Classic SF with Andy Johnson

The Count of Monte Cristo make not seem like the likeliest template for an SF novel, but Alfred Bester was able to take this 19th century French classic and turn it into the basis for his 1956 book T…

Connie Willis is known for her stocked awards cabinet and for her lengthy novels in the "Oxford Time Travel" series. But this major figure of US SF has not always been concerned with exploring the pa…

Time travel is, if scientists are to be believed, impossible. That has never stopped science fiction writers, who have made it one of their most frequently used and popular concepts. But if time trav…

Science fiction is famously difficult to define. In 1952, the writer and editor Damon Knight famously wrote that "science fiction is what we point to when we say it." But what if what we point to is …

This is an exploration of four short novels by a neglected female writer of SF who sought to subvert the genre from within.

One happy development in recent years is the growing awareness of the contri…

Edmund Cooper is hardly a familiar name today, but he was once a significant presence on the British science fiction scene. For 23 years, he reviewed new SF books for The Sunday Times, and one of his…

The generation starship is a classic concept in science fiction. Other stars are hugely far away, and our spacecraft are slow - why not condemn several generations of our descendants to live on board…

Back in episode 131, we looked at The Embedding, Ian Watson's startling debut novel published in 1973. Watson was soon to ascend to new heights, winning the BSFA Award for Best Novel for his second e…

The backwoods of Wisconsin may not seem like the likeliest place for humanity's future in the stars to be decided, but only outside of a Clifford D. Simak story. Wisconsin was his preferred setting, …

Rather than looking at a specific work of classic SF, this episode takes a wider view. It's my personal introduction to five concepts which I think can help enhance your science fiction reading, to b…

Science fiction icon Philip K. Dick is such a well known figure now - over 40 years after his death - that it is possible to lose sight of the struggles he faced in his career. Back in the 1950s, he …

Science fiction has seen many audacious heroes who use their wit and guile to overthrow dictatorships, bring the truth to light, and save the world. While this kind of wish fulfilment has its place, …

A soulful sequel to The Soul of the Robot (1974)

In episode 119, I took a look at The Soul of the Robot from 1974, the best-known novel by the little-known British SF author Barrington J. Bayley. As I…

A clash of the deep past and the near future

Featured in episode 107, Pat Murphy's 1986 novel The Falling Woman was one of my favourite reads of 2024. This episode covers her debut novel, The Shadow H…

Confinement and culture shock in a hyper-urban world

Recent projections suggest that the human population will peak somewhere around 2085; it could even occur, according to some models, as early as 20…

A personal struggle with cosmic consequences

Some people are their own worst enemy - that's particularly true for John Breton. One night, he finds himself confronted with an identical, rival version o…

Coming of age on a hollowed-out asteroid

The critic Algis Budrys said of this novel, "one feels a real shock as one realizes that Panshin after all has never been a girl growing up aboard a hollowed-o…

A tall tale of impossible products, mutants, and parallel Earths

Clifford D. Simak explores the parallel worlds theme to intriguing, energetic effect in his 1953 novel Ring Around the Sun. In this tal…

Entropic tales from the end of time 

It is a bit of a truism to say that people are entranced by imagining the end of the world. But what about the end of time? In this immensely distant scenario, ent…

The Culture is run by Minds - AI constructs of immense computing power, some of the greatest intelligences in the galaxy. But no amount of intelligence can prevent you from making mistakes.

The sixth …