A debut novel which deals with guilt, art, and suspicious happenings on a troubled colony founded on matter transmission.

The British SF author Eric Brown passed away in March 2023. He first came to prominence through his short fiction in the 1980s. Following the publication of his first collection, Brown was given the chance to put out his first novel. This episode covers that book, Meridian Days. While it has been out of print since 1993, this is an interesting first effort from a writer who would ultimately publish numerous novels up until his sadly premature death.

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What if we share our world with a different intelligent species, but are separated from them by a failure of perception? And what if that gap could be bridged by a new technology, a new way of seeing?

That is the premise of Bob Shaw's 1976 novel A Wreath of Stars. In his ninth novel, the Northern Irish writer combined his interest in optics with speculation about exotic particles and a grounded, African setting. This short, intriguing novel is all about perception, and how it can both divide and unite.

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In a recent episode, we looked at Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, who formed the most important science fiction writing team of the 1950s. This instalment looks at a key book by a dominant collaboration of the 1970s and 1980s - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

These right-wing hard SF authors worked together on numerous books, and even collaborated on fantasy at times. Their 1981 novel Oath of Fealty is an interesting fusion of their scientific speculations and their unsettling, libertarian politics. It is also a prominent work of SF focusing on the theme of arcologies - high-tech, self-contained, urban communities cut off from the outside world.

Oath of Fealty was published just after Ronald Reagan became President of the United States, and reflects the hard-right atmosphere of the time. A few years later it was included, with some misgivings, in David Pringle's book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. This episode gives an overview of this memorable book, and its significance in 1980s political SF.

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