Category: Literature

Artemis by Andy Weir book cover

Literature

Review of Artemis by Andy Weir with his first novel since The Martian

Artemis It has been nearly 6 years since author Andy Weir ‘officially’ published his novel The Martian. That story set of a renewed interest in popular hard-science fiction and spawned a Ridley Scott movie. Now the author is back with Artemis – another hard sci-fi novel, this time set on the moon. Artemis is very different from The Martian. It focuses on a female protagonist, professional under-achiever Jazz Bashara. It is also a heist story, of sorts, whereas The Martian is a survival story. Non-spoiler synopsis Set in the late 2080s Jazz must try to live on Artemis base. Despite being...

The Western Star review by Craig Johnson

Literature

Review of The Western Star by Craig Johnson

The Western Star Ever since the final season of Longmire became available on Netflix I cannot get enough of the franchise. As the series has come to an end I have to satisfy my Longmire urges through other means. And so I have started to read the novels that inspired the series – written by Wyoming author Craig Johnson. This is a short review on The Western Star, the latest novel published in September. A small synopsis The Western Star tells the story of how Walt Longmire first began to deputize Sheriff Lucian Connolly, back in 1972. The title of the...

Happy Thanksgiving wallpaper

Computer Games / DVD / Film / Literature / TV-series

Wishing everybody a Happy Thanksgiving + some Black Friday tips

Happy Thanksgiving I wanted to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving. I am sure that after all the roast turkey, pastries, marshmallows and drinks you will be looking to do something else. Perhaps even browse the internet to see what is worth your money on Black Friday. So what can you do during thanksgiving if all the fine dining is over? Well, if you need any persuasion in playing Super Mario Odyssey or Star Wars Battlefront 2 here are links to my reviews. Of course for Super Mario you will need a Nintendo Switch. I have uploaded an unboxing article just recently....

Computer Games / DVD / Film / Literature / TV-series

Happy Halloween – Greetings from the Afterlife

Happy Halloween Hello everybody. I hope you enjoy reading articles here on SciFiEmpire.net. I can see readers are especially interested in yesterday’s review of Berlin Station. Perhaps I will add the series to my regular line-up. As some readers may have noticed the release of posts has become irregular. I have been busy, since April I have a new job and I have also focused more time on writing a book on Deep Learning. Another reason the frequency of articles was reduced is because a lot of my favorite TV shows are over. Person of Interest ended last year, Dark Matter was cancelled...

Literature

Preview of The Girl who takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz

The Girl who takes an Eye for an Eye Back in the summer 2015 the first new book in Stieg Larson’s Millennium series was released. I gave The Girl In The Spider’s Web a positive review. The novel was not written by Stieg Larson, he sadly passed away at 50 in 2004. Instead it was written by Swedish true-crime author David Lagercrantz – not without controversy I might add. Soon, a fifth novel, also written by Lagercrantz, will again spur on characters Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist to uncover mysteries. The Girl who takes an Eye for an Eye set...

Inferno Squad Review

Literature

Inferno Squad Review – A Star Wars Battlefront 2 novel by Christie Golden

Inferno Squad Review Later this year Star Wars Battlefront 2 action shooter is set for release. For Disney this is a second chance after their 2015 reboot failed to deliver. Developer EA DICE have include a single player campaign besides the multiplayer. Earlier this year Disney showed a preview of what to expect. The campaign will focus on Inferno Squad, an elite ‘Imperial’ unit tasked with wiping out rebel cells. The trailer shows a confrontation between various Original Trilogy characters and Iden Versio, the leader of Inferno Squad. As a tie-in to the game, and The Last Jedi, author Christie...

Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds Review

Literature

The Maestro of SF Alastair Reynolds returns to Revelation Space with Elysium Fire

Elysium Fire Today celebrated author Alastair Reynolds announced the title for his next novel – Elysium Fire. Better yet, Reynolds announced the novel will be set in the Revelation Space universe. This will mark a departure from Poseidon’s Children and a return to the universe that made him famous. Elysium Fire will in fact be set in The Prefect sub-universe. For those unfamiliar with The Prefect, the 2007 novel takes place some time before events of Revelation Space, before the melding plague wreaked havoc to the Epsilon Eridani system. Elysium Fire won’t be a direct sequel to The Prefect, instead it will be...

Inferno Squad Review

Literature

Star Wars Inferno Squad Preview – Last Jedi tie-in novel arrives this month

Inferno Squad With episode 8, The Last Jedi, set for release this December things in the Star Wars universe are slowly heating up (see what I did there?). Electronic Arts is readying their fps shooter Battlefront 2 for a November release. Unlike last time the sequel will also have a single story campaign and get rid of DLCs that fracture the player base. During last months E3 a lot of the backstory for the single player campaign was shown. Though it is not certain if the entire campaign will focus on the tie-in it was certainly  The tie-in novel Star Wars...

SparkFun push buttons

Literature

SparkFun Inventor’s Kit Review – the right journey into electronics

SparkFun Inventor’s Kit Review For the past week or so I have been tinkering with the SparkFun Inventor’s Kit. This is an Arduino-based tinkering kit sold by SparkFun for just over a 100 dollars on their website. At first I was somewhat reluctant to purchasing it. This is not my first foray into electronics, so the perceived low threshold made me skeptical. I need not have been. The kit comes with an extensive parts list that covers LEDs, various input sensors, LCD display, breadboard, wires and an electric motor amongst a few others. The kit does not require the user to solder – all...

SparkFun Inventors Kit all components

Literature

Tinkering with Electronics Part 1 – The SparkFun Inventor’s Kit

The SparkFun Inventor’s Kit Let me introduce myself. I am a software engineer. I code, program and find optimal solutions to problems that can be defined mathematically. I am not really much of a hardware guy. Sure I know how computers work – sort of. But I am not a tinkerer. I write, paint and I draw but I don’t know much about electrical engineering. About 8 years ago I tried to remedy that. I bought an Arduino based robotics kit. In hindsight I should have realized it may not have been the best place to start. Following the instructions to put it...

The Massacre of Mankind cover

Literature

A Review of The Massacre of Mankind by Stephen Baxter as the Martians come again

The Massacre of Mankind After reading Alastair Reynold’s Revenger earlier this year I dived right into another thick novel. The Massacre of Mankind is written by Stephen Baxter as an official sequel to H.G. Wells’s The War Of The Worlds. The original story is a first-hand account of a Martian invasion of England in 1907. In 1920 the Martians try their luck again, this time they are come prepared against the Earth’s bacteria and viruses which killed them in the first round. Quickly they manage to devastate England. In The Massacre Of Mankind we follow Julie Elphinstone and we read her first-hand account of how England...

Tips on Writing Fiction - Point of View

Literature

Tips on Writing Fiction: Part 2 – Point of View

Tips on Writing Fiction – Point of View A little over a week ago I wrote an article on writing fiction. It was a just a set of tips covering issues such as that important first draft and why you should redraft your story. For the second article in this series I have chosen to discuss the point of view or narrative of a story. I will discuss what they are, how you should use them and why they can trip up writers. Point of View An important technical consideration when writing a story is to determine whose story it is. Who...

Sherlock Holmes

Literature

Sherlock Holmes The Adventure of the Second Woman Who Wasn’t – A short story

For a few weeks I have been writing a Sherlock Holmes short story. As an author I write for SciFiEmpire.net kind of like a side-project. Yet I don’t often post the fiction that I write. It is something I intend to correct. In fact, if you follow this link you can read a Star Trek The Next Generation short story I published last month. Today I finished a draft of a Sherlock Holmes story I had wanted to write for a while. As the original Arthur Conan Doyle estate has no longer the exclusive rights pretty much anyone can use the...

Star Wars Inferno Squad by Christie Golden

Literature

Disney announces Star Wars Inferno Squad as sequel to Rogue One

Star Wars Inferno Squad The standalone Star Wars movie, Rogue One, released in December has not disappointed Disney financially. However, as most of the major characters died at the end of the movie we are not likely to see a sequel. LucasFilm producer Kathleen Kennedy has already said as much. To keep the Rogue One mini-franchise going Disney has announced a follow-up novel – Star Wars Inferno Squad. With this novel the Rogue One continues in another format. Inferno Squad is written by Christine Golden, whose work Dark Disciple I reviewed 18 months ago. The book is scheduled for release on July...

Tips on Writing Fiction - Point of View

Literature

Tips on Writing Fiction: Part 1 – Finishing that first draft

Tips on Writing Fiction After the release of my second novel Roland, which you can purchase on Amazon Kindle, I thought it a great idea to write a short series articles on the writing process itself. After about a decade spent as a writer I think I have something to offer other prospective writer’s. So far I have published two novels, two novella’s, half dozen short stories and a book on Linux. These tips will mostly be useful for writing fiction, but I can tell you writing a Computer Science book is no mean feat either. As I said this will be a series...

Revenger review

Literature

Revenger review – Alastair Reynolds shows us a world of pirates and skulls, in space

Revenger Writing this review of Revenger is hard. The novel was released in September 2016 and though I am a major Alastair Reynolds fan I initially passed. I am not sure why, Revenger was hinted at by the author for a long time, but its sudden release made me worry it wasn’t that good. I need not have worried, Revenger is fantastic even if there is little to compare it with. But that is hardly a bad thing. So the story is hard to compare, it has both elements of steampunk and hard-sf. It is certainly is space opera, but trying to classify the story would do it...