Rosewater is an exciting science fiction novel set several decades after first contact with an alien called Wormwood, that has established itself as a large biodome in Nigeria. The novel follows Kaaro, a thief whose extra special abilities are forged from an unlikely connection with the alien. The whole thing is part sci-fi adventure and part spy novel. The novel is set in multiple timelines with whole sections of the story told in flashback.

This Is How You Lose the Time War is a short novella about two members of opposing factions (Red and Blue) engaged in a ’time war’: that is they travel in time and attempt to erase each other’s existence. Except that one day Red decides to taunt Blue with a letter, and a correspondence emerges. The book is entertaining by virtue of wit and brevity. However, the elements that are skipped over that end up being more interesting to reflect on later.

I managed to read all of the foundation novels since I wrote about the first one. In this post, I’ll write about the next two, which covers the original trilogy of ‘novels’ created from the original short stories. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers. Foundation and Empire Foundation and Empire comprises two novella length stories. The first story (“The General”) picks up from shortly after where the last of the five short stories in Foundation left off.

For our first anniversary we decided to exhange books. What better way to celebrate a paper anniversary? Ingrid bought me the entire Foundation saga, most of which were reissued in fancy new paperback designs by Mike Topping in 2016. All save for 1993’s Forward The Foundation that is, but Ingrid got me a copy anyway. Hence, here is a new series of blog posts! The Foundation novels detail a galactic empire in decline.

Alistair Reynolds’ 2000 novel “Revelation Space” has long been in orbit of my science fiction “to read” list, but it wasn’t until one sleepless night (post “Command and Control”) that I came across it in Ingrid’s audiobooks. I was instantly drawn in as I listened to the opening scene about an archaeological dig facing evacuation ahead of an imminent ‘razor storm’. “Revelation Space” is hard sci-fi set in a universe where the speed of light cannot be exceeded.

I had low expectations for “Hello America”, the next in the series of Ballard novels that I started reading over seven years ago. However, it turned out to be a hoot. A couple of years ago, this novel would have been a wig-out bit of standard Ballard weirdness (a bit like “The Drowned World” or “The Crystal World”) but given recent events “Hello America” is starting to take on an eerie prescience.

I enjoyed Wonder Woman, which came as a surprise to me given my growing distaste for superhero movies. I can remember seeing the Superman reboot Man of Steel with its phallic rockets and its boring boring fight sequences. But almost everything about Wonder Woman exceeded my expectations. It’s a well-made superhero movie and better still, it gets to the heart of why these kinds of movies matter. Whereas Man of Steel ended up levelling cities and criminally underusing Amy Adams, all while giving us no stake on why Superman even matters as a man or a hero, Wonder Woman focusses tightly on its main character and explains what matters to her, and in turn the movie then explains why she should matter to us.

“Something Coming Through” is a science fiction novel set in the near future. A few years after a brief nuclear war known as “The Spasm”, an alien race known as the Jackaroo introduce themselves to humanity. The novel is funny, thoughtful, and politically charged. I found it to be a good read. The aliens have given humanity fifteen “gift” worlds and an automated way to access them. Think of the Docklands Light Railway but with space shuttles.

In my review of the book I mentioned that a film adaptation of The Martian was on the way. I’m not sure why but it got released earlier than any of the dates that I’d seen and so on Saturday I found myself watching The Martian on the big screen. Could the film version deliver the same level of entertainment as the novel? Could Mark Watney (Matt Damon) get off Mars alive?

I received a copy of The Martian by Andy Weir for Christmas. This week during some annual leave I managed to finish it. It’s one of those novels that just flies by once it gets going. I’ve stayed up incredibly late to read it as it is full of those “just one more page” moments. It’s a readable and enjoyable story of an astronaut trapped on Mars. Mark Watney is believed to be dead following an accident during an emergency evacuation in a dust storm.

Jodorowsky’s Dune is a documentary about outlandish Chilean director Alejandro Jodorosky’s attempt at a film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune in the 1970s. As a big fan of the novel and of science fiction in general, I was very interested in this film. It does not disappoint. It gives a great insight into the mind of a little known (if slightly batty) director and shows even an artistic failure can lead to shock waves that can be felt in later work by others.

Feersum Endjinn is one of Iain Banks’ few non-Culture sci-fi novels. Like the Culture novels, an existential crisis drives the plot: in this case the action takes place on Earth in the far future and the sun has aged to a point where it will grow and swallow the earth. This is referred to as the Encroachment. The characters are divided between the good guys who seek to find a solution for the greater good and bad guys who use the Encroachment to consolidate their power and influence.

Finally saw Guardians of the Galaxy today. Here are fifteen observations about the film that may or may not constitute a short review. At least two Oscars for Best Use Of Body Paint (Green) and Best Use Of Body Paint (Blue) are sewn up. Chris Pratt basically plays Star Lord as “Andy Dwyer in space” and this is fine by me. Best movie to feature a talking raccoon in a long time.

After a few false starts I managed to finish “High-Rise”, the next in my collection of JG Ballard novels. For a book that I had trouble getting into, it turned out to be a pretty good read - even if it was also a pretty unpleasant one. Published in 1975, “High-Rise” is perhaps ahead of its time in exploring the effects of social breakdown in stylised and artificial situations where people are in close contact.

Today I went to see the new Superman reboot Man of Steel with friends. I really enjoyed it, particularly the more reflective take on the superhero myth. Starting out with the fate of the planet Krypton, Man of Steel approximately fuses the events of both the first two original Superman movies. We get to see Superman’s arrival and childhood on earth and then the arrival of Zod, a maniac bent on replacing the earth and everyone on it with a new race of Kryptonians.

I saw Star Trek: Into Darkness last night in 3D at the IMAX in Waterloo. I am going to have to separate this into a review into two parts, a review of the film and a review of the viewing experience. I am not completely happy with how the film experience is changed by the 3D and the super big screen and I will try to explain what I mean.

A while back, I decided I was going to write about the Iain M. Banks sci-fi-novels (mainly as a respite from having to read and write about J. G. Ballard novels, but I only got as fas as writing about the excellent “Against A Dark Barkground” and re-reading the first of the Culture novels “Consider Phlebas”. WARNING: Some plot spoilers follow (but not too many). I’m not sure why it has taken almost two years to write about this novel.

“The Gone-Away World” is a novel by Nick Harkaway. It’s about a world slightly askew to our own in which the powers-that-be have deigned to unleash a weapon that simply wipes the enemy out of existence. Unfortunately the enemies also have the same weapon and there are terrible consequences to the extent that the very fabric of reality is threatened. If you don’t already know what reification means, you will by the end.

There was much excitement about Contagion at work. Finally a movie that explains as part of the plot! A bunch of us went to see it, mainly to see whether a disaster movie about a global pandemic could hold up as entertainment and to have a bit of a giggle if it couldn’t. I liked three things in particular about the film. I liked the cinematography, especially the opening sequences with the index cases staggering around.

A week or so ago, I finished reading Dune by Frank Herbert. It tells the story of a revolution within a Galactic Empire that takes place on a harsh and unforgiving desert planet called Arrakis. One central theme is how destinies can be shaped despite being intertwined around many axes. Another is the importance of adaptation in the fight for survival. I came to Dune via the David Lynch film and then the Sci-Fi Channel’s mini-series, which I was able to stream through LoveFilm.

No man is an island (not any more) You are tracked pretty much everywhere you go. CCTV, the GPS on your phone or the signals sent by your more primitive model to the masts to keep in touch with the network. Your cash withdrawals, your purchases in Tesco and your journeys on public transport all add to the picture of where you are. If you drive, your sat nav will hold clues to where you have been and, if you disappear, where you might have gone to.

As I mentioned before I am re-reading the novels of Iain Banks and this weekend I managed to finish Consider Phlebas. A little post about it will be coming up soon. One of my favourite things about the Culture novels is how the ships are named and having found a list on Wikipedia, I thought I would share ten of my favourites with you! You’ll Clean That Up Before You Leave Ravished By The Sheer Implausibility Of That Last Statement All Through With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff Prosthetic Conscience Of Course I Still Love You Size Isn’t Everything Hand Me The Gun And Ask Me Again Dramatic Exit, Or, Thank you And Goodnight We Haven’t Met But You’re A Great Fan Of Mine Anticipation Of A New Lover’s Arrival, The Great names all I am sure you would agree.

Crystallising the world, the body, or the mind? At last, Ballard in full flow. The Crystal World (TCW) is definitely the most enjoyable of the early trio of apocalyptic novels. It takes the successful elements of the first two and embellishes them with new details and ideas. At time of writing, TCW is definitely the best Ballard novel that I have read in its entirety. The book begins with a steamer travelling up a river in Cameroon carrying the novel’s main protagonist Edward Sanders, a doctor at a hospital for lepers.

The world created by nature versus the world constructed by humans On to The Drought by J. G. Ballard in my ongoing quest to read and review all of his novels. This is his second novel, if we assume his convention of never acknowledging “The Wind From Nowhere” as being his first novel. “The Drought” itself was renamed from “The Burning World” and additional content added later on. This was quite common practice in SF in the 50s and 60s where novels were serialised in magazines like Amazing SF and Interzone.

Does Science Fiction have to be believable to be meaningful? Should science fiction have predictive power? In plotting the vast unknowns of the future, should authors aim for prescience? Will people be able to say of the best SF novels in five hundred years time that some novels were right about some things and that these novels are better than the ones that didn’t? I would say no, otherwise we would be remarkably unfair on an awful lot of good writing.

Reading “Crash” at 17 left me in a state of numb shock. It got me hooked and left me with J. G. Ballard as one of my favourite authors. I then devoured a short story collection called “Myths of the Near Future” around the same time. You may recognise it because the Klaxons appropriated the title for their debut album. Those stories captured my imagination, in particular the eponymous story of a world gone to run amid “space sickness”.