Oddly, the British author Ian Watson may be best known today for his various novels in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Long before he flirted with "the grim darkness of the far future", Watson carved a space for himself as one of the most intellectually challenging and formidable British SF writers of the 1970s.

This episode covers Watson's bracing debut novel The Embedding. Originally published in 1973, it is a startling combination of linguistics, anthropology, geopolitics, and first contact with alien life. With settings in the UK, the US, Brazil, and in space, it is an expansive and ambitious debut posing big questions about humankind's search for meaning and a place in the universe. It also features a gonzo fusion of drugs, language theory, sex, and political violence.

J.G. Ballard once described Watson as the UK's only SF writer of ideas - and The Embedding is definitely packed with those.

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It's been over a year since we last covered a novel in Alan Dean Foster's expansive Humanx Commonwealth setting. In these far-future novels, humanity has allied with the insectoid thranx species, which resemble huge, intelligent ants. Together, the two species create a benevolent, star-faring civilisation.

The thranx are disappointingly absent from the sixth standalone book in the setting, The Howling Stones. What this 1997 novel does have is a pair of bickering xenologists, warlike lizard-like aliens, and the apparently magic rocks of the title. How does it stack up against Foster's earlier novels, like the excellent Midworld from 1975?

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In recent years, the reputation of the Northern Irish writer Bob Shaw has grown. He died in 1996, but left behind a large body of cleverly entertaining science fiction series, novels, and stories. Today, more readers are discovering Shaw's work, which is eminently readable and packed with intriguing ideas taken in surprising directions.

Recently, I covered Shaw's excellent 1976 novel A Wreath of Stars, one of his most celebrated works. This episode covers his debut novel, the deft and exciting Night Walk. Shaw had a fear of blindness, rooted in his own eye health issues, and a strong interest in the science of optics. Like several of his later novels, Night Walk explores this preoccupation.

In this far-future spy story, our hero is blinded and dumped in a prison on a hostile colony world. To escape, survive, and protect a secret with interstellar significance, he must rely on a device that restores his ability to see - but not through his own eyes, but the eyes of others.

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