The publisher classifies this book as fantasy, but as it is based on one of the classic SF tropes, time travel - and this is done by technology, rather than magic - it can sensibly be classified as science fiction. The book features St Mary's, an institute of history attached to a fictional university, where the historians research the realities of history using time machines. While not a particularly original idea - Bill and Ted did their history homework this way a long time ago - it's quite nicely set up with a Time Police organisation that is technically on the same side as the historians, but in practice is often in opposition, plus a couple of dastardly time travellers who are intent on messing with the St Mary's bunch, up to and including committing murder. I did have a slight problem coming to Plan for the Worst as it's book 11 in a series - I sympathise with Jodi Taylor in trying to make the opening accessible to someone who hasn't read the series bef...

It's easy to see the way that science fiction can fit with a 'science of' treatment - less so a fantasy such as Game of Thrones , which is the topic of the latest in this long-lasting genre. However, it's certainly not impossible. The Science of Middle Earth , for example, does a great job of exploring the scientific content of Tolkien's output, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that Rebecca Thompson should be able to do the same for George R. R. Martin's blockbuster series of books and the accompanying TV show. I ought to say straight away that the title here is a little misleading, as by no means all of the content is physics. It covers paleantology, biology, zombieology (is that a word?) and more - but physics probably has the biggest word count, perhaps fitting as Thompson is a physicist. She tells us that the idea of the book is to use the popular fantasy series to introduce science to a wider audience, but I'm not sure that the way the mat...

There is something uniquely beguiling about the moon. The sun might be the serious luminary power source of the solar system, but it is simply too bright to be aware of any detail without specialist equipment. But everyone can admire the full moon in all its glory. In writing Moonstruck, subtitled 'how lunar cycles affect life', Ernest Naylor keeps us very aware of this human awareness of the moon, constantly throwing in moon myths and beliefs alongside detailed information on the way that the moon, and more often its indirect influence through the tides, influences mostly aquatic behaviour. While Naylor is sticking to sealife he is on home territory and authoritative, though for the general reader there is perhaps rather too much cataloguing of how various species behave or mate or whatever in subtly different ways dependent on the phase of the moon and the state of the tides. Where things get a lot more slippery is when Naylor moves onto land animals, and particul...

Subtitled ‘physics and maths in fantasy and science fiction’, this is one for the hardcore science fan. In fact the best reader may well be a scientist who likes a bit of science fiction and wants to play around with how likely all the science in the stories really is. Strangely, the most readable part is the first section, where Charles Adler deals with the goings on of fantasy, rather than science fiction. I think this is because we don’t really expect the science to work in fantasy, and we can enjoy laughing at distortion of the conservation of energy, or the second law of thermodynamics, and thinking about the physics of dragons. But when the book starts to pull apart basics like space travel, it feels like something of a betrayal. Once we got onto science fiction, Adler shows us that practically every major theme of space-based science fiction from the basics of space travel being possible to constructing vast space stations and ring worlds and the like is all extremely unlik...