Crystal Express
10 best books like Crystal Express (Bruce Sterling): Mindplayers, Little Heroes, Budayeen Nights, Elvissey, The Best of Michael Swanwick, Eclipse Penumbra, The Silicon Man, Memory Wire, Toast, and Other Stories, The Wind from a Burning Woman
Author | Pat Cadigan |
ISBN | 0575042427 |
Ok, I'll start by saying that it's not the best book in the world or anything. But I love it. Taking place in a slightly futuristic Earth where people have learned to control and manipulate their minds for fun and profit (mostly for fun), the main character is a Mind Player, sort of like a psychiatrist who...
Author | Norman Spinrad |
ISBN | 0586203621 |
An over-the-hill rock star, a Puerto Rican street kid, and two children of the electronic age discover strength in numbers when they take on the power of Musik, Inc., in a war of nerves, passion, and rock 'n' roll. Spinrad uses the violent, sexually explicit language of new wave sf to communicate an ultimately...
Author | George Alec Effinger |
ISBN | 1930846193 |
George Alex Effinger's first short-fiction collection in nearly 15 years, these nine tales are set in Budayeen, the walled city in the sand, a city of dark shadows and even darker inhabitants, where a Raymond Chandleresque vision has been created -- hardboiled, noir, futuristic -- but with a twist....
Author | Jack Womack |
ISBN | 0802134955 |
At once a biting satire and a taut, fast-paced thriller, Elvissey is the story of Isabel and John, a troubled couple who voyage from the year 2033 to a strangely altered 1954. They are on a desperate mission to kidnap the young Elvis Presley and bring him back to the present day to serve as a ready-made cult...
Author | Michael Swanwick |
ISBN | 1596061782 |
It's here at last the first comprehensive overview of the extraordinary career of master storyteller Michael Swanwick. Covering over a quarter of a century, from his first two published stories both of them Nebula finalists to his most recent, these works bear witness to one of the most vivid and far-ranging...
Author | John Shirley |
ISBN | 1930235011 |
THE SA HAD BEEN HIRED TO MAKE ORDER.
AND THEY PLANNED TO KEEP IT…FOREVER.
From the beginning, thwarting the Second Alliance had been the first priority of the New Resistance; now the SA had decided it was time to return the favor. Resistance could not be allowed to interfere with the progress...
Author | Charles Platt |
ISBN | 0553289500 |
The Silicon Man has been endorsed by William Gibson as "A plausible, well-crafted narrative exploring cyberspace in a wholly new and very refreshing way".
What is the price of immortality? On the track of high-tech black-market weapons, FBI Agent James Bayley has stumbled on a top-secret...
Author | Robert Charles Wilson |
ISBN | 0553268538 |
What did you have for breakfast three Mondays ago? Was it raining that day? Can you remember?
What about a trauma you experienced or witnessed? Is it fuzzy edged, made indistinct by adrenaline and fear? Is it perhaps better that you don’t remember all the details?
Imagine everything...
Author | Charles Stross |
ISBN | 0809556030 |
Ever discover an author through another medium, like TV or Twitter or the author’s blog, and realize you want to read everything this author has written and you want to read it yesterday? That’s how I feel about Charles Stross. It’s similar to my evaluation of William Gibson in my last review; Stross...
Author | Greg Bear |
ISBN | 0445208465 |
I mostly enjoyed this collection of early-ish fiction by Greg Bear, although I have taken a star off because many of the stories had endings that jarred with me, or seemed abrupt or unfinished. The best example of this is probably Mandala. This is story with a great hook: the living cities of the planet...
Author | Roger Zelazny |
ISBN | 0671417738 |
This paperback original is a new collection of short stories by Roger Zelazny (1937-1995), a science fiction writer every young reader should know. Even old fans will find surprises in this collection. For instance, how many devotees have read Passion Play, Zelazny s first published work, and how...
Author | Gene Wolfe |
ISBN | 0765310333 |
Wolfe, whose tetralogy The Book of the New Sun was the most acclaimed science fiction work of the 1980s, offered his second collection of short fiction in 1990 to universal acclaim. This is a hefty volume of over 30 unforgettable stories in a variety of genres-- SF, fantasy, horror, mainstream-many...
Perhaps I should say why I have read this book in the first place: Rudy Rucker is a mathematician, a set theorist to be precise, and this book, his opera prima, was written around a central theme: infinity. To write fiction trying to convey Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers is no minor feat, and that...
Author | Jon Courtenay Grimwood |
ISBN | 0671022601 |
RedRobe is a fastpaced and entertaining read, a SF thriller where - as in some of his previous work - Grimwood answers accusations of 'you can't get there from here' by setting it in the future of a parallel world where history diverges from our own somewhere in the mid-19th century. Religious orders are...
Author | Cory Doctorow |
ISBN | 1568582862 |
Free. In the title tale, narrator James 14 returns home with Mama to 1898 village when his father Les, time-traveller Ambassador to aliens, vanishes from 1975 jet-pack city. When the "mothaship" takes the anointed few into the brave new world, those left behind are angry. "0wnz0red" asks - what happens...