To all readers of my blog: I have decided that this will be my final post. Not that I am about to expire in the near future (I hope) but I have become increasingly aware that my days are ticking by, so I need to focus on finishing the activities which are most important to me.  When it comes to time spent in writing, a series of books on military technology take priority.  For the curious, details can be found on my website here: https://quarryhs.co.uk/  This does not mean I am forsaking fiction. I intend to continue reading novels old and new in various genres, and hop ..read more

  Prospero’s Children, The Dragon-Charmer, and Witch's Honour, by Jan Siegel After a couple of months devoted to stories about Atlantis, I've been reading a modern fantasy trilogy by Jan Siegel in which Atlantis is a major element. Unlike most trilogies, this one doesn't seem to have one over-arching title, just the three individual volumes: Prospero's Children, The Dragon-Charmer, and Witch's Honour, published between 1999 and 2002.  They are mostly set in the present day Yorkshire Moors, apart from the scenes in Atlantis which are many thousands of years in the past, and also in ..read more

  The Lure of Atlantis (part 2) Edited by Michael Wheatley Resurrected: Once in a Thousand Years by Frances Bragg Middleton (published 1935).  The Editor has some fun with this one, first in exploring the genuine identity of the author (usually identified as female but, the Editor believes, probably male). Identifying the source for the basic plot is easier, being inspired by the poem The Lemmings by John Masefield (helpfully included in the text) which concerns longing for the unattainable.  A group of young men goes for a night-time swim in the Sargasso Sea. One of them, Sh ..read more

  This is one of the British Library's ever-growing collections of mostly forgotten short stories and extracts from novels, all focused on particular themes. They have recently been concentrating on "Weird Tales" which consist mainly of fantasy and horror stories. This anthology, consisting of ten stories, is subtitled Strange Tales of the Sunken Continent and is devoted to the tale of the marvellous island civilisation which was drowned in ancient times. A review copy was sent to me by the Library. In Wheatley's introduction, he makes the point that the Atlantis myth has proved remarkab ..read more

  To quote the blurb: We are alone in the universe. After 1,000 years of searching humankind simply believes that there is nothing out there. Space is a magificent, but sterile, wilderness. That's the received wisdom, anyway. But a new expedition investigating a mysteriously aborted mission 27 years earlier is about to turn that wisdom on its head. I don't normally quote other reviewers in my reviews but given the enthusiasm and identity of this one, I'm making an exception: Jack McDevitt is that splendid rarity, a story-teller first and a science fiction writer second. In his ability ..read more

  Yet another volume in Jodi Taylor's Chronicles of St Mary's, The Good, The Bad and the History continues the story of Max the former historian and now bounty hunter, tracking down time-travellers who are trying to alter the past. The seriousness of the opposition steps up a gear with the growing strength of Insight, a mysterious organisation from the future with sinister aims, so Max arranges to be recruited in order to discover what they are up to.  This is fully up to the standard of Jodi Taylor's other St Mary's books, with its unique blend of action, humour, and fascinating in ..read more

 I doubt very much that anyone reading this blog is unfamiliar with the name Larry Niven. Starting in the mid-1960s, he wrote or co-authored scores of novels, mostly "hard" SF, and mostly fitting into one or more of several universes which he developed (many of the series being interlinked). His stories are always very readable, full of intriguing ideas and leavened with a sardonic sense of humour. His most famous novel must be Ringworld which emerged in 1970 and won several awards (including an informal one from me, as being one of my top three SF novels - for the record, the other two a ..read more

  An interesting contemporary fantasy published in 2022.  To quote the blurb: "Some places you won't find on any maps, others, only on maps. Nell Young has lived her life in and around maps. Her father, Dr. David Young, was one of the most respected cartographers in the world. But this morning he was found - or murdered? - in his office at the New York Public Library. Nell hadn't  spoken to her father in years, ever since he fired her over an argument over a seemingly worthless highway roadside map. A map which was mass-produced - and every copy of which is now being found an ..read more

  I started to read Joanna Russ's The Female Man (I found it on a shelf where it had been sitting for decades, and I was in the mood for something short and interesting). It was published in 1975, and is regarded as a classic of feminist SF. The story involves four young women, basically four versions of the same woman each from a different parallel world. The worlds vary - one is just like ours but without World War 2 - but the one which obviously interests the author is the one in which all of the male humans were killed off by a plague several centuries before. Fortunately that world p ..read more

  Two very different novels were recently drawn together in my mind, since both feature missing airliners. One is a straightforward thriller with no SFF elements, the other is….rather different. So naturally I read them in quick succession, to compare and contrast. Without a Trace by Mari Hannah begins with a disaster; an airliner disappears off the radar as it nears the end of its journey from the UK to New York. The recovery of fragments from the sea confirm that the plane was violently destroyed and there is little doubt that sabotage was involved. The main mystery is why? None of the ..read more