Long before the Martian tales of Andy Weir and Kim Stanley Robinson, author Ray Bradbury foresaw a time when Earthlings would attempt to colonize the red planet. His 1949 novel The Martian Chronicles predicts with grim certainty that they would try to make Mars just like Earth.

Compiled from a series of magazine stories Bradbury wrote in the 1940s and 1950s, the book reads like a series of anecdotes about the first expeditions to Mars. A Martian woman dreams about a strange man coming to take...

There’s a scene in Alex Fardon’s novel in which two characters argue about a racial slur. Though the word is never mentioned, the author fills his book with so much other vulgar language that the discussion seems hypocritical.

It’s a shame, because this well-told story of idealism and friendship gets off to a promising start. After a fifty-two-year estrangement, retired government lawyer Oliver Bartholomew gets a phone call from Rose Dellaplane, the woman who refused to marry him for a reason...

Allen Levi’s debut novel is reminiscent of “The Millionaire,” a 1950s TV show in which a reclusive benefactor donates a million dollars each week to a total stranger. Residents of Golden, Georgia, know their new neighbor only as Theo, who offers them something better than money.

Arriving in the spring, Theo discovers a bar decorated with pencil portraits of Golden citizens. He decides to purchase them, one by one, and get acquainted with each subject. During the interview he presents the...