Eamonn Murphy (Author of Arnos Hell)

Eamonn Murphy is now friends with Conor
Dec 17, 2025 12:41AM · like
Eamonn Murphy rated a book it was amazing The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
‘The Essential Horror Of Joe R. Lansdale’ contains what it says on the cover. An introduction by Joe Hill tells us how his father, Stephen King, introduced him to Joe Lansdale’s works one day when he was about thirteen. It’s clear that Hill, no mean ...more
Nov 11, 2025 06:22AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Eamonn Murphy rated a book it was amazing Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends by Richard Wolinsky	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
‘Spaceships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! ‘Interviews With Science Fiction Legends’ is a book of interviews with a difference. Instead of having one author, editor or agent at a time share their story, it’s divided by subject matter and quotes multipl ...more
Nov 11, 2025 06:15AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! by Richard Wolinsky. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! by Richard Wolinsky <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Eamonn Murphy rated a book really liked it The Avengers in the Veracity Trap! (Marvel Arts) by Chip Kidd	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
‘The Avengers In The Veracity Trap’ is a new adventure that harks back to the very early days of Marvel’s Avengers, a superhero group now famous worldwide thanks to some of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Yet it started simply in 1963 with a ...more
Nov 11, 2025 06:04AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Avengers in the Veracity Trap! by Chip Kidd. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Avengers in the Veracity Trap! by Chip Kidd <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Eamonn Murphy rated a book really liked it Drive or Be Driven: Stories of Travel by Aliya Whiteley (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
‘Drive Or Be Driven’ by Aliya Whiteley is the sixth book in the ‘Polestars’ series of individual author short story collections from Newcon Press and features seven stories previously published in magazines or anthologies and twelve yarns ‘original t ...more
Nov 11, 2025 05:58AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Drive or Be Driven by Aliya Whiteley. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Drive or Be Driven by Aliya Whiteley <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Eamonn Murphy rated a book really liked it The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The bad news, reader, is that you cannot join the Society of Unknowable Objects. Membership is inherited, passed down from father to son or mother to daughter, in the case of our heroine. Magda Sparks becomes a member following her mother’s death on ...more
Nov 11, 2025 05:50AM · like · see review
Eamonn Murphy rated a book really liked it Elephants in Bloom (Polestars Book 5) by Cécile Cristofari	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
‘Elephants In Bloom’ by Cécile Cristofari is the fifth book in the Polestars series of individual author short story collections from NewCon Press. The collection features eighteen original stories, with ten previously published in magazines or antho ...more
Nov 11, 2025 03:33AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Elephants in Bloom by Cécile Cristofari. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Elephants in Bloom by Cécile Cristofari <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Eamonn Murphy rated a book really liked it The River Blade by T.R. Thompson (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
‘The River Blade’ by T.R. Thompson is a mix of the Science Fiction and detective genres which mostly takes place in a virtual reality setting known as the River or the Grid. I’m not quite sure if the River and the Grid are the same thing but I’m not ...more
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Eamonn Murphy rated a book it was amazing Animals by Geoff Ryman	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
‘Animals’ by Geoff Ryman is a horror novel and a family story with a large degree of anthropomorphism in it. The anthropomorphism in the novel is not cute, like Disney characters, but instead has a pseudo-scientific rationale. Ryman, an experienced a ...more
Nov 11, 2025 03:19AM · like · see review
Eamonn Murphy rated a book really liked it Vital Signals: Virtual Futures Near-Future Fictions by Dan O'Hara	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Vital Signals’ has thirty stories in two hundred pages, so that’s about six pages per yarn, but it’s a bit less because there’s an introduction and some blank pages where a new section begins. So these are short, sharp shocks but more Thatcher than G ...more
Nov 11, 2025 03:11AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Vital Signals by Dan O'Hara. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Vital Signals by Dan O'Hara <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

Eamonn Murphy is now friends with Conor

Eamonn Murphy rated a book it was amazing

The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale
by Joe R. Lansdale (Goodreads Author)

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‘The Essential Horror Of Joe R. Lansdale’ contains what it says on the cover. An introduction by Joe Hill tells us how his father, Stephen King, introduced him to Joe Lansdale’s works one day when he was about thirteen. It’s clear that Hill, no mean ...more

Eamonn Murphy rated a book it was amazing

Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! by Richard Wolinsky

Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends
by Richard Wolinsky

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‘Spaceships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! ‘Interviews With Science Fiction Legends’ is a book of interviews with a difference. Instead of having one author, editor or agent at a time share their story, it’s divided by subject matter and quotes multipl ‘Spaceships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! ‘Interviews With Science Fiction Legends’ is a book of interviews with a difference. Instead of having one author, editor or agent at a time share their story, it’s divided by subject matter and quotes multiple interviewees on the topic at hand. The way to read the book is to imagine you’re at a cocktail party, wandering around and overhearing different conversations. In one corner, Anne McCaffrey and Jack Williamson are talking about the early days of science fiction magazines.

In another, Charles D. Hornig and Julius Schwarz remember the first fan magazines and Hugo Gernsback’s ‘Amazing Stories’. Quotes from interviews are compiled as if the individuals were on a panel, discussing the same subject. It works well. Hell, it works beautifully to create an oral history of science fiction in the 20th century.

The original interviews were conducted in various places and media by Richard Wolinsky, Richard A. Lupoff and Lawrence Davidson, and this text was compiled and edited by Richard Wolinsky. It must have been a huge job. It recounts the history of science fiction magazines, as told in their own words by the editors and writers who created them, spanning from the 1920s to the 1960s.

‘Chapter One: Science Fiction In The 1920s’ covers the early pulps, Hugo Gernsback’s ‘Amazing Stories’ and other lesser magazines. The interviewees include Jack Williamson and E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith. Gernsback, it seems, was a cheat who didn’t pay his bills and did his best to avoid paying writers who often had to sue to get their money. But he originated the science fiction pulp magazines, and so he has an award named after him.

Chapter two is the story of ‘Weird Tales’ and features plenty of chat about H.P. Lovecraft by E. Hoffman Price, Frank Belknap Long and Robert Bloch, who all knew him quite well. Hoffman Price says that Lovecraft was a whimsical and delightful companion, and the long-faced, solemn scholars looking for significance in his work have it all wrong. ‘It had no goddamn significance, the lot of it. It was just the fun of the moment. They can’t get that through their pointed heads, though.’ Price was a real character.

Chapter Three covers the years of the depression and the triumph of the pulps. This tells about ‘Astounding’ under early editors from Harry Bates to F. Orlin Tremaine and how young fans like Mort Weisinger, Julius Schwartz and Charles D. Horning turned professional. Hornig became editor of Hugo Gernsback’s ‘Amazing Stories’, aged just seventeen, mostly because he was cheap. I like his humility. Asimov wrote somewhere that Hornig was the only person in the field with absolutely no talent. Hornig cornered the great man in New York and said, ‘You really hit it on the head. I never had any talent for it; that’s why I was an editor.’ Hornig’s defence was that he was enthusiastic and interested in science fiction, couldn’t write it and wanted to be involved. I think that’s fair enough. I mean, you could say the same about book reviewers. Hornig published two very early Asimov stories in ‘Future Fiction’, which helped him at the start of his career.

Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz became agents and editors. A good agent who knew the magazines and knew the editors and what they wanted could place a story for a writer, saving him lots of time posting it all over, and was worth his ten per cent. Julius Schwartz took an unsold Lovecraft story, ‘At The Mountains Of Madness’, to F. Orlin Tremaine at ‘Astounding’ and got $350 for it. Lovecraft had $315, and ‘it was the biggest cheque he ever received in his life’. Literary agents are infamous for various scams and schemes, of course, but you get bad eggs in any profession. Mort and Julie continued their careers at DC Comics after they left Science Fiction. Horace Gold reckoned that Weisinger was very creative and great at coming up with ideas. However, the leap from idea to finished story is a large one. Later, in the book, Asimov mentions that he was worried he might be a fraud because all his best stories came from ideas by John W. Campbell, Jr., but Junior himself told Asimov, ‘I gave ideas to hundreds of writers; there’s only one you.’

Campbell is dubbed ‘the King of Science Fiction’ and gets virtually the whole of chapter four to himself with sections on his editing, his policies, his personality and his later years. Campbell launched the careers of Asimov, Heinlein, van Vogt and many others, and ‘Astounding’ was the top magazine for at least a decade. In later life, he fell for wacky ideas like Dianetics, and the quality of his editing slipped, though he was still pretty sharp. Send him an idea for a short story, and he would likely write back six pages telling how it could make a series of novels.

‘Chapter Five: World War II And Beyond: Science Fiction In The Forties’ ranges widely beyond ‘Astounding’ to discuss ‘Amazing Stories’ under Ray Palmer, ‘Fantastic Adventures’ under Palmer and then Howard Browne, and the lovely ‘Planet Stories’. Some SF was getting a bit highbrow, but plenty of readers still wanted ray guns and rocketships, and plenty of writers were happy to supply them. Robert Silverberg made a fortune banging out this stuff.

Chapter six has a lot about the rise and fall of the magazines because there was a boom in the 1950s, but it didn’t last. Various people talk fondly of Horace Gold and ‘Galaxy’, even more so of ‘The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction’ and Anthony Boucher. These rightfully get a lot of attention, but several interviewees make it clear that the smaller publications were important to boost the careers of beginning writers or those who didn’t fit with certain editors. Campbell had his favourite themes, Gold had different ones, and Boucher had another set. Yet there were plenty of ideas which didn’t suit them and still needed publication. Larry Shaw at Infinity dared to print ‘A Case Of Conscience’ by James Blish. Cele Goldsmith, one of the few female editors, was in charge of ‘Amazing Stories’ and ‘Fantastic’ from 1959 to 1965 and published early works by Roger Zelazny, Ursula Le Guin and Tom Disch. She also encouraged Fritz Leiber to write more ‘Fafhrd-Mouser’ tales. Who knows what budding writers might have quit without encouragement from the little publishers?

Chapter seven covers fandom, from the Science Fiction League to the Futurians. Science fiction may be the only genre where fans get so fanatical and also become professional writers or editors themselves. They form cliques, fall out, have feuds, marry, divorce and generally have a good time. I found this section less interesting, but having recently reread ‘The Futurians’ by Damon Knight, I might just be fed up with them.

‘Spaceships! Ray guns! ‘Martian Octopods!’ is a treasure trove for anyone interested in the history of science fiction and pulp magazines and probably of no interest whatsoever to billions of normal humans. I loved it. It will sit well on the bookshelf with ‘The Futurians’ and ‘Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard’ and ‘The Golden Age Of Science Fiction.

My advance review copy was an electronic version that was not at all navigable, and I assume the finished eBook will be better in that respect. I recommend splashing out on paper. This is one you will want to pick up at random and read wherever the page opens, at least, I would. Some sites allow you to download a ten per cent sample for free so you can check it out before deciding which format to buy. Recommended for old nerds or young ones with a sense of history. ...more

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The Avengers in the Veracity Trap! by Chip Kidd

The Avengers in the Veracity Trap! (Marvel Arts)
by Chip Kidd

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‘The Avengers In The Veracity Trap’ is a new adventure that harks back to the very early days of Marvel’s Avengers, a superhero group now famous worldwide thanks to some of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Yet it started simply in 1963 with a ‘The Avengers In The Veracity Trap’ is a new adventure that harks back to the very early days of Marvel’s Avengers, a superhero group now famous worldwide thanks to some of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Yet it started simply in 1963 with a pencil, some Bristol drawing boards and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby bringing a bunch of individual Marvel heroes together to form a team.

Rumour has it that the success of the Justice League of America inspired the creation of the Fantastic Four, but surely that is much more so with the Avengers. The FF were a family with a shared origin. The Avengers, like the JLA, were individual stars with their own comic books, coming together to increase the company’s profits. I mean, fight crime and injustice.

The story goes like this. Loki lures the Avengers to Asgard, where he has assembled a horde of monsters to fight them. The monsters resemble Kirby creations from the early 1960s Marvel books, and someone nerdier than me could probably identify most of them. I recognised Fin Fang Foom, and with further research, discovered that there are now two omnibus editions of these vintage works, but I don’t own them yet, and cross-referencing from internet sources would take too long.

The Avengers fight the monsters, and individual splash pages of our heroes bear the strapline ‘A Marvel Masterworks Pin-Up’ in another homage to the early comic books. The pin-ups were in the back pages then, not part of the story, but Michael Cho’s artistic intentions are good. The Avengers line-up for this story is: Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Giant-Man, and the Wasp. While the others fight monsters, Thor is looking for Loki and finds him at an ancient temple, which also contains the Veracity Vortex.

At this point, the story turns into metafiction, which is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘writing about imaginary characters and events in which the process of writing is discussed or described’. The process of writing here involves a pencil and Bristol board, and two men collaborating. The way metafiction is introduced is clever, original and part of the story, so I won’t spoil it.

I think the advertising blurbs for the book mention this aspect of it. Lee and Kirby did a sort of metafiction in at least one early FF, ‘Fantastic Four,’ which showed them creating an issue but having difficulty because Reed had not yet updated them on the FF’s latest adventure. The pretence here was that the FFs were real, and the comic creators were telling true stories about them. Joe Simon and Kirby did a similar thing with the Boy Commandos back in the 1940s and maybe the Newsboy Legion, too. Kidd and Cho take it a step further.

Nerdy notes: the Avengers line-up of Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Giant Man, the Wasp and the Hulk is only featured in one comic. That was Avengers # 2, in which they fought the Space Phantom. In Avengers #1, Hank Pym was little Ant-Man, not Giant-Man, and the Hulk left at the end of Avengers #2, disgruntled because the others mistrusted and feared him. To fit into the original chronology, this episode would take place sometime between the first two issues. Ant-Man would have been pretty useless against giant monsters, even assisted by his little friends. Are there ants in Asgard?

The art by Michael Cho is a decent homage to Jack Kirby, albeit from a slightly later time than 1963. Cho’s drawings look like Kirby inked by Joe Sinnott. The first three issues, featuring the Hulk, were inked by Paul Reinmann, a solid professional but no one’s favourite Kirby inker. It’s a minor criticism, but some of the figures are a bit wonky. Now, Kirby often went wonky, especially in later years, but, around this time, his figures were perfectly proportioned.

Cho does capture the good, clean lines of the art. Many of the poses are straight lifts from comics of the time. As an homage, this is fair enough. The pictures are big, bright and colourful, with few panels to a page, often one, and capture the spirit of the original. Cho is more of a graphic designer than an illustrator, but so was Kirby.

At a mere 64 pages, ‘The Avengers In The Veracity Trap’ is a brief bit of fun for old fans and may appeal to new ones or aficionados of Michael Cho’s graphics. Given the small price differential between the eBook and the hardback, it might be worth going for paper on this one. I suppose the decision depends on your financial situation. The hardback book measures nearly 12 x 9 inches in imperial units, making it a decent size. Worth a look. ...more

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Drive or Be Driven: Stories of Travel
by Aliya Whiteley (Goodreads Author)

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‘Drive Or Be Driven’ by Aliya Whiteley is the sixth book in the ‘Polestars’ series of individual author short story collections from Newcon Press and features seven stories previously published in magazines or anthologies and twelve yarns ‘original t ‘Drive Or Be Driven’ by Aliya Whiteley is the sixth book in the ‘Polestars’ series of individual author short story collections from Newcon Press and features seven stories previously published in magazines or anthologies and twelve yarns ‘original to this collection’. I enjoyed Whiteley’s novella ‘The Creator’, which is a pulp homage, and thought it would be worth giving her short stories a try, and it was, but they are not the same kind of thing.

In ‘Drive Or Be Driven’, Margarita meets Ioan at an icebreaker for her halls of residence. He lives three doors down the hall, so she arranges to have a lift to campus with him every day in his well-cared-for Citroen DS3. They go for long drives at night with both windows down, as the days are scorching. The background is a slow environmental catastrophe of drought, heatwaves and insect plagues.

There’s a similar setting in ‘Your Hero’, where a man with a very nice Range Rover gives a lift to a young fellow whose old Triumph Stag has broken down. Both stories are slices of life and inconclusive, though the latter has a vague sense of menace.

In ‘Luisa Opines’, Luisa lives in a cottage in a forest. Every day, after her mother goes off into the woods, a young man turns up with a tablet and asks her to take part in surveys about holidays, savings accounts, frozen peas and other matters. He’s always friendly and cheerful. This develops into a black comedy.

Narrator Filli on the interstellar trader Artisan lands in the ocean of a planet where sea giants, five times as large as the ship, circle endlessly and seem to have no interest in anything but feeding. Filli and her people are obsessed with the art of the deal; they trade everything, even favours, with each other. ‘Everything wants something’ is their motto, and the same must be true of the big fish. A terrific story and an interesting look at an alien culture which may be getting less alien now.

Ursula Carleton, née Templeton, struggles to escape the restrictions imposed by society on her sex in 1919 when she investigates the tomb of Khefatra, perhaps a forgotten female pharaoh of ancient Egypt. When male Doctor Morrowley takes over on the instructions of the British government, she rebels. Ursula’s theory is that, like her, Khefatra was oppressed by the patriarchy. At one point, I thought this might turn into a classic horror story, but it’s more subtle than that. Nicely done, though, and I love the title: ‘Wrapped’.

My pulpish expectations were similarly frustrated by ‘Multiply’, which sets up a classic SF scenario. A small crew of three lives and works on board the Arrow. They have left behind a broken Earth and are carrying thousands of passengers in cryogenic storage to start again on a new planet. There are sympathetic characters and a truly devastating crisis which had me gripped. Then the story turned into something else. I’m not quite sure what. The ending was vague. I enjoyed the ride but left disappointed.

I’m glad to have read ‘Drive Or Be Driven’, but it’s only fair to warn potential readers that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s only honest to admit that a lot of it wasn’t mine. If you like your fiction to hit the standard storytelling signposts with a couple of crises and a resolution in which the hero wins out by dint of skill and character, then you may be disappointed. But you can get that in most places. This is something a bit different, and if you like a slice of life or prefer to be surprised, puzzled, intrigued or weirded out, then this collection might suit. You also get fine writing and interesting characters. Take a chance? ...more

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The Society of Unknowable Objects
by Gareth Brown (Goodreads Author)

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The bad news, reader, is that you cannot join the Society of Unknowable Objects. Membership is inherited, passed down from father to son or mother to daughter, in the case of our heroine. Magda Sparks becomes a member following her mother’s death on The bad news, reader, is that you cannot join the Society of Unknowable Objects. Membership is inherited, passed down from father to son or mother to daughter, in the case of our heroine. Magda Sparks becomes a member following her mother’s death on a hiking trail in Nevada, USA. Imelda Sparks was tracking down unknowable objects using a special map and encountered a villain named Lukas. He plays a big part in the book.

Magda has known old Frank Simpson all her life, but only as the proprietor of Bell Street Books in Marleybone, London. It was a surprise when he told her about the society, founded by their forebears, and showed her the Clockwork Cabinet in the basement, where unknowable objects, things with magic powers, are stored. The society meets twice a year to affirm that all the objects are safe and have a cup of tea with biscuits. The other members are Will Pinn, a quiet, introverted watchmaker, and Henrietta Wiseman, a playful older woman who doesn’t always come to meetings. Their ancestors, the story goes, were crusty bastions of the British Empire who discovered the magical objects in foreign lands and brought them back to Blighty to keep humanity safe. A fine moral tale of righteous chaps doing good. It’s like a ripping yarn by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Frank sends Magda on a mission to Hong Kong to retrieve a newly discovered magical object, which leads to a shift in events and the revelation of dark secrets. She meets a handsome bank executive named James Wei, who takes her to a secure place to fetch it. They are interrupted by a trained assassin, one Owen Maddox, an ex-paratrooper who used to work for the British Secret Service but has gone freelance and somehow knows about the objects. Magda escapes from Owen Maddox by using the magic that she has kept secret. You’ll believe a girl can fly!

The magical objects are powerful. Apart from a pendant that lets you fly, there’s a ring that makes the bearer invisible and able to walk through walls, a chess piece that gives you control over other people and a crucifix that restores the dead to life. Some scenes in this light fantasy almost change into horror when the bad guys do their utmost.

In general, though, the plot is a clean, decent adventure story, probably suitable for a YA audience but perfectly acceptable to adults. A page-turner. I really enjoyed it. There are a variety of interesting characters, especially the villains. Owen Maddox has a suitably terrible backstory; Lukas even more so. I also liked Will Pinn, the quiet, decent watchmaker who tried to live a sedate, well-organised life. Oddly enough, the least intriguing character is the heroine, Magda, a rather straight, proper, suburban girl. She is jolly nice, salt of the earth, but a bit boring. It’s often that way in fiction. The minor characters are the favourites, like in Babylon 5. The society’s ancestors, who collected the unknowable objects, are rogues who could make for an interesting prequel, especially if more secrets are revealed.

Author Gareth Brown deftly uses the modern thriller technique of short chapters, point of view switches at cliffhanger moments and surprising plot twists to keep you reading. He writes decent prose, too, with a scattering of similes that lift it above potboiler hack work. This is his second novel, and I must check out his first, ‘The Book Of Doors’. ‘The Society of Unknowable Objects’ is an engaging tale that is worth your time. Enjoy. ...more

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Elephants in Bloom (Polestars Book 5)
by Cécile Cristofari

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‘Elephants In Bloom’ by Cécile Cristofari is the fifth book in the Polestars series of individual author short story collections from NewCon Press. The collection features eighteen original stories, with ten previously published in magazines or antho ‘Elephants In Bloom’ by Cécile Cristofari is the fifth book in the Polestars series of individual author short story collections from NewCon Press. The collection features eighteen original stories, with ten previously published in magazines or anthologies.

In ‘All We Ever Look For,’ a lady opens the window of her Quebec apartment and sees ‘three parrots perched on a tree hanging over a deserted beach of pure white sand.’ When she closes the window, the scene reverts to the maple tree outside as normal. If she opens it again, she knows there will be something completely different: mountains, deserts, and jungles. The window is somehow a portal to other places. This fantastic premise sets up a quiet, thoughtful tale, a slice of life, really, with an Eleanor Rigby theme. Is anybody happy out there?

Huge environmental issues are tackled in ‘The Fishery.’ The fishery opens at dawn, cranes ready to drop the day’s load onto the conveyor belts, ‘nets overflowing with dead things from across the cosmos.’ The catch in the nets is ‘the usual fare: debris, fragments of asteroids that had been roaming the void for aeons, a few anaemic rays of light here and there.’ The story is told from the point of view of three characters. Orna is an environmental inspector. Jana is a journalist working undercover. Ary is an overseer. It’s a metaphor for overfishing, but the cast are not villains, just trapped by circumstance. The world needs food.

Alice and Laurent are dropped off on a small island by their son to avoid a pandemic. They can see the lights of the mainland and have stocks of pasta and beans. They can fish, but the lights on the mainland get fewer and fewer. Are old people worth saving? I liked ‘A Kingdom Of Seagrass And Silk’ but have a fondness for tales of married couples who actually get on well. The circumstances reminded me of ‘Birdwatching At The End Of The World’ by G. W. Dexter, which is also available from Newcon Press.

One of my favourites here is ‘The Hangman’s Legacy.’ In a settlement near Narbonne, the hangman sells corpses to a widow, something that would get them both in serious trouble if discovered. She pays in coin. Madeleine sells remedies, poultices, lucky charms, and embroideries to locals who don’t know what goes into them. Then the prettiest girl in the village asks her for a love charm to make a wicked man want her. This dark fantasy is one of the strongest stories in the book.

In ‘Soaring, The World On Their Shoulders,’ the decent patriots of France have had enough and elected a strong leader who will make the country great again. Top scientist Madame Armande Santucci hopes to keep a low profile and avoid working for their war machine, but that won’t happen. She’s disappointed by how many friends cooperate to save their own skins. What would you do? It’s easy being a keyboard warrior, but it’s tougher in a damp basement with your nipples wired to the mains and a little sadist in a grey uniform holding the switch. That’s not a scene in the story, just my own opinion. The title refers to Santucci’s invention, which the regime hopes to use for war. Is she able to reverse their plans?

Archie lets the cat out of the quantum bag in ‘Schrodinger’s Children.’ Two cats, actually, one alive and one dead. The original belonged to the man next door. Our neighbour, Mr. Newton, is the unpredictable sort. This is a bit of fun with the English language by a native French speaker and first appeared in ‘Andromeda Spaceways Magazine,’ which I must read someday.

In ‘A Diary From The End Of The World,’ an alien narrator has disguised herself as human and spent three years studying planet DA3(1), the third daughter of star Alkahran, where the dominant species has ‘a voracious and utterly unviable relationship with their habitat.’ Summoned home, she must find a way to a remote isle off the coast of Tierra del Fuego where she left her transport. A poetic travelogue of the Beagle Channel with a story thrown in.

‘The Owl Woman’ is a prehistoric tale about the lives of hill people in Provence, subject to raids by bigger, stronger men from the valleys who take their women away. It’s an interesting speculation on a time for which there are no written records.

The book closes with the title story, ‘Elephants In Bloom.’ God, it seems, has fallen out of the sky and landed on a mountain conveniently near a cathedral. Scientists are burrowing into his corpse to find out what they can. ‘This was God, the same as he’d always been: a ponderous, useless carcass, taking up so much space you couldn’t help running into him even when you tried your best to live away from his influence.’ Victor, the narrator, is a fourteen-year-old boy who is quite smitten with his teacher Ilana, a member of the religious group called the Children of Charity. The setting is after a cataclysm that had nothing to do with God, just global warming, plagues, and the energy crisis. Scientists must pedal bikes to run their computers. It’s an odd tale, but it sort of works.

An interesting and well-written set of stories that will make you think. Mostly, it will make you think about environmental disaster, pandemics, global warming, man’s effect on nature, and whales. Each story has an author’s note appended to tell you what inspired it and add commentary. Cécile Cristofari teaches English literature and has written a PhD dissertation on science fiction and fantasy. I like that she only writes short stories and has a proper job as well. That indicates they were the result of inspiration, not hacked out to make a buck. Four of the stories were previously published in Interzone,’ and this collection has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award, so you can tell it’s intelligent, literary, and modern. Worth the effort of reading, but my brain hurts now, so I must go and watch ‘Buck Rogers.’ ...more

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The River Blade
by T.R. Thompson (Goodreads Author)

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‘The River Blade’ by T.R. Thompson is a mix of the Science Fiction and detective genres which mostly takes place in a virtual reality setting known as the River or the Grid. I’m not quite sure if the River and the Grid are the same thing but I’m not ‘The River Blade’ by T.R. Thompson is a mix of the Science Fiction and detective genres which mostly takes place in a virtual reality setting known as the River or the Grid. I’m not quite sure if the River and the Grid are the same thing but I’m not quite sure about anything in this book. There are three main characters, Cass, Adlai and Detective Poe, and the point of view frequently skips about between them. In this future, nearly everyone has data ports in their necks by which they plug into the VR world. They spend a lot of time there, so the real world is getting worse as everyone ignores it. ‘The uglier the real world got, the more time you spent online escaping it, which led to the real world just getting uglier.’ Why buy stuff or try to make your environment better when you can easily enter the Grid, where everything is lovely? One side effect is that crime is lower. No one wants real-world material goods.

The virtual reality world is controlled by the corporations who own the Grid and set it up with quantum computers. But clever, rebellious hackers can also go off-Grid, where there aren’t so many rules and controls. It’s a jungle out there with vampire hunters working in packs to kill unwary travellers. Down these mean streets, a man must walk who is not himself afraid. Detective Poe in a raincoat and hat. He’s sent to investigate a car crash in the real world. I think it’s the real world. Poe follows the clues from one place to another and meets a variety of interesting characters as he unravels the mystery.

Soon, Poe is being followed by Cass, who has become powerful in some sort of gamer way and acquired a tool called the River Blade, which can cut through anything in the VR world: bones, walls, machines…anything! In real life, Cass works in a boring office and spends all her off time in the River. I get the impression that nearly everyone does except very poor people who can’t afford neck data ports.

While chasing clues, Poe frequently talks to Adlai, who is described as his ‘ever-present intellectual companion’. Yet Adlai isn’t with him. When we join Adlai, he’s sitting in a bar drinking bourbon and thinking about his Roman Catholic upbringing and how he rejected it and why. At first, he decided he was smarter than his parents and other churchgoing fools but soon realised this wasn’t true. Yet how come they believed and he didn’t? These musings will resonate with any Catholic, so I presume the author was brought up in the one true faith.

Confession: (It’s a Catholic thing). By page 60, I was getting fed up with the general confusion and would have quit if it wasn’t a review book. A reviewer has a certain duty. Stories set in virtual reality always ring a bit hollow, including ‘Star Trek’ holodeck tales, because…well, what’s the point? Poe’s detective work was interesting and the adventures of Cass as she leapt about rooftops and cut her enemies throats were exciting, but it all happened in virtual reality, so it didn’t make any difference, did it? I think Adlai’s musings kept me reading.

Well, it got better after that. It didn’t get much clearer, but the character arcs converged and there was some sort of conclusion. I don’t know what it meant. I enjoyed the journey, though. In fact, I enjoyed it very much by the end.

I finished the book in time for its release date and then spent three days wondering what to say about it. I still don’t know. I think for some readers it might be brilliant, dazzling, a tour de force and all that. Others might throw it across the room before page 60. It’s well-written, intelligent, thrilling in places, fast-paced and blessedly short by the standards of modern novels. The only trouble with it is that you’re not quite sure why the virtual reality matters. I suppose events in the Grid, sometimes traumatic, would have an effect on the mental state and psychology of the people taking part. Then there’s the matter of the real world falling to pieces when we all spend our time not in it. Perhaps we’ll find out in a few years if Mister Zuckerberg gets his way.

At any rate, I guarantee you will love ‘The River Blade.’ Unless you hate it, or you might be indifferent. It’s a bit like ‘Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance’ because you don’t know who to recommend it to. It’s not ordinary, run-of-the-mill, standard, trope-ticking or meeting-expectations kind of fiction. I’m glad I read it. ...more

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Animals
by Geoff Ryman

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‘Animals’ by Geoff Ryman is a horror novel and a family story with a large degree of anthropomorphism in it. The anthropomorphism in the novel is not cute, like Disney characters, but instead has a pseudo-scientific rationale. Ryman, an experienced a ‘Animals’ by Geoff Ryman is a horror novel and a family story with a large degree of anthropomorphism in it. The anthropomorphism in the novel is not cute, like Disney characters, but instead has a pseudo-scientific rationale. Ryman, an experienced author who has won several awards for his fiction, ensures you’re in good hands when embarking on this thrilling journey.

The story is told in the first person by a fellow named Teddy Spaulding, remembering incidents that happened when he was ten years old. He’s an excellent writer because he grew up with vegans who listen to BBC Radio 4 instead of watching ‘Love Island’ like ordinary folk. An imaginative child, he was homeschooled by his mother. Teddy admits that one reason he didn’t fit in at school was that he didn’t talk like other children. If he ever watched television, it was old films where the people’s manner and the language spoken are more formal. Throughout the narrative, written when he’s an older man, Teddy makes wry comments about how we lived in his past, namely now. He has sensible things to say about television, social media, junk food and shopping.

The supporting cast are Teddy’s family and some neighbours. His mother is referred to as Mom because she’s an American who came to England to work as an actress but then got married. She is helped at home by Faith, a neighbour who does the cleaning. Faith is a superbly competent woman with tonnes of common sense and plays a key role. All the major characters are well-rounded, believable human beings, and the minor ones are often the kind of eccentrics you will find in a typical English village. Ted’s father, Mike, is a veterinary researcher for the Well Being Institute but deserted his wife and child for a man named Ken in London. He comes back to visit on weekends, tolerating Ted’s aloofness, and stays with them when they both fall ill with a strange fever over one long hot, dry summer. Mike is the first to notice that something is killing animals. He’s the first to notice that something is bringing them back.

The antagonists are the animals, though they start off as friendly. Teddy lives in a cottage in Oxfordshire with a big garden and many pets, including a cat called Little One, greyhounds, a huge pig and a duck. There is also plenty of wildlife in the surrounding countryside: cattle, sheep, deer and foxes. The local hunt has a pack of hounds. It’s not the best place to be when animals become killers.

As with any good horror story, this builds slowly with odd incidents no one can quite believe and develops into a full-blown national emergency. Teddy is on the front line because his father is researching the new pathogen that seems to be emerging, which is neither a virus nor a bacterium. Mike is in contact with the Well Being Institute and even appears by video link on the news when startling developments occur. Like any public figure, he gets attacked on social media by idiots.

The premise of the animal kingdom suddenly turning on humanity has been done before, classically in ‘The Birds’ by Daphne Du Maurier and more recently in ‘Zoo’ by bestseller James Patterson with Michael Ledwidge. Geoff Ryman has a sort of scientific rationale for his story and takes the scenario in a different direction than you might expect, an original twist on the theme.

It’s a pleasant, interesting and amusing read in the opening sections, a real page-turner when the crises mount. Even then, there are funny characters, like a dedicated AA breakdown mechanic trying to help everyone. I did wonder if award-winning literary author Geoff Ryman tried to write a best seller with film potential here to garner some loot for his old age. If so, he did a great job, and I wish him every success. ...more

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Vital Signals: Virtual Futures Near-Future Fictions
by Dan O'Hara

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Vital Signals’ has thirty stories in two hundred pages, so that’s about six pages per yarn, but it’s a bit less because there’s an introduction and some blank pages where a new section begins. So these are short, sharp shocks but more Thatcher than G ...more

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