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You never know quite what to expect form the next Chris Brookmyre novel. Most recently it’s been a science-fiction space adventure ( Places in the Darkness ) and an early 19th century medical mystery thriller ( The Way of All Flesh as Ambrose Parry). With Fallen Angel , Brookmyre returns closer to his roots and the kind of crime thriller that made his name; not so much in the blistering comedy terror plots but closer (closer than you might at first think) to his Jack Parlabane books, where he rails against frauds, charlatans, conspiracy theorists, and not without some measure of flirting with controversy. Fallen Angel is inspired to some extent it seems by the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, or perhaps not so much directly inspired by the case as much as picking up on the suspicion and conspiracy theories that still abound around the disappearance of the young child while on family holiday on the Algarve in Portugal. The case in Fallen Angel bears certain similarities in the myst...

I had some reservations when I read Shattermoon , the first part of Dominic Dulley’s SF adventure series The Long Game. The first book was by no means lacking action and incident, but it became a little repetitive in its chase sequences, racing from one battle, trap and escape to the next one. Despite its off-world setting, it was more like a Bond espionage thriller and rather short on science-fiction background detail. There were however indications that the relatively small-scale personal adventure of Aurelia ‘Orry’ Kent and her colleagues might open up as the prelude to a huge interplanetary war. We perhaps aren’t quite at that stage yet, but Dominic Dully has fleshed out the series considerably with Morhelion , and the future looks even more promising. I still had some reservations going into Morhelion however and the opening wasn’t particularly promising, seeming to open with nothing more than a reprise of the first book. Having narrowly averted a major war, Orry and the small cr...

When it comes to science-fiction books about long-distance space travel from Earth and colonisation of other planets the biggest challenge - apart from those technical limitations - would seem to be around the selection of the crew. Whether the trip involves generational renewal on-board or not, the likelihood is that it’s a one-way trip for most candidates, so some writers imagine that it would likely be death-sentence or life-sentence prisoners who would volunteer, not least because – to put it bluntly – it would be less of a loss if things don’t go to plan. Inevitably, putting a bunch of dangerous lifer prisoners into a small tin box and sending it out into space is just asking for trouble. Temi Oh’s Do You Dream of Terra-Two? considers the alternative of young people as candidates for the rigours of long-distance space travel, sent as the junior team to the nearest discovered planet with an Earth-like environment, Terra-Two. To be honest, it hardly seems likely that a group of six...

You would think that there’s nothing much more to add to the genre of zombie apocalypse novels and films, but it seems like there is always another spin that you can take on the subject. What has tended to get lost over time however is the original satirical outlook on society as subsequent treatments tend towards either survivalist manuals or horror slaughter-fests. The most significant social realignment in recent times has been the consideration of moving into a post-human society in MR Carey’s The Girl With All The Gifts (and before that of course Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend ), but there have been numerous other works that consider the necessity of adapting, restructuring and basically starting from scratch again in a post-capitalist, post-consumerist society. In one respect Sarah David-Goff’s Last Ones Left Alive appears to be fairly straightforward in its survivalist narrative interspersed with moments of flash-eating horror even though the zombie lore is a little different ...