Review of my reading in 2013

Long time overdue - I was going to do this around Christmas time - but thought I'd write a recap & overview of the books I read in 2013. It was a good reading year for me, my wife bought me a Kindle for Christmas 2013, and I found myself reading a lot more than I did before I got my Kindle, at least twice as many.

The year started off with Great North Road by Peter F Hamilton. If it wasn't for the fact that I was reading it on Kindle I'd have been exercising my arm muscles with this book as it is a 1000+ pages. It is a really great future detective novel from a master of Space Opera. It's one of the first books to give a good account of 3D printing too.

I then went for a thriller novel, 'First Family' by David Baldacci. As with so many of his books, nothing earth shattering, but a decent page turner.

Next was a 99p Kindle read, 'The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared'. Extremely funny, and you learn a lot about 20th century British History at the same time.

I then moved back to Science Fiction with the Hard SF classic 'Tau Zero' about a ship which can't stop accelerating and travels through billions of years of time. A short, good read.

After reading Great North Road, I then started to read Peter F Hamilton's Void Trilogy, about 3000 pages in all. Overly long at times, but overall extremely good.

Another author I read several books of in 2013 was Vince Flynn. I've really been enjoying his Mitch Rapp series, and read Transfer of Power, The Third Option and Separation of Power. 

I read Startide Rising by David Brin, which was about uplifted dolphins working together with a human crew. Didn't enjoy it overly much.

After that I read 'The Deep Blue Goodbye' by John D MacDonald, the first book in the Travis McGee series, which Lee Child often cites as a key influence on his writing and the character of Jack Reacher. I could definitely see some similarity, and did enjoy this book, but not as much as the Reacher books.

Next, around May time, I read 'Wool' by Hugh Howey. Thought it was a truly great future dystopia, but it was outdone by book 2 in the series, 'Shift'. Both books are set in the (fairly near) future when the very air of the world is poisonous, and people live in underground Silo's, strictly controlled by IT.

Part 2 of my 2013 reads to follow.

Stargate SG-1 Classic Fun & Speculative Crossover Episodes

Stargate SG-1 used to be one of my very favourite TV series, but I haven't seen it for years and only got as far as series six. I then fell behind and never got around to watching the rest. Now I've got a Love Film Instant subscription, and they've got all of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis on there. Happy days! Since it has been so long I decided to re-watch some of the old stuff, starting with the feature length pilot, Children of the Gods.

For those of you who somehow missed Stargate SG-1 (where were you?), it follows on from the 1994 film Stargate, starring Kurt Russell & James Spader. Thousands of years ago, aliens visited Earth, specifically ancient Egypt, via a Stargate. They were nasty guys who kidnapped lots of people and seeded the galaxy with them (so they could later come and use their descendants as slaves). The Stargate on Earth was then buried by some intelligent Egyptians who realised that this would stop nasty baddies coming through and enslaving/kidnapping them. Cue thousands of years later when it is rediscovered and ends up in American hands. They get it working, and in the film find it opens a wormhole to another world.

At the start of the TV series they realise it doesn't just link to one world, but thousands of worlds across the galaxy, you just need to dial the right address. This opens up a lot of potential storylines, as evidenced by more than 200 episodes of SG-1, plus over 100 episodes of Stargate Atlantis, and then there's Stargate Universe & TV movies...

It's great to be getting back into Stargate SG-1, I've been meaning to for years. Since first watching SG-1 however, I've watched  a lot more TV, and my tastes have broadened out of sci-fi into all sorts of other genres. Re-watching SG-1 got me thinking about possible crossovers with other series. As there were doctors operating on someone with an alien parasite in them, this got me thinking of Greys Anatomy, House etc. I also reckon that a lot of the artifacts recovered by the SG-1 team end up in Warehouse 13.What really gets me excited though is a crossover between Stargate SG-1 and The West Wing... I mean come on there's lots of politics that crops up throughout SG-1. General Hammond is always on the phone with the President, and there's various Presidential advisors that crop up from time to time. In fact I'm sure there's a major thread in series 6 with the President in several episodes. It would be great chuck these two great series together...

Agree? Disagree? What crossovers would you love to see?

'Kings of Air and Steam' - a Steampunk Pick up and Deliver Game

I haven't posted anything about board gaming for a while, so here's a review of a game I played last week.

Kings of Air and Steam is a pick up and deliver that first appeared on Kickstarter, which I played at my board gaming club last week. It has a steampunk type them - you use airships to travel around the world picking up resources from factories, transporting them from factories to depots. The depots are on rail lines which allow you to ship resources to cities where they are in demand.

I've not played many pick up and deliver games before, so I don't know whether this is a common approach, but each round has give movement phases in it. At the start of the round, each player secretly plans out his moves in advance. This takes a lot of thinking, as while the first move or two might be quite easy, the later moves are much more problematic. Why? Well by the time you get to the later moves in the round, there's a good chance that other players have already beaten you to a factory and stolen the goods from under your nose, forcing a quick rethink (the pre-planned moves you made at the start of the round dictate how many spaces you have to move in that movement phase, but not in what direction, so allows limited last minute changes of plan). That's just the basic rules of course, there's lots more too it than that, and multiple routes to winning, but that's the gist. Once you get the basics of movement etc you really get into the game very quickly.

The board is hexed based and really beautiful. The pieces are good quality, including chunky plastic airships. Overall a very good build quality.

The game took about 90-120 minutes with four players, and everyone was playing for the first time (although the Neil whose game it was had read through the rules a couple of times and is very good at explaining games even when he hasn't played before. I'd definitely play this again, and give it 8.5/10. It's ranked 835 on BoardGameGeek which to me seems a bit harsh, I'd definitely rate this higher than that. Of course I haven't played many pick up and deliver games before, there may be much better ones out there which is why this hasn't got as good a rating. If anyone's got any recommendations for better Pick up and Deliver games, do let me know!

'Proxima' by Stephen Baxter

I discovered this book in my local library shortly after reading a couple of favourable reviews so had to pick it up. I used to read a lot of Stephen Baxter's books, and was particularly fond of his Xeelee series, but some of his later books I wasn't as keen on so not read any of his for a few years. This caught my eye because it is proper science fiction set in the future (he's written quite a few quasi-historical sf novels which I'm not always as keen on).

There are two plots two the book. The main one is about a small group of colonists who are basically deported from the solar system and abandoned on a world around the giant star Proxima Centauri as part of a hands off colonization effort (the authorities hope they'll breed and develop a colony outpost without them having to do anything much). The second plot is set in the Solar System and is about a futuristic Cold War between the Chinese and the United Nations. There are colonies on Mars, Mercury, the moon and one or two asteroids so it is not just about Earth. Oh and its the late 22nd century just in case you were wondering.

One of the really interesting things about this book is the colony planet Per Ardua, as it is christened, around Proxima Centauri. This is a so called 'exo-planet' similar to one of the hundreds that astronomers have discovered over the last few years. It is much larger than Earth, the planet is stationery around its star so one side is in permanent daylight, the other in permanent night. The topography, terrain and climate of the planet is very different from Earth - it shows Stephen Baxter's creative imagination as well as his scientific background.

I really enjoyed this book and it felt like Stephen Baxter is back to his best. It is imaginative, but plausible. The world of Per Ardua, and the general setup in the solar system is very interesting and well conceived. The plot is good, and the characters are decent too.

After reading, I skimmed through a few of the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. It generally gets favourable opinion, but with a few criticisms. I thought I'd give my take on these.

Blurb doesn't match the book - apparently there were some problems with an initial description, but my copy was fine. It did talk about billion year old secrets and galactic threats, though all you get of these is hints towards the end. I guess this will be picked up in book 2.

Too much like a Dan Dare comic strip - I don't see the problem with this. Yes it has some action in it, but this is well balanced by the other elements in what is a really well rounded novel.

'The bad guys were paper mache who melted when given a good talking to' - this one they may have a point with, I'm struggling to think of any real bad guys/gals/aliens, and the ones there were did just disappear far too quick. But this didn't seem like a problem at the time, and if anything the environment on Per Ardua was the enemy.

Overall, if you like your science fiction to be plausible with a good plot, great world building & dark hints of cosmic danger, then I really recommend this book. If you enjoyed any of Baxter's early books, you should enjoy this. 9/10.

SF authors anagrams quiz

I tried creating a proper multiple choice quiz earlier on General SF & Fantasy Fiction earlier, and any eagle eyed followers who were on Google Plus over lunchtime (UK time) might have spotted a quiz going up. It was a fine quiz, except for the fact that no matter how well you did, it would give you a score of zero. Ooops. I used a free service called Quizbox and there doesn't appear to be any useful help feature or FAQ that might cover this problem. So I'm going to try again with a different service, or maybe even code it myself. However for now, here's a short anagrams quiz. All of scrambled phrases below are anagrams of well known science fiction and fantasy authors. Feel free to post any answers you get in the comments below. Here goes.


1. Inherent Boiler
2. Biz Filterer
3. A merging terror
4. Character lurk
5. A basin mink
6. Discard off milk
7. A mosaic visa
8. Echoed mist
9. Sulk, alien guru
10. Mad of serenity
11. Rink jolter
12. Hob-nob rib!
13. Filched porker
14. Fancy men farce
15. Insane trophy

Shouldn't be too difficult, I'll post the answers in a day or two.

Shouldn't be too difficult, I'll post the answers in a day or two. In the meantime, if you want more SF quizzing fun, check out my Science Fiction & Fantasy quiz book, available on the Kindle store now.

'Ships of My Fathers' by Dan Thompson - review

I recently asked over on Google Plus for recommendations for an 'indie' self-published science fiction book to read. I had various suggestions, several of which I intend to have a go at, but the one that most attracted me was this book, 'Ships of My Fathers' by Dan Thompson, which was recommended by Nathan Lowell (who himself is a quite well established self-published author I've now realised, and his books look rather good so you'll be hearing more from me about his books before long I think). Incidentally, the title may seem a bit of a strange one (too many plurals?), but a couple of chapters in and it makes perfect sense! Before I get into the review, my biggest reservation about self published books is the editing - other books I've experienced have been shocking, lots of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors etc. This book has none of those. It reads completely like a book published by a major publisher. Congrats to the author and their copyeditor, you've restored my faith in self-published indie books!

Michael Fletcher worked on his father's starship when, aged 17, he was suddenly orphaned after his father died in an accident. His father left him his starship, but he can't captain it until he's turned 18 and been able to pass his captain's his exam. Unfortunately, he learns that he was adopted, until he turns 18 he is under the guardianship of an Uncle he didn't know he had, and there are family secrets that need to be uncovered...

The story is a relatively simple one of family secrets, space travel and a little bit of piracy. It doesn't bore you with tonnes of descriptions, biographies, historical backplot etc, instead getting right down to the story. One thing I really liked though is that it goes into a lot more detail (without becoming boring) about life on board a starship, how it works and what people's jobs are. There's also quite a bit about how starships travel faster than light - it covers this much better than most sci-fi books which just stick with 'go to warp speed'... I was curious to know more about

The book is approximately 300 pages, and is the first in a planned series. The storyline in this book comes to a satisfactory conclusion so you don't need to read any more books, but there's enough unresolved plot hooks in there to make you want to read more. The quality of the writing (and editing) is very good - the book really flows, and there are no silly errors or clumsy writing to jar you out of the story.

Have now looked at Dan Thompson's other book, 'Beneath the Sky' the story of which is really, really interesting. A generation ship travelling for hundreds of years to the nearest star gets overtaken by a faster than light ship. What will be waiting for them when they reach their destination. Billed as being like the pilgrims on the Mayflower journeying to the new world, only to land in modern day Boston. Definitely high on my to be read list!

Film review - Star Trek: Into Darkness

I finally got around to watching the new Star Trek film earlier in the week, and it's a really good one, up there with The Voyage Home & First Contact for best Star Trek film. One of the things I really love about these new Star Trek films is the cast. I mean, there's a much sexier version of Uhuru, there's the classic geekiness of Simon Pegg as Scotty and the slightly nervous geek factor of Anton Yelchin as a Chekov, and this film has got the actor of the moment, Benedict Cumberbatch as bad guy Khan.

What's interesting about this film is that its a sort of re-make of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I say sort of because it is only loosely similar. There's a bad guy called Khan who lived hundreds of years in the past, but was cryogenically frozen. In the original Star Trek series, after being woken, he was exiled by Kirk after attempting to steal the Enterprise. Years later he escapes and goes after Kirk to extract his revenge, hence the 'Wrath of Khan'. In the new film he's had no prior dealings with Kirk, so doesn't have a vendetta against the Enterprise or its captain but is merely pursuing his own agenda. In fact, at a couple of points you are questioning whether he really is the bad guy, then you remember he's called Khan... In the hands of another actor, this might detract from the role, but Cumberbatch plays it very well.

The ending of the film is quite different too, but again superficially similar. If you've seen the original film and remember what happened, you'll be wondering if history will repeat itself. I won't spoil it by saying any more, except that the the Tribble is the clue...

I've heard that you would enjoy the film more if you re-watched Wrath of Khan first. I didn't, and loved the new film. I am tempted to go back and watch Wrath of Khan again now though...

I'll give it 9/10. A thoroughly enjoyable film that I'd watch again.