James Nicoll Reviews

Blade Runner: The Role Playing Game Core Rules by Tomas Härenstam & Joe LeFavi, with illustrations by Martin Grip (December 2022)

Walk the mean streets of Los Angeles 2037 in a new game from the award-winning team behind the hit ALIEN RPG.

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw (May 2023)

From USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw comes The Salt Grows Heavy, a dark and deliciously twisted mermaid tale.

After murdering her husband and burning his kingdom to cinders, a mermaid joins a strange doctor on a journey through the eerie taiga. Deep in the woods, the pair stumble upon a village, full of seemingly ageless children and the three surgeons who oversee them — called only ​“the saints.” 

After discovering the villagers’ taste for a sinister blood sport, the mermaid and her companion must embrace the darkest parts of their true nature, if they hope to survive.

Flight From the Ages and Other Stories by Derek Künsken (December 2022)

A stunning collection of novellas and short fiction from the award-winning, critically acclaimed and best-selling author of the Quantum Evolution Series.

From the Author of The Quantum Magician and The House of Styx 

From the clouds of Venus to the origins of the time gates, this collection of novellas and short fifiction visits many favourite worlds of the Quantum Evolution universe, as well as some new to the series. With two 20,000-plus-word novellas and four long short stories, this collection is a stunning showcase of talent. 

Collecting: ​“Persephone Descending”, ​“Schools of Clay”, ​“Beneath Sunlit Shallows”, ​“Flight From the Ages”, Pollen From a Future Harvest and Tool Use By Humans of Danzhai County , this is a must for all fans of forward-thinking science fiction. 

Dreams of the Technarion by Sean McMullen (November 2017)

Hugo finalist and steampunk master Sean McMullen presents ten science fiction stories that skirt the borderlands of reality — and most of the science is not fiction. * The Andromedans will arrive and wipe us out in a few centuries, so should we be worried? * We can’t yet accelerate a space probe to a tenth of the speed of light, but we already have the technology to slow it down. * Will humanity be doomed unless all astronauts go on creative writing courses? * Oscar Wilde is dead, so why is he still writing? * What Roman warship was powered by fish? * Why were the Metropolitan Police interested in quantum entanglement back in 1899? * Why was an American typist trying to save the world from computers in 1875? And this volume includes: OUTPOST OF WONDER — SF in Australia 1832 — 2017Based on the research for Sean’s twenty-six books and articles on Australian SF, this is the amazing, heroic, sometimes amusing and occasionally horrifying story of nearly two centuries of science fiction by Australians. How many Hugo Awards has Australian SF brought home? How many Oscars? Which Australian novels may have saved the world? Who wrote and staged a feminist space opera in 1958? More Australian SF has been published since 2000 than in the rest of its history put together, but what are its prospects for the future?If you want answers, you will have to keep reading.

Generation Nemesis by Sean McMullen (November 2022)

By the year 2045 runaway climate change is overtaking the world, and the generation that has inherited this disaster has turned on those that were given warnings half a century earlier but ignored them.

All Tippers, people born before the year 2000, must stand trial for climate crimes such as squander, display and neglect, and they face the death penalty if found guilty. Nobody sent to Audit Camp 71 has ever been pardoned, but the elderly weather scientist Jason Hall has volunteered to go there. He wants to prove that some Tippers are genuinely innocent.

Jason’s trial is given priority, and every day for a fortnight he will be brought before the Auditor General and the Retributor. His main challenge is likely to be the famously pitiless Auditor General, who is also his granddaughter.