In "River Out Of Eden", Dawkins writes of a universe with no apparent design or purpose and explains more of our evolutionary past. With thorough knowledge and captivating style, Dawkins illuminates how life has achieved what to the uneducated or bigoted appear to be miracles. Science journal 'Nature' says, "It abounds with metaphors that make things brilliantly clear, an excellent introduction to many important evolutionary ideas"

A brilliant idea that ultimately fails in execution. It has been said of Turtledove that he is the master of the alternate history series, on the basis of the first seven books of this series I have little choice but to disagree.

The scientific endeavour is assumed an "unending march of science" by many but, in truth, no one claimed it as such. But why? Why does science, a purely human endeavour, give us real answers whilst religion only pretends to? In discussing some of the most famous feuds in science the author throws light on the true motivations and petty jealousies of scientists throughout history. In cleverly revealing the kind of sarcasm and abuse competing scientists would often throw at each other he puts to rest the idea that science is infallible whilst reflecting on today's media battles between evolutionists and fundamentalists.

A review of "Soldier of the Republic", the debut novel by Ben Slythe. The book might be classed as military science fiction, is well-written and engaging demonstrating the author's excellent grasp of both military organisation and historic battles.

This article briefly introduces me, my work, my background and my website. It outlines (at time of writing) my progress towards the publishing of my first and second novels in "The Abyssal Void War" series and briefly mentions other things to be found here including reviews and opinion pieces.

Despite being an atheist, I had always accepted the existence of a man called Jesus Christ as actual but Freke and Gandy's "Jesus Mysteries" forced me to re-evaluate my view. Although I did not believe Jesus was the son of any god, I had envisaged him a s real, perhaps a Jewish leader, perhaps a "freedom-fighter", perhaps wise, perhaps soft-spoken and the kind of man around which legends are built ... a kind of early-day Robin Hood if you like. In their book, the authors reveal the mystery religions, whose various dying & resurrecting godmen they refer to as "Osiris-Dionysus", as showing a great degree of similarity in their multi-level teachings that were interpreted more literally by the uninitiated and allegorically by the initiated.

A review of Stephen Hawking's, "The Universe In A Nutshell" by my friend and fellow author, Ben Slythe in which he outlines why it is that he enjoyed the late, great Stephen Hawkings' then latest book. In it he outlines how the book, presented with lots of pictures and plenty of whitespace around a great deal of amusing and interesting information, is mostly successful in attempting to explain the universe to the general public.

An absolutely appalling ending to a series that had once held so much promise, as it came back to bite us in the "ass" in the worst possible way. There are a lot of people out there who still like BSG and despite its brilliant start, I'm not one of them. I kid you not, if you love good TV, good storytelling, the way I do the ending of this series will make you spit, swear, stomp and generally want to smash things.

From the "Lensman" series, through "Skylark" and, a rarity these days, even some of his standalone novels, I have read a lot of Edward Elmer Smith's (better known to his fans as "Doc") material. Yes, he had his flaws, most notably his politics (though they were probably a feature of the times as much as anything else), but he had his strengths too. E. E. "Doc" Smith was a brilliant writer, not so much in a literary sense, but one capable of writing science fiction that spanned solar systems, galaxies and universes. Though his philosophies represented a bygone age, his technology was imaginative and carried me, as a young boy, into realms I had never before visited. There have, undoubtedly, been writers of his calibre (and far better) since but I am not sure anyone ever had as much scope in their stories.

I've seen enough reviews in my lifetime to realise that reviewers are often heavily swayed by their emotions and, whilst there will always be an aspect of personal preference, I felt some sort of objective method of comparison was necessary. This article outlines the self-developed method I now use and the categories I use to do them and all of the reviews on this site follow this method. I gave this idea some thought and my intent to create a consistent approach to reviews that is entertaining yet that little bit more objective.