Threshold Shift by Eric Brown
reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Eric Brown is an author who, for near enough two decades, has hovered around the top of the second division of British writers,
without ever quite making the breakthrough into the first rank. He's a solid writer who has steadily earned good if not ecstatic
reviews and who has attracted a sizeable body of adherents. Yet there has never been the groundswell of support, the word-of-mouth
excitement, the great attention-grabbing work that would propel him to the next level.
Reading this entertaining new collection one begins to understand why.
Approaching Omega by Eric Brown
reviewed by Georges T. Dodds
Four humans are the maintenance crew on an outbound human ark escaping an Earth rapidly succumbing to anthropogenic destruction of the
environment and of other humans. Despite warnings all seems good-to-go, but upon their first awakening from suspended
animation, they find the ship heavily damaged, its central AI systems offline, some of the colonist-bearing pods destroyed,
others hanging by a thread.
New York Dreams by Eric Brown
reviewed by Victoria Strauss
The third installment in Eric Brown's Virex Trilogy finds P.I. Hal Halliday deep in VR addiction, living out a
fantasy existence in the pristine landscape of a virtual Virginia coastline, his only companion a programmed recreation of
Casey, the waiflike teenager who briefly shared his real life but has since moved on. Hal isn't alone in his VR dependence:
in the bleak world of the twenty-first-century USA, with its poisoned environment and teeming, refugee-choked cities, the
complete, if temporary, escape offered by VR is powerfully alluring.
The Human Front by Ken MacLeod and A Writer's Life by Eric Brown
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
There are basically two ways to approach the publishing of these two-in-one paperbacks, you can pick stories that are similar in style
and content, hoping they will each appeal to the same readers, or you can present a contrast, pair up two stories that are quite dissimilar
in content, written by two writers with different styles, and give readers familiar with one the opportunity to discover someone new.
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Bengal Station by Eric Brown
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
This is a hard-boiled detective novel with aliens, telepaths, religious cults, and the kind of port city where
anything can be found for a price. As befits a detective story, the plot revolves around the uncovering of secrets, the secrets of
Jeff Vaughan's past, Sukara's present, and the hidden rituals of The Church of the Adoration of the Chosen Ones. Vaughan's the
investigator, and what he finds will start and end with the deaths of friends.
New York Blues by Eric Brown
reviewed by Victoria Strauss
In this 2nd installment of the Virex Trilogy, set in a near-future North America catastrophically altered by
nuclear disaster and climate change, beautiful actress Vanessa Artois makes the trek up
to private eye Hal Halliday's grotty second-floor office-cum-apartment. She
wants Hal to find her kid sister, Canada, who vanished several days ago. But, as Vanessa is laying out the facts of Canada's
disappearance, a deadly beam of laser fire lances through the open window, missing her by millimeters.
New York Nights by Eric Brown
reviewed by Victoria Strauss
This novel is set in a gritty, near-future Manhattan. Terrorism and nuclear mishaps have rendered
much of the Eastern Seaboard unfit to live in, making New York City a mecca for the indigent and the lost. At
the same time, it's still a centre of money and power, and as much a party town as it ever was. In this edgy,
overcrowded, vibrant environment, Hal Halliday and his partner Barney Kluger run a detective agency that
specializes in missing persons.
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