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

A morbid sense of Science

Advantages: Good indepth/thinking novels
Disadvantages: Perhaps too much detail for some

I’m one of those people who tend to like quirky but mellow entertainment. My humour tends to be dry and I can find enjoyment in sad stories. Personally I think this is because I’m actually rather upbeat and optimistic in life and so a sad story simply tends to keep the balance. Thus the fact that Braveheart (for all it’s historical inaccuracies) is one of my favourite films should come as no surprise. I have recently finished my third Steven Baxter ...
...“Time” and the third “The Time Ships”. So if you are familiar with any of these three books then it will also come as no surprise to you that I quite enjoy Steven Baxter’s sense of story. To those of you who are not familiar with Steven Baxter’s novels, let me explain it like this. During a Steven Baxter novel, don’t expect all of the good guys in the story to live happily ever after. In fact, don’t even assume that any of them are going to survive. ...

PuddyTat 01.11.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Moonseed - Stephen Baxter

Haven The Rotten Apple revisited.

Advantages: Good solid read
Disadvantages: Not to everybodys taste

...Fisher. The American Title was Guards of Heaven This book comprises three tales. 4, Vengeance for a lonely man. aka Wolf in the fold. 5 Guard against dishonour. 6, Two Kings in Haven. aka The bones of haven. Here we return to that rotten port town Haven, where anything can be had for a price. Even Guard Captains Hawk and Fisher, or so it would seem... The Town is no better than before in all its dirt and squalor. The Quality still lives in ...
...routine briefing before duty, The Guards are informed of a new spy in Haven This in itself is nothing unusual. However he has learned something that the Council wishes that he had not. They are in a panic about it, and want the spy and his contacts found. The sooner the better. Acting on information received, Hawk and Fisher find the spy, but he escapes to the house of a sorcerer and is transformed and flees into the Tower MacNeil just outside the ...

Coloneljohn 22.01.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Guards of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk and Fisher - Simon R. Green

Raft

Advantages: Excellent story
Disadvantages: none found

In a completely unique universe, Baxter makes his mark. This was the first novel to be published by Stephen Baxter, and certainly made his mark. This truly is a unique story, putting the science back in to science fiction. "Imagine a universe where the force of gravity is a billion times stronger than on Earth. Where humans have detectable gravity fields. Where stars are only a mile across and burn outwithin a year of their formation." I've read ...
...truly shows how inventive Baxter really is. A welcome surprise. This was also the first Stephen Baxter book that I read, and it definitely gave me a greater appreciation for how the imagination can be let loose to tell such an amazing story. It will most certainly not be the last Baxter book I'll read. ...

s_starling7 15.01.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Raft - Stephen Baxter

Pint-size Epic

Advantages: a msut for fans of epic, good vs. evil horror stories.
Disadvantages: Does too much in too few pages - could have been fleshed out more.

...modern horror can mean outside the corporate publishing world. A finely crafted novel - a partnership wherein it is impossible to tell where one author stops and the other begins - this tells the story of a secret town outside town, buried in a place behind and within Swansea, homes to the vagrants and street people. Old Town, as the place is named, is a sanctuary where nobody ages, where nobody has to die or suffer. As the book begins, we quickly ...
...Town and its inhabitants. The guardians of Old Town step up to the plate, and battle commences, as the ordinary folk of Swansea go about their business. That's it. in essence, an archetypal tale of good versus evil. Where the novel gains heavily is the unique setting, the otherworldly hideaway that is Old Town. Potentially, this is a place we could return to in future novels, a creation unique to the authors. It’s a privilege to be give the keys ...

RichardW 12.12.2000 · Read full review
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Review of The Ragchild - Steve Lockley

*BIG* Scale Sci-Fi

Advantages: Clever, real science,
Disadvantages: Patchy, some needless sections

Ring claims to be a standalone novel, but it in fact it is the conlusion of a series of books called the Xeelee sequence. Ring concerns a religious group called Superet who are about to mount an expedition five million years into the future in order to safeguard mankind's ultimate survival. The expedition is intended to drag one end of a wormhole through time and then have the crew return with news of the future. Events in a previous book provide ...
...is not to say that Ring isn't clever, in fact it is downright ingenious in places, often to the detriment of the plot, with characters explaining what is happening in some *very* exposition-heavy segments. Plotwise, there is nothing special here and the fact that characters and plot from the other books in the sequence make themselves felt lends a sense of the arbitray, with one noteable discovery of an object after the midpoint of the book seemingly ...

stevehammond 14.07.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Ring - Stephen Baxter