This wasn't the book I expected it to be from the subtitle 'exploring classic Sci-Fi stories through the lens of modern science'. For me, to be 'classic' something has to be both relatively old and high quality. Without the quality part, 'dated' might be a better word - and that's primarily what we get here. I had the same problem with the recent book Classic Science Fiction Stories , so I can't really blame Stephen Webb, but I had in mind a kind of 'science of' book for Golden Age SF. Instead we get end of the nineteenth/early twentieth century proto-SF, often with very little science to be 'science of' with. The problem with this approach, for me, is illustrated by the best story (as a pure story) in the collection, G. K. Chesterton's The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown,  which first appeared in 1903. This is part of Chesterton's entertaining 'Club of Queer Trades' series of stories, using a Sherlock Holmes-ish ...

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...