With the holidays near, it's no surprise I'll recommend books - as the gifts that keep on giving! I've previously posted my own list of what I consider the greatest science fiction & fantasy novels. Also a list of my personal favorite science fiction and fantasy tales for young adults – with lots of exploration and sense-o-wonder. Many are classics I grew up with .... along with some marvelous recent additions. But for today...
Meanwhile, James Cameron has released the companion volume to his six-part television series – James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction. This volume focuses on the talented directors and filmmakers who have brought SF with much success – and impact - to the big screen, including in-depth interviews and discussions with George Lucas, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro – and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
This lovely
hardcover - The Astounding Illustrated History of Science Fiction – by Dave
Golder and Jess Nevins provides a thoroughly illustrated and well researched, but entertaining dive
into the roots of science fiction, from Frankenstein to Lovecraft, Bradbury,
Clarke and beyond, with timelines and posters that illuminate the branching
evolution of speculative fiction through the pulp magazines to novels, cinema and
gaming – and its pervasive influence on science and technology. Its companion volume explores the Illustrated History of Fantasy and Horror, from myths and fairy tales to cinema.
Long before science fiction, our ancient ancestors dreamed of artificial life forms - moving statues or even mechanical beings that spoke, walked and served. In the recently released Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines and Ancient dreams of Technology, Adrienne Mayor explores references to artificial life in tales from ancient Greek, Roman, Indian and Chinese mythology - ranging from the classic tale of Pygmalion to the bronze giant figure of Talos - built by Hephaestus, Greek god of invention.
Diverse mythic tales of automata can be found in classical stories of Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, Jason and the Argonauts. Read an excerpt from Gods and Robots here.
Celebrating a wave of innovative forward-looking fiction coming from Asia, a new anthology The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First Century Chinese Science Fiction offers imaginative stories from Chen Quifan, Han Song, as well as Hugo winner Liu Cixin, exploring the realms of robotics, computers, AI and the ever-changing fortunes of humanity.
Long before science fiction, our ancient ancestors dreamed of artificial life forms - moving statues or even mechanical beings that spoke, walked and served. In the recently released Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines and Ancient dreams of Technology, Adrienne Mayor explores references to artificial life in tales from ancient Greek, Roman, Indian and Chinese mythology - ranging from the classic tale of Pygmalion to the bronze giant figure of Talos - built by Hephaestus, Greek god of invention. Diverse mythic tales of automata can be found in classical stories of Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, Jason and the Argonauts. Read an excerpt from Gods and Robots here.
== And fictional suggestions ==
Celebrating a wave of innovative forward-looking fiction coming from Asia, a new anthology The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First Century Chinese Science Fiction offers imaginative stories from Chen Quifan, Han Song, as well as Hugo winner Liu Cixin, exploring the realms of robotics, computers, AI and the ever-changing fortunes of humanity.And among the most welcome trends is the recent rise of Afro-Futurism! Brilliantly well-timed with our joy in Wakanda, here's a web survey of nine recent or classic innovations and explorations that will stretch you and make you proud to be human. (I so miss Octavia.) Specially noted below is the haunting imagery in Rivers Solomon's A Haunting of Ghosts.
Among my own recent editions, try Chasing Shadows: Visions of Our Coming Transparent World, with selections that explore the more positive implications of a future of openness. Tales by Bruce Sterling, Cat Rambo, Jack McDevitt, Gregory Benford, Robert Silverberg, Scott Sigler, Robert J. Sawyer - and so many more!
And of course my best - and most recent - short story collection
Insistence of Vision, which includes The Logs, The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss (in best-of collections), Stones of Significance, Transition Generation, and more.
There are vivid and eerie tales by authors including Chris Beckett, Kit Reed, Will McIntosh, Louis Bayard, Tara Laskowski and others - which explore the margins of the dark and sinister, the scary and the mysterious. The ebook is available on Kindle and Nook and other sellers.
And try these recent science fiction and fantasy - marvels by rising stars in the field:
Medusa Uploaded, by Emily Devenport offers a beautifully written and thrilling tale of
revenge and insurgency on an inter-generation starship, with vivid multi-layered
world-building.
Assisted by a secretive AI that haunts the dark, winding tunnels of the ship, Oichi (saved from imminent death by airlock) is a chilling character who will stop at nothing to uncover the dark secrets and rectify the wrongs that have been done to her family and fellow crewmembers:
"Behaviorists say that killers aren't born in a vacuum. But I was born on a generation ship. Our journey is between the stars, and as massive as those gravity wells be, the space in between them is vacuum. And I'm not the only killer on this ship."
Nuomenon, a debut novel by Marina J. Lostetter also portrays a deep space starship, this one crewed with clones who are genetically selected and replicated repeatedly across the centuries of interstellar voyage - the older clones training their younger replacements over the generations. Their destination: an anomalous star which appears to show distinct signs of extraterrestrial life, presenting mysteries that the crew may be unable to solve. Meanwhile, the mission is threatened as the worst of human nature takes root, revealing enduring divisions and deep animosity among the crew, as they find themselves more and more alienated from their origins. "We were aliens now. Nomads in uncharted territory."
Assisted by a secretive AI that haunts the dark, winding tunnels of the ship, Oichi (saved from imminent death by airlock) is a chilling character who will stop at nothing to uncover the dark secrets and rectify the wrongs that have been done to her family and fellow crewmembers:
"Behaviorists say that killers aren't born in a vacuum. But I was born on a generation ship. Our journey is between the stars, and as massive as those gravity wells be, the space in between them is vacuum. And I'm not the only killer on this ship."
Nuomenon, a debut novel by Marina J. Lostetter also portrays a deep space starship, this one crewed with clones who are genetically selected and replicated repeatedly across the centuries of interstellar voyage - the older clones training their younger replacements over the generations. Their destination: an anomalous star which appears to show distinct signs of extraterrestrial life, presenting mysteries that the crew may be unable to solve. Meanwhile, the mission is threatened as the worst of human nature takes root, revealing enduring divisions and deep animosity among the crew, as they find themselves more and more alienated from their origins. "We were aliens now. Nomads in uncharted territory."
"Stories are where we find ourselves, where we find the others who are like us. Gather enough stories and soon you're not alone; you are an army." Blackfish City, by Sam J. Miller depicts a dystopian future impacted by severe climate
change and severely hierarchical social levels. Qanaaq, an engineered
floating city in the Arctic Circle, is run by machine intelligence; a city bursting with refugees, rival gangs and political corruption, with threats
of a spreading infection. This fragile alliance is disrupted with the arrival of a fierce but mysterious woman who is nanobonded, mentally linked with an orca (and accompanied by a polar bear) who will stop at nothing to achieve justice for past
wrongs.
Starting to see a common thread? Womblike, isolated, 'protective' environments like starships that instead cloy and cramp and oppress?
Certainly that's the general theme of An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon which uses the classic scifi domain of a generation starship to replicate and amplify the horrors of a racial/plantation slave society. Every morality-tale of The Handmaid's Tale and even more hauntingly written. In this sub-genre, plausibility (e.g. high-tech slaves have options never available to Nat Turner) is not the issue. The aim is to freeze and shatter the soul and help you rebuild it. Solomon does it well.
I've been enjoying Mur Lafferty's murder mystery Six Wakes - also set on a starship where the six crewmembers awake missing 25 years of memories. A very different take than the show Dark Matter and more deeply psychological. And a Hugo and Nebula Award nominee.
Of course the notion of a generation ship was thoroughly and scientifically... if a bit tendentiously... explored by Kim Stanley Robinson's fairly recent novel Aurora. That one won't cheer you either, though the thought experiment is fascinating.
== Want something a bit more enlivening? ==
Change Agent, a page-turning near future thriller by Daniel Suarez (following up his bestselling novels Daemon and Freedom) explores how we will deal with the complex issues arising from surveillance, ubiquitous CRISPR gene editing, customized 3D drug printers and designer babies. Agent Kenneth Durand is tasked with hunting down black market labs performing illegal genetic modifications, when he is attacked and injected with a 'change agent' - upon awaking from a coma, he is transformed into a doppelgänger of the very crime lord he was pursuing.
The highly productive and vivid Suarez will be at the plate again soon with a terrific tome on asteroid mining! Keep your eyes open for Delta-V, set for release in April.
And yes, the truest heart of SF goes one step beyond chindings or dire warnings. It is about stirring the reader to imagine solutions.
Starting to see a common thread? Womblike, isolated, 'protective' environments like starships that instead cloy and cramp and oppress?
Certainly that's the general theme of An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon which uses the classic scifi domain of a generation starship to replicate and amplify the horrors of a racial/plantation slave society. Every morality-tale of The Handmaid's Tale and even more hauntingly written. In this sub-genre, plausibility (e.g. high-tech slaves have options never available to Nat Turner) is not the issue. The aim is to freeze and shatter the soul and help you rebuild it. Solomon does it well.
I've been enjoying Mur Lafferty's murder mystery Six Wakes - also set on a starship where the six crewmembers awake missing 25 years of memories. A very different take than the show Dark Matter and more deeply psychological. And a Hugo and Nebula Award nominee.
Of course the notion of a generation ship was thoroughly and scientifically... if a bit tendentiously... explored by Kim Stanley Robinson's fairly recent novel Aurora. That one won't cheer you either, though the thought experiment is fascinating.
== Want something a bit more enlivening? ==
Change Agent, a page-turning near future thriller by Daniel Suarez (following up his bestselling novels Daemon and Freedom) explores how we will deal with the complex issues arising from surveillance, ubiquitous CRISPR gene editing, customized 3D drug printers and designer babies. Agent Kenneth Durand is tasked with hunting down black market labs performing illegal genetic modifications, when he is attacked and injected with a 'change agent' - upon awaking from a coma, he is transformed into a doppelgänger of the very crime lord he was pursuing. The highly productive and vivid Suarez will be at the plate again soon with a terrific tome on asteroid mining! Keep your eyes open for Delta-V, set for release in April.
And yes, the truest heart of SF goes one step beyond chindings or dire warnings. It is about stirring the reader to imagine solutions.
Following
up on his dystopian future scenario of a drowned NYC - New York 2140 - Kim Stanley
Robinson’s latest - Red Moon - offers a near future, thirty year projection,
where humanity has established a colony on the surface of the moon. However, ongoing political and economic struggles between the U.S. and China – as well as rising personal animosity - fuel unrest and ignite a rebellion in the lunar colony, setting the
stage for a thrilling tale of revolution amid the dusty landscape of the moon base.
And no, it's not that dusty plain where our future will be made.
And no, it's not that dusty plain where our future will be made.
More - recent SFF selections, many of them mentioned in earlier postings:
Terra Nullius, by Claire Coleman
Semiosis by
Sue Burke
Summerland, by Hannu Rajaniemi
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
Empire of Silence, by Christopher Ruocchio
The Book of M, by Peng Shepherd
The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Oracle Year by Charles Soule
The Rig, by Roger Levy
One Way, by S. J. Morden
Something for the kids? A SpaceX engineer’s Epic Space Adventure trilogy takes a spacefaring giraffe on a tour across the solar system from Mars to Europa. A delight that leaves kids delighted to know stuff.
And set for release in May of 2019:
Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the sequel to his vivid Children of Time.
The Oracle Year by Charles Soule
The Rig, by Roger Levy
One Way, by S. J. Morden
Something for the kids? A SpaceX engineer’s Epic Space Adventure trilogy takes a spacefaring giraffe on a tour across the solar system from Mars to Europa. A delight that leaves kids delighted to know stuff.
And set for release in May of 2019:
Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the sequel to his vivid Children of Time.
Final note! The comments section below this blog is one of the oldest and best on the web! Under this posting you will find bright folks chiming in with more wonderful suggestions of books you can give, to enliven someone's universe, and maybe derive strength from this implication -- there will be a tomorrow!
