Keith Stevenson's Blog

Wayfaring Stranger – Simon Petrie

Wayfaring Stranger by Simon Petrie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Simon Petrie is one of my favourite science fiction authors working in Australia today. A self-described ‘reformed academic’, he has a special interest in planetary and interstellar chemistry, which means his written work often includes scientifically grounded information either to inform the background and setting of his stories – and infuse them with a solid feeling of verisimilitude – or to act as a springboard for more speculative s...

Bee Speaker – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Bee Speaker by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another brilliant read from Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky is the most prolific author working in today’s science fiction field. He also consistently manages to create engaging adventure stories combined with thought-provoking ideas. As a case in point, last year’s Alien Clay spun a tale of political prisoners incarcerated on a planet with a deadly – and very strange – biosphere, while also subverting and reimagining what it is to ...

The Mercy of Gods – James SA Corey

The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It gets better after the first half.

James SA Corey is, of course, the author of the hugely successful The Expanse Series, a galaxy spanning space opera of interplanetary war and alien threat that played out over nine books and spawned a TV series and other media. I love The Expanse. I’ve read all the books, listened to the audiobooks twice and consumed the show. So, when The Mercy of Gods was announced as kicking off a spectacular ne...

Designing the cover for End Times

I’ve had some amazing covers for my past novels, but – as publisher with coeur de lion publishing – I’ve also designed some covers myself, most notably for Pyrotechnicon and Anywhere But Earth. For The End Times of Markusz Zielinski, I had a pretty strong concept for what the cover should be, so I decided to see if I could come up with a cover that fully realised that idea.

A key element of the story is the strange appearance of ‘Teel-Attar radiation’ as the only visible remnant of a collaps...

Publishing Horizon

It’s been a little over ten years since my first novel – Horizon – was published by HarperCollins, so I thought I’d share a few insights from that experience.

In 2014, HarperCollins Australia put out an open submission call for manuscripts. They’d decided to dip a toe in the emerging electronic book market and they were looking for Australian genre stories to feed into their global ebook imprint called Impulse. Impulse had been active in the US for a little while before the Australian call o...

The Escher Man – TR Napper

The Escher Man by T.R. Napper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

TR Napper returns us to his dark cyberpunk future

Endel ‘Endgame’ Ebbinghaus is an enforcer for the Macau drug cartels. He often meets unsavoury people and sometimes he has to kill them. Endgame is a violent abusive husband, and he keeps away from his wife and kid because he’s afraid of what he might do to them. Endgame is a mindless assassin, programmed, set loose and mind-wiped when his target is eliminated. Endgame is a loving partner and ...

The truth about space elevator disasters

Space elevator crashes are classic SF fare. We see a devastating crash in the first episode of Apple TVs Foundation series. After a terrorist bombing, the whole structure topples to the planet’s surface, smashing buildings and creating a deep trench around Trantor. See for yourself:

It’s thrilling stuff to watch, but – from what I’ve learned – not scientifically accurate.

Minor spoilers for The End-Times of Markusz Zeilinski, but my book also has a space elevator crash, so I had to ...

Rollerball (1975)

Jonathan E is not the hero you’re looking for

In 1975, my dad took 13-year-old me to see Rollerball at the Odeon Cinema in Renfield Street, Glasgow. The queue for the box office stretched right round the block and we ended up seeing Dad’s Army instead, which was quite a tonal shift from what I was expecting, but at least I got an ice cream and a night out. We eventually saw Rollerball a couple of weeks later. As a sidenote my dad took me and a bunch of other 6 year olds to see 2001 A Space O...

The Time Ships – Stephen Baxter

The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A worthy sequel to The Time Machine

HG Wells’s The Time Machine is rightly acknowledged as a Science Fiction Masterwork. It’s spawned two movies and two TV series (and counting), the best and most faithful adaptation being the 1960 George Pal movie, and the concepts and tropes it created have found their way into countless books and comics, so much so that a lot of the ideas that went into its creation feel commonplace to us now. But if yo...

Meet the Cast of End-Times

I’ve casted my novels before (see Dreamcasting the Lenticular). It helps me establish and differentiate mannerisms and speech patterns between different characters. Plus it’s a lot of fun imagining who might play the characters I create in a movie or TV adaptation. And the cast for End-Times is particularly glorious.

Markusz Zielinski

Tom Hiddleston

A casual observer would opine that Markusz thinks a lot of himself. It’s an observation Markusz would agree with while pointing out that ...