The Book Plank

Best Science Fiction of 2015 Science Fiction. The genre that excites, invents and build grandiose invents. Science Fiction has always been the books that inspire technology, look at Star Trek tablets anyone? The counts for the light sabers of Star Wars an Harvard - MIT collaboration resulted in a break through ( link ). So you never know what the next big thing will be! Last year Catherine Webb aka Claire North surprised me with Harry August  a terrific book about time traveling. During LonCon3 in London in 2015 I learned about a new book of Catherine, a book where you can jump bodies by touching. If that doesn't get your hopes up I don't know what will. Cathrine Webb writes once again anastonishingstory fast paced, pitch perfect thriller. Adrian Tchaikovksy. The man with a thousand-and-one ideas. After finishing his Shadows of the Apts series he brought two stand alone book this year. One of them was Children of Time  a scifi space op...

Best Debut of 2015 Debuts. Authors often only get one real chance of making a name for themselves. It's basically an all or nothing game. First one of the biggest challenges an author faces is getting published. After that you are basically in with the sharks.. uhm critics... My favorite debuts of 2015 were: Genevieve Cogman's The Invisible Library. The idea of librarians and books jumping has already been done before. However not in the precise way that Genevieve Cogman does it. Every bibliophile will enjoy the wild idea that Genevieve came up with. The Vagrant  by Peter Newman had some very bold idea's when it came down to the story. The world was amazingly rich, a unique blend of a pre and post apocalyptic vision. Crashing Heaven is one of the hardest SF books that I read so far in my reading career. A dark and grim story, Jack Forster's relation with Hugo Fist the AI, is just brilliant. Finn Fancy Necromancy was also nominated with Best First in Series. It's a...

Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson With Earth abandoned, humanity resides on Station, an industrialised asteroid run by the sentient corporations of the Pantheon. Under their leadership a war has been raging against the Totality - ex-Pantheon AIs gone rogue. With the war over, Jack Forster and his sidekick Hugo Fist, a virtual puppet tied to Jack's mind and created to destroy the Totality, have returned home. Labelled a traitor for surrendering to the Totality, all Jack wants is to clear his name but when he discovers two old friends have died under suspicious circumstances he also wants answers. Soon he and Fist are embroiled in a conspiracy that threatens not only their future but all of humanity's. But with Fist's software licence about to expire, taking Jack's life with it, can they bring down the real traitors before their time runs out? Last year Gollancz published some stellar debuts, the big names included: Den Patrick, Jon Wallace and Edward Cox. ...