Please write a short review of an imaginary Science Fiction novel.

None of these books exsist but that didn’t stop us from compiling a set of reviews on them. Consider these to be speculative reviews of imaginary books or should that be imaginary reviews of speculative fiction? I hope you enjoy the reviews. I regret to inform you that these books are not commercial available. However in the case of some of these books that might be a good thing.

I had a blast putting this Brain Parade together and it’s going to be a multi parter as I’ve compiled a good whack of these. Enjoy.

Sean Wright:
If you do not read anything else this year, then you MUST read this fantastic tale of love, betrayal, head-tripping, planet-discovering, consciousness-shifting time travel, called Gob Almighty: A Geeks’ Guide To Interstellar Precipitation, Evaporation and Habitual Spitting by Dr Lars Handel.

Beneath the eco-friendly subterranean world that’s a dirty puddle in Bognor Regis’ red-light district, Gob Almighty’s anti-hero Jack Flasher goes berserk whilst fishing for giant crabs on the storm-ridden pier. Confused? You should be. That’s what’s so appealing about Gob Almighty. You see, it’s a cut ‘n’ paste head-trip from the genre-bending master tall-tale teller, Dr Handel, with thousands of redeeming features, clever intellectual insights, and…other stuff that I’ve forgotten.

Aha - hold on a minute. I’ve just remembered: It’s a rip-roaring rave of a read, where you’ll not need a whiff of a spliff to become…well, even more confused by this ground-breaking narrative style - the spiral. That’s right, the narrative kinda spirals in on itself until it disappears altogether leaving just you, the main character’s unfinished last words and an entire epic of blank pages. Wordwooze? Not on your nelly! From the powerfully creative mind of the author who gave new meaning to communal herpes, Dr Lars Handel wags a nicotine-stained finger at all the well-worn tropes of sci-fi in a brash honest look at the hidden miracles, loves, and slippery life-force within puddles. I’m recommending this stunning book to every sci-fi fan. Buy it now - Gob Almighty by Dr Lars Handel.
Sean Wright is a writer and illustrator of young adult fiction who’s debut novel for grown ups Jaarfindor Remade is just out now.

Julie E. Czerneda:
Once in a lifetime, a book like this is put in your hands. You know what I mean. The sort of book that has you reading in uncomfortable, bladder-threatening positions because you forget to move. The sort that lingers in your mind years after you’ve read it, that changes how you view the consequences of change. As a reader, you long to quote passages, since every phrase has such meaning to the here and now, but dare not read out of context and spoil it. As a writer, you vacillate between despair at your own work ever being this good and delight at having identified that higher bar to aim at for life.
Julie is a Canadian SF writer and biologist

Juliet E. McKenna:

Titan Wakes, by Ed Bromley, is an audacious novel of first contact in the comparatively near future. Mankind is mining the asteroid belt now that raw materials are so scarce on Earth. The colonization of Titan will facilitate the exploitation the outer solar system. Only this activity has disturbed the unimagined denizens of the deep oceans of Jupiter’s moons, Callisto and Europa. How will the Titan Base Advance Party explain humanity’s problems and ambitions to creatures with no knowledge and certainly no interest in such things? But they can’t just ignore the aliens or ride roughshod over them. These creatures have very different but very advanced technologies including effective means of defence, and if need be, attack. They also have their own philosophies which will just as much of a challenge to some.

There are inevitable echoes of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 and 2010 as well as more recent space-faring books by the likes of Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross. In his aliens, Bromley shows his influences include HG Wells’s Martians, Eloi and Morlocks as well as John Wyndham’s Chocky and the Midwich Cuckoos. He has the confidence to acknowledge all those who have gone before him without compromising his own unique vision.

This is a convincing future. Bromley blends plausible extrapolation from likely developments already heralded in popular science journalism with in-depth knowledge of the Cassini-Huygens probe and similar missions. Thankfully the pace of the story never flags under this weight of learning. Nor does he ignore problematic political, economic and environment futures in favour of technological rapture. Most importantly, the book never becomes an arid exploration of theoretical debates. From Commander Joshua Jin-York on, the personnel of the Titan Advance Party are real, rounded people whose fate will keep readers turning the pages late into the night.
Juliet McKenna is a Fantasy author who also participates with The Write Fantastic

Suzette Haden Elgin:
Graciola Flowbender’s debut novel The GenderBabel Revelation has appeared with all the usual commotion and the obligatory half dozen pages of complimentary blurbs; that doesn’t keep it from being a dreadful book that qualifies neither as science nor as fiction. Its protagonist, neuroscientist Glaub Haff, has not only discovered in the human brain the actual “language organ” once proposed metaphorically by Noam Chomsky, he has discovered that human males have a totally different language organ from the one in human females. Flowbender doesn’t understand neuroanatomy or cognitive science or linguistics or (in my opinion) human beings of either gender, nor has she felt it necessary to do any research to repair those deficiencies; she’s winging it, all the way from page one to page — finally! — 834. This doorstop of a book has no redeeming features. The writing is wooden, the science is made up out of whole cloth, the characters are indistinguishable chunks of cardboard, the dialogue is stupefying, and the plot is just barely sturdy enough to support a three-page short-short. We can therefore confidently anticipate that it will become a major motion picture. Feh.
Suzette Haden Elgin is a writer and artist who blogs at Ozarque’s Journal

Tony Ballantyne:
This book is beautifully written. The descriptive passages bear a rare lyricism; the characters are well realised and believable and brought to life by crackling dialogue.

What the book is lacking, however, is Science Fiction. It has SF on the cover in big letters, it is marketed as SF, and yet the only evidence I can find of SF within the covers is yet another hackneyed time-travel/alien-visitors/alternate-history device. Pseudo literature is all very well, but I like some SF in my SF.
Tony Ballantyne is a Science Fiction author

I paticularly enjoyed Suzette’s review. How often do you see a Science Fiction author come up with an imaginary technology and then rubbish it before your very eyes. Brilliant.

If you want to obtain any of these books I’m afraid it’s going to require a trip to Morpheus’ (Neil Gaiman’s Sandman) library of unwritten books. Which is a shame because I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on Titan Wakes but outside of a loan from the Lord of Dreams I don’t know how I’ll get a hold of a copy.

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