Meanwhile the back cover features a different, interestingly-designed spacecraft set against the backdrop of… er… Jupiter. The front cover features an interestingly-designed spaceship set against the backdrop of Jupiter. They say 'never judge a book by its cover', but as I have never trusted 'them' this is exactly what I will now do.

Yes, it is £20 (which is equivalent to about a gallon of real ale or scrumpy, or three paperback novels in today's prices), but then this edition is a hardback and considering that it contains two novels that works out at a very reasonable equivalent of £10 per book, hence good value.

However if you have not already got Blindsight in your collection, and you think you'll like these two novels having read this review, then do get this Firefall duology. America, and so you may wish to wait until that novel comes out. One final thing about this diptych, if you are reading this before you have purchased Echopraxia and you already have Blindsight then you need to know that Echopraxia will shortly (end of 2014) be released in the British Isles as a stand-alone novel and also, I presume, in N. The second half of Firefall (which is the Echopraxia novel) concerns what happens in the inner Solar system shortly after the events of Blindsight. Blindsight concerns this investigative space mission and is a first contact novel. And then an object was detected approaching the Solar system and a spaceship was dispatched to investigate. Both Blindsight and the second half of Firefall ( Echopraxia) start with the same premise… On 13th February 2082 (which is an unlucky-for-some Friday by my calculation) some 62,000 small objects fell from the sky in a grid pattern: someone had taken a snapshot of the Earth. By all means click on the afore Blindsight link for a separate standalone review of what is the first half of Firefall. But first, do not be panicked by Firefall's hefty page count: Firefall is not just a single novel, it is a diptych, a linked duology that contains the Hugo nominated, and Tähtivaeltaja and Seiun award-winning 2006 novel Blindsight.

If you like your science fiction with hefty dollop of science then you are in for a mind-sizzling treat, and a very rare treat at that if the life sciences (biology and its allied disciplines) are your bag as nearly all of hard SF has a physics and engineering (computer science, astronomy and rocket science) slant. Review of Firefall by Peter Watts Fiction Reviews

Peter watts firefall series