Counter-Measures, Series 1 – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Doctor Who spin-off Counter-Measures, Series 1 (Big Finish, digital audiobook, c.4 hrs, plus 65 mins of bonus features) follows on from one of the seventh Doctor’s best television adventures, Remembrance of the Daleks. Some of the soldiers and scientists who helped him face down two Dalek armies, in particular Group Captain Ian Gilmore (Simon Williams), Professor Rachel Jenson (Pamela Salem) and Alison Williams (Rachel Gledhill), come together again to form a special counter-measures group for responding to such “insurgencies”. As you might expect from that, it’s quite reminiscent of Torchwood, if it were set in the sixties, or English black and white science fiction films of that period.

Cloud Atlas – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Drawing together and falling apart through six degrees of separation. Cloud Atlas (directed by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski), released 26 October 2012 (US); 22 February 2013 (UK).

1. Returning to slavery-era San Francisco from the Chatham Islands, a convalescent Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) must put his faith in either the sickly smiling Dr Goose or a Moriori stowaway; he keeps a diary while wrestling with his conscience… 2. Acting as an assistant to a famous but cantankerous old composer, bisexual wunderkind Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) finds Ewing’s diary and is inspired to complete his own great work; when Frobisher commits suicide, he leaves the finished composition to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith… 3. Now an old man and a nuclear physicist, Sixsmith (James D’Arcy) shares a broken elevator with journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry), who then becomes embroiled in a plot to cover up a nuclear accident-in-waiting; she subsequently drafts a novel based on the conspiracy… 4. Ne’er-do-well publisher Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent), having dismissed Rey’s manuscript, receives his karmic comeuppance when he finds himself on the run and imprisoned in a bogus nursing home; later, he writes a screenplay based on his ordeals… 5. Sonmi-451 (Doona Bae), a clone manufactured to work in a fast food joint, watches a snippet of Cavendish’s film after being liberated by union rebels; awakened to her plight, and that of her fellow clones, Sonmi broadcasts a public incitement to rebellion… 6. Living in a society where Sonmi-451 now is seen as a divine entity, post-apocalyptic goat herder Zachry (Tom Hanks) must choose between “Old Georgie” – a devilish vision whose whispered goads once saved him from cannibals – and Meronym, a “prescient” who would use her knowledge of the old technologies to send a distress signal to distant planets; ultimately, Zachry’s fate is determined by ripples spreading through time…

Moscow But Dreaming by Ekaterina Sedia – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The recurring themes of Moscow But Dreaming (Prime Books, pb, 286pp) by Ekaterina Sedia are not happy ones. These are stories of drudgery, degradation and misery, of people with nothing to live for, and women worn away to nothing, like the ghosts of murdered young women in “Tin Cans”, or the unnamed protagonist of “Zombie Lenin”, numbed by misery, followed by a zombie Lenin since she was a little girl, and institutionalised for talking about it, or the protagonist of “Citizen Komarova Finds Love”, an aristocrat before the Russian Revolution, who now works in a consignment shop in the town of N. and gets involved with a cavalryman. “With him, he brought the cutting wind and the sense of great desolation”, not to mention a horse’s leg in a burlap sack, but compared to most men we meet in this book he’s George Clooney carrying a Marks & Spencer’s ready meal for two.

Dan Dare, by Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Rather than a reboot or a re-imagining, Dan Dare (Dynamite, ebook, 198pp), by Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine, is a sequel in seven chapters to the original adventures of Frank Hampson’s Eagle character. Dare has retired to a virtual country village on a piece of class six spatial debris (asteroid #2333419, to be precise). His peace won’t last. Old friends like Digby miss him, and soon they’ll need him. Professor Peabody is Home Secretary, working for a Prime Minister with echoes of Blair (based in Millbank, “he’s been in too long … he’s shrugged off too much bloody wrongdoing”) who took charge of the world after the USA and China blew each other to bits. There are treens on the western approaches of the solar system, and they’ve brought two devastating weapons with them: a black hole, and the malign intelligence of the Mekon.

Clementine by Cherie Priest – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

As Clementine by Cherie Priest (Subterranean Press, ebook, 2508ll) begins, the American Civil War has ground on for twenty-four years or so, rather than lasting from 1861 to 1865 as it did in our history. Airships sail the American skies: from huge armoured battleships down to speedy two-seaters (for passengers who don’t mind a stiff breeze). Slavery persists in the south, and strange things are going on up in Seattle. Across these disunited States, in a tiny, nameless airship, flies Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey – one of the twelve Macon Madmen, who “made a big, nasty show of escaping from the prison there in ’64” – and his two men Simeon and Lamar, in pursuit of the Free Crow. His ship has been stolen by the scoundrel Felton Brink, renamed the Clementine, and sent cross-country with a mysteriously heavy load. Southern lady Miss Maria Isabella “Belle” Boyd has been sent to stop him by the Pinkerton Agency, but an encounter with an old friend will bring her older loyalties to the fore.

The White City by Elizabeth Bear – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The White City by Elizabeth Bear (Subterranean Press, ebook, 1669ll, originally published in 2010) stars Sebastien de Ulloa. Though that’s just one of many names used by this “wampyr, hobbyist detective, peculiar old soul”, it’s the one he’s using in 1903, at the time of this trip to Moscow. He is travelling with what we are told is an unusually small court: “lady novelist” Mrs Phoebe Smith and “forensic sorcerer” Lady Abigail Irene Garrett Th.D. (Abby Irene for short). There is a murder in a house where he was planning to feed, quite consensually, on Irina Stephanova, an old friend; though he is found on the scene by police, suspicion gives way to his reputation as “The Great Detective” and he and Abby are enlisted in the search for the murderer. A second strand describes events six years earlier in the same city, where Jack Priest, a young member of Sebastien’s court who has since been killed, gets involved with Irina and the circle of artists among which she moves; again, there is a murder.