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BOOK REVIEW | SCIENCE FICTION
A Suggestion In Space
And An Anomaly In Edible Oil
An obvious route from Chemical Engineering but apparently unheard of from edible oil!
Author and chemical engineer Alan R Paine has long been a fan of science fiction and has won accolades for his short stories, notably winning the Julia Bradbury prize for capturing the spirit of the Wolds in the competition that led to the anthology Dreaming of Steam.
If asked, I would have said there was nothing outlandish about a chemical engineer becoming a Sci-Fi author, but in Alan R Paine’s corner of the industry, it has made him quite a talking point. His expertise is in edible oil and the publication of his debut novel, A Suggestion In Space, has given him an unexpected level of notoriety. The apparently obvious route from Chemical Engineering to Sci-Fi novelist turns out to be unheard of from the starting point of edible oil. However, Alan R Paine has made good use of his expertise within the story.
Although the premise of the book is not new, there are some novel angles in this ‘lost in space’ adventure. The crew of the spaceship, Kalevala, is in one sense as lost as it is possible to be, and yet in another sense, they are not lost at all. And the physics…
