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This novella was published last Friday, October 10, 2014. I had preordered it a few days before after reading the description at Amazon’s page. That description is very misleading. And so is the title. This is not a story about “burned-out veterans, techs who’ve been warned off-planet, medics who weren’t much good on the ground” […]

What a staggering achievement: a must-buy and a must-read. Within these pages is a complete and kaleidoscopic vision of a far future utopia, and a master-class in world building by John C. Wright. Here, benevolent machine superintelligences called Sophotechs rule over an immortal and fabulously wealthy mankind. Humanity is divided only by their neuroform base […]

Here’s an unusual mix: cyberpunk and fairy tales. The “faeries” in this story are virtual entities that live inside computer systems. And the protagonist’s job consists keeping systems safe. The first third of the book could be the diary of a present day computer security expert. A company wants to hire his services and here’s […]

John C. Wright’s latest tome One Bright Star To Guide Them has a great conceptual hook reminiscent of Spielberg’s Hook. The children of a Chronicles of Narnia-esque adventure are all grown-up, and are tasked to defend Britain from the onslaught of the Knight of Ghosts and Shadows. As the publisher’s description says, the story “begins […]

The novella begins with an unusual warning: Enjoy the ride and don’t worry; it all makes sense in the end. To understand what the author means by “the ride”, just take a look at one of the first paragraphs: Unlike other parts of the known universe, the statistically average inhabitant of the Seven Sectors is […]

A Short History of Fantasy is not so much a history as it is a list of books and a compendium of plot synopses, in order of appearance. Readers expecting an in-depth discussion of the movements, trends, and aesthetics of the fantasy genre should look elsewhere; the authors only have time to cover the broad-strokes […]

It’s 2018 and the United States has just won a war against China. Lieutenant Shawn ‘Calvin’ Hobbs, a hero of that war, hasn’t even completed all his postwar administrative work when he finds himself thrown into his next adventure. Only that this time the enemy, the battlefield, and the weapons will be very different. The Drakuls […]

You know you have a good anthology of short stories when John C. Wright’s “Murder in Metachronopolis” is one among equals. Even the freaking foreword is good: The cosmos spins its gears and stretches wings, the ticks of its constant grinding both too slow and too rapid to ever be detected. When it collapses to […]

“CRY HAVOC!” is the janissary battle cry. They are conscripted to defend the Terran Empire from alien enemies and pirates. In the battlefield you can find armored augmented dinosaurs and mechanized walkers but also swordfights and unusual powers. However, that is not what this book is mostly about. It is about coming of age and […]

THE SEQUATUS SERIES by Nick Broadhurst Humanoid aliens of the galaxy-spanning Federation run the Milky Way galaxy with one particular race called Royals as the lord of each galactic sector. By earth timeline, it is the late 1980’s but earth is unaware of the presence of alien life. The technology level is about what one […]