This has been my bedtime reading for the last week or so, which I stayed up late to finish last night – always a good sign. Probably for fans of the original works only, although there are some nice touches – I particularly liked the parallel drawn between inhuman and monstrous machines, destroying humanity, and inhuman and monstrous humans, destroying humanity. It will be interesting to see where the authors take things in the next two books – which I shall now be getting, in a week or two.

I’ve been planning to re-read some of the classic SF series, Foundation in particular (let the reader understand) but possibly also the EE ‘Doc’ Smith novels, especially the Lensman books, which I read when I was about 12 and still hover in the back of my imagination. I suspect I might now find it racist claptrap, but you never know.

Some good quotes in this book though, especially for anyone sceptical of scientific claims: “Science, lost in its own mythos, redoubling its efforts when it has forgotten its aim.”