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Starship Repo by Patrick S. Tomlinson

Review by Ernest Lilley
Originally Published on SFRevu 5/1/2019:
Starship Repo by Patrick Tomlinson
Tor Books (May 21, 2019)

Her name is Firstname, Lastname, thanks to a clerical error, and she’s human, not something you see every day walking into a galactic hub like Junktion Hyperspace Station. After all, humans have only been feed from their wildlife sanctuary for a few decades, and the Galaxy is a big place. If the customs inspector who greeted her knew how much trouble a teenaged juvenile delinquent could cause, or that his wallet was about to go missing, he’d have had second thoughts about granting that temporary visa. But then things would have been a lot less interesting. Continue reading →

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear

In a clear, light tone, she said, “I know who you are, Haimey Dz. You used to be a revolutionary.” – Ancestral Night, by Elizabeth Bear

March 2019 was a banner month for Bid Idea Space Opera, and it kicked off with Elizabeth Bear’s return to her White Space universe with a new series.  Haimey Dz is chief engineer on a salvage tug that search “scars” in space/time for places where ships didn’t quite make the transition from normal to ftl “Whitespace.”  The tug, with an indentured AI named Singer and a devil may care pilot to round out the crew, has been coming up short on the resource obligation credits that pass for cash in this universe for too many runs when the story opens with them hoping the next find will be their big hit. Continue reading →

Elizabeth Bear Interview

Elizabeth Bear is the author of “dozens of novels; over a hundred short stories; and a number of essays, nonfiction, and opinion pieces” and has won numerous awards including the Campbell, Hugo, Locus, and Sturgeon awards.

By Ernest Lilley

Ernest Lilley: You’ve written a significant (something of an understatement) amount of both fantasy and science fiction, can you talk about the difference in how you have to approach them? Does the technology in fantasy have to be as consistent as in science fiction?

Elizabeth Bear: I actually approach them in exactly the same way, in terms of consistency of worldbuilding. All that’s different is the foundation of the rules that the universe works by.

Fantasy is in no way less rigorous than science fiction, nor is science fiction necessarily more rigorous than fantasy. Certainly, there are examples of both that don’t have consistent physical laws or rigorous causality. Continue reading →

Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty

Review: A Robotic invasion has taken control of Manhattan, the United States is friendless and in tatters, Venezuelan war machines have taken over Chicago, and the list of countries not governed by AIs gets shorter every day. Hey. We saw all that coming. What we didn’t see coming was that when AIs rule the world, they’ll be just as good, bad, and ugly as the humans that went before them.

Todd McAulty’s debut novel explores a fragmented future where the world is just as divided up as ever, but AIs rule the land in very human ways. Some got themselves elected, some performed coup d’états, bloodless or otherwise, and some just bought the place out. AIs in humanoid bodies or full on war droid live side by side with humans as equals, though inevitably, some are more equal than others. Continue reading →

Gate Crashers by Patrick S. Tomlinson

Review by Ernest Lilley
Originally published on SFRevu 5/1/21019:
Gate Crashers by Patrick S. Tomlinson

Tor Books 06/26/2018

400 years from now, mankind has reached out into interstellar space, established a few colonies, and has harnessed both fusion and gravity. But when the starship Magellan, ‘Maggie’ to her captain and friends, crosses an imaginary line in space 30 light years from home, only to find an alien artifact floating in space, humanity is about to enter the big time. Continue reading →