England retain the Ashes (Cricket lovers will obviously notice at this point that this is a work of fiction). After the excitement of time travel, and an English win at cricket the crowd at MCC are further treated by the appearance of a spaceship from which deadly robots appear, killing and maiming all and sundry with cricket bats, before stealing the ashes and disappearing as suddenly as they appeared. But what’s ...

brownp1 02.10.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams

Shame It Ended Here

Advantages: Funny and witty novel from the late Douglas Adams
Disadvantages: Doesn't live up to expectations, seems incomplete

Douglas Adams' Hitch-Hiker's Guide 'trilogy' entertained and inspired me, and I was wary to read this final instalment due to reviews on the internet which suggested it was of poor quality and may hunder my enjoyment of the series. The fifth and final book chronicling the experiences of Arthur Dent and his less human comrades does seem much less original and enjoyable than the previous books, and although this was my opinion of the fourth book "So ...
...the way that book's style was taken in a different direction. This book seems to be a mix between the fast-paced comedy adventures of the first three books and the reflective, stationary nature of the fourth, and it doesn't fit together too well. "Mostly Harmless," once again taking the title from a memorable concept in the first book, occurs an unspecified several years after the events of the last book and sees the "thirty-ish, tall and never quite ...

gunmenoftheapocalypse 10.12.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams

AS HARD SF AS IT GETS (The Line War - Neal Asher)

Advantages: Asher knows his stuff
Disadvantages: It's all a bit too much for me

This new addition to the Polity universe starts off where the Polity Agent left off. Polity is still suffering from the onslaught of Jain tech, a lethal nanotechnology designed to destroy civilisations. Jain-infested Erebus and all his subjugated AIs are at war with the Polity and Agent Cormac, Orlandine and Dragon all are trying to their best, in their unique ways, to thwart Erebus's plans, whatever they might be. The narrative constantly skips ...
...in sequence. As the previous Cormac novels, this one is a space opera with a big helping of post-cyber-punk. All kinds of human-AI hybrids feature prominently (bio-machines and a powerful nanotechnology). The underlying conflict and, let me call it, existential core of the Polity world, buried deeply under the explosive high-tech, is about what it is to be a human or a machine, evolved or built, top-down or bottom-up. And, as with the previous Cormac ...

magdadh 24.05.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Line War (Agent Cormac 5) - Neal Asher