Australia - Permutation City  - Greg Egan

This post for Australia started at Claude was a gift from my mother in law (I had given some suggestions to what I wanted)

The blurb makes it look not that science fiction-esque. so this page will probably change to a Greg Egan book, and probably that book will be "permutation city".

8th Feb 2026:
Also it looks like i'm going to do two books from Australia now. I did a bit of googling and found an aboriginal Australian science fiction author. And from a super quick look on good reads, looks something along the lines on Binti, where the story is set in the future but draws on ancient culture and history, so i'll be dusting off the aboriginal flag of Australia out and grabbing a copy of: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13552764-the-interrogation-of-ashala-wolf. I know i keep making this project bigger and bigger, but i'm learning so much about other cultures that this is too good to miss! And I can probably use an audible credit up for the Greg Egan book!

The Physical Book:

Ordered on Feb 11th from Abe books £6.99 oh and bought The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf from MagpieBooks for £2.68

 United States of America - Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

There are dozens and dozens of Science fiction titles of my bookshelf and in my audio books library, that are written by American authors. I originally picked Rey Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, as it's an absolute classic and one of my favourite books. But once I read Project Hail Mary, I realised that this is brilliant representation of American science Fiction. Even the title is pure stars and stripes, referencing American football! 

I'm going to be as polite as possible to America and Americans. But I will be  throwing no end of stereotypes and  misconceptions. Firstly when I visited America, I had a great time, I only scratched the surface with a couple of weeks based around LA and then 10 days in New York. But it was a great part of my trip. I know it's easy to paint Americans as dumb gun toting meat heads, and there are definitely a few of those. But there are far more kind generous and funny people!

The Physical Book:

I pre-odered this when it was available to do so, after enjoying The Martian so much and the film too, Artemis didn't hit the right spot for me so i'll leave that there. My local bookstore excelled themselves and managed to get me a signed copy of the hardback! Boom! The book itself is a nice, a good cover. Nothing outstanding, just does the job nicely.

The Story:

Love it, and this is were the true America heritage comes at you with all guns blazing. And that is a hell of a lot of gun! Basically a white, young America saves the world, by using good ol' gumption, grit and common sense! Even though the mission was a joint mission with China and USA, only our Anglo pretty boy survived! The alien interactions in the book are great fun, and very very 'alien' which was really cool. It was refreshing to see an Earthling, learn the alien language rather than the usual trope of teaching the Alien how to speak English! Because all Aliens speak the same language and all earthlings speak English!

I can't wait for the film in 2027

Chile - Pedro The Vast - Simon Lopez

31st Jan 2026

Found whilst reading a 'most Antipater science fiction books of 2026' on the new scientist web page. Usually these lists are pretty crappy, but this time it pulled up a gemstone, as I don't have a Chilean author on my radar, so it's always nice when one is delivered to me with out much effort. Just need to pop to my local book store to see if they can source me a copy.