Turn of the Tide by Margaret Skea A Review The story is set in Scotland during the final years of the sixteenth century. Like Romeo and Juliet, it portrays the feud between two noble families whose names, by coincidence, begin with the same letters of the alphabet as Shakespeare's warring Veronese. Instead of the Montagues …
Category: Books
"Everything's going to be okay."
The Truth Will Out by Jane Isaac Well, everything isn't going to be OK for Eva, one of two main characters in Jane Isaac's new detective thriller. And it'll be especially not OK for her friend Naomi, who is murdered in the first chapter. Eva and Naomi travel from England to Italy to collect a …
Sex and Politics in Winter
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K le Guin Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness is surely one of the best sci-fi novels ever written. I read it first in the seventies and now, about four decades later, it comes across as inventive and fresh as on that first reading. "Consider:" writes …
To Boldly Go (3)
Sci-fi finds new inspiration and a new audience The film collaboration between Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick in 1968 was a landmark in the history of science fiction cinema. 2001, A Space Odyssey did indeed go boldly into new sci-fi territory. Yet, though it won an Academy Award for special visual effects and BAFTAs …
It's all in the DNA!
The Seven Daughters of Eve Bryan Sykes's book is one that bears reading a second and even a third time. It is the story of mitochondrial DNA. I first read it shortly after its publication in 2001. Science has moved on. There has been much new research and while scientists do not always agree on …
We are not alone … yet!
"How would you feel if a Martian vomited stale liquor on the White House floor?" Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a novel that should be read at least twice. Read it first as the quaint, inventive work of fantasy that it is. The Red Planet of Bradbury's imagination is peopled with small, light brown, …
To Boldly Go (2)
Asimov and the Golden Age of Science Fiction The mid 20th century ushered in a golden age for science fiction writing and space opera. Drawing from new scientific discoveries and aided by advances in cinematography, the settings for the stories became more exotic and more colourful. Science fiction began to lose its pulp image. Now …
To Boldly Go
The Magic of Space Opera - when Science Fiction came of age Seventy years have passed since Isaac Asimov penned the first of his Foundation stories. Tens of thousands of years in the future, humanity has colonised far beyond the Solar System and has established a galaxy-wide empire, dependant for trade and communications on faster-than-light …
Shall we eat the cabin boy?
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch A Review Long-listed for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, Jamrach's Menagerie is an absorbing story of the sea, a sort of cross between The Life of Pi and The Ancient Mariner; at any rate it has a tiger and a cursed ship. Jaffy Brown is eight years old. He runs …
“I never read a book before reviewing it.”
Reflections on books, reviews and the Classics Club Literary historians attribute the quotation in my title to Sydney Smith, an English cleric, writer and humorist who lived around the turn of the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. Known for his many witticisms, Smith, who once described Scotland as the knuckle-end of England, that land of Calvin, …
Magda Green Books 