Growing up at a time when both Monty Python and ‘alternative comedians’ like Ben Elton were on the telly, I couldn’t help but absorb British humor, and coupling that with a love of science fiction and fantasy (Asimov, Heinlein, Moorcock, etc.), I was ripe for an introduction to Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett… And the rest is history. The world is too serious a place, and I find comedy of all kinds, but especially SFF, a welcome escape. My own writing has been inspired by all the books on this list, and while I work in a range of genres, almost everything includes at least some snarky humor.
I fell in love with Terry Pratchett’s writing style with the first Discworld novel I read—they’re all great, and could fill a ‘best of’ list by themselves. But if I’m forced to pick a single favorite, it’s this one. I love the witches (and Nanny’s cat, Greebo), and can’t help but grin at the conversations between Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.
The highlight of this particular book is Nanny Ogg’s rather rude ‘cookbook.’ Oh, and Greebo in human form. And Henry Slug pretending to be Enrico Basilica, while wanting nothing more than wholesome Ankh-Morpork cuisine, not to mention… I could go on for ages: I love everything about this book.
One warning, though: don’t listen to the audiobook in public. When among strangers, it’s embarrassing to burst out laughing for no readily apparent reason.
A paperback edition with the original cover art of the classic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, the fifth book in the Witches series, part of the Discworld novels.
'A master storyteller' A. S. Byatt
'An excellent mystery whodunnit...Terry Pratchett at his very best - wonderful humour combined with a really good read' 5-star reader review
'There's a kind of magic in masks. Masks conceal one face, but they reveal another. The one that only comes out in darkness . . .'
The Opera House in Ankh-Morpork is home to music, theatrics and a harmless masked Ghost who lurks behind the…
I first encountered Douglas Adams when I caught The Hitchhiker’s Guide on late-night radio, and I was hooked. The novel is slightly different, with Adams giving a bit more consideration to plot and logic, but it has the same wonderful, rapid-fire dialogue style, which has seldom been replicated.
I absolutely love Arthur Dent’s ludicrous accidental odyssey, meeting characters like Zaphod Beeblebrox and the wonderfully named Slartibartfast. The Guide sits in the background, popping up to provide superbly funny explanations of the history of the universe, humanity’s obsession with money, and a lot more.
For me, the thing that sets this apart from a lot of SFF humor is its ‘Britishness’—there’s a distinct feel of the surreal comic legacy of, for example, Monty Python and The Goon Show.
This box set contains all five parts of the' trilogy of five' so you can listen to the complete tales of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Bebblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android! Travel through space, time and parallel universes with the only guide you'll ever need, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Read by Stephen Fry, actor, director, author and popular audiobook reader, and Martin Freeman, who played Arthur Dent in film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He is well known as Tim in The Office.
The set also includes a bonus DVD Life, the Universe and…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
This is the most Terry Pratchett-y book I’ve come across that wasn’t written by Terry Pratchett! It’s often hilarious, but also hides a deeper commentary on war, selfishness, and human nature. This is a short, quick read, but well-told and engaging—once I started, I couldn’t put it down until I finished it.
T. Kingfisher writes in a number of different styles, and this is the funniest of her books that I’ve read, just beating Swordheart.
From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes Nine Goblins, a novella of low fantasy and high mischief.
No one knows exactly how the Goblin War began, but folks will tell you that goblins are stinking, slinking, filthy, sheep-stealing, henhouse-raiding, obnoxious, rude, and violent. Goblins would actually agree with all this, and might throw in “cowardly” and “lazy” too for good measure.
But goblins don't go around killing people for fun, no matter what the propaganda posters say. And when a confrontation with an evil wizard lands a troop of nine goblins deep behind enemy lines,…
This book is a parody of a certain story set in a galaxy far, far away, and does a wonderful job of sending up the franchise. Low humor throughout, but I enjoyed every minute of it.
My absolute favorite aspect of the book is how, every now and then, the typeface changes and something new and ‘polished’ is dropped into the text, just like a certain director remastering the original movie and inserting modern CGI special effects, effects which looks totally out of place compared to the older non-CGI material.
A long time ago in galaxy far, far away a really quite good SF film, a sort of western in space, was launched. The special effects were pretty shoddy but it did have some quite good actors in it. And Mark Hammill. A second and third film that were actually the fifth and sixth films followed and they weren't quite so good but they were still quite fun (especially when the teddies got blasted by the Imperial stormtroopers). Then, the first, second and third films followed and they were actually fairly dreadful though by now the special effects were much…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
I loved the Red Dwarf TV series (at least, the early ones), and this book captures the spirit of the show, no question. It expands the world and characters, and provides a giggle a chapter, if not per page. I found I couldn’t help but ‘hear’ the dialogue being spoken in the voices of the TV characters.
The TV series is perhaps losing its luster (it has been going for a looong time), but the books still rock it for me.
Here are the first two novels of the cult series Red Dwarf in one volume - Red Dwarf and Better Than Life - plus the first draft of the original TV pilot script. It all when Dave Lister is celebrating his twenty-fourth birthday on a Monopoly board pub crawl round London, and somehow ends up three million years from Earth, marooned in the wrong dimension of the wrong reality, and down to his last two cigarettes. Together with a dead man, a senile computer, a deranged sanitation mechanoid with an overactive guilt chip and the best-dressed entity in all six…
In this comic fantasy, daydreamer Imperceptibility Happenstance enjoys a good adventure, but only within her imagination. Perhaps things will change when she acquires a magic lamp… And they do: soon after being press-ganged into the navy, she finds herself cast adrift after a mutiny, heading for the underworld and the terrifying Kharon. All she wants is to get home, but her journey continues via the mysterious tunnels of the Humble Monks, sacrifice to a quantum dragon, and an explosive confrontation with a ruthless businessman; and it gets worse from there. Finally, home is within reach, but she realizes she has grown beyond her old mundane life—can she fulfil her dreams, armed with nothing more than a goose feather?
Selected by Deesha Philyaw as winner of the AWP Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, Lake Song is set in the fictional town of Kinder Falls in New York’s Finger Lakes region. This novel in stories spans decades to plumb the complexities, violence, and compassion of small-town life as the…
A grumpy-sunshine, slow-burn, sweet-and-steamy romance set in wild and beautiful small-town Colorado. Lane Gravers is a wanderer, adventurer, yoga instructor, and social butterfly when she meets reserved, quiet, pensive Logan Hickory, a loner inventor with a painful past.
Dive into this small-town, steamy romance between two opposites who find love…
