Classic SF with Andy Johnson

It's been over a year since we last covered a novel in Alan Dean Foster's expansive Humanx Commonwealth setting. In these far-future novels, humanity has allied with the insectoid thranx species, whi…

In recent years, the reputation of the Northern Irish writer Bob Shaw has grown. He died in 1996, but left behind a large body of cleverly entertaining science fiction series, novels, and stories. To…

The hugely prolific Michael Moorcock is credited with making a major contribution to New Wave science fiction, mainly due to his editorship of the pivotal British magazine New Worlds. Moorcock wrote …

The time has come to continue exploring Iain M. Banks' Culture series. Inversions is the fifth of nine novels, and also the last to be published in the 1990s. This time, Banks stretched himself furth…

No discussion of classic British science fiction could be complete without mentioning John Wyndham, and perhaps especially his 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids. A pioneer in the noble tradition of …

This episode covers two quite different science fiction novels by two quite different writers, published more than a decade apart. What links them is their emphasis on religious themes. Let the Fire …

Back in episode 111, I took a trip back to the 1950s, and looked at three books written collaboratively by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. The first two of these, The Space Merchants and Gladia…

Originally published in 1960, Rogue Moon is an excellent novel by the Lithuanian-American author, critic, and editor Algis Budrys.

If you read classic science fiction and encounter contemporary revie…

A debut novel which deals with guilt, art, and suspicious happenings on a troubled colony founded on matter transmission.

The British SF author Eric Brown passed away in March 2023. He first came to p…

What if we share our world with a different intelligent species, but are separated from them by a failure of perception? And what if that gap could be bridged by a new technology, a new way of seeing…

In a recent episode, we looked at Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, who formed the most important science fiction writing team of the 1950s. This instalment looks at a key book by a dominant collabor…

Barrington J. Bayley's novel The Soul of the Robot (1974) fits within the wider context of robot stories in SF - these include Isaac Asimov's influential tales from the 1940s, and the more subversive…

 Charles L. Harness' 1953 novel The Paradox Men was originally published under the title Flight Into Yesterday. It is a classic example of elevated pulp, which features swordfights, superpowers, voya…

 Originally published in the December 1971 issue of Playboy, “A Meeting With Medusa” is generally thought of as Clarke’s last significant shorter work. Notably, it won the Nebula Award for Best Novel…

 In The Forge of God (1987), the Earth’s demise is an inevitability. Greg Bear’s novel of apocalypse was published when he was establishing himself as a leader of American hard SF in the 1980s. This …

Robert Silverberg's To Open the Sky (1967) combines five pre-planned stories originally published in Galaxy magazine in 1965 and 1966, it is an interestingly structured piece of work published at a t…

George R.R. Martin is easily one of the best-known, most successful, and wealthiest genre writers still working today - albeit slowly.

While Martin is a giant of modern fantasy writing, even some of …

John Brunner was a startlingly prolific British writer of science fiction, whose reputation rests on four acclaimed books he published from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. However, earlier in his ca…

Pure SF pulp, The Fall of Chronopolis (1974) is the fifth novel by British author Barrington J. Bayley. While it superficially resembles a space opera, it is really more of what could be called a "ti…

This special feature episode focuses on three novels written in partnership by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbbluth - The Space Merchants (1952), Gladiator-at-Law (1955), and Wolfbane (1959). Each …