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Foundation's new season has dramatic potential – but sadly falls flat

9 July 2025

Foundation's new series is full of new characters and dramatic potential. But instead of mining those rich seams, too many plotlines have become shallow and absurd. It's hard to see a good show go bad, says Bethan Ackerley


crowd in a stadium

Provocative new book says we must persuade people to have more babies

9 July 2025

The population is set to plummet and we don't know how to stop it, warn Dean Spears and Michael Geruso in their new book, After the Spike


Mandatory Credit: Photo by ADAM VAUGHAN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (14138456b) An aerial photograph taken by drone shows the recently felled tree at Sycamore Gap in Northumberland, Britain, 05 October 2023. The famous tree at Sycamore Gap was cut down on the night of 27 September 2023, leading to the arrests of a 16-year-old boy and a 60-year-old man on suspicion of causing criminal damage. The tree appeared in Kevin Costner's 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and was part of the landscape for 200 years. One week after Britain's iconic Sycamore Gap Tree was felled, Northumberland, United Kingdom - 05 Oct 2023

A new book argues that revenge is an addiction – but doesn't convince

18 June 2025

Recovering "revenge addict" James Kimmel Jr. makes the case for retaliation to be understood as an addiction in new book The Science of Revenge. It's compelling, but doesn't quite add up


WHA2R6 Frederic and Irene Joliet-Curie in their Paris Laboratory

Physicist Frank Close's new book is a welcome rework of the atomic age

11 June 2025

The story of the birth and growth of nuclear science is rebalanced in Destroyer of Worlds, which gives due prominence to the role of women


Block of flats Description Block of flats during night time with many figures in the windows and symmetrical staircase on both sides lit in green

A compelling book asks if we are killing off the idea of private life

11 June 2025

How did we lose the sense that some parts of life should be off-limits rather than open to commodification? Tiffany Jenkins's thoughtful new book Strangers and Intimates explores


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Grisly new book reveals what zombie insects can teach us

14 May 2025

In Rise of the Zombie Bugs, Mindy Weisberger zooms in on how parasites hijack the brains of their tiny host animals


EWXH9C THE MARTIAN (2015) MATT DAMON RIDLEY SCOTT (DIR)

A doe-eyed look at space exploration is inadequate for the zeitgeist

14 May 2025

In highly politicised times, is living off-world something we should entertain, let alone do? Adriana Marais's futurist dream Out of This World and Into the Next feels tone deaf


H7X53M Los Cedros River, Cotacachi-Cayapas Reserve, Ecuador

Robert Macfarlane is wrong to cast rivers as life forms in new book

30 April 2025

We should protect Earth's rivers and forests with laws. But it is another matter to claim them as living beings, as Robert Macfarlane does in his new book Is a River Alive?


Egret Take off at Pallikaranai Marsh, Chennai, India

Chronicling nature activism in a coastal corner of India

23 April 2025

Intertidal is Yuvan Aves's extraordinary, personal exploration of the rich wildlife offsetting the urbanity of Chennai, India. While its focus is a small strip of Indian coast, its issues are global


Spacecraft over the mountainous terrain of the planet.; Shutterstock ID 85321648; purchase_order: -; job: -; client: -; other: -

Would we recognise alien intelligence, asks Adrian Tchaikovsky novel

5 February 2025

In Shroud, Adrian Tchaikovsky's intriguing new novel, two women marooned on a strange moon encounter alien life – and struggle to recognise intelligence in other beings, finds Emily H. Wilson


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