Category Archives: Science Fiction

Provenance

Posted on 11 July 2020 by Barbara Howe

Ingray Aughskold is an insecure, needy kid. Well, not a kid, exactly. She’s in her twenties, with a good job on her home planet Hwae, but her politically powerful mother has encouraged competition between her foster children: Danach, the son … Continue reading →

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The Murderbot Diaries

Posted on 28 February 2020 by Barbara Howe

If I were to make a movie of All Systems Red by Martha Wells, I would open with this voiceover: I murdered 57 humans. And then I went rogue. Murderbot, as the part-organic android security unit (SecUnit) privately calls itself, … Continue reading →

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Cloud Atlas

Posted on 8 December 2019 by Barbara Howe

The most notable feature of David Mitchell’s award-winning—and challenging—novel Cloud Atlas is the book’s structure. Made up of six loosely-connected novellas, each in a radically different style and time period, this novel nests the six stories like Russian dolls. The … Continue reading →

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Imperial Radch: Ancillary Justice

Posted on 2 November 2019 by Barbara Howe

The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie, consisting of the books Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy, is one of the most astounding and engrossing works I’ve had the pleasure of reading in a long time. Given the number … Continue reading →

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Shards of Honor

Posted on 18 August 2019 by Barbara Howe

In Shards of Honor, the superb introduction to Lois McMaster Bujold’s many-volume Vorkosigan saga, Commander Cordelia Naismith, citizen of Beta Colony and head of a planetary survey mission, is down planet with a small team of scientists when they are … Continue reading →

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The Molenstraat Music Festival

Posted on 27 July 2019 by Barbara Howe

An accident leaves a brilliant young cellist brain-damaged. She can still play, but her concentration slips after a few minutes, leaving her unable to finish a piece. In The Molenstraat Music Festival, set a thousand years in the future, medical … Continue reading →

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Rendezvous with Rama

Posted on 27 July 2018 by Barbara Howe

The year is 2131. Aboard the Solar Survey ship Endeavour, Commander Bill Norton and a team of scientists are on a mission to intercept and glean what information they can from an alien spacecraft as it hurtles through our solar … Continue reading →

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Matters Arising from the Identification of the Body

Posted on 7 April 2018 by Barbara Howe

In Matters Arising from the Identification of the Body by New Zealand-born author Simon Petrie, hard science fiction intersects with another of my favourite genres, crime fiction. In a mining colony on Titan, Saturn’s moon, a young woman, Tanja Morgenstein, … Continue reading →

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The Witches of Karres

Posted on 6 August 2017 by Barbara Howe

The Witches of Karres, a whimsical space opera by James H Schmitz, is an old favourite. I think I must have first read this in high school, but it still appeals. A young man, Captain Pausert, is on his way … Continue reading →

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Doomsday Book

Posted on 24 June 2017 by Barbara Howe

Doomsday Book* is a Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning** time-travel novel by Connie Willis. It was published in the 90’s, but I only stumbled across it a few months ago. The plot is straightforward: from the near future (December 2054), a young … Continue reading →

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