I grew up in Spain, the U.S., and Germany, but no matter where we lived I always felt at home with a book in my hands. From a young age, I was drawn to stories with otherworldly content or told in dazzling ways. My curiosity about the workings of nature led me to a degree in Theoretical Physics, and later, I studied the history of science fiction and the craft of storytelling. Science fiction from the 60s and 70s, setting out to push the boundaries of the possible, hit me at exactly the right time in my development as a reader and changed me forever.
Jo Walton is a wonderfully humanistic storyteller with a deep knowledge of history and art who excels at creating alternate societies, and I was fascinated to see her work on a deliberately smaller, more intimate scale in this novel. The text is made up of the diary entries of Morgana, a precocious teenager who is a voracious science fiction and fantasy reader, as is Jason Velez in my novel. Though published in 2011, the book begins at the end of the 70s and perfectly captures the period.
Among Others excels at character development. It feels like a literary mainstream novel about a young personâimagine, say, the best of Judy Blumeâsmartly mixed in with glimpses of the fantastic. It wears its love for 70s science fiction on its sleeve and won the Hugo and Nebula awards.Â
Winner of the 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novel Winner of the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel
Startling, unusual, and yet irresistably readable, Jo Walton's Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and SF, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.
Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she played among the spirits who made their homesâŚ
The two main reasons Iâm including 334 on this list are its structure and themes. This is an intricate mosaic novel built around a series of interconnected tales set in an apartment building, following characters through a four-year period.
It explores ideas like people inhabiting such subjectively different worlds that they canât truly communicate with each other, the visibility or lack thereof of class lines, and the ultimate futility of crime, virtual reality, and cryonics to provide any true solution to lifeâs woes. Irony, art, and death are always a stoneâs throw away.
Dischâs mastery of style and the rhythm of his prose are also on display in this book. Besides his brilliant fiction and poetry, he wrote several volumes with strong opinions about science fiction, reflecting his deep, if critical, engagement with the genre. My novel includes more than one reference to this complex and visionary artist.
Number 334, the city street address of a place in which time pivots forward and backward, becomes the setting for a unique odyssey through human history. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.
Spellbinding Sentences is for writers who want mastery of their craft, writers who want to know the secrets of powerful prose that will give readers pleasure and keep them turning pages. These techniques are available to anyone whoâs willing to practice them consistently.
This novel is one of the few that for me truly delivers on science fictionâs promise to transport the reader into a fully-realized alien culture that has been thoroughly thought through, from its biology to its myth-making. I find it a masterpiece of sensitivity and immersiveness.
I also appreciate that the story unfolds slowly and deliberately. Despite the hefty ideas, the relationship between the Terran protagonist and the Gethenian character of Estraven is one for the ages. I found the sequence detailing their long trek through icy desolation starkly beautiful.
Like Among Others, this book won both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking work of science fiction-winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants' gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...
Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectualâŚ
When I discovered this book as a teenager, it exploded my understanding of what science fiction could do. After revisiting it recently, I found its absurdism, dark humor, and satire to be as fresh, funny, biting, and original as ever.
Voice is probably the most distinctive literary characteristic of Malzbergâs vast short fiction output, of which this collection contains a number of 70s gems. This work showcases some of Malzbergâs obsessive interests, like alienated astronauts, hallucinating patients, assassinations, and the deconstruction of genre tropes. Malzbergâs commentary on science fiction and fandomâthe recursive strand in his workâlinks it directly to my novel, which mentions his work explicitly.
The stories in this collection are short but savage, genius, offensive, and maniacal. Youâve been warned!Â
Introduction (Out from Ganymede) (1974) essay Out from Ganymede (1972) short story November 22, 1963 (1974) short story Still-Life (1972) short story by K.M. O'Donnell The Conquest of Mars (1972) short story Some Notes Toward a Useable Past (1972) short story Linkage (1973) short story The Union Forever (1973) short story The Yearbook (aka Yearbook) (1971) short story Inter Alia (1972) short story Allowances (1972) short story The Helmet (1973) short story Breaking In (1972) short story Pater Familias (1972) short story with Kris Neville Causation (1971) short story A Short Religious Novel (1972) short story Report of the DefenseâŚ
From Pulitzer Finalist Laurie Sheck (A Monster's Notes), a new speculative literary fiction in the spirit of Italo Calvino, Umberto Ecco and Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto that enacts an incisive and moving exploration into what it means to be human in the age of AI and increasing inhumanism.
As a teen in the 90s, I bought a lot of used science fiction paperbacks from the 70s; I loved this tribute to that eraâs key artists and their signature styles. I found this book to be much more than a pretty exercise in nostalgia, however, weaving in smart historical commentary and creating an interesting context for works through subject-related groupings like âLife in the Future(s)â and âCryptozoology and the Paranormal.â
By chronicling the science fiction art of the time during which Jason Velez in Equimedian is active in fandom and builds his collection, this thorough, gorgeous survey doubles as a kind of extended universe artifact for my novel! Itâs a beautiful resource that includes full-page reproductions of stunning covers (including some by authors on this list, like Malzberg), and I find that it inspires me to continue exploring the strange byways of 70s science fiction.
A visual history of the spaceships, alien landscapes, cryptozoology, and imagined industrial machinery of 1970s paperback sci-fi artIn the 1970s, mass-produced, cheaply printed science fiction novels were thriving. The paper was rough, the titles outrageous, and the cover art astounding. Over the course of the decade, a stable of talented painters, comic book artists, and designers produced thousands of the most eye-catching book covers to ever grace bookstore shelves (or spinner racks). Curiously, the pieces commissioned for these covers often had very little to do with the contents of the books they were selling, but by leaning heavily on psychedelicâŚ
In an alternate 1979, the life of long-time science fiction fan and collector Jason Velez reaches a point of crisis. He begins having strange dreams, experiencing memory lapses, and developing a problem with his eyesight. Reality begins to compete with his cherished science fiction worlds for strangeness.
Increasingly stressed out by his low-paying job installing virtual reality machines and suspicious of various social forces swirling around him, he realizes something has to give. Through Jasonâs journey, Equimedian explores the powersâand perilsâof imagination.
If you love science-fiction, fantasy and horror, but don't have time for an entire novel, try these short stories.
They have all (but one) been previously published in various anthologies and online - the 'bonus' story being a new tale set in the 'Unreachable Skies' universe.
Mother of Trees is the first book in an epic fantasy series about a dying goddess, a broken world, and a young elf born without magic in a society ruled by it.
When the ancient being that anchors the worldâs power begins to fail, the consequences ripple outwardâthrough prophecy, politics,âŚ
