The hugely prolific Michael Moorcock is credited with making a major contribution to New Wave science fiction, mainly due to his editorship of the pivotal British magazine New Worlds. Moorcock wrote relatively few science fiction novels, certainly compared to his huge output of fantasy work, which he used to help support New Worlds financially.However, some of Moorcock's own SF novels are themselves significant contributions to the New Wave. The Black Corridor, written in uncredited collabora...

The time has come to continue exploring Iain M. Banks' Culture series. Inversions is the fifth of nine novels, and also the last to be published in the 1990s. This time, Banks stretched himself further than ever before, experimenting with a radically different view of his post-scarcity setting. What does the Culture look like, viewed from a medieval society that is unaware that other worlds even exist?To catch up with my coverage of the series, listen to episode 90 for The State of the Art, 9...

No discussion of classic British science fiction could be complete without mentioning John Wyndham, and perhaps especially his 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids. A pioneer in the noble tradition of the British disaster novel, this influential classic piles not one, or two, but three catastrophes onto the world. The protagonist, Bill Masen, must navigate not only mass blindness and a mystery disease, but the iconic triffids themselves - mobile, venomous, and possibly intelligent plants with m...

This episode covers two quite different science fiction novels by two quite different writers, published more than a decade apart. What links them is their emphasis on religious themes. Let the Fire Fall by Kate Wilhelm was published in 1969, and is largely forgotten. Set in a near-contemporary world, it deals with alien visitation and a manipulative religious cult.Strength of Stones is an early novel by Greg Bear, published in 1981. It has a far-future setting on a planet colonised by religi...

Back in episode 111, I took a trip back to the 1950s, and looked at three books written collaboratively by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. The first two of these, The Space Merchants and Gladiator-at-Law, are major landmarks in the development of social science fiction.In 1955, while that collaboration was ongoing, Frederik Pohl published another novel in partnership with a different author - Lester del Rey. That novel was Preferred Risk, another minor classic of social SF in which the ...

Originally published in 1960, Rogue Moon is an excellent novel by the Lithuanian-American author, critic, and editor Algis Budrys. If you read classic science fiction and encounter contemporary reviews of those books, you are sure to have heard Budrys' name. He was a major critic of SF for many years. However he was also a highly capable writer of his own fiction, both at short story and novel length. Rogue Moon is his best-known novel, a nominee for the 1961 Hugo Award which combines a lunar...

A debut novel which deals with guilt, art, and suspicious happenings on a troubled colony founded on matter transmission.The British SF author Eric Brown passed away in March 2023. He first came to prominence through his short fiction in the 1980s. Following the publication of his first collection, Brown was given the chance to put out his first novel. This episode covers that book, Meridian Days. While it has been out of print since 1993, this is an interesting first effort from a writer who...

What if we share our world with a different intelligent species, but are separated from them by a failure of perception? And what if that gap could be bridged by a new technology, a new way of seeing?That is the premise of Bob Shaw's 1976 novel A Wreath of Stars. In his ninth novel, the Northern Irish writer combined his interest in optics with speculation about exotic particles and a grounded, African setting. This short, intriguing novel is all about perception, and how it can both divide a...

In a recent episode, we looked at Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, who formed the most important science fiction writing team of the 1950s. This instalment looks at a key book by a dominant collaboration of the 1970s and 1980s - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. These right-wing hard SF authors worked together on numerous books, and even collaborated on fantasy at times. Their 1981 novel Oath of Fealty is an interesting fusion of their scientific speculations and their unsettling, libertarian...

Barrington J. Bayley's novel The Soul of the Robot (1974) fits within the wider context of robot stories in SF - these include Isaac Asimov's influential tales from the 1940s, and the more subversive work of John Sladek in the 1980s. The protagonist of Bayley's novel, the fully conscious robot Jasperodus, can be seen as a kind of middle ground between these two approaches. Featuring fallen empires, a strange mix of technologies, a war for control of Mars, and a robot revolution, The Soul of t...

Charles L. Harness' 1953 novel The Paradox Men was originally published under the title Flight Into Yesterday. It is a classic example of elevated pulp, which features swordfights, superpowers, voyages to the sun, and a strange furry creature that can speak - if only to speak the phrase "don't go..."The Paradox Men is featured in David Pringle's 1985 book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. This inclusion is arguably a key reason why Harness and his work have avoided a descent into ob...

Originally published in the December 1971 issue of Playboy, “A Meeting With Medusa” is generally thought of as Clarke’s last significant shorter work. Notably, it won the Nebula Award for Best Novella the following year. It was also an early inspiration for two of Clarke’s successors in the British SF scene. 45 years after the novella’s publication, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds delivered their novel-length sequel, The Medusa Chronicles.Taken together, these two works form an exc...

Get in touch with a text message! In The Forge of God (1987), the Earth’s demise is an inevitability. Greg Bear’s novel of apocalypse was published when he was establishing himself as a leader of American hard SF in the 1980s. This is a sophisticated, chillingly believable, and scientifically rigorous view of the end of the world. Crucially, Bear is as interested in human beings as he is in the devastation that unfolds. Knowing the outcome does not undermine the emotive power of his huma...

Get in touch with a text message!Robert Silverberg's To Open the Sky (1967) combines five pre-planned stories originally published in Galaxy magazine in 1965 and 1966, it is an interestingly structured piece of work published at a time when Silverberg was just entering his own personal golden age. It also combines themes of religion, psychic powers, terraforming, immortality, and political conflict into a unique take on the "future history" subgenre of SF. Support the Show.For lots more writi...

Get in touch with a text message!George R.R. Martin is easily one of the best-known, most successful, and wealthiest genre writers still working today - albeit slowly. While Martin is a giant of modern fantasy writing, even some of his ardent fans may not be aware that he first made an impact in science fiction. This episode first covers his debut novel from 1977, Dying of the Light. It's a gloomy, mournful story of lost love and personal obligations set on a dying, rogue planet. Next, I'll t...

Get in touch with a text message!John Brunner was a startlingly prolific British writer of science fiction, whose reputation rests on four acclaimed books he published from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. However, earlier in his career he wrote many SF adventures which while less ambitious, are a rich source of pulp excitement.This episode focuses on two of these many novels. The Atlantic Abomination and Sanctuary in the Sky were both published in 1960 by Ace Books. They represent only half ...

Get in touch with a text message!Pure SF pulp, The Fall of Chronopolis (1974) is the fifth novel by British author Barrington J. Bayley. While it superficially resembles a space opera, it is really more of what could be called a "time opera". The Chronotic Empire rules hundreds of years of human history, using powerful time-ships to head off threats from the past and the future. But when officer of the Third Time Fleet, Mond Aton, glimpses the true nature of the "temporal substratum", it...

Get in touch with a text message!This special feature episode focuses on three novels written in partnership by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbbluth - The Space Merchants (1952), Gladiator-at-Law (1955), and Wolfbane (1959). Each unique in their own way, these three books are classics of the genre in the 1950s. They are the products of a special partnership between two writers who complemented each other perfectly. Significantly, all three books were originally serialised in Galaxy magazine...

Get in touch with a text message! Winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel, Excession (1996) is the fourth novel in Iain M. Banks ever-popular Culture series of SF novels. In this entry, the awesome power of the post-scarcity Culture civilisation is challenged by two linked threats. One is the increasing aggression of a cruel species, the Affront. The other is the emergence of a vast and mysterious structure, the Excession.  On one level a classic "big dumb object" story, Excession explores...

Poul Anderson's Tau Zero, published in 1970, is a landmark of hard SF which pushes out far further, beyond the Milky Way and into the frightening emptiness of intergalactic space. It also deals memorably with time dilation, and a vast spain of eons.  Significantly, Anderson does all of this in a scientifically convincing way, with a plot strongly grounded in his understanding of phyics at the time. This episode takes a close look at the novel, and the reasons why it remains a classic of its...

The Garments of Caean is a science fiction novel by the British author Barrington J. Bayley (1937 - 2008). It forms a part of his classic run of unusual and energetic books in the mid-1970s, and is included in guide 100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels. This is a space opera with an odd hook - it is about clothes, specifically an incredible Frachonard suit which gives its wearer remarkable influence over others.  This is both an exciting interstellar adventure with comic elements, and an...

American fantasy in the 1980s is often associated with big, bloated series of novels steeped in Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons. The Falling Woman is something very different. It isn't set in some imagined world stuck in the middle ages - the story occurs in contemporary Mexico, in and around an archaelogical dig site. But this is a fantasy novel - in which the dead have a profound effect on the living. This episode takes a look at Pat Murphy's 1986 novel, which won the Nebula Award for...

Imperial Earth is the second of three novels Arthur C. Clarke published during the 1970s - and of those three, it is the least well-known. The main focus of this episode is to assess this tale of 2276, which takes in the quincentennial of the United States, a technological utopia, and Clarke's coy take on sexuality in science fiction.  This episode also includes a bonus - a brief look at the first five novels in Roger Zelazny's popular fantasy series, The Chonicles of Amber. Do these tales...

Use of Weapons (1990) is the third novel in the Culture series of science fiction novels by the much-missed author Iain M. Banks. Originally drafted in 1974, the book follows the interstellar supersoldier Cheradenine Zakalwe, an efficient agent of the Culture. Combining two interleaved narratives, Use of Weapons tells a complex story about military intervention, violence, responsibility, and guilt. This episode explores what makes this perhaps the best-known and most acclaimed novel in the...