Science Fiction

The balance of power between humans and machines

18 November 2023 9:00 am

Robert Skidelsky dismisses the possibility of our annihilation by a superintelligent computer system, since ‘science tells us that we cannot create such a being’. But does it?

Private obsessions

22 July 2023 9:00 am

A world of private fetishes, obsessions, childhood memories and literary passions is dazzlingly revealed in 13 short stories

Among the giants

3 June 2023 9:00 am

A dramatic rejuvenation drug is being distributed to a wealthy elite, enabling them to tower over the other inhabitants of the mysterious lake city of Othrys

Travels in time and space: Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel, reviewed

21 May 2022 9:00 am

It’s a bold writer who confronts a major historical moment such as a pandemic before it’s over, but Emily St.…

Here in Texas, Hell has frozen over

27 February 2021 9:00 am

 Austin ‘If I owned Texas and Hell,’ General Phil Sheridan famously said, ‘I would rent out Texas and live in…

A James Bond film with added physics no one understands: Tenet reviewed

29 August 2020 9:00 am

Tenet is the latest high-concept, time-bending blockbuster from Christopher Nolan and it’s the film that (unofficially) reopens cinemas in the…

Robert A. Heinlein: the ‘giant of SF’ was sexist, racist — and certainly no stylist

30 March 2019 9:00 am

Like someone who has bought a first computer, then reads the manual from front to back but never actually gets…

Left: cartoon of Hector Berlioz published in the Wiener Theaterzeitung in 1846. Right: the composer in 1863, aged 59

David Cairns explains how we learned to love Berlioz

2 March 2019 9:00 am

According to his friend and fellow-composer Ernest Reyer, the last words Berlioz spoke on his deathbed were: ‘They are finally…

The Book of Joan: part apocalyptic tale, part erotic poem

24 February 2018 9:00 am

Does J.G. Ballard’s ‘disquieting equation’, ‘sex x technology = the future’, still hold? Not in Lidia Yuknavitch’s novel, which imagines…

Brilliant essayists, dark and fair

11 November 2017 9:00 am

Read cover to cover, a book of essays gives you the person behind it: their voice, the trend of their…

No pain, no gain

5 August 2017 9:00 am

It is an unexpected pleasure when fiction has a soundtrack to accompany the work of reviewing. H(A)PPY is ‘best enjoyed…

Don DeLillo foresees the imminent death of death

21 May 2016 9:00 am

Cults, the desert, natural disasters. Artists, bankers, terrorists. Cash machines, food packaging, secret installations. Mediaspeak and scientific jargon. Crowds and…

The heavens are falling

20 February 2016 9:00 am

The dystopian novel in which a Ballardian deluge or viral illness transforms planet Earth has become something of a sub-genre,…

‘I was facing truths I didn’t particularly want to look at’: Michael Moorcock interview

8 August 2015 9:00 am

Cult novelist Michael Moorcock on fantasy, his father, and the London he loved and lost

God, aliens and a novel with a mission

22 November 2014 9:00 am

They say never work with children and animals. They could just as well say don’t write about aliens and God.…

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood - review

31 August 2013 9:00 am

The two opening volumes of Margaret Atwood’s trilogy have sold over a million copies. One of them managed to be…