Category: Literature

Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds Review

Literature

Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds Review – The Maestro of SF revisits the Glitter Band

Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds Review Another year and thus another Alastair Reynolds novel is released. Well, strictly speaking, we did not get a novel in 2017 – but we got two in 2016 (Revenger and The Medusa Chronicles). And Elysium Fire was released in January. So its not all bad – right? Elysium Fire is the direct sequel to Aurora Rising, a standalone novel set in the Revelation Space universe released in 2007. These two novels exist quite separately from the larger RS-verse. They are set in the Glitter Band – a world of thousands of the habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone in...

Literature

Dark State by Charles Stross Review – Jaunting back into the Empire Games

Dark State Before reading Empire Games last year I had never read a book in the Merchant Princess series by Charles Stross. Empire Games is the first in a new trilogy that would not require prior knowledge. I certainly did not regret reading it. I have been looking forward to the second novel – Dark State – ever since. A small recap The Merchant Princess is set in a alternative universe in which certain people can travel to parallel worlds. It is called jaunting or world-walking. Such people are members of The Clan and the novels set before Empire Games dealt with their...

Sherlock Holmes

Literature

Read my Sherlock Holmes short story on FanFiction.net

Sherlock Holmes on FanFiction.net Fans of Sherlock Holmes can read a short story I wrote on FanFiction.net (follow the link to the story). I just uploaded Sherlock Holmes The adventure of the Second Woman Who Wasn’t. And so I cannot be certain others can read it straight away. It is a Science Fiction story with background references to Neural Networks and crime solving computer systems. I had been wanting to do a Sherlock Holmes story for a while. At first I considered combining it with Star Trek (a lot of Trekkies are Holmes fans too). However, the story is instead set in the...

A Happy New Year from SciFiEmpire.net

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

A Happy 2018 from SciFiEmpire.net, your website for all Sci-Fi news

A Happy 2018 from SciFiEmpire.net I want to wish every reader of SciFiEmpire.net a Happy 2018. I think it will be easier this year. Last year we had just lost Carrie Fisher and her mother and the election of Donald Trump was weighing on the minds of a lot of people. Yet, since then things have changed considerably. Looking back on 2017 And so 2017 has also come and gone. As I am growing older it feels like the years are passing by more quickly. Well, what a year 2017 has been. Donald Trump was in the news more often than...

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...