There are times when marketing people should not be let anywhere near book covers. To start with, when you see a quote like “Hard SF’s next superstar” splashed across a book cover you just know it isn’t the full comment. Sure enough, a quick check inside reveals a much longer quote from a PW review: “Budz may be poised to become hard SF’s next superstar.” Ah well, at least it didn’t say “has no chance of being…”.

Unfortunately, while it is true that Budz has written some material that could be classed as “hard SF”, he’s probably better known for his speculations in biotech, which the hard SF crowd tends to look down upon. As for Till Human Voices Wake Us, it certainly has echoes of Matt Ruff, M. John Harrison and Phil Dick, but not a trace of Greg Benford that I could detect. So any hard SF fan buying this book on the strength of the cover is going to be disappointed. You, however, are forewarned, and can go out and enjoy a smart, ambitious, character-driven novel that, in the best tradition of PKD, keeps you guessing as to what is “real” until the very end.