England, 2020. There are 1.2 million human-sized rabbits living in the UK. They can walk, talk and drive cars, the result of an inexplicable anthropomorphising event fifty-five years ago. A family of rabbits is about to move into Much Hemlock, a cosy little village where life revolves around summer fetes, jam-making, gossipy corner stores, and
Books
For some reason, I think a lot about choices. We have access to some choices, and others we don’t. As early as grade three I remember wondering with a little frisson of unease of what my life would have been like if I’d been born elsewhere, to some other set of circumstances or even parents.
Author: Jasper Fforde Publisher: Hodder & Stroughton Price: £20 (Hardback), £10.99 (eBook) Peter Knox is a man who has a job he tolerates and a boss he hates so he can spend his days off indulging in idiosyncratic hobbies and family time with his daughter. He is a resident of Much Hemlock, a quintessentially English
Exploring the multiverse of science fiction and fantasy can be an exhilarating journey for a collector, and an inexhaustible one too. As well as all the celebrated 19th and 20th Century classics of the genre, from Frankenstein and Alice In Wonderland to Lord Of The Rings and Dune, it’s worth remembering that the roots of imaginative
Author: John Harrison Publisher: Gollancz Price: £20 Shaw is having a mid-life crisis. Or he’s had one and missed it… He’s not quite sure, but either way he’s trying to get his life back on track with his new London apartment, new job and new relationship with Victoria. However, as he starts to settle into
Publisher: DC Black Label Writer: Scott Snyder Artist: Greg Capullo (penciller) Price: £29.99 Bruce Wayne isn’t Batman and never was. It was all just a delusion – or so he’s told when he wakes up in a psychiatric hospital, surrounded by doctors and nurses (some of whom bear an uncanny resemblance to the villains in
Author: Kester Grant Publisher: HarperVoyager Price: £12.99 (Hardback), £7.99 (eBook) Part one of a trilogy, The Court Of Miracles is set in a nefarious and lawless alternative Paris in the 1800s. Times are tough. The revolution to overthrow the monarchy has failed and crime and violence is prevalent. Seeing the city they love falling to pieces,
Now don’t say we never give you guys anything! We are delighted to not only be able to exclusively reveal the cover to Aliya Whiteley’s sci-fi novel Skyward Inn almost a whole nine months before the book is released, but we can also give you an excerpt from the novel as well! To get you in
Publisher: Century, Cornerstone, Penguin Random House Released: 16 June Writer: Max Brooks Price: £12.99 The Bigfoot (or Sasquatch, or what ever other name anyone prefers) is a creature that is often overlooked as a truly terrifying foe. It is sometimes even looked upon with a rather comedic eye due to the various crackpot ‘sightings’ and
Rare book seller Peter Harrington has launched its latest literature catalogue which includes rare fantasy and science fiction books spanning a broad selection of popular and specialist genres. Entitled In Other Worlds: Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Beyond, the 180-item catalogue spans several centuries and genres, from dystopian and apocalyptic fiction to imaginative tales that have
Author: Ben Aaronovitch Publisher: Gollancz Price: £7.99 Trier is Germany’s oldest city, famous for its Roman history and more importantly, its winemaking prestige. It’s also the setting of a murder, which is why Investigator Tobias Winters is despatched there to investigate the suspicious death of Jörg Koch (who is an apparent victim of a potentially
Publisher: Penguin Random House US Writer: Laurie Halse Anderson Artist: Leila del Duca Price: $16.99 In Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed, writer Laurie Halse Anderson strips away the strength and confidence synonymous with the titular character and delivers a timely, powerful reimagining of the iconic warrior’s origins. As she approaches her 16th birthday, Princess Diana is
Author: Asaf Ashery Publisher: Angry Robot Released: Out now Price: £9.99 Mazzy Simantov is a detective at the head of a new division that relies on mysticism to aid their investigations. When a young girl goes missing, Simantov has to partner with her former lover, Yariv. With tension between them mounting and supernatural clues piling
Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky Publisher: Solaris Released: Out now Price: £25 At just under 200 pages, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest novella is a masterclass in concise storytelling. Set in a future that doesn’t seem too far from the impossible and uncomfortably close to the probable, Earth is now almost uninhabitable. The ambient temperature has risen to such
MR James is one of the masters of terror. Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) is one of the absolute masters of the British tale of terror. He refined the tale of supernatural terror and, given his fondness for narrative play and overt references to generic tropes, can be cited as one of the field’s first modernists.
Author: Ramsey Campbell Publisher: Flame Tree Press Released: Out now Price: £20 Ever thought you saw a shadow move out of the corner of your eye when you were alone? Even if you’re not prone to getting spooked, reading The Wise Friend after dark is very, very likely to creep you out… Narrated by literature
Author: Jem Tugwell Publisher: Serpentine Books Released: Out now Price: £8.99 It has been a year since the events of Jem Tugwell’s first book in the iMe series, Proximity, and for Detective Inspector Clive Lusaac the world is back to normal. Now that the iMe system (which controls everything in the UK via compulsory implanted
Can you tell us a bit about your upcoming book, The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires? Growing up, I hated my mum’s book club; I thought they were just a bunch of silly housewives, but when I got to know them as adults I realised I was the idiot. These women had dealt
Author: Grady Hendrix Publisher: Quirk Books Released: Out now Price: £9.99 When you hear “vampire slayer”, you probably think of a certain blonde teenager. But what the women of the Southern Book Club have in common with Buffy – aside from their bloodsucker problem – is that they’re living in the Nineties. In South Carolina
Ray Harryhausen created many iconic creatures, but which one is the world’s favourite? Well not only are we all about to find out but we can also put our two cents in by voting for our personal favourite! A month ahead of what would have been Ray Harryhausen’s 100th birthday, The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation
Mary Robinette Kowal continues her Hugo and Nebula award-winning Lady Astronaut series, following The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky, with The Relentless Moon, and we’re proud to reveal the wonderful cover and include an excerpt from the first chapter of the novel. In The Relentless Moon the Earth is coming to the boiling point
We have great news for those wondering what Cymera, Scotland’s festival of science fiction, fantasy and horror writing, is doing this year amid the ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic: it’s going digital! The festival organisers have said that they were originally going to offer a taster plate of the festival online, but thanks to the
Author: Ben Aaronovitch Publisher: Gollancz Price: £18.99 Wonderfully blending technology and magic, Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers Of London series focuses on the adventures of Peter Grant – a Met police officer who works in a very special department: dealing with strange and unusual crimes of a magical nature. Luckily, Grant is both a police officer and
Author: Veronica Roth Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Released: Out now Price: £14.99 We love a bit of YA dystopian fiction here at SciFiNow – strong female lead, a seemingly all-powerful bad guy, a big battle, perhaps a love interest… now, imagine if an author of one of the most successful YA dystopian fiction series in
Can you tell us more about your upcoming novel, Chosen Ones? Chosen Ones is about a group of people who saved the world when they were teenagers. They took down the ‘Dark One’, a being of great evil who wreaked havoc across North America. Now, ten years later, they’re the most famous people ever to have
No Signal is the second book in the iMe technothriller series, and is set a year after Proximity (book 1) introduced the world of iMe, where crime is eradicated by complete control and people are kept in optimal health through embedded technology. No Signal asks: ‘Can a game change the world?’ The game is central
We are delighted to be able to share with you lovely SciFiNow readers a snippet of Adrian J Walker’s The Human Son. But first, here is a synopsis of the book: The Earth was dying, and only the erta could save it. Created to be genetically superior, hyper-intelligent and unburdened by the full range of
Those lovely people at The Folio Society have released another beautiful edition of a classic sci-fi novel with its take on Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama. And we are delighted to be able to share with you some images from the book… For those unfamiliar with Rendezvous With Rama, here is a synopsis: Rama is a vast
The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind by Jackson Ford caused much excitement and expletives when published last year – being hailed as “Alias meets X-Men in a grimly LA setting” by Maria Lewis, a “madcap adventure” that speeds along at “breakneck pace” by the Guardian and “furious, frenetic, fun, and ‘f*ck you’’ by Robert Brockway.