Charming gangsters, lots of gun-fighting, and one insufferable robot cop: Version 43, Philip Palmer's latest, is a cracker-jack pulp-noir deep-space blast.

October brings several long-awaited treats to your bookshelf, including a new Culture novel, the sequel to Connie Willis' Blackout, and Scott Westerfeld's Behemoth. Plus spying Victorian streetwalkers and Miles Vorkosigan! Here are the October releases you can't skip.

Are you missing Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat novels? Me too. It turns out there's a placebo available, for your space-opera anti-hero needs. Philip Palmer's Debatable Space, which came out earlier this year, is a very Rat-like tale of a space pirate who kidnaps a princess.