I’ve always been fascinated by the strangeness of human character when tested to the limit by overwhelming catastrophe. I’ve always wanted to write a story that brings into stark relief the courage, fear, ambition, tragedy, absurdity, and the ecstatic. In other words, a disaster. And if character is destiny, then an apocalypse maybe the best way to show us who we really are and where we’re going. My debut novel, Delirium focuses on these extremes of character. And after writing it I reached one indelible conclusion: that the human being is the most disturbed creature, but also the most hopeful.
I’ve always preferred those stories of great global catastrophes that remain in a single small location.
In the case of Alas, Babylon the small town of Fort Repose survives the nuclear holocaust because it’s small. Written at the height of the cold war when there were several and very real moments of brinkmanship between the Soviets and Americans.
It’s a great read for another reason: this is a well-informed writer. For instance, here we find that salt is as vital for survival as water? And what good is a doctor if he has no medicine? These are things this little community has to face, but the author is hopeful.
This is one of those books that is a lens into a period in time but is at the same time easily readable and to the point. How Fort Repose deals with nuclear Armageddon is the same story of how all…
“An extraordinary real picture of human beings numbed by catastrophe but still driven by the unconquerable determination of living creatures to keep on being alive.” —The New Yorker
“Alas, Babylon.” Those fateful words heralded the end. When the unthinkable nightmare of nuclear holocaust ravaged the United States, it was instant death for tens of millions of people; for survivors, it was a nightmare of hunger, sickness, and brutality. Overnight, a thousand years of civilization were stripped away.
But for one small Florida town, miraculously spared against all the odds, the struggle was only just beginning, as the isolated survivors—men and…
I have been interested in time travel since childhood, although I personally do not think human beings will ever move forward or backward in time. But the notion and its paradoxes make a great subject for the imagination, which is the meat of speculative fiction. In writing about time travel, I had to deal with the “grandfather paradox,” where something the character does in the past changes his own future—the core of Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Sound of Thunder.” My excuse, used in The Children of Possibility, is that great upheavals like war and civilizational collapse erase small changes like stepping on a butterfly. But, you know, it’s all speculative.
Heinlein is a master of science fiction. This book is only incidentally—but also irrevocably—about time travel. The life of Lazarus Long, who appears in other works by Heinlein, inspired me to write about longevity in my two-volume novel. Heinlein’s story of adorable Dora will bring tears to your eyes, and it shows how immortality can be a curse if you dare to love someone. Heinlein shares a lot of common sense, too, in the incorporated Notebooks of Lazarus Long.
The capstone and crowning achievement of the Future History series, from the New York Times bestselling Grand Master of Science Fiction...
Time Enough for Love follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor.
I’ve always been a big fan of ghost stories where, for some reason, the ghosts reveal that they are stuck here. Something happened to them during their earthly life so that, instead of going to wherever you’re supposed to go when you die, this means they can’t. Not until they have ‘undone’ or put right something they did or had done to them. In these stories, we meet spirits who, usually with the help of some human, are doing exactly that. I find such stories deeply satisfying. Which is probably why I try and write them as well…
It’s not quite clear at first whether the two children who appear one day out of the mist asking for help are ghosts, or whether the word is better used to describe the children who go back in time, as requested, to help them. Either way, this is a cracking story with a very satisfactory solution for all of them. And the amazing Mr. Blunden? For me, he is the best and the most moving part of the story. An old gentleman who made a terrible mistake in the past, but who has now been given a chance to put it right, and earn forgiveness and peace.
A CHRISTMAS SKY ORIGINAL FILM, STARRING MARK GATISS, SIMON CALLOW AND TAMSIN GREIG
AN ENTHRALLING GHOST STORY WITH A TIME-TRAVELLING TWIST
'When you come to the house, you will hear strange tales. They will tell you in the village that it is haunted, but you must not be afraid. When the time comes ... you will know what to do.'
Mr Blunden's words echoed through Lucy's ears as she explored the house. It was such an old house that it seemed to Lucy as if all the past was gathered up inside it as if in a great box; as…
I studied economics and found it incredibly boring, exclusive, and confusing at the same time. Eventually, I discovered feminist economics and realized that economics is loaded with crazy mathematical jargon aiming to hide exploitation processes such as unpaid work in the household, precarious production especially in former colonies of the “Global South”, as well as environmental destruction. I found that utopian and sci-fi novels are not only fun to read but may also carry antidotes to reshape traditional economic thinking. Check out my TEDx talk where I can tell you more about all this.
This is an amazing book to really get sucked into.
Written in 1976, it is a fantasy to go hide in from today’s dystopia of post-COVID and early climate change. You can join 1960s Consuela Ramos in her escape from a forced hospitalization in a mental institution to a utopian world that she visits with Luciente, a time-traveler.
That future is full of amazing people who do not celebrate hierarchies of race and gender but live in anarchist poly-amorous villages where hard labor is performed by machines and babies are produced in breeders with biological components of three parents.
The book is rich in blueprints for liberated education, conflict resolution, socio-economic innovation, and relationships. The beautiful world is threatened by a wicked parallel future world that Consuela must help to prevent.
'One of those rare novels that leave us different people at the end than we were at the beginning.' GLORIA STEINEM
'She is a serious writer who deserves the sort of considered attention which, too often, she does not get...' MARGARET ATWOOD _______________________________________
Often compared to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Naomi Alderman's The Power - Woman on the Edge of Time has been hailed as a classic of speculative science fiction. Disturbing and forward thinking, Marge Piercy's remarkable novel will speak to a new generation of readers.
Connie Ramos has been unjustly incarcerated in a mental institution with…
I’m an accidental historian, one that stumbled over a love of history in spite of myself. In school, history was all just dates and places—not the kind of thing to inspire a kid that loved stories about people, not dusty old battles. But then a funny thing happened on the way to an English degree. A few history electives suddenly seemed way more appealing than another round of Austen, and led me to a BA History with Distinction. The first half of the twentieth century is a favorite period, but I say bring on the Renaissance and Viking ships too!
In The Inheritors, William Golding brings to life a creature from the distant past: Lok, a hairy, barely verbal hominid whose small band is the last of their kind. New words and thoughts confuse him, flashes of logic slip out of his grasp, and he discovers the existence of mysterious Others; invaders with the formidable technology of bow and arrow. But The Inheritorsis much morethan an exciting adventure. The story stays with me because Lok is a mirror of us—of the human urge to try, to fail, to push on despite the odds. We have no idea what the next thousand years will hold. Neither did Lok. But just like him, we can’t help moving forward.
Hunt, trek, and feast among Neanderthals in this stunning novel by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, introduced by Ben Okri.
This was a different voice; not the voice of the people. It was the voice of other.
When spring comes, the people leave their winter cave, foraging for honey, grubs, and the hot richness of a deer's brain. They awaken the fire to heat their naked bodies, lay down their thorn bushes, and share pictures in their minds. But strange things are happening: inexplicable scents and sounds. Imaginable beasts are half-glimpsed in the forest;…
I’ve been a fan of dinosaurs and other mega-monsters ever since I watched the original Godzilla movie as a kid. It scared me half out of my wits! There’s something about big, scaly, dangerous beasts that makes for a great adventure story. Add fascinating human characters and you’ve got my full attention. I started writing my Dinosaur Wars books precisely to fill the void where there are far too few stories of this type in current literature. Challenges between human heroes and giant beasts have been part of literature from the start, featuring dragons, titans, and ocean leviathans. I see my writings as efforts to continue that tradition.
In addition to his Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dinosaur adventure story delivers world-class excitement and deeply satisfying reading. Doyle’s story of explorers who find living dinosaurs in the Amazonian rainforest can hardly be matched for its originality.
I read it long ago and found it so memorable it was worth another read more recently. And I’m glad I did. The dinosaurs are portrayed dramatically, to say the least, but I was also impressed by rereading that the characters were quite ingenious. Professor Challenger, the expedition leader, is a gruff, highly irascible fellow, given to brawling as much as to debate. Ned Malone, newspaper reporter, and central “I “ character is a riveting taleteller and keen observer of dinosaurian and human nature.
Originally published serially in 1912, “The Lost World” is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic tale of discovery and adventure. The story begins with the narrator, the curious and intrepid reporter Edward Malone, meeting Professor Challenger, a strange and brilliant paleontologist who insists that he has found dinosaurs still alive deep in the Amazon. Malone agrees to accompany Challenger, as well as Challenger’s unconvinced colleague Professor Summerlee, and the adventurer Lord John Roxton, into the wilds of South America and the Amazon in search of Challenger’s fantastical beasts. There, cut off from the rest of civilization and high atop an isolated…
A classic collection of stories - all told on the skin of a man - from the author of Fahrenheit 451.
If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime, no bigger than your hand, infinitely detailed, with his sulphurous colour and exquisite human anatomy, perhaps he might have used this man's body for his art...
Yet the Illustrated Man has tried to burn the illustrations off. He's tried sandpaper, acid, and a knife. Because, as the sun sets, the pictures glow like charcoals, like scattered gems. They quiver and come to life. Tiny pink hands gesture, tiny mouths flicker…
I love a book with new ideas that challenge, novel glimpses into the near future, and a taste of ethical dilemmas. And a new author to discover. This is only Lynn Watson’s second novel – a beautifully scripted, gentle masterpiece of intrigue that has it all. It is set in an all too realistic 2048, where medical science has advanced, diseases are a thing of the past (at least for some), and radical life extension is becoming possible. As ever, it is about power and wealth, corporate intrigue and self-interest versus the good of society. The cybirds are an inspired vision of runaway AI. The characters at Wellowfern are well developed and comfortable, almost our friends, but we also know there is a world outside, a world of great suffering. Where do our morals lie?
In 2048, medical science has overcome all the diseases and limiting conditions of old age. In the exclusive community of Wellowfern, radical life extension has turned from distant dream to near reality and competing forces are lining up to impose their widely different visions of the future. Isabel is a loyal and influential resident who knows about corporate intrigue and the power of self-interest. She now has to figure out who is pulling the strings, which side she is on and how best to defend her safe haven and her eccentric, misfit friends, as the high-level infighting threatens to overwhelm…
The concept of whether a woman can truly be the subject of her own life has always fascinated me. It was an invisible struggle I didn’t know I had. Until I set out to finish the 54 unmet dreams of my late father, whose life had been cut short in a car crash. It wasn’t until I looked at the world through main character lenses, the kind that just seem to come more naturally to men, that I was able to see myself truly. This is just one lesson from my book. If you’ve ever felt different, remember: you’re not. You just haven’t seen yourself as the main character yet. These books will guide you.
I read this during a confusing time—when I was seeking treatment for depression, from age 16 through 24.
Here was the third-most adapted book in history, and yet with each adaptation, the story grew further from the author’s true voice, which was that of an 18-year-old girl. How odd that this could happen, given that Frankenstein revolves around the creature finding his identity.
He only wants to do good, but when he learns how to read, he also learns how to label himself—as separate from God, and separate from man. He believes he must be bad because he’s different. The whole town agrees.
When I read this, I also felt different. This feeling didn’t go away until I finished my dad’s bucket list and saw the beauty and wonder he’d seen in me. I was different. But this was a good thing. I pray Mary Shelley found the same peace,…
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times
Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third…
I grew up in the 1970s, still in contention for America’s most paranoid decade (thanks, Watergate). Practically everything I watched, listened to or read (right down to my beloved superhero comics) was asking, what’s hiding behind the world around you? I don’t think of myself as a paranoid guy – I don’t, for instance, believe in a real life Deep State – but these are the sorts of stories that resonate for me. Taken less literally, they do ask worthwhile and still disturbingly relevant questions: what is beneath the world you know and see every day? What is right in front of you, both good and bad, that you aren’t seeing?
Suburbanite Ragle Gumm is overcome with a sense of urgency to play a bizarre newspaper game every day. He’s so good at it, he makes a living from its cash prizes. But lately, his world seems to be fraying around him. Things he sees and knows are suddenly...not. And if you can’t trust the very ground you’re standing on, what’s left? This takes the whole “maybe my world isn’t what I think it is” idea about as far as it can go, and it was just about the first story to ever do that. The best, most satisfying book I ever read about a banal, mundane world that turns out to be anything but.
Ragle Gumm is an ordinary man leading an ordinary life, except that he makes his living by entering a newspaper contest every day - and winning, every day.
But he gradually begins to suspect that his life - indeed his whole world - is an illusion, constructed around him for the express purpose of keeping him docile and happy. But if that is the case, what is his real world like, and what is he actually doing every day when he thinks he is guessing 'Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?'
