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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.
For me, the worst thing about New York is getting stuck in traffic.
In the New York of 2140, that’s not a problem because rising sea levels have drowned much of Manhattan and motorboats zip through the flooded streets like it’s a high-rise Venice. Future New York is also a city whose residents are coping with the planet’s new reality.
In the midst of climate gloom, it is refreshing to imagine a scenario where New Yorkers can come together through cooperative action to take control of their own future.
As the sea level rose, every street became a canal, every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city.
New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson delivers a bold and brilliant vision of New York in the next century.
'New York may be underwater but it's better than ever' - New Yorker
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…
I love fantasies that dream up totally new worlds! Some people condemn the fantasy genre as formulaic, and sometimes they’re right—but it shouldn’t be so! Fantasies can explore worlds as wide and wild and wonderful as the human imagination itself! Anything’s possible! But I also love a fantasy world that’s as real, coherent, and consistent as our own real world. I think that’s the ultimate challenge for any author: to create it all from the grassroots up. And for any reader, the trip of a lifetime! My personal preference is for worlds a bit on the dark side—just so long as they blow my mind!
It was a toss-up here between this book and The Scar, set in a different part of the same world. One of Miéville’s acknowledged influences is the wonderful Mervyn Peake, and like Peake, he’s never in a hurry to get a story underway.
I’d have probably tossed Perdido Street Station aside after 100-200 pages except for a friend’s fervent recommendation—and I’d have missed out big time if I had! Because the story as it develops is truly grand, truly epic. Like Peake, Miéville has a gift for raising action to a mythical status. I love, love, love a novel that builds up to a long, rolling, thunderous climax!
Winner of the August Derleth award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Perdido Street Station is an imaginative urban fantasy thriller, and the first of China Mieville's novels set in the world of Bas-Lag.
The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the centre of its own bewildering world. Humans and mutants and arcane races throng the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the rivers are sluggish with unnatural effluent, and factories and foundries pound into the night. For more than a thousand years, the parliament and its brutal militia have ruled over a vast array of workers and artists, spies, magicians,…
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.
I get bored when aliens always seem to land on the National Mall in Washington or hover over Los Angeles, so I was delighted to discover that at least one alien ship prefers to land in the lagoon off Lagos, Nigeria.
It’s a city as big or bigger than New York, after all. There is the challenge of dealing with very enigmatic visitors, but the time is the present and readers get a whirlwind tour of one of the world’s megacities. It’s like having the most highspeed guide you can imagine… who happens to be one of the most compelling SF writers today.
Three strangers, each isolated by his or her own problems: Adaora, the marine biologist. Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa. Agu, the troubled soldier. Wandering Bar Beach in Lagos, Nigeria's legendary mega-city, they're more alone than they've ever been before.
But when something like a meteorite plunges into the ocean and a tidal wave overcomes them, these three people will find themselves bound together in ways they could never imagine. Together with Ayodele, a visitor from beyond the stars, they must race through Lagos and against time itself in order to save the city, the world... and themselves.
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…
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.
For much of my academic career, I’ve battled the stereotype that cities are dangerous and deadening places, and certainly not where you want to be caught after plague decimates the population.
Pat Murphy is on my side. She imagines a post-plague San Francisco where the few remaining residents are artists, not bunkered survivalists. Her city “not long after” a plague is a place of creative eccentrics who defend themselves against outsiders with performance art.
Without the excitement of cities, there would be few new ideas, and it is great to find a science fiction book that agrees.
Jax and Danny-Boy, scrambling to get by in a near-future San Francisco ravaged by plague, become fellow artists in their united struggle to stop a tyrannical general from taking over
The first books I ever read were a pair of Star Trek novels before I knew it was a TV show. These books were rich with an ensemble cast of characters and different points of view. Something that has very much shaped my reading habits and writing. I love complex character dynamics and storylines that weave between them. When I became a writer, it was something I strived very much to emulate in my own work. In 2020, author NT Anderson and I set up Tepris Press to publish our own works and help other indie authors realize their works.
I read this book on its release, and it blew me away. I’d always been a SciFi fan, but this was the first time I’d read an ‘alternative history’ book with science fiction leanings. It took a historical event, like WWII, and threw an invasion into it.
I love ‘what if’ scenarios. Most first contact books look at aliens arriving on a united Earth, but what if extraterrestrials arrived at a point where the world was most divided? It was my first time reading a book with multiple character perspectives. What did this invasion look like from an Allied or Axis perspective? How did it differ from the soldier to the civilian? This was a form of writing that became heavily influential to my writing.
War on earth erupted in every corner of the globe. Then the real enemy came. Inhuman invaders who were unstoppable, their technology far beyond our reach, their simple goal to claim Earth for the Empire. Here is a saga that covers all the Earth, and beyond, as mankind--in all its folly and glory--faces the ultimate threat; a turning point in history shows us a past that never was and a future that could yet come to be....
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…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Growing up on a small farm, my brother and I listened to crudely recorded Star Trek episodes. We didn’t have much, but our imaginations gave us infinity. Then life happened. To reclaim childhood wonders after losing myself in a long tech research career at Bell Labs, I transitioned into planetary science. Now I ‘live in space,’ but remotely, through cold machines. What will the future hold for people who actually live on other worlds, touching and smelling alien soil and solving alien challenges in their thoroughly alien lives? When I write, I dream, understand (sometimes), and strive to pass the experience on to new generations of readers and dreamers.
Realistic space settlement stories balance infinite optimism against terrifying risk. The celebrated authors of this science fiction masterpiece explore this cosmic equation without mercy. The veritable utopia of Camelot, mankind’s first interstellar settlement, is about to go very, very, very wrong. After reading this book, I stopped visiting the river behind my house and I lost sleep for weeks. It taught me that when we audaciously plan our real-world space settlements, the details really do matter. Living on another planet requires the consideration of thousands and thousands of important details… and unfortunately, the doomed settlers of Camelot have overlooked one.
The two hundred colonists on board the Geographic have spent a century in cold sleep to arrive here: Avalon, a lush, verdant planet light-years from Earth. They hope to establish a permanent colony, and Avalon seems the perfe
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.
Sterling burst onto the SF scene with a crash and clatter when I was in high school, and this book, while perhaps not his very best work, is certainly his most creative.
I loved the fact that the aliens were investors rather than conquerors and also the fact that human beings were diverging along so many different vectors that we were rapidly becoming alien to one another.
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND CAN TAKE ONE OF TWO DIRECTIONS...
The Mechanists are ancient aristocrats, their lives prosthetically extended with advanced technology. The Shapers are genetically altered revolutionaries, their skills the result of psychotechnic training and artificial conditioning.
Both factions are fighting to control the Schismatrix of humankind.
The Shapers are losing the battle, but Abelard Lindsay--a failed and exiled Shaper diplomat--isn't giving up. Across the galaxy, Lindsay moves from world to world, building empires, struggling for his cause--but more often fighting for his life.
He is a rebel and a rogue, a pirate and a politician, a soldier and…
Of all the intelligent species (both real and fictional), humans fascinate me the most. For me, it’s the creativity and diversity of humans that both divide and unite us. Our eternal struggle to understand one another and overcome our differences fascinates me. I love first-contact science fiction that lets us view the values and behavior of our own species through the lens of true outsiders. I find great value in these parables when they increase self-awareness of our identities and our effect on others.
Honestly, I could recommend any of Peter Cawdron’s first contact science fiction books–and there are many of them! Peter is one of the most prolific indie authors on Amazon, and I appreciate that most of his books are available on Kindle Unlimited.
The Simulacrum appealed to the side of me that craves stories with tension, drama, and a fast pace. At the same time, as a science-minded reader, I want the stories I read to be plausible. The author clearly did his research by producing a first-contact story that fits within the known laws of physics and interstellar travel.
As a bonus, this book includes an afterword with detailed explanations of the ideas, concepts, and hard science that went into the book–something I really appreciate.
Someone is altering old astronomical images. In one small patch of the sky, the digital versions don't match the original prints and photographic plates taken by observatories from around the world over the past century.
Dawn McAllister is a PhD student tasked with figuring out why Przybylski’s Star is attracting unwanted attention from a malicious hacker... Her high-achieving brother, Ryan, is an astronaut on the backup crew for NASA's Ample mission to the asteroid Psyche in orbit between Mars and Jupiter... At the same time, NSA analyst Gabriel Rodrigez stumbles upon a collaboration between Russia and China to interfere with…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
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.…
