10 Great Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Novels
Books It’s a classic theme of science fiction: something really, really bad happens, and mankind is knocked back to the Stone Age. Of course, with the dropping of atomic bombs by the U.S. to end World War II, people came to realize that for the first time Man himself possessed the power to bring about a global cataclysm. And science fiction wasted no time in examining the possible effects (there were speculative stories in print well before the Manhattan Project was even conceived). But nuclear holocaust isn’t the only way Man’s thin veneer of civilization can be stripped by catastrophe.
50 Fictional Days Immortalized in Literature
Today is April 4th, the day on which George Orwell’s 1984 famously begins—in the year 1984, of course (a year that seems rather closer than usual right now). Inspired by this literary holiday of sorts, I went out in search of other notable fictional dates—that is, specific days on which something interesting happens in literature (as opposed to actual events that are reported in novels, as background or otherwise). I’m sure there are an infinite number of these out there, but there are also an infinite number of books in which the author never pins down the events at all, rather letting them float in the reader’s imagination—an approach that certainly has its merits. But if you are an obsessive planner and list-maker (like certain people, not me, not me at all), you enjoy knowing exactly what has happened, and what will happen, and when—even if said events are made up. January 1, almost every year — Aaliya begins a new translation, An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine
Top 25 Best Science Fiction Books
Love Science Fiction? Hate wasting time reading the trash? Then read this definitive guide to the Top 25 Science Fiction Books in the genre. It's been a long time in coming, but the NEW Top 25 Best Science Fiction list has been released January 2016. There's a LOT more thought put into the list here than the old list (which is still a great list) and the picks are more representative of the genre as a whole. We've also filled out every section with MORE information about why we consider each entry the best of the best.
The Complete History of Time Paradoxes
This list just made me want to go back in time and READ MORE SCIFI LIT...there's stuff here I've never even heard about, let alone read. Though, on the whole, I've got to say I find it more interesting from a storytelling and potential character development standpoint when characters from the past somehow wind up in the future, rather than the other way around. OH, and A Sound of Thunder video game has the potential to be really really awesome, so please, developers, don't F*** it up! I'm literally salivating over the idea of battling my way through future-Chicago.
Most Anticipated: The Great 2012 Book Preview
2012 is shaping up to be another exciting year for readers. While last year boasted long-awaited novels from David Foster Wallace, Haruki Murakami, and Jeffrey Eugenides, readers this year can look forward to new Toni Morrison, Richard Ford, Peter Carey, Lionel Shriver, and, of course, newly translated Roberto Bolaño, as well as, in the hazy distance of this coming fall and beyond, new Michael Chabon, Hilary Mantel, and John Banville. We also have a number of favorites stepping outside of fiction. Marilynn Robinson and Jonathan Franzen have new essay collections on the way. A pair of plays are on tap from Denis Johnson. A new W.G.
Free Philip K. Dick: Download 13 Great Science Fiction Stories
Although he died when he was only 53 years old, Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) published 44 novels and 121 short stories during his lifetime and solidified his position as arguably the most literary of science fiction writers. His novel Ubik appears on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 best English-language novels, and Dick is the only science fiction writer to get honored in the prestigious Library of America series, a kind of pantheon of American literature. If you’re not intimately familiar with his novels, then you assuredly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darklyand Minority Report.
Sorry, Ebooks. These 9 Studies Show Why Print Is Better
Don’t lament the lost days of cutting your fingers on pristine new novels or catching a whiff of that magical, transportive old book smell just yet! A slew of recent studies shows that print books are still popular, even among millennials. What’s more: further research suggests that this trend may save demonstrably successful learning habits from certain death. Take comfort in these 9 studies that show that print books have a promising future: Younger people are more likely to believe that there’s useful information that’s only available offline.
Top 25 Best Fantasy Books
This one is full to the brim with gritty, amoral, cynical dark humor. A different sort of fantasy, but one that's extremely refreshing, disturbing, and entertaining -- one of the best fantasy reads to come out the past couple years. Even as we near 2015, The Prince of Thorns still stands tall among other strong fantasy books. For a dark, gritty, anti-hero driven fantasy, I felt strong Abercrombie vibes. There's a strong influence from A Game of Thrones -- and if you've ever read KJ Parker's The Engineer trilogy, you'll see some similarities in the tone and style of world.
If it is realistic or plausible, then it is not science fiction
There's a lot of possible definitions of SF that make sense, certainly. But plausibility never really struck me as particularly good. The problem, to my mind, is that to really split apart the literary efforts of perhaps-SF writers into the "could happen" and "could not happen" would require essentially perfect knowledge of all things. If I wrote, say, a story where the Messenger probe sends back the first images of the side of Mercury we could never see before and discovers a vast ruined structure that's obviously artificial — what have I written? Observed from 2004 it's surely plausible. It could happen.
Books of the Year 2011 - Magazine
The Atlantic’s literary editor picks the five best of the crop. The Hare With Amber Eyes Edmund de Waal FSG This rueful family memoir is also a vividly episodic history of 19th- and 20th-century Europe, and a plangent consideration of the pleasures and fleetingness of aesthetic and familial happiness. Letters to Monica Philip Larkin, edited by Anthony Thwaite Faber and Faber Even as this book chronicles an almost passionless and far from conventionally happy relationship, it yields moments of exquisite tenderness and acuity, while obliquely showing the civilizing effect that even the most trying woman can exert on even the most impossible man.
