EXTRACT: SALVATION by Peter F. Hamilton

SALVATION Peter F. Hamilton Pan Macmillan (www.panmacmillan.com) £20.00 Earth Calling Drifting through interstellar space, three light-years out from the star 31 Aquilae, the Neána abode cluster picked up a series of short, faint electromagnetic pulses that lasted intermittently for eighteen years. The early signatures were familiar to the Neána, and faintly worrying: nuclear fission detonations, […]

EMPIRE OF SILENCE by Christopher Ruocchio

EMPIRE OF SILENCE (SUN EATER BOOK 1) Christopher Ruocchio Gollancz (www.gollancz.co.uk) £16.99 Hadrian Marlowe, eldest son of the ruler of the planet Delos, is little more than an embarrassment to his father. A wannabe scholiast, he is far from the strong son who could rule with an iron fist in the event that Lord Alastair […]

EXTRACT: THE HAND OF AN ANGEL by Mark Brownless

THE HAND OF AN ANGEL Mark Brownless (www.markbrownless.com) £1.99 Prologue 2013 Eighth International Congress of Clinical Psychology, Granada, Spain The printed A3 sheet clipped to a folding stand outside the lecture theatre announced the afternoon sessions. Shortlist lecture series: Elspeth Dickson Award for New Research Areas A list of research papers and their presenting authors […]

EXTRACT: SHATTERMOON by Dominic Dulley

SHATTERMOON Dominic Dulley (dominicdulley.com) Jo Fletcher Books (www.jofletcherbooks.com) £16.99 MENDER Consciousness returned slowly. At first the familiar throb of a ship’s mass-inversion drive made Orry think she was in her cabin, but the smell wasn’t right. There was an antiseptic odour that brought to mind a hospital, but it was fighting with something earthier, a […]

THE SEVEN DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE by Stuart Turton

THE SEVEN DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE Stuart Turton Raven Books (www.bloomsbury.com) £12.99 A man wakes in the middle of the woods and can remember nothing except the name “Anna”. Hearing noise nearby, he believes that Anna is being murdered, but has no idea why he believes this to be the case, or why she might […]

GUEST POST: Who is Elyse Martingale? by MATTHEW BLAKSTAD

Name: MATTHEW BLAKSTAD Author of: SOCKPUPPET (2016) LUCKY GHOST (2017) On the web: www.matthewblakstad.com On Twitter: @mattblak Ah, yes: Professor Elyse Martingale. Doyenne of Britain’s post-war computing revolution. Political radical and scourge of the state. Inspiration to a new generation of 21st century hacktivists. Surely you know all about Elyse Martingale? What’s that? You’ve never heard of […]

LUCKY GHOST by Matthew Blakstad

LUCKY GHOST Matthew Blakstad (www.matthewblakstad.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £16.99 Welcome to the Strange, an augmented reality game that has taken the world by storm. Through Encounters, the Strange matches participants together, giving them tasks to complete, which is why Alex Kubelick finds herself slapping a complete stranger in the face one morning. Completing tasks […]

An Interview With DAVE HUTCHINSON by George Sandison

2084 Unsung Stories (unsungstories.co.uk) Currently on Kickstarter: unsungstories.co.uk/2084 Indie publisher Unsung Stories are currently running a Kickstarter project to fund the release of 2084, an anthology of dystopian fiction from some of the biggest names in the genre. Fully funded within the first 24 hours, the anthology is now heading towards its third stretch goal. […]

An Interview with MATTHEW BLAKSTAD

Name: MATTHEW BLAKSTAD Author of: SOCKPUPPET (2016) On the web: http://www.matthewblakstad.com On Twitter: @mattblak Matthew Blakstad’s first career was as a professional child actor. From the age of ten, he had roles in TV dramas on the BBC and ITV, in films and at theatres including the Royal Court. After graduating from Oxford with a […]

SOCKPUPPET by Matthew Blakstad

SOCKPUPPET Matthew Blakstad (www.matthewblakstad.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £16.99 Days before the nationwide rollout of Number 10’s Digital Citizen initiative, news appears online that the pilot scheme has been hacked, and the data stolen. The source of the information becomes an immediate suspect, but there’s only one problem: famous Parley personality sic_girl doesn’t exist; she’s […]