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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The hugely prolific Michael Moorcock is credited with making a major contribution to New Wave science fiction, mainly due to his editorship of the pivotal British magazine New Worlds. Moorcock wrote relatively few science fiction novels, certainly compared to his huge output of fantasy work, which he used to help support New Worlds financially.

However, some of Moorcock's own SF novels are themselves significant contributions to the New Wave. The Black Corridor, written in uncredited collaboration with his then-wife Hilary Bailey, is one example. To catch up with my review of another classic Moorcock SF novel from 1969, listen back to episode 96 for Behold the Man.

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The time has come to continue exploring Iain M. Banks' Culture series. Inversions is the fifth of nine novels, and also the last to be published in the 1990s. This time, Banks stretched himself further than ever before, experimenting with a radically different view of his post-scarcity setting. What does the Culture look like, viewed from a medieval society that is unaware that other worlds even exist?

To catch up with my coverage of the series, listen to episode 90 for The State of the Art, 93 for Consider Phlebas, 99 for The Player of Games, 105 for Use of Weapons and 110 for Excession.

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No discussion of classic British science fiction could be complete without mentioning John Wyndham, and perhaps especially his 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids. A pioneer in the noble tradition of the British disaster novel, this influential classic piles not one, or two, but three catastrophes onto the world. The protagonist, Bill Masen, must navigate not only mass blindness and a mystery disease, but the iconic triffids themselves - mobile, venomous, and possibly intelligent plants with mysterious origins and a taste for human flesh.

Despite its pulpy premise, The Day of the Triffids is written in genteel prose that reflects its postwar British origins. But Wyndham's breakthrough novel is no "cosy catastrophe", a phrase coined by Brian Aldiss. It is an unsettling depiction of societal collapse, which probes the frailty and weakness of civilisation in the face of rapid change and technology that spirals out of control.

In this episode, walk the deserted streets of a fallen London to explore an enduring classic of British SF, one that casts a long shadow over the genre even after more than 70 years.

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This episode covers two quite different science fiction novels by two quite different writers, published more than a decade apart. What links them is their emphasis on religious themes. Let the Fire Fall by Kate Wilhelm was published in 1969, and is largely forgotten. Set in a near-contemporary world, it deals with alien visitation and a manipulative religious cult.

Strength of Stones is an early novel by Greg Bear, published in 1981. It has a far-future setting on a planet colonised by religious outcasts. How do these lesser known novels by prominent authors stack up today?

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Back in episode 111, I took a trip back to the 1950s, and looked at three books written collaboratively by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. The first two of these, The Space Merchants and Gladiator-at-Law, are major landmarks in the development of social science fiction.

In 1955, while that collaboration was ongoing, Frederik Pohl published another novel in partnership with a different author - Lester del Rey. That novel was Preferred Risk, another minor classic of social SF in which the world is dominated by a huge, monolithic insurance company.

This episod explores Preferred Risk, its unusual future world, and the controversial circumstances in which it was written and published.

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