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How High We Go in the Dark.
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Alien invasion is just another form of apocalypse. The terrible truth is, our civilization and our world can end in many different ways. I think of myself as being on a life-long quest to read as many variations as possible. No matter how things end, I’m always interested in how authors portray human survival. Even when we inflict harm on ourselves, humanity always seems to be capable of bouncing back. It’s a form of optimism that I just can’t resist. I try to include some of that hope in everything I write.
This is the first collection of short stories I’ve encountered that deals specifically with the aftermath of an Earth-shattering alien invasion, dwelling mostly on what humans do in the ruins after the aliens have packed up and gone home. I hadn’t really thought about that part of an invasion story before. As difficult as rebuilding would be, I was heartened to read about the satisfaction the survivors got from reclaiming what they had lost. Now that I’ve read this, it’s an aspect of the post-apocalyptic genre that I’d like to see more of.
Humanity was unprepared for the Xanite invasion of Earth. After decades of world-wide destruction, global infrastructure crumbled and cities fell into ruin.
As the calamity unfolded, a new generation of heroes confronted an uncertain future. They came from all walks of life – some wearing camouflage, while others were garbed in food service whites. These men and women worked courageously to stem the collapse of human civilization.
It would take new thinking and new beliefs to bring about a better future and deal with the alien menace. These are some of their stories of bravery and determination.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I discovered science fiction at age nine with Rocketship Galileo and Red Planet and have never lost my love for speculative worlds, even after growing up to follow a career teaching and writing about the history of cities and city planning. In recent years, I’ve also begun to write about the field of SF. So it is one-hundred-percent natural for me to combine the two interests and explore science fiction cities. I try to look beyond the geez-whiz technology of some imagined cities to the ideas of human-scale planning and community that might make them fun places to visit or live in if we could somehow manage to get there.
At the center of the story is Spearpoint, the tallest skyscraping megabuilding that you could imagine. It is so enormous that it is divided into segments from bottom to top with different levels of technology (Horsetown and Steamville at the bottom, cybertowns, and then the fantastic Celestial Levels at the top). But wait, there’s more.
Roaming the rest of the planet is the Swarm, hundreds of giant aircraft that function together as the neighborhoods of a “distributed city” much like the fleet in Battlestar Galactica. The very different cities do not play well together, and you get to choose which one you’d rather live in. I like flying, myself.
Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different - and rigidly enforced - level of technology. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television and electric trains ...Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon's world is wrenched apart one more time, for the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint's Celestial Levels…
I’ve always been drawn to the small-town milieu, which might seem strange given I’m a product of suburbia. But as a professional travel writer, I’ve visited scores (maybe hundreds) of country towns, so I know what makes them tick—and they come prepackaged with all the ingredients needed to create an unnerving horror experience. The author simply dreams up a charming little village with humble and lovable residents, then either peels back the bucolic veneer to expose the corruption beneath or introduces a hostile outside force. Voilà! An effective horror novel. I love reading those sorts of stories, and I love writing them.
This book is the grandfather of the modern small-town horror story–few novels before or since have developed such a sense of creeping dread and paranoia.
Aside from being impressed with Finney’s writing, the masterful way he manages mood, and the gradual deterioration of trust (which underpins the most admirable qualities of small-town life), I can trace my lineage as a horror writer back to this novel.
Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction
Mill Valley, Marin County, California.
Dr Miles Bennell has lived there all his life. But one day Miles sees a patient who claims her Uncle isn't himself. He's a different person, despite being identical in every way except one: he is only pretending to have emotions. Miles dismisses this as delusions and refers her to a psychiatrist. Then he finds the pods. Giant seed pods, filled with a strange, grey substance. A strange grey substance that can slowly, slowly, become a perfect replica of a…
"She plunged her blade into his chest, feeling it grind along his ribs..."
Outcast swordfighter, Kyer Halidan, was abandoned in a cornfield at age three. Now, twenty years on, she’s searching for answers: Who left her there? And why?
Kyer doesn’t suffer fools, and when she kills a man in…
I have always been a very imaginative individual and even now I think of my imagination as a place I can escape to. I build worlds and dimensions in my head and visit them often especially when I'm writing my own books, poems, or drafting characters. I'm a very visual individual and pay attention to detail so these imagined worlds can become quite complex and intricate. That's why I have always loved adventure, it's such a privilege to be given access to other worlds and minds through the medium of books. You get a chance to wander around someone else's imagination – what a way to escape, what an adventure in and of itself!
I loved this book for many reasons growing up but I think first and foremost because it was one of the first books I had ever seen with an illustration of a black child on the front cover aimed at children around my age. It was also turned into a TV series and I remember realising at this point in my early teens that there are so many ways that a book can be interpreted. Not just in the minds of their readers but through different creative mediums and this really excited my imagination as I have been acting since I was small and very involved in many different forms of music. This made Whizziwig, a story about possibility at every turn as the subject matter is also about chancing upon an alien life form in your backyard with whom the protagonist becomes friends. Plus, it was the first…
Whizziwig is an alien - a very special alien who makes wishes come true, but only wishes made for someone else! Every wish granted gets his space ship one step nearer to becoming repaired. But every wish granted also causes chaos for Ben and his family.
I’ve been writing for publication since I was a student, crudely the writing has been a way of medicating the fact I’m incurably curious about a range of things and I’ve also suffered from an over-production of ideas my whole life. Wrestling this under control into writing and live speaking where the subjects must fit within a title, word limit, or running time for a talk has been helpful, beyond which the whole writing career has been a trade off between things I’ve chosen to do because they matter a lot to me, and the occasional accepting of an offer I thought too good to refuse.
This is hefty, recent, authoritative, and well written (the author’s CV includes a Pulitzer Prize nomination).
Over a lengthy historic account, he spins the twin stories of the search by scientists for extraterrestrial life and the – usually – amateur search by ufologists for evidence to support their claims that aliens are already visiting us. Garrett Graff explores the contradictions.
He is clear and concise on the strength and weakness each side’s efforts, and insightful in those moments when both sides have briefly collaborated. For a beginner to the subject who wants the shortest route to becoming truly knowledgeable, this is the perfect primer.
From Garrett M. Graff, New York Times bestselling author of Raven Rock, The Only Plane in the Sky, and Pulitzer Prize finalist for history Watergate, comes the first comprehensive and eye-opening exploration of our government's decades-long quest to solve one of humanity's greatest mysteries: Are we alone in the universe?
For as long as we have looked to the skies, the question of whether life on Earth is the only life to exist has been at the core of the human experience, driving scientific debate and discovery, shaping spiritual belief, and prompting existential thought across borders and generations. And yet,…
Clemens P. Suter is an author of adventure novels. His books deal with people that overcome impossible, life-changing situations. These are entertaining adventure books, with dystopian, post-apocalyptic, and Scifi elements.
Vance is one of the best Sci-Fi authors of the twentieth century, although for a long time he wasn’t a household name in the genre. Over 70 years he has written an abundance of books, all of which focused on distant worlds and human societies that have differentiated into freedom-loving, anarchic and weird cultures. “Planet of Adventure” is a set of four books, and deals with Adam Reith, a single astronaut stranded on a planet ruled by four races of extraterrestrials. Humans are little more than slaves on this planet, and Adam needs all his wits to survive… and to find a way off the planet and back home. The book resembles a wild, expressionist painting; the extraterrestrials and their strange cultures and the humans that serve them provide the color and texture to a truly amazing adventure.
Stranded on the distant planet Tschai, young Adam Reith is the sole survivor of a space mission who discovers the world is inhabited--not only by warring alien cultures, but human slaves as well, taken early in Earth's history. Reith must find a way off planet to warn the Earth of Tschai's deadly existence.
Against a backdrop of baroque cities and haunted wastelands, sumptuous palaces and riotous inns, Reith will encounter deadly wastrels and murderous aliens, dastardly villains and conniving scoundrels.
When a mysterious stranger traps teen siblings in a precarious game, each must overcome their embittered past for the other to survive.
This magical realism YA novel explores the power of family and forgiveness. But take heed. The truth can cut like shards of glass, especially for those who’d rather…
I have prosopagnosia, Face Blindness. I can’t recognize my face, let alone anyone else. Not being able to remember people makes for a lonely existence. Ever since I was little, I created worlds inside my head. These were places where I could control what happened when the real world felt lonely and out of control. Discovering books that created worlds I could immerse myself in was life-changing for me. It was like finding my lost tribe. Science fiction became a comfortable home, becoming a science fiction writer was a natural progression. I still get excited when I find a book that sucks me into its world.
This book made me ask myself how far I would go for someone I loved. Would time, distance, and beliefs change me, too?
I like the classic hardcore science fiction setting of this story mixed with a culture based on a mystical belief—science meets faith. Which would I choose if I were living in that world? Or can I have both? The answer is bittersweet because there is no perfect solution.
This reissue of a modern classic of science fiction, the Hugo and Locus Award-winning and Nebula-nominated The Snow Queen, marks the first time the book has been reprinted in fifteen years.
The imperious Winter colonists have ruled the planet Tiamat for 150 years, deriving wealth from the slaughter of the sea mers. But soon the galactic stargate will close, isolating Tiamat, and the 150-year reign of the Summer primitives will begin. Their only chance at surviving the change is if Arienrhod, the ageless, corrupt Snow Queen, can destroy destiny with an act of genocide. Arienrhod is not without competition as…
I am both a writer and a publisher of Superversive fiction. Even before I encountered the term and the official definition of it, my fiction writing has always tended to be Superversive. Which makes sense as I am drawn to Superversive stories as a reader. I want to read and write about heroes and heroines. I want to be drawn into incredible universes and taken along on amazing adventures. I want stories where evil appears to be winning but good eventually finds a way to triumph in the end.
Partially because I credit Jack for inspiring me to give my own fiction writing one more try when I decided to retire from sports writing. Having read this book and being hooked on the entire series, I read about his life’s journey and saw many similarities to mine. As for the book itself, the thought of how future archaeologists would approach their craft on a galactic scale, and how solving ancient mysteries could impact current events so, really captured my imagination.
Jack McDevitt's A TALENT FOR WAR takes Alex Benedict into the heart of an alien galaxy in a thrilling interstellar adventure. 'A real writer has entered our ranks, and his name is Jack McDevitt' Michael Bishop, Nebula-winning author
Everyone knows the legend of Christopher Sim. An interstellar hero with a rare talent for war, he changed mankind's history forever when he forged a rag-tag group of misfits into the weapon that broke the alien Ashiyyur.
But now, in a forgotten file, Alex Benedict has found a startling piece of information. If it is true, then Christopher Sim was a fraud.
When I was growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania, my father and I watched Star Trek reruns together. He was so busy traveling all over the world with his job that our time watching Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock was precious to me. I loved it so much that I built my own Enterprise models and sewed a boxful of tribbles. More importantly, that show led me to reading tons of science fiction - everything from Isaac Asimov to Douglas Adams - and, of course, watching every Star Trek sequel ever made. Live long and prosper.
I loved the humor of this novel: Prot – who claims to be an alien from the planet K-PAX – is charming and funny and absolutely wins over everyone he meets. You can’t not want him to be who he says he is. Is K-Pax a real planet? Is Prot a real alien or does he suffer from a mental illness? If you’ve seen the movie, that’s a start, but the book is better and there are sequels. It’s told from his psychiatrist’s point of view so we get a lot of background on him and how he relates to Prot. In many ways, the book tells us more about what it’s like for us to be humans than for Prot to be an alien.
When a man who claims to be from outer space is brought into the Manhattan Institute, the mental ward seems to be just the place for him. However this patient is unlike anyone psychiatrist Dr. Gene Brewer has had under his care before. Calling himself 'prot', he has no traceable background but says that he is an inhabitant of the planet K-PAX, a perfect world without wars, government or religion, and where every being coexists in harmony. Setting a departure date - August 17th at 3.31am - on which he plans to return home on a beam of light, 'prot'…
In Renaissance Venice, the deadliest weapon isn’t a blade… it’s a secret.
Angelo Mascari is a master swordsman whose greatest battle isn’t fought for crown or country, but for love. When treachery strikes and the Republic turns against him, Angelo is forced into a desperate flight that leads him across…
Looking back, I was surprised at the things I'd done and the distance I'd traveled from my lower-middle-class upbringing in an industrial town. Destined for a life on the hot beds at the steel mill, I worked my way through college, found a job as a cub copywriter, learned documentary filmmaking, won an EMMY Award, moved to Hollywood, and started my 'sho biz' career.
What I love most about this story is the fresh new take on ‘the aliens among us.’ The author picks a ‘backwoods country boy’ to confront and eventually be chased by powerful creatures from outer space. Lucky for the country boy, he is given some superpowers to help him survive.
I liked how the story moved along with snappy enthusiasm (this is the first of six volumes).
The adventure begins when JB Tucker, a simple, backwoods country boy–born and raised in the Carolina swamps–accidentally becomes infected with tiny, autonomous alien tech.
The hundreds of millions of sub-molecular robots coursing through his bloodstream have evolved far beyond their original design and capabilities. The freak pairing of the off-world medical protocols and JB’s unique human body chemistry result in immediate and dramatic consequences.
Now, relentlessly hunted by off-worlders intent on both the retrieval of their stolen technology and his utter destruction, JB finds himself thrust into the center of an intergalactic conflict that he can neither comprehend, nor escape.
…
