Reviews and Comments

An interesting summary of the changes that led to Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014 by a regular contributor to The Economist magazine. It feels like the events that led to the collapse of the USSR and Yeltsin's rise to power and subsequently falling out of favour fill a lot of the book. The pace positively gallops once Putin appears. A lot of the book deals with the importance of television for communicating to the masses, both in the USSR and in Putin's Russia.

An interesting summary of the changes that led to Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014 by a regular contributor to The Economist magazine. It feels like the events that led to the collapse of the USSR and Yeltsin's rise to power and subsequently falling out of favour fill a lot of the book. The pace positively gallops once Putin appears. A lot of the book deals with the importance of television for communicating to the masses, both in the USSR and in Putin's Russia.

rather than generic science fiction, this is hardcore maths fiction. Some stories gave me a headache with their extended technobabble.

Disappointing after reading his first collection - I skipped a lot of stories in this book and didn't feel connected with any of the characters

Disappointing after reading his first collection - I skipped a lot of stories in this book and didn't feel connected with any of the characters

Despite being an avid reader of Interzone in the early/mid 90s, I must have forgotten about Eric Brown. This was an interesting collection of his early science fiction - definitely not hard-SF. I don't think I skipped any stories in this one.

There was something about the relationships that the telepaths in the Engineman stories here have that made me uncomfortable, but it was the early 90s. The telepaths are created medically at an early age and are needed to guide spacecraft (perhaps like Navigators in Dune, but much younger). I think this quote encapsulates it:-
"It’s no longer illegal, but oldsters like Mass have throwback morality."

I only read the title story in full, the other two were boring, but for £1.99 it was fine.

Probably not going to re-read this, but it was entertaining and had some unexpected twists.

PJ McAuley can write some great books. Others are okay, and this is one of them. There is too much flashback, presented as one character telling stories to another character. There are no heroes in this book, mostly criminals of one sort or another, but some become criminals because of discrimination.