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…
I am passionate about this topic because it dates back to my childhood. I have been interested in this subject for as long as I can remember and, as far as I can tell, gravitated towards it naturally, probably due to those unknown vectors within us all that gear us towards our loves, interests, and passions. I have written many novels in this field, and countless short stories, some published, others lying around my house. For me, this genre defines the best aspects of the imagination and is full of color, fantasy, and the entire broad spectrum of human emotions, including the most potent: fear.
Perhaps the most classic work of horror fiction in both literature and cinema. As an English teacher, I find that there is so much fodder for lessons prevalent in this book–nature vs nurture, the dangers of forbidden knowledge and playing God, the arrogance of science, and who the real monster is. I particularly love the difference between The Monster in the novel and the film, its articulation, desires, abilities, and even its physical appearance. Few written works have been more seminal.
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…
As an author who is also a patent attorney and an engineer, I often deal with projects that are the closest thing to science fiction. That is one of the driving forces behind my urge to write science fiction. However, I very much prefer realistic stories that may potentially come true to hard science fiction with intergalactic travel, robots all over, and time machines (although I have written space opera and a few other hardcore SF tales, and must admit having had fun with them). Still, I like realistic science fiction much more. It leaves more room for character development, and I find myself engrossed in it more easily.
Robert Heinlein excels himself in this story narrated in the first person by a young woman, who is not really a human but rather a synthetic person but one you can relate to. Published in 1982, when much of the technology it describes was not yet in the realm of possibility, this book shows us an image of a chaotic world that may well be in our future. Serious issues sprinkled through this book’s pages are hidden between fun, fast action, a bit of licentious behavior, and some absurdity. Fun is guaranteed.
A CAEZIK Notable book. CAEZIK Notables is a series of speculative-fiction books marking important milestones in science fiction or fantasy. Each book published in the series has a new introduction highlighting the book’s significance within the genre.
“A charming protagonist in a story as sleekly engineered as a starship. This one should fly.”―Publishers Weekly
Friday is a secret courier and ardent lover. Employed by a man she only knows of as “Boss”, she is given the most awkward and dangerous cases, which take her from New Zealand to Canada, and through the new States of America’s disunion, all the way…
My inspiration is my life experience as a high-tech entrepreneur. Real-life events are the source of my stories. I love to explore how the corporate environment shapes businesspeople and to push the boundaries of traditional mystery. I find exploring the themes of ambition, betrayal, loyalty, and integrity important.
I really like this book because it shows the downsides of being too optimistic about technology. It makes you think about the moral issues and social effects of artificial intelligence.
The story is interesting because it looks at how much privacy we have and what we should know in this age of digital spying. It's a warning about these things, and I found it thought-provoking.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE starring Tom Hanks, Emma Watson and John Boyega
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - a dark, thrilling and unputdownable novel about our obsession with the internet
'Prepare to be addicted' Daily Mail
'A gripping and highly unsettling read' Sunday Times
'The Circle is 'Brave New World' for our brave new world... Fast, witty and troubling' Washington Post
When Mae is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. Run out of a sprawling California campus, the Circle links users' personal emails,…
As a surgeon and scientist who has had a lifelong interest in science and science fiction, I can’t help being fascinated by “what if” questions, especially as regards the impact of inventions on human society and the world. As an optimist, I tend to enjoy exploring inventions that benefit mankind much more than those that bring on an apocalypse.
This riveting tale asks “what if” a future technology allows the “bobbling” of spherical volumes of invincible space within which time is stopped. In a misguided effort to stop a war, the Peace Authority bobbles military groups and war-making machinery all around the world with unexpected consequences.
But, for me, the stars of the show are the bobbles themselves, especially when they unexpectedly start popping, releasing people, war machines, and exploding bombs that have been in stasis for decades.
First in a quintessential hard-science fiction adventure, Hugo Award-winning author Vernor Vinge's The Peace War follows a scientist determined to put an end to the militarization of his greatest invention--and of the government behind it.
The Peace Authority conquered the world with a weapon that never should have been a weapon--the "bobble," a spherical force-field impenetrable by any force known to mankind. Encasing governmental installations and military bases in bobbles, the Authority becomes virtually omnipotent.
But they've never caught Paul Hoehler, the maverick who invented the technology, and who has been working quietly for decades to develop a way to…
Fantasy has always intrigued me since I read The Once and Future King in grade school. The number of fantasy books I’ve read number in the hundreds if not topping a thousand. In my twenties, you never saw me without a book in my hand, my nose pressed into the pages. If I wasn’t reading, I was dreaming up fantasy stories in my head, and this was long before I ever thought of writing my first book. I was a dreamer from birth and will die as one if I live to be 100 like my granny.
Stepping out of the theme of fantasy, I have to say I am a huge fan of science fiction, nearly as much as fantasy. One of the first books/series that springs to mind when speaking of this genre is the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois Mcmaster Bujold. I’d read a lot of Sci-Fi prior to this series, but mostly the Battletech books. If Battletech was my favorite fast-food books, then The Vorkosigan Saga was an 8-course meal at a 5-star restaurant. While it did not delve into the intricacies of space travel and technology to the point I felt like I was taking an advanced college course, she does create a living galaxy and intricate characters you can’t help but chase after like a starstruck fan seeing Mark Hamill at a Star Wars convention. While there is an overall theme to the large series, each book is unique to itself, so…
Cordelia Naismith is enjoying a baptism of fire. Her first mission is to captain a throwaway warship of the Betan Expeditionary Force on a mission to destroy an entire enemy armada. Discovering deception within deception, treachery within treachery, she is forced into an uneasy peace with her nemesis: Lord Aral Vorkosigan. Discovering that astrocartography is not the soundest training for a military leader, Cordelia rapidly finds herself the prisoner of the Barrayaran Captain Aral Vorkosigan, also known as 'The Butcher of Komarr'. But the notorious captain is not quite the beast Cordelia was expecting and a grudging respect develops between…
I’m a storyteller who loves ‘oh my gosh��� ideas. Something that, the moment I hear about it, it captivates me. I also love characters who are deeply heart-warming and pleasurable to be around. For me, delving into the intimacy of a character’s mind and their shifting relationships with others is a pleasure. This is why I’m so attracted to contemporary domestic family issues or love stories with living, breathing characters. By pairing it with a puzzling or shocking wow of an idea to investigate, I can explore my character’s unique world and set it at odds with something that threatens that existence.
This is an uplifting family drama about technology that could – and possibly is (if we think about AI and smartphones) – already happening.
It’s a social comment about a brain surgery that improves the functions of thinking. The implant proves so popular, it begins to bias society to favour those who have the implant and sideline those who don’t. The story is told from the viewpoints of a lesbian couple and their two children, demonstrating how easily divided we can be, enough to threaten the breakdown of society.
It’s a wonderful story with very real characters, commenting on mega technology and exploitative commercial enterprise yet is also at its heart, about the importance of the family unit.
From award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them.
Get one - or get left behind.
Val and Julie just want what's best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when David comes home from school begging for a new brain implant to help with his studies, they're torn. Julie grew up poor and knows what it's like to be the only kid in school without the new technology, but Val is terrified by the risks and the implications.
Soon, everyone at Julie's work has the implant and she's struggling to keep…
I’ve held a burgeoning interest in the stars since I was a young girl. Daydreams of adventure and exploration guided me to the genre. Once I found it, I consumed everything I could find, both on-screen and in the pages of books. There’s something to be said about the vulnerability of being in the vastness of space, oftentimes with strangers who grow to be family. I guess, in a way, it reminds me of that moment when we set out into the world, away from our families, to learn and explore more about our surroundings and the characters we meet along the way (only on a much grander scale).
I don’t typically read military sci-fi or hard science fiction, but these two incredible authors have pulled me in. This series is part of a bigger universe called Aeon 14 and all of it is a joy to read. The authors work together to weave a story full of well-developed characters, flawless character interactions, along with conflict and resolution.
The Silstrand Alliance lies at the intersection of vast empires. And they're losing ground... Kylie Rhoads, one-time officer in the Silstrand Space Force, is now a junker. Captain of the Dauntless, she plies the black at the edge of the Gedri System, looking for derelict hulls to pull in and sell for salvage. So that she can bring Maverick his cut of the take...
But the Silstrand Alliance hasn't forgotten Kylie, and Maverick has something they desperately need.
Kylie finds herself caught up with old friends, enemies, and a rather terrifying new technology that will make or break whatever future…
My father wanted to be an astrophysicist, and as a kid I caught his passion for the future from the many science fiction books he’d left throughout our house. As an adult, the advances in technology have brought the future envisioned in those books closer than ever. My passion for what awaits us led me to write The Price of Safety, which contains innovations that are right around the corner—and have already started to come true (which is freaky), between Elon Musk’s cranial implants to DNA tracking. The world we live in is becoming more like the world in my books. I hope we’re ready!
Peper’s novel is about how the technology available in the near future, which seems like a gift, can be used against you. (Sound familiar?)
In this instance, it is being used to potentially change humanity’s fate, and the main character has to decide what to do about it, if anything. The book stuck with me as it involves power, corruption, and the risks of relying too much on technology.
It’s a complex story, trying to encapsulate the threats our future holds, not only in terms of technology but the damage to our environment and how both could impact our survival.
There are elements of my novel in terms of having neural feeds, though the story explores how life would be experienced if you could capture every moment (not that I personally want to capture everything that happens in my own life).
A rising star at a preeminent political lobbying firm, Dag Calhoun represents the world's most powerful technology and energy executives. But when a close brush with death reveals that the influence he wields makes him a target, impossible cracks appear in his perfect, richly appointed life.
Like everyone else, Dag relies on his digital feed for everything-a feed that is as personal as it is pervasive, and may not be as private as it seems. As he struggles to make sense of the dark forces closing in on him, he discovers that activists are hijacking the feed to manipulate markets…
Science fiction has been my life since I first sawA New Hope at the age of six. Whether the story is set five years ahead of the present or five thousand, the ability of sci-fi writers to envision where we might be going and how it could all end up—while influencing real-world technology and innovation in the process—is an inexhaustive source of inspiration to me. Best of all is when science fiction creators manage to pull off the double act of thoroughly entertaining us while offering a concise, intelligent critique of our present without ever proselytizing.
While Neuromancerpresents one of the most well realized examples of a lived-in future ever committed to ink, the origins of William Gibson’s Sprawl – a metastasizing concrete-and-neon megalopolis that has consumed the US eastern seaboard – can be found in the short stories he published between 1977 and 1984. Later collected in the anthology Burning Chrome, four of the stories – “Fragments of a Hologram Rose”, “Johnny Mnemonic”, “Burning Chrome” and “New Rose Hotel” – create the skeleton of a post-World-War-III future where corporations rule, life is cheap and technology is God. There’s actually a movie version of New Rose Hotel, and despite starring Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken it’s even worse than Keanu Reeves’s Mnemonic.
Best-known for his seminal sf novel NEUROMANCER, William Gibson is also a master of short fiction. Tautly-written and suspenseful, BURNING CHROME collects 10 of his best short stories with a preface from Bruce Sterling, co-Cyberpunk and editor of the seminal anthology MIRRORSHADES. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson's characters and intensely-realized worlds at his absolute best. Contains 'Johnny Mnemonic' (filmed starring Keanu Reeves) and title story 'Burning Chrome' - both nominated for the Nebula Award - as well as the Hugo-and-Nebula-nominated stories 'Dogfight' and 'The Winter Market'.
