This novella combines Celtic folklore with a sci-fi twist. “The Otherworld” of the ancient tales, whose power is said to wax with coming of the dark half of the year, is here portrayed in the form of aliens rather than fairies or ghosts.

The book follows a pair of researchers, Dr. Siobhan Ryan and Dr. Michael Sullivan. There’s a Mulder/Scully-esque Believer vs. Skeptic vibe between them, which emerges as they witness increasingly strange phenomena. It begins with crop circles and other extraterrestrial appearances in the quiet village of Clooncara, followed by visions experienced by the town’s children, and soon escalating to even more bizarre, and more terrifying, events.

The story reminded me a little of Arrival, a little of Childhood’s End, and maybe just a dash of Lovecraft thrown in when describing the alien world. That is all to the good. On the other hand, some of the decisions made by the scientists reminded me a little of Prometheus. They might have been a bit more careful when dealing with world-threatening aliens.

But then again, we would have precious few good scary stories if characters behaved intelligently or cautiously. Let’s face it, practical thinking is antithetical to good horror, as is perhaps best illustrated by this Far Side cartoon that I was thinking about recently. So I could live with some poor decision making by our protagonists.

I liked the idea of the energy in the air as Samhain approaches, and indeed, I think this is a real phenomenon which careful students of Halloween can observe. Obviously, there was something about the changing of the seasons that has caused this part of the year to be celebrated since ancient times, and I like the notion that the old rituals were only other forms of what modernity dubs “space aliens.” The line between archaic superstition and modern scientific speculation can be a mighty fine one.

All in all, this is a good mix of sci-fi and folkish fantasy, and perfect reading for this most eerie time of year.

This book has an ideal premise for a military sci-fi adventure: a hotheaded and impulsive cyber racer named Ryan Fall runs afoul of the law. But, his talent for high-speed maneuvering leads the government to offer him a choice: serve in an advanced combat mech program, to fight against an alien invasion force.

With little choice, and his own adrenaline addiction and competitive nature driving him, Ryan accepts, and is soon mustered into military training. Naturally, his “rebel without a clue” attitude leads him into plenty of clashes with the authorities. But then, that’s partially why they wanted him: as an outsider, he’s willing to think outside the box, and challenge their assumptions. And that is something desperately needed against the inscrutable alien enemy that is threatening to attack.

I imagine any MilSciFi fan will need no further convincing to pick this up. But, just in case…

There are plenty of exciting action sequences in this book, from the early racing scenes to the huge mech battle in the final sequence. On that basis alone, the book certainly earns its military sci-fi name. But what really makes the book are its characters, especially the supporting cast. I confess that Ryan himself was not my favorite; I tend not to like characters who are reflexively disobedient. But, Ryan has his reasons. More on that shortly.

The characters I really did like were Ryan’s immediate superior, the distant Captain Eleanor Ryder, whose icy demeanor masks a past trauma and a desire for revenge. I also loved General Matthews, the stern but fair officer who takes the burden of leadership seriously, but never loses a fundamental affection for those under his command. Both of these characters were great, and I enjoyed all of their scenes. Especially when Matthews is holding forth on the burden of responsibility and being accountable for one’s actions.

Which brings me back to Ryan’s devil-may-care behavior. There’s a reason he acts like he does, and it’s so he can learn and grow over the course of the story. Since military sci-fi adventures are likely to be read by the same demographic as Ryan is in–thrill-seeking young people–there is a message in this story that’s important for folks in that group to learn. Not that most of them will, any more than does Ryan, who, no matter how many times he is told something, doesn’t learn it until he has to experience it for himself. Still, it’s commendable of the author to try.

This is exactly the kind of thing I like in military science-fiction: well-crafted action scenes with deeper themes woven into the story. Highly recommended to fans of the genre.

Over on Twitter, I asked for recommendations of little-known books that deserve more attention. Richard Pastore answered the call by recommending this one, a post-apocalyptic tale from the 1950s.

While reading it, I thought to myself that there is an easy way to summarize this book: “Catholic Fallout.” This describes it remarkably well, in my opinion, but since I’m guessing few of my readers have played any of those classic RPGs, more elaboration will be necessary.

The story begins with a young monk, Francis, holding a vigil in the desert. When a mysterious wanderer passes by his outpost, Francis uncovers a fallout shelter from the past nuclear war, which holds artifacts which appear to belong to “the Blessed Leibowitz”–an engineer from the pre-war era who, after surviving the nuclear holocaust, joined the church and strove to preserve knowledge during a Dark Age called “The Simplification.”

Francis’s discovery of the relics paves the way for the beatification of Leibowitz, and ultimately, after many years, the young monk makes his way to New Rome for an audience with the Pope himself.

Time–measured in centuries–passes. Technological progress begins, and with it comes a kind of renaissance, as well as feuding tribes and political machinations and scientific progress. All the while the Order of Saint Leibowitz carries on.

More time passes, until society has developed computers and off-world colonies. And, most significantly, nuclear weapons have returned, and the Order is once again faced with preserving their traditions and teachings in the face of horrific devastation.

The book, in short, is not really a feel-good tale. But it does include two of the hallmarks of 1950s and ’60s zeitgeist: space travel and nuclear war. In that sense, it’s very much a work of its time, and that, of course, is one of the great things about Vintage Sci-Fi Month: the opportunity to look back on what people of the past thought were the burning issues of the day.

Ah… perhaps that was an unfortunate choice of words. But, never mind! The techno-optimists of the era were enthralled by space travel, the techno-pessimists obsessed with nuclear armageddon. It’s clear enough that Miller, in addition to being a Catholic, was definitely in the pessimist category. And this is rather understandable when you learn he fought in World War II, and was present at the destruction of a Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino. It haunted him, and that comes through clearly in the text, as the cyclical destruction of all efforts to build civilization is perhaps the central theme of the book.

Usually, I don’t like generational epics. Stories that span huge swaths of time tend to leave me feeling distanced from the characters. Call me simple if you like, but I generally prefer my stories to follow one character, or group of characters.

However, while this book spans centuries, it definitely worked for me. Each set of characters was so carefully-drawn that I could relate to all of them, and get involved in their struggles. Which in turn made it all the more poignant when their time came, as it always does.

All right, I’ve tap-danced around the issue long enough; I can’t put it off any longer. This book involves some very weighty moral and religious ideas, and does not shy away from taking a stance on certain issues. How one feels about this may color one’s perception of the entire story.

I, however, am in no position to pontificate about such matters. I have my opinions, as everyone does, but in the grand scheme of things, I am just a thirty-something blogger who has probably consoomed more Content than is really healthy. It is not for me to sit in judgment of the philosophy of a man who led the life that Miller did, and saw the things he saw, as though I am somehow “above” him. Nothing is more obnoxious than to judge the past without at least being willing to ask how the past would judge the present.

So, yes; the last third especially might be off-putting to some readers. Nevertheless, I encourage approaching it with an open mind and an understanding of the author’s experiences. Seen in that light, it is an especially haunting and gloomy story, but one which I recommend to all sci-fi fans.

This book is a neo-noir mystery. In terms of plot, it’s a fairly straightforward yarn about a detective who is tasked with tracking a mysterious femme fatale. Along the way, he delves into a depraved criminal underworld, is forced to flout the normal rules of police procedure at risk to his own career, and ultimately finds his own and his family’s lives threatened.

I guess this all sounds pretty standard for a detective mystery, doesn’t it? Well, I deliberately phrased it so. But I guarantee you, this is like no other detective story you’ve ever read.

It’s set in the distant future, when everything can be copied; the matter rearranged. This includes human beings. It’s not at all unusual for a person to die, and a new copy to be “instantiated” from the data stored in some central insurance system. Cosmetic alterations of all sorts can be performed instantaneously and at will.

This is in addition to the extreme nature of virtual reality programs, which can simulate anything anyone desires, creating a completely immersive experience.

In this world, the nature of reality itself starts to get fuzzy, and indeed, in the early part of the book it was hard for me to even conceptualize what was going on. Such a universe feels so bizarre it becomes difficult to ground oneself in anything relatable.

And yet… in a way it was relatable. At least to me, a terminally-online millennial, who grew up with the internet and video games. The logic of Demiurge is the logic of the 21st century media infotainment complex, carried to its natural conclusion. (It’s important to note here that the first edition was written in the year 2000.)

That was the really haunting thing about this book for me. There are sentences describing the most fantastic and mind-bindingly weird concepts, followed by sentences that feel like they could be describing the world we live in now. The overall effect is… disturbing.

Actually, many things about this book are disturbing. The femme fatale that our hero is tracking leads her admirers… clients… victims… whatever you want to call them… into a world of strange and unsettling perversity. I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s just say that it wouldn’t be a stretch to say this book contains psychosexual horror elements.

The really chilling aspect of it is, for every unsavory thought and act referenced in the pages of Demiurge, the text seems to implicitly ask, “Could you imagine this would happen, if technology permitted?” And in every case, I could. This is no lurid penny-dreadful; making up horrible things for shock value. No, far more subtle than that… it is a window into the collective id of the age of Techno-Decadence.

Every chapter begins with epigraphs from various texts, some real, some fictional, and all related to the themes of identity, reality, and the nature of the human mind. The book would be worth reading for these passages alone, which contain brain-twisting ideas and downright eerie visions of the cyberpunk nightmare that waits for us in this imagined future.

As I approached the climax of the book, I was worried the story would, like so many noir tales, sink too deep into its own exquisitely thick atmosphere of nihilism. This can happen easily in this sort of story, when the sheer crushing weight of all the grimdark overwhelms everything else.

But no, thankfully that didn’t happen. Pacotti was able to stick the landing, and in the final chapters, he ties things up well, and in so doing, provides a character who is, I think, the perfect hero for the age of social media. It’s rare in modern storytelling to have the main character give a speech un-ironically defending his actions and his values. But then, noir detectives are rare in modern storytelling too; and that’s what makes the final chapters of Demiurge feel like coming home. After a mind-breaking, head-spinning dive into the darkest depths of humanity and technology, we come up for air and have something familiar, at last, to grab hold of.

Maddening, disturbing, terrifying, confusing, prophetic, and not without rays of hope and real emotion; Demiurge is a metaphysical magnum opus for our time.

The Matrioshka Divide is a throwback to the Golden Age of science fiction, in the tradition of Heinlein and Asimov, where advanced spacefaring technology is used to explore political and philosophical ideas.

The main character is Samir Singh, a retired starship captain known as “the Butcher of Three Systems” for his actions during war. He is persuaded to come out of retirement to serve as captain on a vessel tracking down a signal from a derelict ship on the edge of galaxy. Captain Singh reluctantly accepts the mission, seeing it as a chance to redeem himself for his past.

As it happens, the old war veteran on a quest for redemption is one of my favorite sci-fi tropes, mostly because it is the main theme of my beloved KotOR II, and so I immediately became interested in Singh.

Then there is Erika Terese, the arrogant scientist convinced that her models tell her everything about how the universe works, and how to respond even to encountering new forms of intelligence. She believes everything can be measured, quantified, and understood with mathematical precision. She and the religious Captain Singh clash frequently.

Then there is Miles Kieth, the cynical pilot, who couldn’t care less about politics or religion, and is just out for his own sake. Or is he? Naturally, there ends up being more to the man than meets the eye.

And then we have Amos Singh, a descendant of Captain Singh (prolonged lifetimes allow for more distant relatives to survive contemporaneously with their ancestors), who wants to succeed to clear the family name and right the wrongs committed by the man who commands him.

Finally, there is Glen Tannis, the Machiavellian operative of the Free Exchange, the powerful shadow government that controls and manipulates all of human society. I love sinister organizations like this, reminiscent of the Bene Gesserit in Dune or the Timermen in Fitzpatrick’s War.

The book takes this cast of characters and throws them into an extreme situation, encountering incomprehensible aliens on the edge of the galaxy. But the aliens are really just there as a catalyst for the different characters to spar over their philosophical differences.

The concept of a crew on an isolated ship, in high-pressure situations and all distrustful of one another, is another trope that I love. It reminded me of Frank Herbert’s The Dragon in the Sea.  The characters clash repeatedly over their moral and philosophical beliefs, with allegiances changing frequently as their circumstances become more dire.

That said, I don’t mean to suggest the conflicts are purely philosophical. This is sci-fi after all, so there are plenty of space battles and shootouts too. The balance of spacefaring adventure and intellectual exercise that is one of the hallmarks of classic sci-fi is here.

The simplest way I can put it is, if you enjoyed my book The Directorate, with its blend of space battles and political machinations, you’ll probably enjoy this one as well. I could say more about the plot and the ending, but given that this book is relatively new, I don’t want to spoil anything for those encountering it for the first time. Sci-fi fans should definitely give it a try.

You have to know something before we start this review: Andrew Crowther is probably the greatest living W.S. Gilbert scholar, and has written numerous biographical and literary analyses of the great Victorian dramatist.

I, having become a Gilbert fan at a young age, have been reading Crowther’s writings since I was about 14 years old. And since then, I’ve come to realize that besides being a great critic and Gilbert biographer, Crowther is also a fine writer in his own right. And Down to Earth is a good example of why.

This book is a satire, but not so much in the Gilbertian vein as it is in the tradition of another favorite author of Crowther’s (and mine): George Orwell. It takes an initially utopian science fiction concept, a lunar colony, and gradually uses it to examine concepts like governmental power, freedom of expression, and racial prejudice.

The book addresses these issues in a number of clever ways, especially through my favorite character, Mr. Thark, a bitter and often deliberately offensive literary critic who nonetheless has some essential core of kindness which he tries his best to conceal.

Actually, I could say a great deal about this book, and the way it handles thorny concepts. Like freedom of expression, for instance. Should people have it? They should, right? But what about for things that are really, really offensive? Specifically things that come under the now nearly-forgotten doctrine of “fighting words”? And this leads to another question, which is who gets to define what constitutes fighting words? It all puts me in mind of a certain Frank Herbert quote.

But I can’t go into too much detail about these things, for to do so would be to spoil the book. And it really is a good story, with a likable protagonist whose goodhearted naïveté makes your root for her from the beginning, and creates an interesting dynamic between her and Mr. Thark.

Needless to say, I highly recommend this book. It’s a thought-provoking Orwellian satire that explores many current issues. And, Crowther is a fantastic writer who deserves to be widely read.