This is first listener submitted book for Luke to review. Variable Star is a novel 51 years in the making. Question: if Heinlein was on a spaceship heading out at 97% of the speed of light for 17 years, and Spider Robinson stayed on Earth to pursue his own writing career, would it have been completed any faster? Also, due to time dilation, Luke managed to talk for 20 minutes about the book.

More info on the SFBRP Wiki

Buy the book on amazon.com (full disclosure, the book costs no more if you use that link to buy the book, but I get a few cents for each sale):

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Singularity Sky is book in a new genre that Luke would like to call “Technobabble Opera”. Charles Stross has loads of great ideas, but do good ideas make a good book?

More info on the SFBRP Wiki

Buy the book on amazon.com (full disclosure, the book costs no more if you use that link to buy the book, but I get a few cents for each sale):

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Luke is sorry for not updating this blog feed for a week… this episode is a review of Learning The World, a book with a blog where someone apologizes for not keeping up to date with their blog. After a week of tonsillitis, Luke gets back to the shorter length of podcast.

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After reading Frank Herbert’s Dune, Luke had so much to say that this episode is less of a review, and more of a discussion on what makes it such a great novel. With so much to talk about, Luke stopped recording after almost 30 minutes.

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The legendary science popularizer Carl Sagan turned his hand to science fiction. Luke, a fan of Carl Sagan’s other work, reviews a book he didn’t finish reading.

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Luke likes stories that feature big things that float mysteriously in space. And Marrow is a book about just that topic, and a lot more besides.

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A big book with big ideas means Luke runs long with his review of this chunky 2001 novel. You’ve got to love body armour and battles… but Luke wants a more human conclusion.

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Luke reads and reviews a book from 1984 about the sixteenth century historical figure of Humphrey Gilbert and how, instead of drowning at sea, Humf was displaced through time by a secret government experiment.

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Luke checks out the 2003 book set in Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space universe. A slightly longer podcast this time as Luke discovers it contains two novellas instead of one novel.

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