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Imagine a world where you can travel from sun to sun in wooden ships, without worrying about space suits since all of space is filled with air. Imagine a world without planets, with spinning town wheels to emulate gravity to keep humans – descended from us planet dwellers – healthy in a free fall environment. Then imagine that all kinds of technology that we have invented in roughly the latest 100 years (and kinds not invented yet) are disabled: no electricity, no electronics, no advanced nanotech or biotech.

You get a wonderfully strange environment. This is the setting of the Virga series by Karl Schroeder. Virga is a huge bubble world, filled with air and isolated from the surrounding universe. Many of the inhabitants are unaware of the nature of Virga and the existence of an outside. Here you get far future adventure with steampunk level technology.

This is a major worldbuilding exercise. Take a look at the beautiful cover images to tickle your sense of wonder a little bit. (There is going to be a graphic novel of the first Virga book, Sun of Suns. I wonder what that will look like!)

Worlds with some of these features have been created by others in science fiction. There are perhaps never any really new ideas. One recent example is Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds (which I haven't read). In his story more advanced technologies can only function in the higher levels of a towerlike world. The Virga series develops these ideas with causes and consequences in an interesting way, perhaps deeper than anything before.

Ashes of Candesce concludes the Virga series, consisting of five books. According to Karl Schroeder himself, the books are written to stand alone as much as possible. The first three are tied together in one story arc: Sun of Suns, Queen of Candesce (these first two are also collected in one volume as Cities of the Air ) and Pirate Sun. Here the focus is on life, struggles, intrigues and battles within Virga. The final two books, The Sunless Countries and Ashes of Candesce open up to the outside, which is dominated by something called Artificial Nature. Virga is threatened, and the stakes are high: it's about the continued existence of humans, and perhaps of any embodied intelligence at all.

Full disclosure: I haven't read all of the Virga books, so my description relies partly on back cover descriptions, reviews and the author's website. Now, I'm sure I will have to get hold of the first three books. The setting fascinates me, and I want to inhabit Virga a little bit longer. Still, I can testify that it's possible to follow the story without starting from the beginning of the series.

One of the intriguing things about Virga concerns how and why someone would want to construct a place like this. The mechanism suppressing advanced technologies is contained in Candesce, the central "sun" of Virga. The control of Candesce is the ultimate prize of Virga. Of course there are obvious drawbacks with not being able to use all known technology. No unchallenged romantic low-tech bliss. People die, when they really would not have to. So there must be an important advantage, but what? Why did someone invent something like Candesce? Exploring this, and the struggle between various groups, the story also touches interesting questions like the relationship between mind and body.

My favourite character in this book is Keir, who starts out as a mystery even to himself. He knows that he is losing memories and knowledge, but he doesn't know why. In the end his secrets turn out to be very important for the solution of the conflict. He comes from a world outside Virga, and through his eyes the good and the bad aspects of life in Virga stand out in sharp relief. It's also touching to follow Keir as he loses the function of his neural implant system, the scry, which has always provided him with augmented reality information and extended memory functions.

This is an example of one of my favourite things in science fiction: how it can make the familiar strange and wonderful. Like biological memory, and how to use it. It's not necessarily optimal, but it is something that I use all the time never reflecting over the special experience. This gave me little kicks of sense of wonder for a couple of days, and at the same time made me a bit frustrated with the shortcomings of my own powers of recollection. But of course, we all use extended memory: writing, photography, sound recordings and so on. Which we also tend to take for granted.

Karl Schroeder is definitely an author to watch. I might even take a look at his earlier works, things he wrote before Virga.

A short introduction (but maybe you have already seen me on Facebook): I am Joris, I'm 18 years old and I live in Holland. I am having a internship at The English Bookshop in Uppsala for 20 weeks, this is a part of my study: Marketing and communication.

Now I have had two weeks of internship at The English Bookshop. The first week was a kind of introduction week, I got to know everybody, and I got to know the shop. My first impression was that the people who are working here are very open and friendly. It feels very calm to work at The English Bookshop, even though it can sometimes be pretty busy.

What I noticed is that many of the customers are more like friends to the bookshop, than customers. Many people (customers and workers at The English Bookshop), know eachother. So it's always nice if people walk in, not only because they buy books, but also because it's a bit like a friendly visit.

A part of the second week I have worked at home. I have done a marketing investigation, and together with Jan we will look what exactly with the marketing I can help with.

I have enjoyed the first two weeks of internship at The English Bookshop. And now I even have my own blog! :)

Baby, it’s cold outside. As we put on yet another layer of thermal underwear - not much of a fashion statement, I’m afraid, but a dire necessity in these sub-zero times – and brace ourselves before we go out to shovel some more snow, it is easy to grow pessimistic, perhaps even start thinking about the neverending winter in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. (Hey, at least we got to celebrate Christmas!) Do not despair, though: spring will come, and instead of pining for what we cannot have at the moment – sun, warmth, a life without thermal underwear – I suggest you embrace the cold and check out a few books that, in one way or another, deal with arctic temperatures.

My first arctic tip is Elizabeth Hand’s brand new novel Available Dark, where we are reunited with the inimitable Cassandra Neary of Generation Loss fame. This time, our little corner of the world (well, sort of) gets a visit from "your prototypical amoral speedfreak crankhead kleptomaniac murderous rage-filled alcoholic bisexual heavily tattooed American female photographer" (Hand’s own description of her literary creation – you now know why I love both ladies, right?) as Cass is sent to Helsinki to evaluate a series of disturbing but eerily beautiful photographs on behalf of a shady collector. Of course, death and destruction follows, and Cass soon finds herself on the run from a potential manslaughter charge. Meth-fuelled and justifiably paranoid, Cass ends up in snowy Iceland, where she encounters former lover Quinn and becomes increasingly entangled in a twisted series of events that, among other things, feature Norse mythology, black metal, and murder.

If you enjoyed Generation Loss, you will adore this. Not only is Available Dark a top notch thriller of the dark, literary, and deliciously twisted variety, it is also further proof of Hand’s seemingly effortless ability to create unorthodox and deeply fucked up yet thoroughly believable female characters that make Lisbeth Salander seem like Mother Teresa. Also? It is funny as hell. The line "It all made me miss the cheery optimism of The Smiths" is one of many laugh-out-loud moments, and while we’re on that note (so to speak), may I add that all the references to music, whether punk, indie, or black metal are deeply knowledgeable. I even had my black metal freak of a husband double check some of the facts, and he was impressed.

You probably guessed it already, but I really enjoyed Available Dark, on so many levels. The diversity is one of the many things I – here we go again.. – like so much with Elizabeth Hand’s Cass Neary books. Are you a crime buff? Why, then you’ll definitely appreciate the page turner aspect of the book. Black metal fan? See above. Generally into well written, edgy prose with compelling and multi-layered characters? I believe we have a match. So yes, the fan girl has spoken (or chirped, more like it), and is now chirping "can’t wait for another fix of my favourite prototypical amoral speedfreak crankhead kleptomaniac murderous rage-filled alcoholic bisexual heavily tattooed American female photographer!". Will, in fact, continue to chirp until it is revealed that Elizabeth Hand is working on a third instalment of the Cass Neary saga. Only a matter of time, I hope, although I am happy to announce that another book by Hand, a young adult novel called Radiant Days, will be out in April. In the meantime, if you feel like exploring the addictive, genre defying brilliance that is Elizabeth Hand further, try Waking the Moon, Saffron and Brimstone, or Illyria. Oh, and Generation Loss, obviously. You will undoubtedly enjoy Available Dark without having read Generation Loss first, but since it is only a matter of time before you are as enamoured with Cass Neary as I am, and since Available Dark does have some mild spoilers regarding the outcome of the first book, I suggest you pick up Generation Loss first and then read Available Dark back to back.

Arctic pick number two is Dan Simmons’ epic horror novel The Terror, loosely based on the ill-fated Franklin expedition in 1845. Snow, ice, a lost/doomed expedition, unspeakable horrors… Add a touch of gangrene and I believe we have a winner.

If you like your horror on the gently creeping yet haunting M.R. James spectrum of things, do make sure to read Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter. It is the tale of loner Jack Miller, who joins an expedition to the Arctic Cirle and the remote, supposedly haunted Gruhuken bay in an attempt to escape his lonely life in London. However, the expedition soon turns into something other than Jack had imagined and once settled in the ice cold wilderness, Jack and his colleagues soon realise that all the ghost stories are true… I read Dark Matter in one spine-tingling sitting and chances are you will, too. It is the perfect ghost story, really, with a wonderful sense of place and atmosphere. Ideal for chilly winter nights.

Perhaps you already read Graham Joyce’s Silent Land when it was December’s book of the month, but I’m going to pass on the tip anyway. The premise of Joyce’s award winning novel is an intriguing one: a couple skiing in the French Pyrenees is buried under a flash avalanche. After having dug themselves out, they find the resort completely abandoned. It is almost as though the entire outside world has been emptied of people, of noise, of life… Silent Land is one of those books you almost have to pry yourself away from. Unputdownable, and beautifully written, too.

Finally, the first book in  Cardinal and Delorme series, Forty Words for Sorrow, takes place in February, which in Algonquin Bay, Canada, is a snowbound, quiet, and very, very cold place. If you haven’t read Blunt, you’re in for a treat. He always delivers great plots, and plenty of atmosphere and tension along the way. Blunt’s latest Cardinal/Delorme thriller, Crime Machine, is also a snow-filled affair, so there’s no shortage of arctic weather and snowy seclusion here.

You might like this book if you enjoy:

• action-filled thriller type plots
• time travel
• science fiction stories with philosophical implications, but not too much
• doom and apocalypse

Keep reading if you would like to know my thoughts on Final Days in a context of hard science fiction. 

The last third or so of Final Days was a fun read, but for a hundred pages in the middle I kept reading mostly for the grazing cars. Cool gadgets help a lot when I fail to feel really involved in the plot.

As the title reveals, it's a story about the end of a world. A mysterious alien artefact is lost, and those who know about it have reasons to believe that it's going to destroy all life on Earth. At the same time, there are political tensions over the access to the wormhole technology that allows transfer to the space colonies in other star systems. The array of wormhole gates is located on the moon, and controlled by the very powerful organisation Array Security and Immigration (ASI), based in the Western Coalition. Saul Dumont is an ASI agent who gets involved in it all, partly as a consequence of his failures.

I found Saul a somewhat colourless character, despite his mild drug addiction and his personal problems. He thinks he is investigating the sabotage of the gate to the Galileo colony, where his wife and daughter live. For ten years, no-one has been able to travel between Earth and Galileo, and Saul is eager to find out who is responsible for separating him from his family. What his superiors really want to get is details about the imminent destruction and its cause, and therefore Saul finds himself at the centre of the events threatening billions of people. There is a lot of action and violence, but I didn't really care about Saul himself.

He gets more interesting in the second half of the book, when he interacts with people in situations not always involving a lot of running and fighting, and reveals more complex feelings. And he gets to ride a Saturn rocket, which is actually kind of cool in a future where very few actually travel through space.

That detail with the Saturn rocket struck a chord in me, which made me a bit worried. There is a strong streak of nostalgia in some flavours of hard science fiction, with authors who clearly seem to think that the future was better in the past. I'm talking about the kind of technology romanticism that seems uncomfortable with the developments in society and comes together with a certain political conservatism. Like Michael Flynn in Firestar. He describes a return to space coupled with a kind of soft revolution that transforms our whole culture, art and literature and everything, to something easier and more understandable. The effect is to make him look like he skipped a couple of decades and just cannot comprehend the world he lives in. I'm not sure I want to be like that. Still, I can't help being charmed by the old fashioned rocket. It makes a wonderful contrast between the easy everyday travel between celestial bodies in the portrayed future, and the much more heroic (i.e. uncomfortable) journeys of the early space pioneers.

Also, Gary Gibson avoids getting overtly nostalgic about the Right Stuff, and never gets ideologically annoying. (There are actually interesting post-colonial issues in this future, where the wormhole technology gives the Western Coalition control over the colonies, while the Pan-Asian Congress demands equal control and their own gates. I like it when Earth is described as a whole, multi-faceted planet.)

Still, Final Days is definitelyhard SF. The story is much more about the physics of wormhole gates and the technology of the future, and about time travel paradoxes and free will and the destiny of humanity, than about a few specific characters. Perhaps the most memorable person in the story is the elderly Amy, who together with her husband runs the space tourism company owning the Saturn replica rocket. That Amy makes a reference to a "cold equation" tells us that Gary Gibson very much knows that he's a part of the conversation in hard science fiction. ("The Cold Equations" is a much debated short story by Tom Godwin, first published in 1954.) The story is also full of action and suspense. Will mankind survive? And at the end, I actually cannot be sure that Saul did the right thing. It's an interesting situation. I must say that I also enjoyed the attempt at exposing the inherent problems with wormhole travel. This is a very commonly used trope in science fiction. One example is how Peter F. Hamilton uses wormholes to connect the planets in his Commonwealth universe, another is the "farcasters" in Hyperion by Dan Simmons that allow the river Tethys to cross several planets. Still, the fact that this kind of faster-than-light travel allows for certain kinds of time travel and all sorts of paradoxes is usually just forgotten. In Final Days the gates are even called CTCs, for "closed timelike curves", a term referring to the description of a phenomenon like a wormhole within the theory of relativity. Don't worry about the details, Gary Gibson is not weighing down the story with lengthy explanations, but it's still an important plot point. (There's the conversation again. Science fiction collectively exploring common tropes.)

I also found it sort of refreshing to read about a future with recognisable humans and technology in the year 2235. The augmented reality of Final Days is not very far from what we can do now, with a smart phone, but much more integrated with daily life. Most people wear contact lenses containing their personal data ("ubiquitous profile", including money) and communications device. They also display the desired amount of information and helpful instructions in the wearer's field of view.

It's not our immediate future, but still a world just a step beyond ours. No backups of your personality, no quasi-magical nanobot utility fogs, no emerging intelligences on the internet, no singularity. I guess I sometimes get a bit tired of those things, and like variation.

As I mentioned in the beginning, the grazing cars was another piece of future technology that I found fascinating. Kind of cute, but a bit incongruous with the rest of the worldbuilding. It actually doesn't seem to be a very good idea.

A second hire car was parked near Jeff's own, where it shuffled closer to the verge and began tearing up the same patch of grass, sucking the biomass deep into its guts prior to converting it to ethanol.

Can you imagine hauling around large amounts of concentrated biomass for the cars to eat -- instead of just bringing the ethanol from a centralised distillery? And how do you deal with the waste? You know what a street looks like where horses are used.

Still, if it hadn't been for the cars I might have stopped reading before getting to the good parts. That's hard SF for you.