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...

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 ti...

A transitional 1950s novel of colonisationI'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 transitio...

A beginner’s guide to her groundbreaking SF settingBetween 1966 and 2000, Ursula K. Le Guin published seven novels and 17 stories in the Hainish setting, which together comprise a large proportion of her science fiction. Co...

The Science Fiction Encyclopedia states that "there is a false belief that SF and humour do not mix."  The SFE does concede, though, that the two are more successfully fused in short stories rather than in the novel form. Like Douglas Adam...