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A challenging novel of mysticism, power, and alien contact This week brought the news that the British science fiction writer Ian Waton had passed away in Spain, where he had lived for some time. Coincidentally, I was reading Watson's 1977 novel Alien Embassy, the subject of this week's episode. Watson wrote numerous challenging SF novels, including The Embedding (1973) and The Jonah Kit (1975), both previously covered here in episodes 131 and 163, respectively. Watson was also the writer of the very first novels to tie in with the Warhammer 40,000 setting, and so helped to set the stage for the vast and growing body of writing set in the grim future of the 41st millennium. Alien Embassy is something very different, an idea-packed look at a post-disaster future in which humanity is reaching out to the stars - but with the mind, not with spacecraft. I will certainly be reading more of Watson's work and in the meantime, I hope you find this look at one of his early novels to be interesting. Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

An influential classic of power and revenge on Venus Like Kallocain, which I covered in episode 188, Fury is another SF novel which was published earlier than my usual jurisdiction - the 1950s to the 1990s. Written by Henry Kuttner and an uncredited C. L. Moore, it is a classic of the so-called "golden age of science fiction", a term I'd personally consign to history. As we'll see, Fury is focused on a highly driven antihero on a transformative mission of revenge on a habitable Venus, the last refuge of humans who have ruined the Earth. Its legacy lives on in the various works which have been influenced by it, not least novels by Alfred Bester and Harry Harrison. Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

An entertainingly wild aquatic adventure on two worlds A mid-period novel by Northern Irish SF writer Bob Shaw, Medusa's Children centres on a bizarre scenario. A dwindling group of humans struggle to survive inside a liquid planetoid, preyed upon by hungry squid-like creatures. What does this have to do with Tarrant, an inept aquafarmer working on the Pacific Ocean? Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

On the run in the networked society This episode returns to the work of a writer featured frequently here: John Brunner. His prolific output, creative and commercial struggles, and untimely death at the Glasgow Worldcon in 1995 are contribute to him being a fascinating figure. The Shockwave Rider is one of his few novels currently in print. Like his magnum opus Stand on Zanzibar, it is a part of the SF Masterworks series. Written in the mid-1970s, it is one of Brunner's ambitious "tract novels", an attempt to confront imaginatively the seismic shifts that he saw coming in the 21st century. In this particular case, Brunner imagined a world in many ways like our own: politically repressive, technologically advanced, and interconnected by omnipresent computing. But as we will see, Brunner's vision from 1975 is quite unlike our present reality. Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

Can hope exist in a scientific city of total suspicion? This episode is a look at Kallocain, the final novel by the Swedish poet and and writer Karin Boye, which was published in 1940. Although little known and not available in English until 1966, this bleak book should be recognised more widely as a key example of 20th century dystopian fiction. Set in a repressive state inspired by Boye's visits to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Kallocain focuses on a powerful truth drug, with the potential to help the state lay siege to our most private thoughts - and to stamp out that last bastion of freedom. Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

In his book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, David Pringle aptly described A Canticle for Leibowitz as "a beautifully written novel, rich in character and ironic detail, and at the same time funny and sad." Published in 1959, this book was the only novel published by Walter M. Miller Jr. during his lifetime. One of the most highly praised science fiction novels of the 1950s, A Canticle for Leibowitz is in part Miller's reflection on his traumatic experiences in World War II, his Catholic faith, and his fears of nuclear conflict. It is also a stark warning about the dangers of both ignorance and knowledge, and an exploration of humankind's capacity for creativity and destruction. Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

My coverage of Iain M. Banks' wonderful Culture series continues with the seventh novel, Matter, published in 2008. This is the longest Culture novel yet, and in some ways the most complex - set on a vast macrostructure, specifically the artificial planet of Sursamen. Banks weaves an ambitious plot which at times makes the novel feel like Use of Weapons nested inside Inversions - or perhaps it is the other way around. This is literally a story of spheres within spheres, as the different levels of the planet play host to various species, conflicts, and levels of technological development. In what is in part another Banksian meditation on the ethics of intervention, a novice Culture agent must decide how best to interfere in a conflict that threatens not only her siblings, but the fate of a world. Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

Confronting a time mystery as a new ice age looms Climate breakdown, and rising temperatures, are a fact of life. But in the 1970s, there was a subset of climate scientists who believed that global cooling was going to be the challenge of the 21st century. Ice and Iron is a little-discussed 1974 novel by the author, critic and fan Wilson Tucker which explores this scenario. It also follows a strange conflict between heavily armed women from the future, and violent nomads, apparently from prehistory.  Can the eccentric researcher Fisher Highsmith solve a mystery of deep time and the human future? Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

Another comic inferno from another stupid timeline Back in November, in episode 176, I took a look at The Reproductive System, the first novel by the US writer John Sladek, who produced almost all of his work while living in the UK. This episode tackles his second novel, the even more anarchic The Müller-Fokker Effect, published in 1970. It was not successful, and Sladek did not publish another SF novel for a decade. However, The Müller-Fokker Effect is one of those novels from decades past which captures something of the vibe of today's times. Welcome to a wild ride featuring a tradwife proto-influencer, a semi-literate racist demogogue with an eye on the US presidency, and a mind without a body.  Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

Corporate warfare becomes deadly as the state crumbles Robert Asprin was best known for the humorous fantasy series MythAdventure and for creating the influential Thieves' World series of anthologies which ran from 1979 to 1989. But before launching either of those long-running enterprises, Asprin got his start in science fiction. His story of corporate mercenaries in the August 1977 issue of Analog was followed immediately by a full-length version, his debut novel The Cold Cash War. Fairly obscure today, this novel is a precursor to cyberpunk which explores a new kind of corporate warfare, fought by non-lethal means and in secrecy. A product of a very particular moment in the late 1970s, how well does The Cold Cash War stand up today, and what contemporary relevance does it have? Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

The definitive travel guide to a place that never existed Like J. G. Ballard's Crash - featured in episode 149 - Last Letters From Hav is another novel which might challenge or expand definitions of science fiction. Originally published in 1985, the book is a work of veteran British travel writer Jan Morris, who died in 2020. Sitting comfortably alongside her books on cities like Oxford, Venice, and New York, it is a travelogue - the difference being that Hav is a fictional place. But what is it that makes Hav such a strangely believable locale? And what qualifies it as science fiction? Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

The influential classic of enhanced intelligence with a breakneck pace An early novel by Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (1954) is also a landmark science fiction story on the topic of intelligence enhancement. Unlike in the later Flowers for Algernon (1966) - see episode 148 - an explosive rise of brainpower is not the work of human scientists. Instead, the whole world gets a huge intelligence boost, as the Earth exits a vast cosmic field which for millions of years had inhibited "certain electromagnetic and electrochemical processes". Can society survive this colossal, overnight shift? And if so, what does it mean for the human future? Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

It's time for the final episode of 2025! Find out which were the top 10 science fiction books I read over the course of the year, along with five honourable mentions. Plus, a brief reflection on how the year has gone, some plans for 2026, and a thank you to everyone who has listened, shared, and got in touch over the last 12 months. And: corny sound effects! Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

Published between 1999 and 2001, the Mammoth trilogy is a fascinating set of linked SF novels by Stephen Baxter. In reality, mammoths died out 4,000 years ago but Baxter imagines a different fate for them. Thoroughly researched and at times quite moving, these are fine examples of science fiction which does without major human characters, and has readers view the world through the eyes of a very different creature. Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

A transitional 1950s novel of colonisation I'm somewhat sympathetic to Robert Silverberg's suggestion that the 1950s were the real "golden age of science fiction". In any case, that decade is notable for its fascinatingly transitional works, as SF shifted from the sometimes naive adventurism of the 1930s and 1940s, towards the more contemplative uncertainties of the 1960s and 1970s. Originally published in 1953, West of the Sun is a good example of this transition. The debut SF novel by Edgar Pangborn, it is a colonisation novel of an intriguingly unusual type. Get in touch with a text message! For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.