Another Space in Time

Putting on young shoes, this is definitely a 5 star. Slopping in my comfy middle-aged slippers, this is definitely a 5 star. The writing is every bit as good as any hunk of Rowling's fantasy, and if anything the plot has more originality. I have to admit to being a bit of a long-term fan of books that can mysteriously pluck me from everyday life and plunge me into the realms of fantasy. The escape into otherness, away from this all too real existence, to weird places that night's illusions so often strive to go, is done very well in Lethal Inheritance. If we wish we can explain everything as delusion, or the stuff of nightmare, or of chemical concoction, possibly as shadows on the edge of perception, or simply consider this fantasy as metaphor for some deep, private, spirituality. I can't be bothered to dwell for long on such particulars, preferring to just get on with enjoying a very good tale told very well. Newland effortlessly draws us out of a suburban bedroom windo...

Upload grabbed my attention early on and wouldn’t let go. Having teenage children, in a society where all YAs seem to live half-way towards the world of McClelland’s main character Raymond, I had no trouble in seeing this as a very near future story. This science fiction contains plenty of technology, but it is anchored firmly in speculative and metaphysical science fiction arenas. Technology has just arrived at the point when human mental complexity, brain memory and an accurate digital physical copy can be accurately reproduced and uploaded into an electronic world. In other words, total digital maps of all that we are can be transferred into a created environment populated by whatever programmers choose to build. Many of this story’s characters’ lives have become increasingly dominated by “gaming”. Now they can really be part of the game. This intriguing technology has led Raymond, who lives on the edge of some sort of autism spectrum disorder, to plan to escape from the rea...