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Imaginative SF

Advantages: Imagination in SF at its best
Disadvantages: No real action for fans of battles

Silverberg is a writer I tend to find as reliable. If I need a good book, having his name on the cover is usually a guarantee. This book does not break that guarantee, far from it. I found this book to be what Science Fiction is all about. The idea for this is a human colonised world where individuality is frowned upon, where uttering the word 'I' is considered obscene. The author manages to portray what it must be like in such a society and how ...

sjm6 14.08.2000 · Read full review

Review of A Time of Changes - Robert Silverberg

Sci-fi Noir

Advantages: Atomspheric old-style detective novel meets high-tech sci-fi
Disadvantages: Drugs, sex and swearing could offend

Laurens Bancroft is found in his study with his brains decorating the bookcase behind him. However, when a verdict of suicide is returned, Bancroft is not satisfied - adamant that he would never take his own life, he calls in outside help to investigate what he is sure is his murder. And so Takeshi Kovacs, Envoy solider-elite turned criminal, is awoken from his own near-death to play private eye to the rich and ancient Bancroft. Either he discovers ...
...to play out his penal sentence as 'd.h.f' - digital human freight. Struggling to overcome his last memories of being fatally shot, he finds himself in a different body, light years away from home and back on humanity's home planet, Earth. Can he find the clues to what really befell Laurens Bancroft? Not easy when someone is trying to kill you - again - nor when the local police seem to have a more than healthy interest in 'your body'. To avoid total ...

Calypte 15.02.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan

Rankin Ranks highly

Advantages: totally bizarre
Disadvantages: where's the time gone?

...answer is: it can't. Armageddon the Musical is often credited as the novel that 'made' Robert Rankin the purveyor of far-fetched fiction he's loved for. I for one am glad I decided to pick up that book (although it's since cost me a fortune in hardbacks over the years since that day). To get a true appreciation for Armageddon the Musical, you should also read Armageddon 2: the B-Movie and Armageddon 3. Only then will you fully appreciate the mad ...
...his characters find themselves in, and of course the rolling gags and the strange feeling of reja-vu (I'll be seeing this one again), which must be a tradition, and old charter or something. Put it this way, if I ever need to *seriously* cheer myself up, it's one of the few books I can safely say will keep me reading and laughing from start to finish. ...

angehodgson 17.04.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Armageddon the Musical - Robert Rankin

Closer to Heaven

Advantages: Great character building
Disadvantages: A little slow paced for my taste

Fantasy and science fiction are genres that mesh well together. Some authors have written successfully across both genres, but not usually in the same story. Jaine Fenn has managed to combine both in one book and it's an interesting read. One night, a stranger is found lying unconscious in a bog just outside the village of Dangwern. He appears to have come from nowhere and, apart from a strange piece of cloth lying near his naked body, there is nothing ...
...Unfortunately, this includes the stranger himself, as he is suffering from amnesia and has no idea even where he is, much less how he came to be there. Fortunately for Sais, as he is nicknamed, the boy who finds him is "sky touched". This means he is soon to travel to the City of Lights to be tested to see if he is worthy of being a consort of the goddesses. The village elders permit Sais and the boy's mother Kerin to accompany him to see if anyone ...

Soho_Black 19.12.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Consorts of Heaven - Jaine Fenn

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