Foundation Retrospective

Christmas 2001 and the world was gripped by the ‘Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring’, which exploded into cinemas with almost unanimous critical approval and huge box office success. It was the film everyone had to see. However, what is less well known is that New Line Cinema only embarked on the plan to adapt Tolkein’s seminal fantasy novel after a plan to make a very different trilogy of films collapsed. In 1998, New Line were busy developing film versions of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels. How different would film be today if they had succeeded? Asimov is best known for his Robot novels (I, Robot; Caves of Steel, etc) but his Foundation novels have perhaps had an even greater influence on science fiction. The Foundation series began life as a series of short stories published in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and 1950, which were collected into the first novel, Foundation, in 1951. Two further novels, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation followed in 1952 and 1953 respectively. All were well received and quickly became classics of post-war science fiction. In 1965, Asimov was award a special Hugo for Best All-Time Series, beating The Lord of the Rings to the title.

Foundation’s influence upon the rest of the genre is subtly but persistent. Most obviously, Asimov was the first to use the concept of a world being covered by one vast city. Trantor, the capital of the Asimov’s future human empire, is echoed across sci-fi books and film, from the vision of the future of Earth in ‘The Fifth Element’ to Coruscant, the capital of the Galactic Republic/Empire in the Star Wars films. Trantor has reappeared again and again since Asimov first imagined it during the Second World War. Many other classic works give nods to Foundation, most notably The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy name drops the Encyclopaedia Galactica, the great compendium of all human knowledge which the Foundation is working to collect.

Foundation is set in the distant future, where one single human empire covers the entire galaxy. On the imperial capital, Trantor, the empire’s greatest scientist, Hari Seldon, claims that he has found a means to predict the future of human society through a new science, which he calls psychohistory. Through complex mathematics, Seldon has discovered that the empire is doomed and will soon collapse. This will be followed by ten thousand years of barbarism, but this could be reduced to a mere thousand if the greatest scientists are gathered together to create a library of all human knowledge, the Encyclopaedia Galactica. This group will be known as the Foundation and, after a thousand years, will emerge to found the Second Empire. Seldon’s plan is approved, but the Foundation is consigned to the remote world of Terminus at the far end of the galaxy from Trantor.

The book then chronicles the Foundation’s attempts to survive and thrive in the years of chaos which come after the collapse. The scientists of the Foundation are guided by Seldon’s plan and his map of how events will play out. However, unforeseen and extremely unlikely events shift the fate of the galaxy away from Seldon’s plan, which must later be re-established by the Second Foundation.

Foundation was one of the earliest novels of what we now understand as science fiction. Distinct from the dystopian fiction of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, Asimov became known as one of the big three writers of science fiction, together with Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. The Foundation novels are a love letter to the 1950s technological optimism that can be seen in Hergé’s Tintin or the British TV show Space 1999. When Asimov was writing Foundation, the atom had just been split for the first time and it was thought that atomic energy would transform every aspect of our lives. The Foundation novels are filled with atomic blasters and nuclear belts which seem dated now, but which preserve a vision of what we thought the future would be like. Future generations may think the same about current authors’ enthusiasm for nano technology.

However, Foundation is also tinged with fear for what the future will hold. The collapse of human civilization is discussed at length in the books, something which was on everyone’s mind as the world entered the nuclear age and the Cold War began. As America and the USSR tested larger and larger bombs it was felt that humanity needed Hari Seldon to imagine our survival after the complete destruction of our civilization. This fear of the future can be seen in the cinema of the 1950s, where popular films included a remake of ‘Godzilla’ in 1954, an adaptation of ‘1984’ in 1956 and ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ in 1951, where an alien chastises humanity for our self-destructive streak.

Foundation was out of step with the trend of its time, but now this in common place, with superhero movies from ‘Iron Man’ to ‘The Fantastic Four’ regularly featuring scientists as heroes. The ‘Stargate’ TV series is a good example of a science fiction show in which scientists and soldiers work side by side to save humanity. The spin off, ‘Stargate Atlantis’, also borrows heavily from Foundation. Set in a galaxy where war has wiped out most of humanity, one last bastion of science and civilization holds out against the chaos. Over 70 years after Hari Seldon and the Foundation first appeared in print, its influence upon science fiction is still profound.

Isaac Asimov created a series of novels which continue to astonish today with their intricate plotting, vivid imagination and sprawling narrative. Over the following decades, other great writers have been inspired by his work in their own creations, and it is this which gives him the status of titan of the genre. The Foundation novels are essential reading for any science fiction writer (especially in the space opera or hard sci-fi subgenres), as Asimov has a created a story that is as enduring and brilliant as The Lord of the Rings.

Dune Retrospective

It is difficult to overstate just how important Dune is to science fiction. Originally published in 1965, Frank Herbert’s seminal masterpiece won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. In addition to being a huge game-changer of the genre, Dune remains the best-selling science-fiction novel of all time. It casts a long shadow over the genre; the single ecosystem of Star Wars’ Tataouine is a clear nod to Arrakis,  and other sci-fi classics such as Sheri S. Tepper’s Grass also draw heavily on the book. What is the appeal of Dune and why has it lasted so much longer than that of other books?

Dune is set in a far future in which interstellar travel is made possible through consuming the mind-expanding ‘spice melange’. Melange originates from one planet only, the desert world Arrakis, also known as Dune. 

The novel follows Paul Atreides, whose family settles on Dune when his father is appointed the planet’s new ruler. However, the rich resources of Arrakis mean that House Atreides soon comes under attack.

Paul’s father is murdered, forcing Paul, the heir apparent, and his mother to escape. They only survive by joining the ranks of the native Fremen, who hold him as a messiah figure. Eventually they overthrow the new rulers of Dune, leading Paul to intrigue his way to becoming Emperor of all of humanity.

Published in the mid-1960s just before the advent of the flower power generation, a novel about a mind-expanding drug captured the mood of the time. The clear Middle Eastern allegory (Herbert based the Fremen language on Arabic) added to the novel’s relevance. Since then, the fascination Dune inspires in authors and readers alike has allowed it to maintain its high status. Dune has also inspired artists in other mediums, David Lynch directed and filmed an adaptation in 1984, and in 2000 the Syfy Channel produced a three-episode TV version.

Dune has also inspired many video games, particular Westwood Studio’s Dune 2. Released in 1992, it was one of the first strategy-based video games and established a lot of the conventions that strategy games still use today. Dune 2 was an important precursor to Westwood’s seminal Command and Conquer: Tiberian Dawn which was released three years later. It seems that whatever medium Dune is adapted into, it sets the mould for how things will be done in the future.

Today, Dune remains consistently popular, but significantly lags behind in followers when compared to famous sci-fi franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek etc. This is partly because Dune is a lot less accessible than these stories. The book is long and does not go out of its way to explain what is going on. Instead, the reader is immersed into a strange world of ritual, mysticism and political intrigue. You are never quite sure what is real and what is illusion, what is fantasy and what is science. Dune is a book which tests the reader and does not give easy answers. It is no wonder that it has inspired artists to create great works and technical innovations. Sadly, its esoteric nature prevents it from being as popular as the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Dune was the first ‘grown-up’ novel I read aged 12 and it opened my mind to the amazing world of the science fiction novel. I was already a huge Star Wars fan but Dune showed me the how complex and imaginative the sci-fi novel can be when the author is able to create a whole world and immerse the reader in it. Dune is perhaps the best example of this experience of complete immersion in book form.

What is lacking is a screen adaptation which captures how magical the book is to read. The David Lynch version captures the mood of the novel but drops most of the plot to fit into two hours, while the 2000 TV adaptation maintains the plot, but fails to translate the mood accurately. Many fans feel that an adapted that captures both could catapult the novel to the same level of popularity as Lord of the Rings but it has always eluded audiences.

Chilean surrealist director Alejandro Jodorowsky attempted to adapt the book in the mid-1970s. Despite putting together an impressive team including Orson Welles, H. R. Giger, Salvador Dali and French comic book legend Moebius, he was unable attract funding. Perhaps Jodorowsky could have successfully translated the book into a film or maybe he would have just added to the opaqueness which surrounds Dune. For those interested, the recent documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, which explores the story of this would-be adaptation, is really worth a watch.

Dune may not be quite as famous a work as Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, but it still stands as a titan of the genre. This masterwork hardly needs a blockbuster film adaptation to maintain its popularity. With each generation, thousands of science-fiction readers rediscover the book and love it. I frequently tell my non-genre-reading friends that if they want to read one SF book, it should be Dune, as it’s a true pillar of science fiction.

What Is Horror Comedy?

The sky is possessed by an unearthly glow. The moon is a pale in colour and frightened. You stand beside a road cutting across the land like a rough scare of the skin of the world. Tenebrous and indescribable alien beings are eating in a nearby diner. Behind you cults practice bloody sacrifices to undying, ancient gods that sleep beneath the earth. Before you strange hooded figures perform eldritch rituals in front of a black, faceless monolith. In the background there is a pigeon. You have awoken in a world that is somewhere between reality and your nightmares. You are late for a PTA meeting. Welcome to Night Vale.

Horror and comedy sound like the complete opposites of each other. One aims to create positive feelings within the viewer, the other unpleasant feelings. However they are both broad churches, filled with many sub-genres, some of which have more in common than is immediately apparent. Welcome to Night Vale, a podcast from Common Place Books, is only one recent example of horror and comedy meeting to great effect.

Horror and comedy have been combined several times in the past, with the emphasis sometimes leaning towards one or the other.The League of Gentleman popularised the combination in their hit sit-com for the BBC and later in a film. Channel 4 has produced Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, a comedy drawing heavily on the seminal horror works of Steven King, James Herbert and Lars von Trier’s excellent horror TV show The Kingdom. Mark Z. Danielewski’s ergodic bestseller The House of Leaves falls within the horror genre but can also be read as a spoof of an academic monograph. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead is a standard zombie horror movie, populated by characters from a rom-com.

What all these works have in common (aside from combining horror and comedy) is that all use a touch of the surreal to meld the two contradictory genres together. Surrealism has a long history of being successfully employed in both horror and comedy. From Monty Python’s Flying Circus to The Mighty Boosh, surrealism in comedy is well established. Many of horror’s greatest authors use surrealist elements in their stories, from the mixing of sleep and awake in the writing of HP Lovecraft to Steven King frequently giving life to inanimate objects in many of his novels.

The horror/comedy crossover genre is usually bent towards the surreal and Welcome to Night Vale is no exception. My own attempt to write a Welcome to Night Vale style opening feels more like a scene from a Francis Bacon painting than a work of conventional horror. Welcome to Night Vale draws its influences from a wide range of surrealist horror, most notable the short stories of HP Lovecraft that set the tone for the podcast.

In the American desert town of Night Vale, a community radio station gives regular updates of local news and events. However, the town is beset strange creatures and horrific events – from mysterious hooded figures and an ancient underground city, to a man in a tan jacket who no one can remember and the nameless, indescribable, monstrosity that is the station’s management. The strange thing is no one in Night Vale finds any of this unusual, however, Lovecraft’s influence is written all over the town and podcast.

It is difficult to take the writings of man who believed that space is a black-soupy liquid either, through which alien beings could swim, seriously and it is in this where Welcome to Night Vale is able to meld Lovecraft’s wired fiction horror style with surrealist comedy. It is this combination which makes Welcome to Night Vale distantly from the torture porn sub-genre of horror, popularised by the Saw movies, which is currently hugely popular with cinema goers.

It is also this unusual combination which makes it different from horror spoofs like the Scary Movie or Scream franchise. Whereas these seek to embrace the conventions of the horror genre and find humour in how ridiculous they can be, Night Vale mocks and subverts these conventions. Horror if often accused of being formulaic and so deep is this criticism that even spoof horror is formulaic in its approach.

Welcome to Night Vale is not a conventional modern horror but like House of Leaves, it feels like a breath of fresh air into a genre which too often falls back on tired formulas and generic stories. Welcome to Night Vale finds a new way of examining the horror genre and draws on the deep roots of modern horror which go back to Lovecraft. Like the best horror/comedies, it cleverly moves between the two genres, never going too far down one road or the other.

Horror/comedy is not something new and but it is a different way of thinking about horror and comedy, informed by the best cannon works of both genres. I would recommend anyone interested in either genre download Welcome to Night Vale and be amused and creeped out in equal measure. If you live in the town of Night Vale then follow the stations own advice: “turn on your radio and hide”. Goodnight Night Vale.

Top Ten Spaceships

From the Star-Destroyer flying overhead at the beginning of Star Wars to Klaatu’s flying saucer descending in the original Day The Earth Stood Still, the idea of a spaceship goes hand-in-hand with what we expect from sci-fi. Where would science fiction be without space ships? It would certainly have lost a significant proportion of its iconography. To celebrate this I have chosen ten ships which stand out to me as great icons of the genre. This list is by no means definitive (neither ships mentioned above is included) but these ten vessels are essential to the narratives of their stories, and they’re fiction design classics as well.

10. The Lying Bastard – Ringworld

This one takes some explaining: built by Pierson’s Puppeteers – a cowardly two-headed alien race from Larry Niven’s Known Space series – the Lying Bastard is technically advanced and packs a few nifty tricks.

Though the Puppeteers detest violence, this personal vessel (large enough to carry four in cramped conditions) is filled with tools which could easily be used as weapons – a disintegration ray supposed to be used for digging, a flash-light with a beam so powerful it can cut someone in half. Hence our protagonist, Louis Wu’s affectionate nickname for the ship.

The Lying Bastard is also protected by the Puppeteers’ impervious hull, which comes in handy when the ship collides with the Ringworld and the novel gets interesting.

9. Serenity – Firefly & Serenity

Serenity, a second-hand Firefly-class ship and the setting for Joss Whedon’s short-lived Firefly, has as wonderfully iconic design. To me it’s like a duck, odd-shaped and bulky on the ground but surprisingly graceful in the air.

Serenity may be small compared to the settings of some stories but it has enough secret hidey-holes filled with stolen goods and the occasional fugitive to keep the audience interested. More than anything, the crew of Serenity are a family and no family is complete without a home. Whedon lovingly brings it to life for this cult season of TV and the subsequent film.

8. Red Dwarf – Red Dwarf

In the future, there will still be shit jobs; this unavoidable truth is the essence of Red Dwarf, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor’s sci-fi/comedy show. Huge, lumbering and most of it serving no visible purpose, Red Dwarf is a place where the downtrodden of the future toil away for little money.

It has an AI with an IQ of 6,000 (or the same IQ as 6,000 PE teachers), a surviving crew of four (one human, one hologram, one cat and one android) and is vast enough to contain any number of comedy capers. One piece of advice: make sure you know one of their garbage pods when you see it.

7. Luke’s X-wing – Star Wars

No, not the Millennium Falcon; the real hero among Star Wars’ ships is Luke’s dependable X-wing. The star of sci-fi’s greatest David and Goliath scene, Luke must pilot this fast but well-armed single person star-fighter down the equatorial trench of the Death Star to deliver a photo-torpedo to the enormous battle station’s only weak spot.

The Millennium Falcon plays only a supporting role in this, one of cinema’s most dramatic scenes. It’s Luke in his plucky X-wing we root for, breath held as he presses the fire key and launches those missiles down an unshielded ventilation port. It helps if you have the force on your side at the final hurdle but you need an X-wing to get you there first.

6. Planet Express ship – Futurama

In the year 3000 you wanted some soft toys delivered to the moon, Planet Express would be your first call. Another great example of blue-collar jobs in the far future, the staff of this delivery company frequently ends up in trouble on simple delivery jobs, always relying on their trusty nameless vessel.

The ship has been everywhere with its human, robot and lobster crew, from the University of Mars, to Roswell in 1947. The only thing they won’t deliver is presents for Santa.

5. Nostromo – Alien

Continuing on from Red Dwarf, it seems to me the worst job you could get in the future would be working on the intergalactic mining vessel Nostromo. Made almost entirely out of tiny ducts, pipes and small spaces for nasty things to hide in, the ship is managed by what looks like a computer from the late 1970s.

Its crew is so obsessed with getting their bonuses that they barely have time to investigate a mysterious signal they pick up on their travels. When they do, they discover science fiction’s most vicious predator and spend the rest of their short lives running or being attacked in the ship’s escape pods. All in all, not a great ship on which to be a crew member.

4. The Truck – Galaxy Truckers

Galaxy Truckers is a brilliant board game in which you assemble your space truck out of tiles picturing spare parts and then send it on a run around the stars to get the stuffing knocked out of it. Bits fall off, crew members get spaced, the guns never point in the right direction and usually the whole thing is lopsided. We love this game, because no matter how well you build your ship at the start of each round, it always ends up in port hobbling along on its last engine, with a large hole in the side.

There’s a fine art to building robust space trucks and no human seems to be able to master it.

3. Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints – Surface Detail (Culture Universe)

No list of spaceships would be complete without a mention of the late Iain M. Banks and his amazingly named Culture vessels – runners up for a position on this list included Serious Callers Only, Grey Matter and Funny, It Worked Last Time. However the prize must go to Surface Detail’s Fast Picket Ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, a vessel which is basically a self contained war fleet, capable of breaking into a fleet of smaller, deadly warships. In one scene, the FOTNMC takes out an entire enemy armada in a few seconds, displaying the Culture’s vastly destructive military power which goes along with their utopian lack of laws, leaders and social structure.

The casual cruelty and moments of sudden viciousness of the FOTNMC show the dark side to the never ending sex and drugs free-for-all that is the Culture.

2. The Normandy – Mass Effect

If I were going to fly around a hostile galaxy and fight ancient killer machines, I would want a ship like the Normandy. Piloted by Seth Green’s Joker and crewed by a bizarre rag-tag group of aliens and humans, The Normandy is as versatile as its captain, Commander Shepard.

There is enormous fun to be had exploring each layer of the ship and talking to every crew member, finding out their backstory and getting their opinion on the last mission they went on. Like Serenity, The Normandy is a home and its crew members are a family. Throughout the Mass Effect series you get to know each personally and the Normandy is the perfect setting for this.

1. Discovery One – 2001: A Space Odyssey

Without 2001, there would be no Star Wars and without Star Wars there would be no sci-fi summer blockbusters or triple A games. It all began here in 1968 when Stanley Kubrick teamed up with Arthur C. Clarke to expand one of his short stories into a film. What resulted pioneered a lot of special effects that are now a staple of modern sci-fi.

The most intelligible part of the narrative takes place on Discovery One, a ship sent from Earth to investigate a mysterious black monolith that has appeared in space around Jupiter. The ship has an active crew of 2 and is run by its AI, HAL. Unfortunately, conflicting parameters in HAL’s programming drive him to become murderous. More than the terminator, HAL is logical, cold and unwavering in his killing of the crew of Discovery One, leading to some of science fiction’s most iconic scenes. The mission was a failure but 2001 was a huge success which changed science fiction forever.

Honourable mention: The TARDIS – Doctor Who

Technically not a spaceship, in that she rarely does any flying, but a special mention must go to the Doctor’s mind bending, bigger-on-the-inside space and time travelling device.

It’s huge, unknowable and full of surprises. Its ability to always go somewhere interesting is one of the greatest plot devices in TV fiction. A piece of trivia for anyone keeping track: since Doctor Who was brought back in 2005, all regenerations have taken place in the TARDIS console room, including the Master’s and the Doctor’s fake one during Journey’s End. If only those walls could talk.

Grass Retrospective

Frank Herbert’s Dune casts a long shadow over science fiction. The epic masterpiece is a classic that towers above other genre works, and has many imitators. Grass by Sheri S. Tepper is a good example of a sci-fi book which wears its influences on its sleeve, as it borrows the single ecosystem planet, the quasi-feudal power structure and the sense of mysticism interwoven with science, but Tepper’s book has depth beyond this – she has created a rich world, as distinct and original as Herbert’s own.

In the future. humanity is dying rapidly due to the spread of an incurable plague. Only one place in the galaxy is free from sickness, the planet Grass. The Westriding-Yrarier family are sent to Grass to investigate the reason behind the lack of plague, and to discover whether it could lead to a cure. Upon their arrival on Grass, they find an insular society based on hereditary privilege. The wealthy ‘Bon’ families engage in the sport of riding Grass’ native mounts, fearsome beasts much larger than horses. However the mounts have a strange power over those ride them, one which the Bons refuse to discuss. This, coupled with the disappearance of several teenage girl riders, leads Marjorie Westriding-Yrarier to suspect that Grass and the mounts hold a dark secret.

At first glance, the world of Grass will look familiar to sci-fi readers. We have a future society more akin to the past than present, and an alien world populated by strange creatures. Tepper has created a fascinating mystery to inhabit her world; not a scientific quest, but a more a familiar intrigue, based on a closed community with a deadly secret. Grass is a community hostile to outsiders that hides murders behind a wall of silence. The real drama of Grass does not come from alien creatures or intergalactic plagues but from something that could occur in the real world.

Tepper has a distinct voice for a sci-fi author, not only as a woman writing in a male-dominated genre. Her background as a mystery and horror writer is evident as Grass sweeps you up and carries you along. In some ways it owes more to the closed militaristic community of Anthony Price’s Gunner Kelly than to Dune. Unlike most sprawling sci-fi epics, Grass doesn’t have a sprawling cast of characters, and all have real humans flaws and tragedies. Aside from having to deal with deadly plagues and monstrous beasts, Marjorie is confronted with a family under pressure.Female protagonists in sci-fi can be problematic as many are reduced to sex symbols.

Some authors try to avoid this with another trope: the aggressive warrior woman, a female protagonist with traditional male traits. However, it is important to remember that a strong character who is female is not necessarily a strong female character. Grass avoids both of the above problems; Marjorie is richly developed and faces real human problems. She is also a mother, a somewhat unusual trait for a sci-fi protagonist, something she shares with Dune‘s Lady Jessica Atreides.

The substance of Grass owes a lot to Dune. There is a family ripped apart by the circumstances of this strange world. There is the mystery of the planet’s animal inhabitants, and the degree or their intelligence. There is the wider picture of a future society centred on a single powerful figure backed up by a religious order. This said, Grass avoids many of the major pitfalls of attempting to imitate Herbert’s masterpiece. As a novel, it does not feel bogged down, the plot moves quickly and the sense that the central characters are under threat is ever present. It keeps the reader interested in the story and turning the pages. Eventually the implied threat becomes manifold in a series of heart-stopping action scenes which were among the most engrossing pieces of writing I have ever read.

Grass is a good example of a novel firing on all cylinders; it is well crafted, engaging and very exciting to read. Tepper’s great strength is her experience writing novels that are rooted in reality. It makes her characters easy to relate to and gives her narrative strong pace. In a few scenes towards the climax of the novel she really excels in writing gripping drama. Grass owes a large part of what it is to Dune but a closer look revels the book has more substance than others who have tried to mimic the best selling science fiction novel of all time.

The Most Dangerous Game

Richard Connell's short story The Most Dangerous Game famously describes people hunting other people for sport. However humans aren’t alone in gunning for our world’s top predator. To celebrate the release of After Earth, set on a planet where everything has evolved to hunt humans, this is my Top Ten Nastiest Creatures With A Taste For Homo-Sapiens.

10. Weeping Angels – Dr Who

Not the Doctor’s best-known enemy but certainly one of the scarier from his more recent adventures, the Weeping Angels are among the oldest creatures in the universe. Why they look like a statue from our recent past is never explained, but it is this every day disguise that I find especially scary. The minute you look away, that innocent statue over there will reveal the quantum monster within, and zap humans into the past to feast off of their potential energy. After watching an Angel episode of Dr Who, you will be convinced that every sculpture you see has moved while your back was turned. So just remember, whatever you do, don’t blink.

9. Velociraptor – Jurassic Park

For years Jurassic Park was my favourite film. A Spielberg on top form filled his audience with equal parts wonder and terror at the sight of living, breathing dinosaurs. Never had good and evil been so clearly defined than in the contrast between the reptiles who eat plants and the reptiles who eat you. The standout dino from this film is undoubtedly the raptor. Yes, T-Rex is a brute but Spielberg’s improved raptors are clever, they hunt in packs, can open doors and display almost human emotions. My favourite moment is the irony of our heroes almost being eaten in a kitchen. All fans of the film should read this Wikipedia article on what science tells us raptors were actually like.

8. Wraith – Stargate Universe

Stargate has many alien villains but none quite as scary as the Wraith. Using advanced technology to harvest humans as a food source and spread fear across the galaxy, this bizarre progeny of humans and a life-sucking spider feeds directly off human life force. What makes the Wraith interesting is the sad inevitability of their story. They need to kill humans to live, and despite their cruelty they are still people trying to survive. The Wraith exploit the tragedy most vampire stories overlook or over simplify, the fact that they simply don’t have a choice.

7. Genestealers – Space Hulk

No one wants to be trapped in a confined space with something dangerous – let along something that is mainly made out of claws and wants to rip you apart. This is the main premise of Space Hulk, a Warhammer 40K spin-off in which humans explore abandoned space ships and try and avoid Genestealer attacks. The Genestealers are perhaps 40K’s most iconic alien menace, and in Space Hulk they came into their own. This game cleverly subverted the open space aspect of the 40k tabletop battlefield with its tight and confined setting. As a game it borrows extensively from films to capture a claustrophobic mood. The Genestealers are alien predators distilled: vicious, tough, fast and driven by murderous urges.

6. Polymorph – Red Dwarf

What do you fear most? Snakes? A bad case of indigestion after a vindaloo? Or perhaps this giant, killer monster? The Polymorph is a well-known Red Dwarf creation capable of turning into whatever its prey fears or hates the most. It is dangerous in itself, as it also sucks emotions out of its victims’ heads, but it is the Polymorph’s ability to transform into other creatures to torment its targets that makes it really special. Red Dwarf makes use of its limited budget to create a villain that is memorable and leads its fans to ask themselves the dreaded question – if I met the Polymorph, what would it turn into?

5. The Thing – The Thing

Another creature capable of changing its shape to infiltrate human circles, The Thing first attacked Kurt Russell in 1982, making him question his closest friends. An alien who crashes near a human research post in Antarctica, The Thing then disguises itself as its victims to pick them off the one by one. This film is John Carpenter at his finest, being genuinely nasty. The sight of characters split apart into unnatural configurations of organs as the Thing changes from its human form into its alien body is so unsettling that it has left a permanent impression on me.

4. Reavers – Firefly

People hunting people will always be scary. From Scream to Duel, the idea of being hunted by another person touches a deep chord of fear within us all. What makes the Reavers even scarier is the mindlessness of their aggression. The primary antagonists of Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Serenity, they move quickly and kill without reason. The perfect illustration of how narrow the line between civilisation and savagery can be, the Reavers hunt, torture and kill for no other reason than perverse thrill.

3. Predator – Predator franchise

Anything Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot kill is worthy of a place in this list. The nameless intergalactic skull-collectors first appeared in cinemas in 1987 and have since made the leap to comics and games. Unlike some other creatures on this list, the predators are made to look vaguely human and point of view shots throughout the film put the viewer inside their heads. However, their complete lack of remorse or restraint sets them apart. As space’s ultimate sportsmen, who hunt and kill for fun, they are a reflection of our own viciousness towards each other and other living things.

2. Slake Moth – Perdido Street Station

Giant dream-sucking moths from another dimension? It can only be a China Miéville novel. What I find scariest about the Slake Moths is how entirely unlike any other creature in the Bas-Lag universe they are. In a world populated by so many bizarre beings, it takes something truly aberrant and outlandish for Miéville to describe it as alien. The villains of Perdido Street Station start life as curios caterpillars but soon grow into huge vicious predators with indescribable limbs and hypnotic wings. The Slake Moths stalk the night in the city of New Crobuzon, feeding off the dreams of their prey. They hunt humans as a source of food but unfortunately for us, they have limitless appetites and their feeding drains their victims heads’ of all thought. Another genuinely terrifying aspect of the Slake Moths is the way that they eat your mind, but leave your body untouched.

1. Alien – Alien, Aliens, etc

A strong candidate for any scariest creature in science fiction award, the Alien has terrorised audiences in a number of media since it first exploded out of John Hurt’s chest in 1979. What begins as a routine planetary exploration trip for the crew of the Nostromo ends up with a monster chasing them through their own ship. The aggressive extraterrestrial of unknown origin boasts acid blood and two sets of razor sharp jaws, including one on the tip of its tongue. However, what makes it really scary is how unpredictable the alien is. It is clearly intelligent, but is so different from humans that we cannot communicate; leading to inevitable violence of the most basic and animal kind. Following the initial encounter, the Alien has appeared in a series of sequels, games, books and comics as well as several high profile crossovers with the Predators. The Alien is the original monster, delivering utmost terror with the tagline “in space no one can hear you scream.”

Eon Retrospective

How much scientific knowledge do you need to enjoy science fiction? It goes without saying that a lot of sci-fi fans will have at least a basic grasp of scientific concepts, but even that is by no means necessary for every work in the genre. To enjoy Star Wars, the viewer only really needs to understand what a planet is, the physics behind the hyper-drives or light-sabres are incidental. Other works of science fiction require a greater understanding of various disciplines; Eon by Greg Bear is a good example of this.

First published in 1985 and set in 2005 Eon follows a group of scientists as they investigate The Stone, an enormous asteroid that has appeared in orbit around Earth. They discovered that The Stone has been hollowed out into seven chambers, some of which contain abandoned cities, the seventh of which appears to go on forever. As the scientists investigate the mysteries of the Stone and the infinite corridor, the political situation on Earth deteriorates. The ongoing Cold War threatens to become the hot war while a group of Russian Cosmonauts prepare to invade The Stone to claim it for the Soviet Union. On top of this the builders of Stone have become aware of human presence on the asteroid. Humanity’s fate quickly becomes intertwined with that of the builders of the Stone as the enigma of its origin is revealed.

The Cold War aspects of the story have aged poorly. EonSome of the political scenes come across as unintentionally comical, mainly those featuring the West German Space Defence Force (Bear wrote Eon four years before the collapse of the Berlin Wall). The Russian characters border on Cold War stereotypes, while the subservience of the Chinese to the West is as far from our reality as the novel’s Soviet moon base. Bear is better at predicting the science of alien races than the politics of the near future.

This is a novel about scientists and a scientific investigation, so it follows that there would be a lot of scientific discussion. A large part of the book is given over to an extensive and truly fascinating description of the Stone. The more I read the more I wanted to know, particularly about about the infinite Corridor. Bear’s writing style is dry and factual, reading at times like an academic paper. This can make it hard to connect with the events described, but a lot of high stakes drama keeps the book entertaining. As the characters probe the mysteries of the Stone and the Corridor, their discoveries are explained by what sounds to me like convincing science, adding to the book’s overall sense of realism in an extraordinary setting.

I am a big fan of science fiction, but my scientific knowledge is limited to what can be gleamed from the Guardian’s science pages and occasionally New Scientist. Most of my understanding of science comes from science fiction and could very well be nonsense. As someone with little in-depth knowledge of science, I found Eon to be a convincing read. Bear seems to know what he is talking about and his description of the Corridor and the theoretical universe it inhabits will convince a scientific-layman of its realism. At times I found the more technical aspects of the novel difficult to follow, but this did not prevent me from enjoying the book. A greater knowledge of science might have helped me appreciate Bear’s work more but it is by no means necessary to follow the plot. Like the best science fiction, it involves complex science but does not require a PhD in astrophysics to enjoy.

There is plenty in Eon for non-scientific readers, with strong characters, human tragedy and a deep and fascinating mystery permeating the novel. Bear draws the reader into his world, deeper and deeper into the Corridor, one million kilometres at a time – that will make sense when you read the book. There are also a lot of classic sci-fi plot elements; expect aliens, flying cities and inter-dimensional travel.

The Hydrogen Sonata

Subliming is mentioned in almost all of Iain M. Bank's Culture novels, but not until now has he explored the concept in any detail. It forms an important part of the plots of novels such as Look To Windward and Surface Detail, but we actually know very little about it. In the universe of the Culture, subliming is the civilizational end game; the point where a species collectively checks out of this universe and passes onto some other dimension, outside even the multiverse structure mention in Excession. Sublimed beings become so vastly powerful and complex that they care little for the trivial affairs of species still bound to this physical plane. It is a concept common to many science fiction universes, from ascension in Stargate SG1 to first ones of Babylon Five.

Banks’s latest novel, The Hydrogen Sonata, focuses on the events surrounding the subliming of the Gzilt, an pan-human civilization that nearly became a founding member of the Culture ten thousand years earlier. Mysteriously, they opted not to join at the last minute but have enjoyed close ties to the Culture ever since. Now, on the eve of their subliming, a message has been delivered which could shake Gzilt society to its foundations. Only one person can verify if this message is true: QiRia, the oldest person in the Culture who was present ten thousand years earlier when the Culture began. A Gzilt by the name of Vyr Cossont, who met QiRia twenty years ago, is dispatched to find the truth behind the message. She teams up with a band of Culture ship minds (mainly one called Mistake Not...) to, in typical Banks style, travel around some of the galaxy’s more unusual spots to find QiRia. Meanwhile she is pursued by members of the Gzilt military who are intent on keeping the message secret in case it threatens the subliming.

This book follows on from trends in the last three Culture novels: firstly the events mainly take place outside the Culture itself. Culture ships, drones and avatars are involved, but the majority of the dramatic plot focuses on events elsewhere in the galaxy. Secondly, this is his third consecutive novel with a female protagonist, and Cossont is one of his most engaging protagonists to date, flawed with youth but also strong and determined. This story also explores a few fundamental aspects of the Culture universe. It deals with the events around when the Culture was first established and gives some more insight into its history. It also explains much more about what is involved with subliming, how species and individuals sublime, what happens to what they leave behind – these are all themes of this novel.

As usual, Banks’s imagination is front and centre, and he takes the reader on a journey to many bizarre and original places. Included this time are rivers made of sand, an airship devoted entirely to pleasure, mountains of sound and sculpted moons, which are described in beautiful detail in the book.

The Hydrogen Sonata is one of Banks's stronger novels. It lacks the flaws of the weaker ones, mainly sub-plots that do not join back up to the main plot. This novel also tones down the sex and violence to a degree but still manages to keep the story extremely entertaining. This book is more thoughtful, similar to philosophical Excession rather than the explosive Consider Phlebas or the violent Surface Details. The ending is perhaps a little predictable but does have strong emotional resonance. I would certainly urge any fans of science fiction, and especially Banks's other writing, to read this novel.