Anyone who knows me and knows me well, knows I love science fiction and was, up until a few years ago, a SF reading machine. That is, until I got jaded by the then up and coming authors writing books that weren’t just door jambs, but were a trilogy in one volume. I simply lost interest in wading my way through these novels. Some had good ideas, but mostly, it was recycled ideas, being reused and tweaked, but without adding anything new or relevant to the genre. I felt like I had read it all before.

People kept telling me you should read so and so, but so and so had written something that was, to me at least, a pale imitation of something Clarke, or Asimov, or what Heinlein had written 10, 20 and 30 years ago. These new authors, to my mind had (a) never read the authors that had come before them or, (b) had, and were cherry-picking ideas as their own.

Because of my hiatus, however, those new authors from the 90s have, in turn, been replaced and supplanted by another set. Some emerging from the most unlikeliest of places: Bristol for one — yeah, go figure. Then there’s a whole clutch of writers that have popped up on my radar hailing from across the planet, which is always great news for Spec-Fiction.

Now I feel like I can begin to dip my toe(s) back into the Spec waters and, hopefully, find myself a good space opera, or flight of fantasy.

So, dear reader, do you have any recommendations for me, anything grab your attention lately?