Here are 100 books that Tales of Pirx the Pilot fans have personally recommended if you like
Tales of Pirx the Pilot.
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My dad and Uncle (who was not my uncle!) were both WWII veterans; I was fortunate to receive an artist’s grant to gather stories from WWII veterans in Minnesota and told several at concerts honoring the anniversary of D-Day. My counseling background unexpectedly came into play as their stories left me understanding their heroism, sacrifice, shell shock, and grief. These vets grew up never leaving a circle about a hundred miles across and were suddenly thrown into a foreign country and war. I was compelled to research and write about the 1930’s, life on the farm, young romance, and trying to heal PTSD after the war.
Every now and then, I discover a book that has imagined a world and/or a character that takes me by surprise, and I can’t stop reading about them. Again, it’s all about character! In this book, I met a human cyborg enslaved by a computer program and built as a security unit rented out to corporate groups exploring planets for profit.
This sentient cyborg frees itself from enslavement, hilariously staves off the boredom of security work by watching its favorite media series, and as it watches characters in these shows, begins to learn about human behavior. I enjoyed the awkward, touching way it developed friendships and emotional connections. The character, which calls itself Murderbot, presents as if it’s on the spectrum.
Its first-person narration is snarky, occasionally hilarious, and endearing as it slowly learns what it means to have friendships. And oh, it finds all this wildly inconvenient, hates eye…
All Systems Red by Martha Wells begins The Murderbot Diaries, a new science fiction action and adventure series that tackles questions of the ethics of sentient robotics. It appeals to fans of Westworld, Ex Machina, Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series, or lain M. Banks' Culture novels. The main character is a deadly security droid that has bucked its restrictive programming and is balanced between contemplative self discovery and an idle instinct to kill all humans. In a corporate dominated s pa cef a ring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by…
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…
I am an astrophysicist with a passion for narratives that stare unflinchingly at the inherent hostility of outer space. Professionally, I study graduate astrophysics and research the ways high-energy celestial objects impact cosmic evolution. Creatively, I use my training to write science fiction horror exploring the spookiest things the universe has to offer. I particularly love stories that throw wrenches in the best-laid plans of star-faring protagonists, and will never get tired of a good old space mission gone terribly and tragically awry.
Binti combines some of my favorite flavors of science fiction into one bittersweet treat: brutal interspecies politics, cultural misunderstandings, and the struggle for coexistence in a galactic community.
The tragic encounter between students on their way to attend a prestigious university on another world and a violent alien species starts this story off with heart-pounding, heart-rending stakes. It goes on to interrogate war and peace between species and the act of true communication and tolerance.
Those who are interested in stories with a raw but hopeful outlook on what it would mean for multiple civilizations in the Milky Way to find harmony will enjoy this read.
Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.
Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the…
I was a teacher and a professor who showed generations of students how to find x, how to prove figure 1 was similar to figure 2, how to make a machine search through millions of bits of data for an answer. An inspiration for a story struck me one day early in retirement as I was daydreaming. I began to write and have never stopped. It turns out that “if-then” is not so different from “what if.” The first is more like destiny, the second like free will. One is science, the other is fiction. “What if” has led me into strange lands.
What is it? A first contact story. Sort of. They were aliens? Yeah, Russians. What are they like? Don’t know. They’re gone now. Did you find anything good? Lots and lots. What’s that? The God hypothesis. It allows you to have an unparalleled understanding of absolutely everything while knowing absolutely nothing. Can you show me something else? No. You gotta go yourself. Can I really go into the Zone? If you’re old enough. And brave enough. Is it dangerous? People don’t come back. Is it legal? No, but you can sneak in.
Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’ve loved all kinds of science fiction since I was a child, and always enjoy discovering new worlds, and the frisson of danger that inevitably accompanies the discovery. After a successful career in science and engineering, spanning more than three decades, I left the corporate world to make stringed instruments and to write fiction and non-fiction. My two novels are An Accident of Birth, and the space opera, Galactic Alliance: Betrayal, and I’ve written a non-fiction reference book Brass and Glass: Optical Instruments and Their Makers. I live in Kent, England with my wife, Margo, and our cat.
Ian Banks is as well known for his science fiction as for his mainstream and literary fiction. This is the first book in his Cultureseries, in which the Culture is a galaxy-wide advanced technological society with complex attitudes to how it should interact with other civilizations. The Culture is at war with the Idrians. Consider Phlebas is the story of a mercenary lone operative on a quest to retrieve a stranded Culture AI mind from an abandoned world to further the Idrian cause. The problem is that he is not the only one going there to find it, and nobody is playing nicely – not even the stranded AI mind. The wide-ranging inventiveness, subtle humour, and gritty realism of this story makes for highly compelling reading.
"Dazzlingly original." -- Daily Mail"Gripping, touching and funny." -- TLSThe war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza,…
I’ve been a science fiction writer since I was old enough to read, and I’ve spent probably way too much of my life reading and writing and researching and thinking about aliens. I’ve worked in the aerospace industry, launching rockets to the moon and Mars and Saturn, and five of the books I’ve published have touched on alien life in one way or another. I’ve worked as a contributing editor for WIRED magazine and the science and technology correspondent for the SyFy channel, and I hold patents in seven countries, including 31 issued U.S. patents.
Of all of Clarke’s works, this one had, for me, the grandest sense of adventure and mystery. We never do find out who the aliens are or what their goals might be, but we get to join them for part of their journey.
There are puzzles to solve, wonders to behold, and dangers bravely faced. I first read the book when I was nine years old, and it communicated to me just as clearly then as it does today.
In the year 2130, a mysterious and apparently untenanted alien spaceship, Rama, enters our solar system. The first product of an alien civilisation to be encountered by man, it reveals a world of technological marvels and an unparalleled artificial ecology.
I was born where the sun rose in the prairies and set behind the Rockies. Now I live on the West Coast of Canada. I am a picture bookmaker, and from my recommendations, you might think that I also have a thing for thieves: cupcake thieves, underwear thieves, hat thieves, chicken thieves, pie thieves. But I’m really here for the element of surprise and well-earned laughs in children’s picture books. They say comedy is hard, but comedy in picture books is even harder. These five picks are a great place to start if you like smartly silly picture books with a bit of off-kilter humor and a sense of irony. Bonus points for puns.
A hapless astronaut is on a mission to find Life on Mars and explores a seemingly barren landscape. The astronaut is unaware of what is going on -- if only he would turn around! This becomes a source of great entertainment and an early lesson on irony. I enjoyed this book not only for the illustrations, which are well suited to this story, but more importantly for the way that the words do not match what is going on in the illustrations.
A daring young astronaut arrives on Mars, certain he will find life there. He has even brought a gift of chocolate cupcakes. But soon he realises he's made a mistake as the planet seems to be totally barren except for one little flower. However, as only the audience can see, if only he would turn around he would meet the friendly Martian who is always lurking shyly one step behind! As he settles in for the journey home, he cracks open his cupcakes-only to discover that someone has eaten them all! Fans of Oliver Jeffers and Jon Klassen will love…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
As a child, I was inspired by the feats of the first astronauts and cosmonauts, culminating with the Apollo expeditions to the Moon. As I grew up, I found that I was more of a historian than an engineer or a physicist. So, I began writing the stories of some of the people who were involved in the 1960s space race. I have since written about topics ranging from the strategic missiles that kicked off the space race to the Hubble Space Telescope, and today, I am the editor of Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly.
I have read many books about the Apollo astronauts and their journeys to the Moon, but this very readable book is the only one that took me along on the greatest human adventure in space.
Chaikin also left me knowing each one of these astronauts better than I did when I started.
This is the definitive account of the heroic Apollo programme.
When astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their 'giant leap for mankind' across a ghostly lunar landscape, they were watched by some 600 million people on Earth 240,000 miles away.
Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with the astronauts and mission personnel, this is the story of the twentieth century's greatest human achievement, minute-by-minute, through the eyes of those who were there.
From the tragedy of the fire in Apollo 1 during a simulated launch, Apollo 8's bold pioneering flight around the…
I’m a science fiction and fantasy children’s book author, who loves everything about space and science fiction. I’ve been fascinated by space ever since I was little; mesmerized by clips of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon. As a teenager, War of the Worlds by H.G Wells was my favorite book! My daughter’s complete lack of interest in space inspired me to write a space adventure series. How could I make space entertaining? When it comes to children, I’m a big fan of mixing space facts with a dollop of space fiction, so I hope you will enjoy the collection of books on this list!
If there’s any book that deserves the title inspirational, it’s surely this children’s book narrated by astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Here he recounts his life story, beginning with his childhood and how he acquired the name Buzz⎯such a cute story! This is followed by the significant events that led him to become an astronaut, then eventually to his epic moon landing. Buzz believed in education, discipline and he felt strongly that any goal was possible. He certainly lived up to those ideals!On July 20, 1969, after blasting off in the Apollo 11, he and Neil Armstrong became the first people ever to set foot on the moon. An incredible achievement! Children will love Wendell Minor’s gorgeous paintings and enjoy reading about the personal story of a great American hero.
I walked on the moon. This is my journey. But it didn't begin when I stepped on board Apollo 11 on July 1, 1969. It began the day I was born. Becoming an astronaut took more than education, discipline, and physical strength. It took years of determination and believing that any goal is possible-from riding a bike alone across the George Washington Bridge at age ten to making a footprint on the Moon. I always knew the Moon was within my reach-and that I was ready to be on the team that would achieve the first landing. But it was…
When I was 14, I wrote in my diary that I wanted to be an astronaut. It was 1968, and all astronauts were men. My role models came from fiction. It wasn’t until after I got my degree in physics and went to work for NASA that I finally got to know other women scientists and engineers, including the first women flight controllers and American women astronauts. After leaving NASA, I became a space journalist, author, editor, and book reviewer, often focusing on women’s contributions to space. I’m currently the volunteer historian for Mission Control and helping to capture more stories of women in space.
As one of the 8,000 people who applied (and wasn’t selected) as an astronaut in 1978, I wondered what made the six women chosen, including Dr. Seddon, stand out.
How about the stamina and skill to handle 24-hour shifts saving gunshot victims in the emergency room? How about pushing her body to the limit to hold her breath and swim two lengths underwater? And then there is the sheer determination that allowed her to endure almost drowning when the spacesuit she had to wear was sized for a man.
She not only was one of the first women astronauts, but she also married an astronaut and raised a happy family during the high-pressure Shuttle era. In my opinion, Rhea Seddon’s story should be required reading for all Americans!
In a small town in Tennessee, the young girl stood with her father and gazed at the Russian Sputnik in the night sky. She knew that she was witnessing the beginning of a new era for the human race. Would she play a part? Rhea Seddon was ten years old.
As years went by, humans ventured off the planet and walked on the moon. The astronauts were men but she felt that would change. At Berkeley in the tumultuous late 1960s, in medical school and a surgery residency she learned that the world no longer belonged solely to males. When…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
My husband/co-author and I are sci-fi nerds and started getting excited about space settlements after writing two space-related chapters in our first book, Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. We spent 4 years doing research for A City on Mars and ended up with around 35 shelves of space-related books in our bookcases. About 3 of those shelves are books related to life in space, many of which are astronaut memoirs. Here are some of our favorites, picked so they span from the Apollo to the International Space Station eras!
This book is hilarious and raunchy and is an incredible story about how social progress is made.
Mike Mullane was at NASA when the first astronaut class that included women was recruited. He was a pretty massive sexist when the women initially joined, and he details how his thoughts on working with women astronauts changed as he found the women astronauts to be eminently capable.
By the end of the book, it’s clear that Mullane could still stand to make a little more progress on the sexism front, but he has come a long way. Social progress is often achingly slow, but this is a fun story about how it sometimes slowly inches forward.
Selected as a Mission Specialist in 1978 in the first group of shuttle astronauts, Mike Mullane completed three missions and logged 356 hours aboard the Discovery and Atlantis shuttles. It was a dream come true. As a boy, Mullane could only read about space travel in science fiction, but the launch of Sputnik changed all that. Space flight became a possible dream and Mike Mullane set out to make it come true. In this absorbing memoir, Mullane gives the first-ever look into the often hilarious, sometime volatile dynamics of space shuttle astronauts - a class that included Vietnam War veterans,…
