The H-Bomb Girl: Stephen Baxter

“The Cuban Missile Crisis, Teddyboys, Rock N’ Roll, The Key To The End Of The World, Timetravel - There’s nothing quite like being a teenager in Liverpool during 1962…”

Laura Mann, 14, is The H-Bomb Girl and has just moved to Liverpool with her mum. Laura’s father is seperating from her mother, and he’s in the RAF, and very close to the rising angst between the US and Cuba.

This is a fictional account of history during the Cuban Missile Crisis, rise of the Beatles, threat of nuclear war and includes bit parts by the Beatles and Cilla Black. As I’ve spent quite a bit of time in and around Liverpool in the last few years, and the descriptions of 60s Liverpool, especially the Cavern and the feeling of the loud music rockets this story onto another parallel. I even looked around for footage of The Beatles playing early on in their career, and you can image The H-Bomb Girl and her friends somewhere in the crowd.

It’s worth pointing out that Baxter is well known for his harder SF, and this is quite a departure for him, don’t expect in your face SF, this is more subtle, and the way he introduces the SF elements are perfectly paced.

There is a big downside though, and that’s towards the end where the story collapses (as does the wall in The Cavern in an idiotic display of dangerousness of the British Military) and my suspension of belief was forced to vacate the area.
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TAU 4: V.J. Waks

“A being known as TAU 4, the terrible and uncontrollable brain child of a brilliant, enigmatic and ruthless scientist.”

On a distant planet of the Homeworld Alliance, Dr. Stephen Weller, acclaimed expert in behaviour, is about to penetrate one of the greatest mysteries of his field. He spent months of planning and care to get access to Altair Base, a high security experimental research facility.

Dark work is afoot at this Base controlled by Dyle Carzon and his entourage, under the guise of its focus for the war efforts against the hostile planets of the Outworlds. Securely tucked away in Altair’s encrouching forest, the Base is a natural strong hold, both to enter, and to exit.

Weller meets the being known as TAU 4, a morph, spliced together from human and Altair animal, to learn of her ‘behavioural problems’.

Victoria J. Waks has sewn together an almost poetic narrative in her debut novel, TAU4.
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Rebody: Clive Warner

“Murdered in 2009. Revived in 2373. Grafted to a vaccum cleaner. Enslaved as a domestic robot. It’s a hell of a time to be Rebodied.”

The main character in Clive Warner’s Rebody, Hugh, must be the luckiest and unluckiest run-of-the-mill professor to have lived. He is lucky in that he gets to mix with one of his students at poetry nights. Yolanda, five eight, french looking, makes a pair of jeans and baggy sweatshirt look Paris-chic, takes a liking to the professor. The professor is unlucky as Yolanda has a mean boyfriend who kind of manages to take him out with a size ten boot. He’s also unlucky (or you might say lucky I guess) because he managed to win a Cryo Freeze prize at a funfair, while out with Yolanda, earlier that same evening.

Satire and comedy in the genre have to be treated with the utmost care. Rebody tackles it well, never trying to be satirical for the sake of it. Even though the author himself has said its satirical, its reads very much tongue in cheek. From the internal dialogue of Hugh, to how he comes to terms with his environment, Hugh keeps his sense of humour. I mean, you’ve got to if the last thing you remember is getting beaten to a pulp and then waking up ’seconds later’ a few hundred years into the future, inside a vaccum cleaner.

Some of the subject matter is downright bordering on sexually explicit, but this is delivered in a genre-esque way. Having a human head grafted onto different bodies, each with its own pros and cons, but actually being gradually taken over by it. One example is Hugh having his head attached to an apes body, and talking about the size of its manhood, in human terms its quite small, in ape terms its apparently quite big. Even thinking about it now makes me guffaw. Clive delivers these tidbits in a fashion I’ve never quite seen before.
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Hybrids: David Thorpe

A brand new voice in children’s literature offers an eerie contemporary tale on the fusion of man and machine. Hybrids was the winning entry in HarperCollins Nationwide search for an author competition with Saga Magazine, beating 882 other manuscripts to first place.

Johnny Online and Kestrella are hybrids - victims of Creep, a pandemic sweeping the country which causes suffers to merge with items of technology when over-exposed to their use. Kestrella persuades a wary Johnny to help her find her missing mother, but the sinister Gene Police have other plans for him.

The story is narrated alternately by Johnny and Kes, which is an interesting technique and works well, as it shows the same situation from both persons point of view. Meaning you can see the difference in their thoughts, especially how each sees the other. Hybrids questions our human dependence on technology, and our reactions in the face of nationwide panic. Based in a world which is current, but not quiet; which is real, but only just; which is horribly close to our fears of what is happening and may happen in the future.

A virus, Creep, has swept Britain, causing the merging of technology with people; bass guitars(!), monitors and computer innards, mobile phones, it’s all there. The people infected as deemed dirty and dangerous by the non-infected, and as such are rounded up and kept seperate. Those on the run feel isolated and live on the edge, mostly banding together to survive.

The writing is at a steady pace and as a children’s book, will easily be followed. There’s no ‘over your head technology’ to content with, it’s really just people who are different to ‘the norm’. I feel this is a nice introduction to cyberpunk. It has messages too, loving someone, not for their physical appearance, but for their ‘internal beauty’; public panic at the unknown; dependency on technology. The depenency on technology is, while reading, the message which struck me most.
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The Alchemyst, The Secrets Of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel: Michael Scott

“An ancient book is lost. The modern world could be ripped apart at the seams.”

The Alchemyst: The Secrets Of Nicholas Flamel is the first in a brand new series starring The Immortal Nicholas Flamel (of Harry Potter fame). Released through Kids At Random House publishing, it’s aimed at the young adult market and, as seems to be the norm with this kind of age targetted book, has two fifteen year old siblings, Sophie and Josh Newman.

On their summer break in San Francisco, they take jobs and end up working across the street from one another, her in a coffee shop, him in a book shop which is owned by husband and wife, Perry and Nick (who is infact Nicholas). The action starts immediately, with some animated men made from mud attacking the bookshop, capturing Perry and stealing a rare book called the Codex. Luckily, Josh manages to grab the last two, and most important pages as it’s snatched away.

The Codex contains magical wisdom, and most disturbingly to Josh and Sophie, a prophecy about ‘twins’. They learn that Nicholas is a 14th century alchemist who has been hiding out and laying it low, with his wife Perry, since discovering the secret to immortality.

Attempting to recover the book and Nicholas’ wife, they encounter mythical beings, mythical places and some glowing characters: An Irish woman warrior, trained in martial arts, in the body of a young girl. A greek Hekate - The Morrigan and a poweful Egyptian cat-goddess Bastet to name but a few.
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Vacation: Jeremy C Shipp

The good folk at Raw Dog Screaming Press have unleashed on the world, Vacation; without a doubt, one of the most bizzare, crazy (and I hate to use the phrase) far-out books I have ever had the pleasure of swapping photons with.

“It’s time for Bernard Johnson to leave his boring life behind and go on The Vacation, a year long corporate-sponsored odyssey. But instead of seeing the world, Bernard is captured by terrorists, becomes a key figure in secret drug wars, and, worse, doesn’t once miss his secure American Dream.” That’s the blurb on the back, and in no way does it do the story justice.

In my opinion, it should read something like, “It’s time for Bernard Johnson to leave his boring life behind and go on a year long, corporate sponsored Vacation. Where he’s whip cracked into a world of hallucinations (maybe) and the crazy, dark side of the world today, as his brain breaks down, and he takes a tour of violence, beauty and surrealism within a challenging. violent nightmare. And not once missing his secure American Dream.”

Vacation is written in the first person, so the author tends to speak to the reader a lot - this adds to the unworldly, plain strange read it is. Adding the fact that some of the passages are written to Bernard’s parents, it mixes and matches techniques into a literary blender of truths about the world today.

You are whip lashed from one scene to another, trying hard to keep up with what is, or might be, or probably isn’t, sort of, happening. I felt there was a lot of anger in the story, anger with the world, anger with certain situations which the protagonist comes up against. It’s dark.
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The Lost Art: Simon Morden

David Fickling Books / Random House Group

“The world has turned on its axis and a traveller has arrived from beyond the stars, but it’s a secret from earth’s past that could destroy all…”

Simon Morden’s The Lost Art is set in a post apocalyptic world, at a guess, a thousand years ahead of today. Earth has been turned, literally, on its axis and forced mankind back a few hundred years to the mid fifteenth century. The inversion of the world is not really explained, so whether technology itself, or some natural global catastrophe, caused it is unknown. The story is stubborn, it doesn’t even give a hint.

Our world has gone; the Users, who were the old, pre Inversion people, have gone, and has been replaced by population suspicious of technology. Nevertheless, certain people, including the Kenyans have started to use and develop technology once more.

The story starts brutally with the slaying of a monastery of monks in Siberia. Va is the sole survivor, having the fortune to be sent away at the time of the attack. He finds that six ancient, metal covered books were stolen during the attack and, being a mental monk, striving to cleanse himself of his previous sins, he immediately sets out to get them back. The books, whose contents are thought to be dangerous, as they contain the ‘knowledge of mankind’, would bring on the destruction of the World, were locked and hidden deep in the monastery for a reason. Va is continuously followed by a princess whose love has been ignored and thwarted (remember, he’s atoning his sins), but who never gives up helping him.
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Book 1: Cassandra Peel And The Wild Gods Of Cyberspace

J. Robert Maze has, in Cassandra Peel Series, woven together contemporary life and technology, with classical Greek mythology.

In the first book, Cassandra Peel And The Wild Gods Of Cyberspace (WGOCS), Cassandra, working on her computer, accidentally accesses Greek goddess Athena in cyberspace. School friend Giorgio, an internet technobuff, develops a Virtual Reality helmet, and Hephaistos, craftsman god well advanced in electronics, secretly incorporates in it a mechanism which converts Virtual Reality into Bodily Reality.

Hephaistos and Aphrodite use this to spirit Cassandra bodily away into Greek cyberspace, allegedly to assist them to undo war-god Ares’ machinations. Ares is fomenting religious hatred between two tribes in a remote eastern European mountain village. Beneath this village is a vast reserve of oil, coveted by two opposed Axes of oil-consuming nations, who will seize any opportunity to intervene and take over. Our heroes, with the help of Hephaistos, his beautiful robot maid-servant Eliza, and the complex Indian goddess Durga who comes to the aid of another school friend Parvati, foil this plot.

Aphrodite is revealed as a secret devotee and accomplice of Ares, her former lover, whom she praises on Network Olympia as a Man of Peace through War.

The characters from Homer’s Iliad and from Indian mythology live riotously in cyberspace in present time, treasuring up loves and hates that began three thousand or so years ago. Each of the gods represents some universal human passion. These passions are alive still, operating in present day affairs. One of the premises of the novel series is that the ancient deities’ interactions offer an analogue for today’s social and international undercurrents. Since the deities possess mythical being, and the myths are extant in mass entertainment, it is imaginable those old gods still exist and follow their favourite amusement of interfering in mortal affairs.

The three novels can be appreciated by readers of different levels of maturity, and are especially for mature teenage and older readers, aged 15+ years. They can be read as adventure stories incorporating interesting characters from classical mythology, as parables of contemporary history and society, or as explorations of core psychological themes of conscious and unconscious origin.

Cassandra and her friends make great reading. I found myself immersed in the book following their antics and liking the interaction between the real world and the virtual worlds. It has a very strong message to give out which mirrors today’s society, with the oil and war.

I am not really into Greek Mythology and don’t really know a lot about it (apart from Xena The Princess Warrior), but that doesn’t affect the readability - seeing the ‘gods’ come to life on the page is enjoyable, seeing them interact, help each other, even crack a joke or two, is enjoyable. The logic being different bits of technology the kids use is spot on, and adds to its ’scifi realism’. Again, it’s a bunch of kids saving the world (from World War III), but it’s almost tongue in cheek, but with a serious message.

That said, I’d prefer to call Cassandra Peel And The Wild Gods Of Cyberspace predominantly ‘life-fi’, as you almost forget they’re teleporting in and out of virtual realiy, it just becomes ‘normal’ and you concentrate on the gods and people’s interaction.

For all you saturated Harry Potter fans to get your teeth into. And even if you’re not, it’s a great read, thoroughly recommended.

The fourth Cassandra Peel novel is due out by the middle of 2007.

Show All Review Of The Cassandra Series.

The Sticky Rock Cafe : Dekaydence, Teabags, GeeZers And Haggoids

One thing that stands out, even only after reading the back cover is the number of fuzzzywuzzy, cutesey names which most of the characters are blessed with. The GeeZers are a group of teenage eco-warriors fighting to save the dying planet Earth. The King and The Prime Minister, on the other hand, create Stick Rock Cafes, developed by the Company Of Dekaydence, to take the GeeZers’ minds off the environmental stuggle. The Cafes are places where young people can go to drink cappuccinos and listen to (manufactured) rock songs. Will, the King’s nephew, secretly supports the GeeZers. Ruby Q Cooper is a want to be journalist, looking for her mother, who abandoned her as a child. Piccolo wants to be become a musician.

All three of them embark on an adventure which takes them through the mysterious, hi-tech world of Dekaydence, meeting Tartan Guards, wild haggoids, Eye-Spies, a composer knighted for his services to loud music, and missing decorators.

Being a fananatical tea-drinker, this book has to have one of the best opening lines I’ve ever read: ‘’I blame the teabag for the collapse of civilisation,'’.

The Sticky Rock Cafe has so much going for it, bright characters, weird creatures (which would do well to scare people into helping to save our planet today). Unfortunately, there is too much going on at any one time, with seperate stories and more than a handful of characters; it would have been better if it had been lengthened slightly to allow breathing space, as at time it’s claustrophobic. There is a Dramatis Personae at the beginning which lists the majority of the characters and their roles, which is a good idea.

The characters are believable, with Piccolo (the want to be musician) and Taylor (the just want to be famous, probably an actress) coming across as most realistic. It makes a refreshing change to see a group of teenagers help to save a close-to-home world, rather than a totally fantasy one. There are some truly funny scenes, but these are sparse, with the action seeming to revolve around a lot of running and ‘right place at the right time’ narrative. This works well for younger readers (which appears to be its audience).

The story also disturbed me in a way too; it seems to echo something which is quite plausable, an entity setup by the ‘powers that be’ to curtain people’s thinking and actions.

Definitely a fantasy for the younger readers amongst us.

Susie Cornfield was given a typewriter when she was seven years old and can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be a writer. She trained as a journalist on a local newspaper before joining The Sunday Times. She went on to be a columnist on The Sunday Telegraph Magazine while working as a documentary writer for BBC TV. She has written for a variety of newspapers and magazines and was a TV presenter/producer for United Artists.

She works from a garret on a hill in south London, emerging sometimes to spend time with her family, friends and cat, BB Edwards, play tennis with a group of retrobates, The Racqueteers, listen to or play music, and read.

Read Chapter One
http://www.garretbooks.com/srctext1.html

Listen To Martin Jarvis Read Chapter One
http://www.garretbooks.com/srcmj.html

View Page Design
http://www.garretbooks.com/srcspread.html

The Sticky Rock Cafe by Susie Cornfield (Garret Books, £6.99) is available nationwide from all good bookshops including Waterstones and your local independent bookshop, as well as on-line.

ISBN: 0955227909 or 9 780955 227905

Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony

Published by Puffin Books in paperback 3rd May 2007.

Ten millennia ago, the fairy people were defeated in a great battle with mankind, forcing them to move underground. Only the 8th family of fairies remained undefeated: the demons. But now one demon has discovered the secrets of the fairy world, and if humans get hold of this information, the fairies are in BIG trouble. Only one person can prevent this disaster - teenage criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl.

Eoin Colfer’s world is one where fairies say ‘lock and load’ and the ancient magic of Eire is blended with weapons-grade hardware and high-level technology.

‘I love the old stories and I haven’t cheapened them,’ he says in an interview with the Times newspaper. ‘I was once taken to task at the Celtic Club in Australia, where an irate member turned on me and said: ‘Do you realise your books are ridiculous? There are no female leprechauns.’ But I quickly realised that if I wanted to write in this fairy genre I would have to bring something new to the table. What I brought was James Bond, Men in Black and Star Wars.’

Acclaim for the Artemis Fowl series:

‘Best described as Hans Christian Andersen meets Miami Vice’ - Anthony Horowitz, Independent

‘A hugely entertaining romp mixing folklore, fantasy and hi-tech wizardry’ - Observer

‘It reads like the fastest, punchiest comic strip you’ve ever come across’ – Daily Telegraph

In only five short years since Artemis Fowl, dubbed ‘Die Hard with fairies’, cast a spell on the book world, Eoin Colfer has become one of the UK’s best-selling children’s authors, with UK sales topping 1.7 million copies and over 7 million copies sold worldwide. His explosive blend of action, comedy and fast-paced adventure has won the former primary school teacher millions of adoring fans the world over. Eoin lives in Wexford, Ireland with his wife and two sons.

Rare videoed interview with Eoin Colfer.

The Court Of The Air: Promotional Animation

Well here’s a neat idea. Rather than describing a novel in a few sentences, why not use an animated movie to set the scene?

HarperCollins UK’s sff division, Voyager Books, have done just that, and created a Flash-based promo movie for Stephen Hunt’s fantasy novel, The Court of the Air.

The book trailer somewhat resembles a comic book look (typical of flash animations) and introduces the viewer to the main characters in The Court Of Air: orphans Molly Templar and Oliver Brooks, and the dangers they find themselves in.

To quote: “battling a grave threat to civilization which draws on an ancient power thought to have been quelled millennia ago.” (and that doesn’t mean Windows ‘95).

We have the book in the ‘to review’ pile, so there will be a review sometime soon.

It’s also worth clicking on the media window to go through to youtube, to see what other videos are ’similar’ to this.

Beyond Future Shock

Alex Alaniz, Ph.D.

Beyond Future Shock begins as a pre-WWII love story. When two German lovers, Heinrich and Lise, marry, their jealous, scientific peer and friend (Hans), who has become a fervent Nazi, exposes Lise and her Jewish family.

The plot starts off slowly with no hint of sci-fi, except for baffling, but intriguing, mentions of ‘hundreds of years in the future’ and scientific discoveries to do with DNA. This shouldn’t put you off reading it, as it is an enjoyable period read.

We follow Heinrich, Lise and Hans through their early years and education. To start with, their education is almost happy go lucky, they enjoy every moment of it - until war looms and Hitler take over their education and Nazism is shoved down their throats.

From then on, it follows the three through the war, sometimes in a graphic way. The general history of this period, including the Nazis, SS, Hitler, extermination camps and bombings seems to have been well researched and is an enjoyable read, as the author really describes the people and places, and their interactions. You can feel Heinrich’s love for flying, Lise’s love of Physics and Hans’ obsession with Nazism.

So for two third of the book it really is a WWII love story, including the almost cliched love triangle, in which the two lovers are split up and go in different directions, and don’t hear from each other for a long time, all the while not knowing if the other is alive.

As I read the narrative, I found that the story picked up pace with regards to the amount of time which passes with each set of pages. This helped to give the story depth into the future - the same number of pages read, but more time passes in those pages.

Towards the end, things get a little vague. They upload their minds into Mindspace Servers and gradually use their physical bodies less and less, until eventually they are redundant. It seems most humans are doing this, but the story doesn’t really explain what it is like. Everything seems to be pretty much ‘as was’.

As most humans upload their ’self’ into these Mindspace servers, the more server space the person has, the more processing power they have. So it goes without saying that people try and take over other people’s mindspace area. Thus begins the ‘Minspace Wars’.

The only downside of the story being that the fine narrative to start with gets a little flat as Heinrich and Lise emigrate to Mindspace. An enemy is described, but there is no motivation as to why this entity is attacking (you never see things from its point of view). It is still the ‘old’ Heinrich and Lise in there, but they don’t come across as the same. Some spark is lost. Maybe that was intentional, as they are now no longer human.

There are some neat parts though. The while first two-thirds of the book are a must read, as the author brings it to life with his styled prose. Also, in the scifi part of the book, Heinrich orders hundreds of spacecraft to be built and loads in the persona of a dead pilot friend into them all. He changes the logic in one of them to be more ‘human’ - i.e. it cracks jokes. After one outing with it, he returns and programs a few more with the same more human logic.

Overall, it’s a pretty mindblowing concept. The book flows well until the end (if you can use your imagination and fill in the blanks somewhat), and seems grounded in fact, only to explode into SF.

Alan Alaniz’s homepage.

Q) Desperately looking to find name of cover artist for Coronet edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan published in 1970’s.

Doesn’t say anywhere in the book and publishers no help at all! Any suggestions?

A) This is another of those questions which we wish we could answer, but after a some hefty searches, and asking some people ‘in the know’, we’ve come up blank.

Suprisingly, even when looking at image specific search engines. This is a shame, as I’m not sure what the 1970s cover of Sirens Of Titan looked like, and some of the older covers are a lot blander, and at the same time more effective, than today’s glossy, colourful cover artwork.

Anyone know the answer? Let us know!

If there’s any Scifi Question you’d like to ask us, then let us know and we’ll bust our brains to find the answer!

Bogles, Reevers, Grinnlings and Nickers

Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One: Foundling (MBT1), is the first of a trilogy and was published in February by Random House Children’s Books.

By the way, although MBT1 is published through a children’s publisher, this fantasy novel is by no means only for children or younger teens, so don’t stop reading if you’re over fifteen.

Rossamünd, a boy with a girl’s name (reminds me of Jayne is Serenity), seems destined to be stuck in Madame Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls. Raised as a Foundling (not knowing his mother or father), he hopes, and expects, to become a sailor. When he’s recruited by a Lamplighter, he agrees, even though the repetative life of looking after Lamps on a monster infested road, in monster infested territory, sounds boring and dangerous.

He sets out on his journey with some basic, though necessary, equipment.

The setting is in a small part of the Half Continent, following Rossamünd on his journey to start his life a Lamplighter. As the story progresses, the text brings the experience to life. So much so that there are times when the story slows down to describe the surroundings. On his path Rossamünd meets a Lahzar (Europe) (my favourite character in the book), Licurius, her helper, The Misbegotten Schrewd and The Rever-Man to name but a few.

The books is lavishly decorated with pages of hand drawn pencil sketches, which breathe life into the book. Everytime a main character is introduced and described, the following page or so has a picture of them - you really do see them for the first time. There are maps of the world, which show just how little of the land is explored within the first book, and shows just how much there is to explore in the following books.

This is by no means a complete story, but sets the scene nicely, introduces characters and brings the environment to life for the reader.

MBT1 is thoroughly recommended for readers who enjoy a good, solid fantasy, and as it includes an extensive explicarium, a place for the child in your to write your name at the front as a ‘Bookchild’, and lavish illustrations by the author, D M Cornish, it is great value for money.

Monster Blood Tattoo Official Site
Monster Blood Tattoo Blog

Polis: a city-state . policy . politics . metropolis

As previously mentioned, A Loop In Time, from author Rowena Wright, is an novel where art, science and timetravel combine in a smart and silly telling of the myth of Osiris set amid issues of post 9/11-New York.

The first thing I noticed when reading this book is added trinkets of artwork while adorn the first page of each chapter. They look like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. They’re a nice touch and help to set the scene of the book.

The story is about a single mum (Sophia) who has to deal with raising her child (Ericca) in a foreign land. Sophia hides her true heritage from Ericca, but Ericca realises as she gets older, that something is amiss.

She finds out that she is Ringgold, and has magical powers like time travelling and altering the past. Ultimately, she has to ‘grow up’ and seek out her father who died years before. She is assisted by various cool items, including her baby blanket which has Albert Einstein and Leonardo Fibonacci magically embedded. The bantering between them is quite surreal and I chuckled quite often when Albert went off on one about his discoveries and theories.

I’m a real time travel story lover, ask anyone who knows me how many time travel books I have, and it’s more than you can count on two hands. Some of the twists and turns had me scratching my head, and I had to re-read a couple of sections to make sure I knew what was going on. Although, if I’d carried on, it actually explains itself. A Loop In Time is a story I’d class as fun, yet realistic, and (of course?) science goes out the window.

It’s fun because a lot of aspects are light hearted and jovial; realistic because of the way Sophia protects her daughter and the growing up of Ericca, as she faces the world. As for the science - well, there really isn’t any. None of this is by no means negative.