 | Hidden Empire (Saga of Seven Suns) | Kevin J. Anderson |  |
| In the book Hidden Empire by Kevin J. Anderson, humanity is preparing to test a device which will convert a gas giant into a sun. The test is successful but before the gas giant finishes its conversion into a star, diamond-hulled ships fly out of the newly forming sun. The book then cuts to about a... |
 | The Algebraist | Iain M. Banks |  |
| Reading the depth of Banks' writing is an experience in itself. The Algebraist is such a good read that I would daydream about the story when awake and dream of it when asleep. My life was taken over by the scale of the plot, the implications of the outcomes and even the epic-ness of sub-plots! Page... |
 | The Player of Games (The Culture) | Iain M. Banks |  |
| In The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks presents a distant future that could almost be called the end of history. Humanity has filled the galaxy, and thanks to ultra-high technology everyone has everything they want, no one gets sick, and no one dies. It's a playground society of sports, stell... |
 | Raft | Stephen Baxter | |
| I found review of Dec, 2003 interesting for its explaining the critic's contentions over the inaccuracies of the science, but I think the point of the book was missed. This book is a great read. It is unfortunately, one of very few of Baxter's books which have characters you can actually sympathiz... |
 | Timelike Infinity | Stephen Baxter | |
| While it moves somewhat slow, "Timelike Infinity" is still very good. This book is about Michael Poole, a brilliant scientist who wants to build gates to link up the galaxy. Using this gates, it is possible to travel from Earth to Pluto nearly instantaneusly. Once he pulls this of, Poole decides ... |
 | Ring | Stephen Baxter | |
| This was an award winner, which beat out The Algebraist. I disagree with the outcome. Ring is definitely full of goopy science (particles, strings, quantum mechanics, etc.) - all things the geeks love. I'd prefer a better science-based story over the profusion of hard-science. |
 | The Time Ships | Stephen Baxter | |
| What if the time machine from H.G. Wells' classic novel of the same name had fallen into government hands? That's the question that led Stephen Baxter to create this modern-day sequel, which combines a basic Wellsian premise with a Baxteresque universe-spanning epic. The Time Traveller, driven by h... |
 | Phase Space | Stephen Baxter | ![]() |
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 | Beyond Infinity | Gregory Benford |  |
| folks if you like the hard stuff then benford is for you, with an imaginative mixture of theoretical physics and creative fiction, his books bound with possibilitys. |
 | The Light of Other Days | Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter | |
| The crowning achievement of any professional writer is to get paid twice for the same material: write a piece for one publisher and then tweak it just enough that you can turn around and sell it to someone else. While it's specious to accuse Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke of this, fans of both ... |
 | A Quantum Murder (Mindstar) | Peter F. Hamilton | |
| Hamilton delivers another solidly entertaining novel with A Quantum Murder. In this book, Greg Mandel is called back to the service of Julia Evans to solve the mystery of a murder that it appears nobody has committed. It is not long into the investigation before the political involvement and strange... |
 | The Nano Flower (Mindstar) | Peter F. Hamilton | |
| Sorry, but I didn't care for it. The ending was a disappointment. I expected better after 480 pages. The book seems to be nothing more than a vehicle for Hamilton to dazzle us with his science and engineering knowledge. The truth is that his storytelling is just not that good here. |
 | Fallen Dragon | Peter F. Hamilton | |
| This forey into military sci-fi may be in the tradition of Heinlein, but it does not satisfy as well. The universe of the story is quite well done and well thought out, down to the stagnation and issues such a society would face. But it comes off as preachy in many places, lacking the "ah-ha" othe... |
 | The Reality Dysfunction (Night's Dawn Trilogy) | Peter F. Hamilton | |
| This is space opera on an epic scale, with dozens of characters, hundreds of planets, universe-spanning plots, and settings that range from wooden huts and muddy villages to sentient starships and newborn suns. It's also the first part of a two-volume book that is itself the first book of a series. ... |
 | The Neutronium Alchemist (Night's Dawn Trilogy) | Peter F. Hamilton | ![]() |
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 | The Naked God (Night's Dawn Trilogy) | Peter F. Hamilton | ![]() |
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 | A Second Chance at Eden | Peter F. Hamilton | |
| This is a superb collection of stories from Peter Hamilton, set in the same universe as his excellent, bestselling epics Reality Dysfunction (Emergence and Expansion) and The Neutronium Alchemist (Consolidation and Conflict). It's hard to pick favorites here... |
 | Pandora's Star | Peter F. Hamilton | |
| I came across this little gem by accident one day.It sat round on my desk for a couple of months before I got to settle into it.But I can honestly say that once I picked it up I was unable to put it down!It has all the elements of a true sci-fi classic.Exceptional plot developments as well as charac... |
 | Judas Unchained | Peter F. Hamilton | |
| First off: I'd like it better if we had 1/2-star options. Judas Unchained really doesn't deserve a 2, more a 2-1/2 or 2-3/4. |
 | Newton's Wake | Ken MacLeod | |
| (or maybe 3.5 stars -- a book I had trouble rating.) |
 | Spin State | Chris Moriarty | |
| In her debut novel, the terrific thriller Spin State, Chris Moriarty melds cutting-edge science with post-cyberpunk fiction and neo-noir suspense to create a complex, believable future inhabited by one of the most intriguing characters in modern science fiction |
 | Marrow | Robert Reed |  |
| The Ship is a rock larger than worlds. The Ship is a world full of vast hollows in which live thousands of alien races. The Ship is a mysterious starship, billions of years old, crewed by the near-immortal humans who discovered it, empty, at the fringes of the galaxy. And, as a select inner circle o... |
 | Absolution Gap | Alastair Reynolds | |
| Listen, I love a good hard Sci-Fi book. I grew up on Arthur C. Clarke and the likes. These can be good stories, putting the whole myth of the "Star Wars" universe to rest and showing what space travel and living in space may really be like one day. Alistair Reynolds, though, just isn't cutting it... |
 | Pushing Ice | Alastair Reynolds | |
| Lets start of with a statement - believable characterisation and character interactions are not a strength of Reynolds. There were times during Pushing Ice when I found myself thinking - That character would not have done that or I don't believe they would have reacted that way. Yet I gave Pushing ... |
 | Calculating God | Robert J. Sawyer | |
| Creationists rarely find sympathy in the ranks of science fiction authors--or fans, for that matter. And while Robert J. Sawyer doesn't exactly make peace with evangelicals on the issue, Calculating God has to be one of the more thoughtful and sympathetic SF portrayals you'll find of relig... |
 | Old Man's War | John Scalzi | |
| I bought this book because of the glowing readers' reviews in Amazon. I do not understand this reaction. Opening the book, I met a central character whose lame attempts at humor are acclaimed as hilarious. Gradually we find our man is gifted at everything but amazingly modest. This endears him to hi... |
 | Ilium | Dan Simmons | |
| Genre-hopping Dan Simmons returns to science fiction with the vast and intricate masterpiece Ilium. Within, Simmons weaves three astounding story lines into one Earth-, Mars-, and Jupiter-shattering cliffhanger that will leave readers aching for the sequel. |
 | Singularity Sky | Charles Stross | |
| This book made me chuckle on occasion, so I have to give it that. But I am so sick of the current SF buzzwords. Is this all I need to do to write a great SF novel: pick up a current book on physics, psychology, or philosophy and just incorporate whatever they say into my story? |
 | A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought) | Vernor Vinge | |
| In this Hugo-winning 1991 SF novel, Vernor Vinge gives us a wild new cosmology, a galaxy-spanning "Net of a Million Lies," some finely imagined aliens, and much nail-biting suspense. |
 | Mockymen | Ian Watson, Lydia Wood, Gabriel Strange | |
| Watson's recent novel is on the surface a bit more conventional sf story than his classic novels such as THE EMBEDDING and MIRACLE VISITORS. However, it is great fun and encompasses some adventurous story telling, involving Nazi plots, zombified drugged-out "Blissheads," and a dangerous quest to sav... |
 | Blindsight | Peter Watts | |
| The first alien-encounter book I've been lucky enough to stumble across in many years where the author realized that if the aliens aren't bipedal humans... they don't think like humans, and likely, their way of thought is based on their physiology. |
 | The Golden Age (The Golden Age, Book 1) | John C. Wright | |
| The Golden Age is the most ambitious and impressive science fiction novel since China Miéville's Perdido Street Station. Amazingly, it is John C. Wright's debut novel |
