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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, Exc...