Hiking on Pluto: The travel blog with a twist.
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Herve Le Tellier: The Anomaly
The Anomaly is a good reminder how artificial genre divisions are. It ticks all the boxes for a thriller: it is a dark, high stakes, suspenseful plot-driven story. It has tonnes of the common tropes: mysterious turbulence, arrogant Pentagon general, inexplicable stranger, nerdish math prodigy, prim FBI agent, double life contract killer. It is a…
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The 10 best exoplanets for setting up home
We went hiking in the Solar System [link], but what lies beyond? It’s hard to imagine now, but before the 1990s astronomers were not even certain that any other star hosted planets: discovering the first exoplanets in 1992 and 1994 made headlines, and they all got individual names (Poltergeist, Phobetor and Draugr, a variety of…
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Rosa Montero: Bruna Husky Series
Titles in the series: Tears in Rain, Weight of the Heart, Los Tiempos del Odio Recently struggling to create lists of outstanding female SF authors and great non-English SF, having Rosa Montero on my radar has been a piece of good fortune on both counts. Montero, a Spanish mainstream author whose SF books are limited…
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S. K. Vaughn: Across the Void
It’s hard to imagine a more intriguing opening scene than an all-dark exploration vessel drifting in deep space, with the tune Silent Night reverberating on empty corridors, and the ship’s commander suddenly waking up buried in hypothermic gel in an intensive-care cocoon. Unremitting suspense is among the best qualities of Vaughn’s novel. Mysteries are everywhere…
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The 10 best SF books of all time
Sooner or later, all SF fans end up compiling their very own best-of list of science fiction books. There’s a risk of getting emotional – once I had an hour-long passionate argument (would not go as far as to say fight, but voices were raised) with a friend over which of Wyndham’s books to add,…
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The Seven Summits of the Solar System
Conquering the seven highest peaks of seven continents on Earth is classic challenge to some, trodden path banality to others. It’s been done by at least 100, some estimate by 500 people, including by a 76-year old mountaineer, a married couple and a mother-daughter climbing pair. The current fastest record-holder bagged all seven peaks in…
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The 7 best active holiday destinations in the Solar System
While Planet Earth certainly offers excellent hiking and adventure opportunities, none of these involve methane river rafting, a 20 kilometre-drop from a cliff top or cryovolcanoes [link]. On the other hand, only a handful of Earth peaks would call for wearing an oxygen mask, and no destination on the home planet would require a full…
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The 10 worst things about living in Bangladesh
There were a good number of things I liked in Bangladesh [The 10 things I liked best in Bangladesh], but still, it is considered a hardship posting for a reason, and during my three years, I did find a number of things stressful, irritating or just alien. Here’s the ten things I liked least in…
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The 10 things I liked best in Bangladesh
Bangladesh was in many ways unexpected, and a long-term stay in my discomfort zone [The 10 worst things about living in Bangladesh]. But there were things I enjoyed at the time, and I’m surprised how much I’m still missing them! Lightning storms in Bangladesh are a whole different scale from what I had seen before.…
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Sergei Lukyanenko: Genome
I’ve known Lukyanenko as a phenomenal fantasy author, with his bestselling Night Watch series. The hexalogy held me in its grips for a year at least, while I obsessively re-read all the books five times, and felt genuinely disappointed for not being initiated into the Night Watch. Or the Day Watch, for want of options.…