Science Fiction Books > less than 5 GBP Science Fiction Books

1'st Sight of Brentford

Advantages: Music, Time Travel, Strange Moustaches Etc etc
Disadvantages: Time Travel makes me dizzy

I read this book on holiday it was meant to last me through the holiday but I actually read it in 1 day. Mostly because I stayed up all night reading it. This book should come with a disclaimer not to read it when you have a drink as time travel makes you very dizzy and you need to lay down. The characters you meet are brilliant. I loved the character of Soap Distant but this was the 1st time i had met any of the characters and I was a bit confused ...
...through time and sanity. Mostly marred by insanity I think. It contains so many twists I can't even begin to explain the story. You meet Soap Distant (traveller to the centre of the earth) first who seems about the sanest character in the story and like so many people he is chasing his 15 minutes of fame but he comes back to a world very different to the one he left. Richard Branson rules the world you would think he couldn't do much worse than the ...

bellybee 27.11.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls - Robert Rankin

He's Not Selling Any Alibis

Advantages: A decent, entertaining piece of fiction
Disadvantages: None really, but a little strange -ooooooooh

...sure it’s very nice. Certainly the picture Robert Rankin paints of it in his novel, “The Antipope”, depicts an extremely interesting place to visit - full of places of interest and colourful (to put it mildly) local characters. I’m guessing the book is set in the very early seventies, the only clue we get is that two pints of “Large”, the preferred local draught, costs 10/6 (10 shillings and sixpence – ask ...
...that one of the central characters has been dead for a few hundred years the exact timing of the novel's “present day” seems a trifle irrelevant. Much of the action takes place in The Flying Swan, a local pub run by Neville, the part-time barman. Although never actually stated, we are left with the impression that Neville has been, and will be, a fixture in the bar for many years. Two of his work shy regulars, John O’Mally, a drunken ...

Thamisgith 18.02.2003 · Read full review
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Review of The Antipope - Robert Rankin

The sweet smell of success

Advantages: Not too many running jokes, clever use of themes
Disadvantages: The end is fairly inevitable

Knees Up Mother Earth is a well-produced insight into the sort of writing Robert Rankin is able to produce when he's on form. Continuing well with a set of characters who came to fruition seven-or-so books previously, the author manages to weave a plot not devoid of nonsensical calamity, but also ripe with good humour and clever story-telling. Although Rankin can have a tendancy to run with an over-abundance of obvious running gags, getting lost ...
...hilarious happenings along the way, Knees Up Mother Earth lodges itself firmly amongst the higher echelon of Rankin-produced humour, in this writer's opinion. Whether you've read the rest of the series or not, this is as good a place as any to start, or just to join in again. ...

robcauson 26.09.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Knees Up Mother Earth - Robert Rankin

Robert Heinlein, First and Best

Advantages: A very entertaining thoughtful reat
Disadvantages: Not to every ones liking

Starship Troopers by Robert A Heinlein. Published in 1959. Very brief synopsis:- With this book you follow the life of one Juan (Johnny) Rico from his enlistment in the Federal Service, Mobile Infantry, up to his command of a platoon of these troops in an Interstellar war. Mankind is facing a Bug like alien species, something like a giant ant crossed with a spider. Johnny Rico comes from a background of wealth and privilege and through peer pressure ...
...who has completed a minimum two year service has the Right to vote. Not everybody wants to serve and thus vote. A good part of the book is taking up with his time at boot camp and the training he undergoes. Running in the background that we are not aware of is the situation that is getting steadily worse, going from normal peace time through a state of emergency to a full war. The reasons for this we are not told. This book is written in the third ...

Coloneljohn 18.04.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein

The Hatchet-job of Wimbledon

Advantages: Easy reading
Disadvantages: But so's 'Where's Spot?' and I won't recommend that to you either

...lied to and that all the fantasy fiction of the Victorian era was in fact true. That 19th Century England was in fact full of airships and automata, where Oscar Wilde was a notorious ladies' man and Queen Victoria was the Empire Bike. Airships and automata are familiar enough to any reader of alternative histories. They crop up in anything where Rome didn't fall or the Nazis weren't defeated. To combine this kind of earnest but far-fetched academic ...
...people getting him confused with the man who created Rebus, Rankin is the slow-thinking man's Terry Pratchett. The author of a string of 'comedy' novels set around the London borough of Brentford, these books lure you in with admittedly brilliant punning titles such as '101 Damnations' and things. The contents are generally (I've read three or four over the years, hopefully I've learned my lesson now) meandering tales full of one-note characters, ...

Olly_Plimsoll 26.06.2006 · Read full review
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Review of The Witches of Chiswick - Robert Rankin