I don’t write the same story twice. Obviously, it’d be easier for me if I did: same characters, bigger bad guy, ramp up the peril, final showdown, victory, and onwards! It works for some. It works very well for some. For all I know, my publishers past and present would love me to do this – find a winning formula and stick to it. It’s not me, though. I have to do things the hard way, apparently.

So having chased a disparate bunch of people through the Underground and into Down by making them believe that London has been incinerated in a huge, unprecedented catastrophe, and then doing several unspeakable things to them before finally getting them to the end of Down Station, slightly ahead of the game – I’m not going to do the same thing this time, am I?

Hell no. Part of the reason why I don’t write the same book twice is because I’m not the same person writing the book. I’m older, for a start. I’ve absorbed new experiences, met new people, read new books, learnt new facts and been exposed to new ideas. Some people don’t want to change: they want to stay the same. Not me. If I’m not growing and learning and moving forward, then I suppose I’d have to say I’m shrinking and becoming more ignorant and I’m heading backwards. That’s not a good place to be, surely?

In the months between finishing Down Station and starting The White City, something incredibly significant happened: my father died. We knew throughout 2014 that he was ill, and he wasn’t going to get better. I managed to hand in the manuscript for Down Station before I went to help my mother look after him. Four weeks later, he was gone.

It took a long time to start writing again, and one of the reasons I finally forced myself to sit down in front of a blank page was simply because I was contractually obliged to do so. It was … incredibly hard work. Those first few chapters became as bleak as anything I’d written before. And slowly, I started to construct a story based around the themes of sacrifice and safety, and how much of one you’re prepared to do in order to get the other.

This isn’t to say that Down Station is a light-hearted romp, and The White City is a terrible, dark, soul-crushing tale. Neither of those is true. Down Station pitches the survivors from London into a world of slavery, barbarism and betrayal. The White City shows them beginning to not only survive, but if not quite thrive, certainly come to terms with their predicament and go some way to becoming agents of their own destinies once more.

The other part of the reason of not writing the same book twice is because it’s not just me who’s a different person: it’s the characters themselves. Mary is becoming more confident in her abilities. Dalip is getting used to having to make decisions for himself. And Mama stops trying to boss everyone around and learns to trust people, Dalip especially. That has enormous ramifications for the plot – there’s less of things that happen to them, and more things they actively do, to try and bend Down to their will. Of course, Down being a character in its own right, isn’t going to be bent so easily, and has plenty of surprises hidden away in the folds of the landscape.

In the end, The White City ended up one of the quickest books I’d ever written. The words just poured out of me. It didn’t stop there, either. 2015 saw me write somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million words. It was, I suppose, catharsis. But it was lots of other things too. Because you can never go back.

Simon Morden
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"The Wolfhound Century" is one of those series that defy easy description. Peter Higgins' literary fantasy tour the force is a historical tale steeped in Slavic mythology and it was quite unlike anything else out there. Oft quoted comparison to China Mieville was particularly apt while that to Vandermeer less so. Any yet, if the first two instalments were hard to classify, "Radiant State" completely tears up the rulebook. It's mad in a way to topple the scales with the final part of the trilogy and yet that exactly what Higgins has done here - he goes out with a bang.

"Radiant State" is a crux of all that happened until now and we see the Josef Kantor's plan as it reaches its fruition. The Vlast Universal Vessel "Proof of Concept" stands proud ready to take his latest reincarnation as President General Ozip Rizhin to the stars. The price of progress, as in countless many versions of Soviet Russia, is the suffering of its people. Vissariom Lom and Maroussia Shaumian don't share his enthusiasm. They're still reeling in the aftermath of the previous volume "Truth and Fear" but there's not time for rest. Standing on the knife's edge they're in their biggest pickle yet. They'll do everything to stop Kantor. And while this short synopsis might make you believe that the story itself is a rather straightforward affair, it is its delivery that sets it apart from other books that occupy similar territory, albeit with a slightly less supernatural elements, i.e. Jasper Kent's Danilov Quartet or Sam Eastland's Inspector Pekkala. Higgins peppers chapter with nuggets of wisdom, all carefully taken from rich soviet literary history. Particularly fitting is the opening quote from Mikhail Gerasimov, Russian poet from early 20th century who said "On the canals of Marks we will build a palace of world freedom". This quote perfectly sets the stage for what's to come. Some are downright frightening and ominous like Josef Stalin's "If you're afraid of wolves, stay out of the forest." All this makes "Radiant State" a rather immersive reading experience.

While I won't go further into details of the story, I'll just mention that I feel that the final, fourth part of the story provides worthy conclusion for the entire ride. It was a glorious tale, and "The Wolfhound Century" as a series has succeeded where many others have failed - it has managed to carve a new niche for itself. I predict it'll be a series against which many others with be judged.  It's innovative, often unique in its setting and so beautifully written. I expect I'll be returning to it many times in the future and if you're even a little bit intrigued by its subject or you like the poetry of Mieville or just plain gold old history, I urge you to give it a try. It might just blow your mind.

Review copy provided by Gollancz.
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I should probably admit straight at the start that Adam Roberts' latest novel "The Thing Itself" confused me completely. It is one of those rare books that I have read twice in quick succession simply for the reason that first time around I've just skipped some of its more experimental chapters in an effort to grasp what's it about. It was a bit much for me as I just don't think I'm learned enough about philosophy to truly understand it. As I turned the finally page I wasn't even sure what it was that I have just read and I can already see that I should prepare myself for another thorough re-read. "The Thing Itself" is a really good novel but one I don't think I'll every completely figure out. It is basically a new genre in itself. In a similar way that Greg Egan writes the hardest Hard Science Fiction there is, Roberts has created something akin to Hard Philosophy Fiction, a metaphysical novel that explores the nature of the reality and existence through Kant, AIs and Fermi's Paradox. And it's dense. Very, very dense.

Purely on the story level, "The Thing Itself" is about a life-long connection between two men, Charles and Ray, who back in the 80s as part of ongoing SETI research embarked on a polar expedition together. They're total opposites and their stay at a remote base is strenuous at best. Ray is an introverted computer geek who's obsessed with Kant. On the other hand, Charles is a scientist who is very down to earth. He writes letters, even playing a chess game with a friend through them, reading newspaper that occasionally arrive. One night, Ray tries to kill Charles and leaves him to die in cold. After suffering though frightening hallucinations and frostbites, Charles loses fingers and toes, and effectively ends up scarred for life. Ray ends up in mental institution. From that point on Charles' life is one big downward spiral. First losing his job at the university, due to drinking problems he also loses his post as a teacher, and ends up working a bin men. All through his life he's been shadowed in his dream by a strange kid, Ray's still writing to him. It all comes back again when a stunningly beautiful woman appeared on his doorstep. She's asking him to join the shadowy Institute which does research into AI, remote viewing and the nature of reality in general. They want both Charles and Ray in their ranks. In-between this, relatively straightforward story, is a series of experimental chapters, each delivered in a different style - one that's particularly hard to read because there's no punctuation marks in it. Another one's written as numbered list.

So, in the end, is "The Thing Itself" a good novel? It's an experimental novel so it all depends on your preferences. Personally, I found it deeply fascinating but hard to understand. The closest reference point for me was Philip K. Dick's VALIS trilogy which fits in the same general literary area but "The Thing Itself" is definitely much more fun.

Review copy provided by Gollancz
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More of the same, only different.  It’s a perpetual problem for those of us writing long-running series; not just in fantasy or science fiction, which these days trends toward the multi-book format, but also for writers with much-loved detectives or secret agents.   The Commonwealth Universe, that I’ve been writing about since 2004 when Pandora’s Star was first published, is one that readers are now as familiar with as I am myself.   Paradoxically, although I have an entire universe to play with and explore, that tends to be quite limiting.  There are only so many ‘fresh’ worlds that the expanding Intersolar Commonwealth can encounter only to discover yet another deadly threat to civilization.  How quickly the familiar can become repetitive, a position from which the fall to boredom is a short one.  In the case of Night Without Stars this problem was particularly acute.  It’s the seventh book in the series, everybody knows the parameters, and I cannot mess with the continuity.

To carry the story forward, I had to rely heavily on the characters.  Fortunately, the previous six books have provided quite an extensive cast list to choose from.  But once again I didn’t want to fall back on the old reliables –with one major exception that allowed me a degree of continuity.

By focusing on the newer characters, I was able to return to the fundamentals of science fiction which is exploring ideas and how they impact on the individual for better or worse.  Today’s world is science fiction to someone from the fifties.  Yet for all its shiny gadgets and fast pace, so many old problems persist -we have simply adapted to them.  So how will people adapt to new problems progress will create?

This is where the author in me takes over, observing the world today and extrapolating mundane situations.  For Night Without Stars this all came together from a trip to Leipzig.  I was a guest at a convention there a few years ago, and my hosts very kindly arranged for several trips into the city.  One of the main attractions for the visiting authors was the Stasi museum, which by quirk of fate was actually the old Stasi headquarters.  

Looking round, for the first time I really started to appreciate just how intrusive the East European state had been into the lives of its citizens.   The extensive underground vaults built purely to accommodate the incredible numbers of files the Stasi had on everybody, all studiously cross indexed in rolodexes.  I could barely grasp the paranoia driving it, the amount of effort that the state put into monitoring people was phenomenal.  It represented an institutional level of behaviour I found deeply disturbing, as if a particular strain of insanity had become infectious.  This was an entire country gripped by fear and suspicion, with everyone content to inform on their neighbour.

On top of that was the spy technology on display, the jewel in the crown to captivate every ten-year-old.  The jacket with inbuilt (film) camera, where the collar button was a lens.  Micro-tape recorders –not cassettes, these had actual spools.  Microphone bugs.  Now bear in mind the Berlin wall came down in 1989, which is the time from which everything in the museum is preserved.  These gadgets were the best technology available.  Really?   I had the advantage of looking back across twenty years of digital development, however even taking that into account, everything was so primitive.  Yet because of that basic nature, it still worked.  It was less fragile, more reliable than today’s electronics where we upgrade everything every two years.

And there it all was, in context, sitting in glass cases in the very building where it had been used in anger.  So I started to look at it all through author eyes.  If something happened, if our smartphones and laptops failed, all the equipment around me could be started up again without much trouble.  All that was left to complete the nightmare was the return of paranoia, something would have to come along to justify the obsession and mistrust.

That was the key to creating the world in Night Without Stars; a civilization which had fallen from its technological and democratic peak. It was easy to picture a world under threat, allowing the political class to convince everyone that overwhelming state security was essential for their own protection.  It gave me the book’s character theme; those working tirelessly to do what they believe is their duty, encounter something new and strange, forcing them examine their world from a new and uncomfortable viewpoint.  Exactly what Science Fiction should be.

Night Without Stars by Peter F Hamilton is out now, published by Macmillan price £20.00 in hardback

The Story Behind Night Without Stars
Peter F. Hamilton
September, 2016
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For the last couple of years Alison Littlewood has been one of the finest voices in contemporary British horror / paranormal literature so each time a new book of hers pops up in my mail box I can't wait to sink my teeth into it. Ever since her breakthrough novel "A Cold Season" was picked up by Richard and Judy as part of their book club, Alison has been churning out intriguing and clever chilling stories that always manage to raise my heartbreak. Her latest one, a strange historical twister called "The Hidden People" is no exception. It's one of those books that you will probably read over the course of a single night and wonder in the morning where the time has gone, as bleary eyed realise you have to go to work.

"The Hidden People" is a gothic tale that revolves around the tragic death of one Pretty Lizzie Higgs who was burned on her own hearth. Her husband was accusing her of being a changeling for a while now and therefore murdered her. Albie Mirralls met his cousin ages ago at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and knowing her is unwilling to accept the circumstances. He decides to leave his life in London and head to Halfoak, a small village where Lizzie lived. Not exactly knowing what exactly is he doing, he finds that the truth is far more strange and complicated than he bargained for. As he arrives Lizzie hasn't even been buried. She is kept in a garden cottage and it is up to Albie to organize a burial - to which no one comes. But that is just the beginning. In Halfoak, "Hidden People" and old wives' tales might have more than a grain of truth to them.

"The Hidden People" is an intriguing piece of work that takes its cue from complex mythology and superstition to weave a timeless story that equally delights and disturbs. It's a welcome addition to Littlewood's bibliography and mightily easily become one of the sleeper hits of the year.

Review copy provided by Quercus Books
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