FUTURES FROM NATURE edited by HENRY GEE
Tor Books hardback, 320pp, RRP US$24.95

Reviewed by Shaun C Green

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Packed with a numeric century of sf yarns from as many writers, Futures From Nature is a book ideal for dipping into for a quick reading session. All the stories contained within first appeared in the pages of the British science journal Nature, and the consistent theme is the titular future.

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Tags: book • flash fiction • Futures From Nature • Nature • review • Science Fiction

THE RIVER KNOWS ITS OWN by JAY LAKE
Wheatland Press paperback, pp263, RRP $19.95.

Reviewed by PENNY HILL

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“Tommy “Leviathan” Hobbes was short, nasty and reeked of Brut.”

This is my favourite opening line in The River Knows Its Own, Jay Lake’s bohemian collection of short stories; simultaneously an homage to a cliché and a swift character sketch.

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Tags: book • collection • Fantasy • Jay Lake • review • Science Fiction • short stories • slipstream • The River Knows Its Own

AXIS by ROBERT CHARLES WILSON
Tor Books hardback, 304pp, $25.95

Reviewed by Chris Hill

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Starting with 1986’s A Hidden Place, Robert Charles Wilson has written a sequence of solid, competent sf novels (not to mention a fine short story collection, The Perseids and other stories) which contrast small human stories with big science fictional concepts, often involving an outside agency imposing change on a community. Some critics have pointed out a resemblance (particularly in the early novels) to the works of Clifford D. Simak, which does not seem unreasonable. Spin finally won Wilson the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

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Tags: Axis • book • review • Robert Charles Wilson • Science Fiction • sf

GLASSHOUSE by CHARLES STROSS

Orbit paperback, 400pp, £6.99

Reviewed by David McWilliam

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WARNING: THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CAN BE CONSIDERED TO CONTAIN SPOILERSLet me begin by stating that Charles Stross’s Glasshouse is a text where ideas take centre stage. This is not an indictment of his plotting or characterisation, both of which are handled assuredly throughout, but an indication of the breadth of imagination on display in a novel which is simultaneously a cyberpunk thriller and a complex moral satire - of both our own “dark age” and the text’s fragmented posthuman narrator. (more…)

Tags: book • Glasshouse • posthuman • review • Science Fiction • scifi • sf • Stross