The Devil’s Nebula – Eric Brown
The Devil’s Nebula – Eric Brown (Abaddon Books)
I remember this. Good old fashioned, page turning, thrill a minute Science Fiction adventure that kept me rooted to the spot from beginning to end, more commonly know around these parts as a four pot phenomenon. That is, I sat down, opened the first page of ‘The Devil’s Nebula’, and four pots of coffee and an entire Saturday later, I finished the final sentence, having been unable, once I starting reading, to put the book down. What, on the surface, appears to be a pretty straight forward space opera style stake about a crew of misfits who operate on the fringes of the law being press ganged into service by an Empire that they each despise for their own reasons, and then sent on a mission beyond the boundaries of known human and alien space in order to find, after said Empire receive a garbled distress call, a long lost colony of humans in region of the cosmos where there should be no humans. So far, so good, but then, slowly but surely, bit by bit, ‘The Devil’s Nebula’ starts getting better and better as Eric Brown begins exploring sub-plots (the colonists who set out for stars worshipping creatures from a dimensions beyond our own, the gradual infection and conquest of humanity and the stars etc.), all of which eventually link into the whole, creating a truly terrifying opening chapter in what, given the strength of the opening salvo, promises to be an incredible new series. Part Heinlein, part Harrison, part Lovecraft, part Lumley, but so much more than the sum of its parts, ‘The Devil’s Nebula’ is pulp science fiction for the twenty first century delivered by one of the largely unsung hero’s of modern genre fiction. The Weird are here, the door is open, it’s time to fight back… Tim Mass Movement
