The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa had me hooked straight from the title. Seriously, guns, thugs, and ruthless determination? I’m usually satisfied if a book provides me with just one, but all three? Seriously though, this sto...
He has, I am told, informed SM that as soon as he is established in EG he will send 3000 Guardia Civil.’ Simon Mann, confession While recruiting was underway in South Africa, others took on different tasks. Greg Wales arranged for a lobbyist to promote Moto in Washington DC. Mann shuttled back an...
It is largely salt desert, with some localised rock formations, and the Sebestyen mountains that back us are the only real mountains. There are three small seas. Before our departure from Earth, analysis of the spectrographic data from this world suggested there was a great deal of free water on ...
He received him in the Blue Room. The big Englishman burlied in and began without preliminaries: ‘I’m a Catholic, a Christian-Catholic.’ ‘Oh,’ said George. ‘You probably didn’t know that.’ ‘I don’t think I did,’ George conceded. ‘Or – wait. Maybe you did mention it, once before?’ ‘We can divorce,...
There was a great deal to be sorted out; an executor had arrived, and was working through the instructions of Cleonicles’ will. The executor was a young military officer, First Flying Squadron – another surprise, for Polystom had expected a civilian executor. But he was efficient, and deferential...
He leaves his stolen car in an NCP in Berwick-on-Tweed. He is exhausted, but chivvied on by PETA he limps to the railway station. Here he buys a ticket for London with his debit card, and then goes to a different window and buys a ticket to Edinburgh with cash. Since the cash isn’t his, he doesn’...
So the question as to the present-day legal status of bêtes was beyond me. For all I knew, their legal equivalence with humanity had been withdrawn. Revoked. Overturned. The slaves returned to bondage, the cows marched back to the slaughterhouse. But a moment’s thought ought to have made me reali...
‘Will you walk with me?’ Coyne asked. ‘My hotel is not far from here.’ ‘Which hotel?’ ‘The Marco Polo. It’s just off the Tverskaya Ulitsa. Do you know it?’ ‘That’s a little close to the Militia headquarters for my taste,’ I said. ‘Oh but it’s opulent, the Marco Polo. It’s new, you know. It’s a sy...
Lugging him along the corridor involved banging his flopping limbs awkwardly against the walls and the floor. Eventually they bundled him into his cabin, and shut the door on him.As they returned, Lebret noted. ‘Soon enough de Chante will sort out the vanes and we’ll have a more-or-less functioni...
But the problem with the metaphorical modes of fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, ‘magic realism’ and the like, is almost that they are too deep. (Pierre Delalande) I do not intend, in this chapter, to try and generate an itinerary of every author who has been influenced by Tolkien or written a s...
Mulvaine, who had slept through the experience of being half eaten alive by a claw-caterpil, started moaning and shifting as soon as they moved his body. He tried to turn over, muttering. Tighe examined the wound at the end of his thigh; it was covered in some sticky saliva-like substance, which ...
Second contact She was alone again, and that was alright; although being alone in her house, with its beautifully manicured garden, was a different thing to operating a basket-case spaceship with a crew of two corpses. There was a further leak, and this threw the ship into a shimmy-shake and slow...
‘We’ve arrived!’ announced the Dr, somewhat superfluously. ‘Here we are.’ ‘And this is the location of our mission?’ Linn asked. ‘Oh yes.’ ‘So where are we, exactly?’ ‘According to my screen here,’ said the Dr, ‘we’re on a planet called, um.’ ‘Um?’ I said. ‘The Planet Um is in the Hesitant System...