Science Fiction – Baskerville Book Reviews

Review: Life Ever After

Tech City: Society is obsessed with relentless progress and the possibility of eternal life. A woman and a man meet in waiting room, anticipating a procedure that will incorporate the latest science and technology into their minds and bodies, heightening their awareness and increasing their productivity. Years pass, their relationship deepens and fades, and they grow increasingly uncertain where the AI stops and where they begin. A romantic drama exploring the potentiality of transhumanism, Life Ever After is a rich listening experience that is at once naturalistic and poetic.

Playwright Carla Grauls was awarded a commission through the Audible Emerging Playwrights Fund, an initiative dedicated to developing innovative original plays driven by language and voice. As an Audible commissioned playwright, she received funding and creative support to develop Life Ever After.

Review: Cthulhu Mythos Tales

The Cthulhu Mythos is a collection of 23 loosely connected short stories by H. P. Lovecraft, one of the earliest masters of dark fantasy and horror. From “Dagon” to “The Call of Cthulhu” to “The Haunter of the Dark,” each story connects to the ancient cosmic entities known as the Great Old Ones, buried in a deep sleep beneath the earth and incomprehensible to mankind. For the few mortals who dare to glimpse this unknowable world, the result is a complete disconnection from what was once considered reality. Lovecraft’s stories are grim, fantastical, dark, horrifying—and yet endlessly fascinating.

Review: Love in an Undead Age

Surviving the zombie apocalypse was hard but finding true love might be fatal.

Urban farmer Miranda Tucci is lucky to be alive in what’s left of California’s Silicon Valley, despite a love life that’s dead on arrival. Then an old flame turns up and she wonders…does her DOA love life have a pulse?

A ruthless governing council controls the cure for the zombie virus. If Miranda joins a plot to steal it, will the vaccine be used for political advantage, or can she survive long enough to usher in a new age of civilization? It’s only the fate of humanity suddenly resting on her shoulders.

If she can bring her love life back from the dead how tough can saving the world be?

Review: Randomize

In the near future, if Vegas games are ingeniously scam-proof, then the heists have to be too, in this imaginative and whip-smart story by the New York Times bestselling author of The Martian.

An IT whiz at the Babylon Casino is enlisted to upgrade security for the game of keno and its random-number generator. The new quantum computer system is foolproof. But someone on the inside is no fool. For once the odds may not favor the house – unless human ingenuity isn’t entirely a thing of the past.

Andy Weir’s Randomize is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

Review: Solstice Shadows

Da Vinci Code meets Tomb Raider in this multi-award-winning thriller series.

A computer-app designer. An encrypted relic. Can she decipher the dangerous code before extremists trigger a high-tech apocalypse?

Software expert Maddy Marshall isn’t sure she’s ready for a hazardous role in black ops. But when an armed Russian thief makes off with a rare ancient star chart, the aikido black belt has no choice but to join her VanOps boyfriend and twin brother in the pursuit. If her royal Spanish family legends are true, the chart leads to a superconductive treasure trove capable of powering the ultimate instrument of global destruction.

Setting off on a mad dash to uncover the secrets of a Mexican archeoastronomy site, she and the VanOps team unearth a clue dating back to biblical times. But as they race across the globe to Morocco, Turkey, and Egypt, they find themselves only a half-step ahead of sinister assassins.

Before millions die at the hands of an anti-American Russian government, can Maddy crack the secret code?

Review: The Wonderful World of Scary Ass Shit

Your parents are lying bags of dicks, everything you ever had a nightmare about is real, and probably was hiding under your bed.

Parallel dimensions exist, let’s get that out of the way right now. What matters more is that something is causing them to merge. A process, to put it bluntly, that can only be described as slamming one’s tit in the proverbial plane of existence’s door… or simply put, maximum unpleasantness in all the wrong places.
Monsters, creatures, anything really that can trigger that burning fear sensation that makes you wish you were already dead, they are real. Like real-real, like really-really real. Trust me, but also no one… see what I did there? The Aurora Wasteland seems to be the epicenter of it all. A focal point for the strange and weird. It’s an area that lives beyond man-made borders. A place made up of people you wouldn’t want to meet. People you wouldn’t want to be, because escaping from the nightmare that is the Aurora Wasteland, well, that’s just not possible.

Logan, Gabe, Monahan, and Jeff are and have been best friends since childhood, only they’ve never met, except they have and know everything and nothing about each other. Perfect stranger and the tightest of friends. Makes sense? Because it shouldn’t, it doesn’t to them.

Not that any of that matters, because as their dimension merges with another, they seem to be the only ones that remember anything about it… the old dimension that is. Even then, only their memories remain, while their lives have been swapped out like a saggy bag of gold. Merged with the them from the new dimension. It’s ok to be confused, none of it makes sense to them either, even if it should.

Then there is Patty, the fifth friend they didn’t even know they had, except they did. Patty knew it was coming and tried to stop it, The Merge that is. Only he failed and died graphically for it. Dragging the knowledge he had about everything to his grave. Now the four friends have to figure out how to try to pry themselves out of this dimension and to get home if it’s even possible. All while navigating their new lives, relationships, and the strange and weird known as The Aurora Wasteland, that just keeps pulling them in deeper.

Lost and with little to go on, a book by the title of TETHERED is found to be left specifically for them. A book written by the so-called discoverer of The Aurora Wasteland. A book whose contents may seemingly be more important to them than they know.

It’s ok to be confused and scared, but I should warn you, if you’re reading this, then it’s already too late. The Aurora Wasteland has you. It knows you. There is no escape. Trust me, because well… it’s better you just figure out what’s going on, for your own sake and sanity. Read, watch, listen, do that you have to do, consume it all. Because you’ll need it.

Review: You Have Arrived at Your Destination (Forward collection)

Nature or nurture? Neither. Discover a bold new way to raise a child in this unsettling story of the near future by the New York Times bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow.

When Sam’s wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a “leg up” in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question the choices he has made in his life.

Review: Blood and Water

Seventeen-year-old Jay Harris lives in a world struck down by a deadly virus. His parents are dead, along with half the planet. When Jay’s sister Maia falls ill, he must find a cure before he loses her, too. But unbeknownst to Maia, Jay is also sick…and he’s running out of time to save them both.

When Jay’s friends tell him there might be a cure for him in France, he must decide whether to pursue it. The journey will be difficult and dangerous, especially in his weakened state, but with little time left – for himself and for Maia – it soon becomes clear there’s no other choice.

Jay leaves the relative comfort of London to search for help, knowing he may never find it. Along the way, he experiences the effects of disaster on the bonds of friendship and fluctuating notions of family. These teens, decimated by a dangerous plague, face stark choices in their search for help, not knowing if their efforts will end in loss and pain. Will Jay and Maia find a cure before the virus takes them?

Review: Project: Perception

Mankind is stagnant. Still fighting the same fights since the end of the 20th century. While technology advances at a blistering pace, socially, humanity is becoming stunted. Someone or something known only as “the Administrator” is determined to change the path that humanity is on. A small push in certain places, and the combined weight of public opinion will change. But who is the Administrator? What is the ultimate goal? And who will get sacrificed to reach the endgame?

Review: Bloody Wicked

Taking on a horde of demon possessed vampires? Time to get wicked.

You’d think when a plague that threatens all of vampire kind (not to mention the world) is afoot, alerting the Vampire Council would be the responsible thing to do…

I was too late…and now the already-possessed council is coming after me.

If only I could access the infernal power Edwin brought with him when he bound himself to me in hell…

There is one item that might allow me to tap into that power: a flambeaux once made by the Witch of Endor.

Unfortunately, the infernal object is guarded by Cajun werewolves and the nasty ghost of a voodoo priestess. Not to mention, the possessed council is trying to get the item themselves.

To get there first, to claim the object, I’ll have to be ruthless. I’ll have to embrace my inner darkness. I’ll have to be bloody wicked. Hell, it’s only the fate of the whole world that depends on it.