Fairyland

Author

George Turner

Francis Conway is Swill—one of the millions in the year 2041 who must subsist on the inadequate charities of the state. Life, already difficult, is rapidly becoming impossible for Francis and others like him, as government corruption, official blindness and nature have conspired to turn Swill...

Author	Christopher Priest
ISBN	1882968336

Christopher Priest excels at rethinking SF themes, lifting them above genre expectations into his own tricky, chilling, metaphysically dangerous territory. The Separation suggests an alternate history lying along a road not taken in World War II. But there are complications. In 1999, history...

Author	Bruce Sterling
ISBN	1857989287

This is my favorite book.

It's so much my favorite book that I wrote an article on its 20th anniversary for Slate. I interviewed Bruce Sterling on what inspired him while writing, and why this book is still relevant right before the 2018 midterms.

...

Okay, that's not a review....

Author	Geoff Ryman
ISBN	0575076909

In a semi-tropical London, surrounded by paddy-fields, the people feed off the sun, like plants, the young are raised in Child Gardens and educated by viruses, And the Consensus oversees the country, 'treating' non-conformism. Information, culture, law and politics are biological functions....

Author	Rachel Pollack
ISBN	0879515309

It's uncomfortable to be chosen for Great Things. A lot of fantasists admit that, but Pollack's Jennie Mazdan shows us just how uncomfortable it can be. This is suburban fantasy, reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's suburban SF, and the protagonist is a nice suburban middle-class person who, in a recognizable...

Author	Jon Courtenay Grimwood
ISBN	0553383787

In a world where secrets kill, an ex-cop discovers he's got the biggest secret of all. . . .

Set in a 21st-century Ottoman Empire, Jon Courtenay Grimwood's acclaimed Arabesk series is a noir action-thriller with an exotic twist. Here an ex-cop with nothing to lose finds himself on the trail of...

Author	Ken MacLeod
ISBN	0812568583

Ellen May Ngewthu is a soldier and leader of the Cassini Division, the elite defense force of the utopian Solar Union. Here in the twenty-fourth century, the forts of the Division, in orbit around Jupiter, are the front line in humanity's long standoff with the unknowable post-humans godlike beings...

Author	Colin Greenland
ISBN	0380763958

A fast-moving space adventure featuring mysterious aliens, a journey to a de-populated planet, a mad run from space cops, a ship captain in trouble, and her AI (Artificially Intelligent) companion/ship's computer. Winner of both the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel of the year...

Author	Bradley Denton
ISBN	0380718766

It doesn't have quite the same rocking energy that his first novel, Wrack and Roll, contained, but this is a very well written good book in the semi-quirky tradition of Rudy Rucker and the best of Avram Davidson. The characterization is especially well-drawn, and the plot, while a little hard to completely...

Author	Charles Sheffield
ISBN	0671721410

So this follows the life of a man from birth to his end. If you like Job, which I did, then this makes for a compelling read. The world building is perhaps the best dystopian can offer. The world feels chillingly real and possible to me. The situations are not generic but layered and nuanced and help you to...

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	Kathleen Ann Goonan
ISBN	0765313553

Sam Dance is a young enlisted soldier in 1941 when his older brother Keenan is killed at Pearl Harbor. Afterwards, Sam promises that he will do anything he can to stop the war.
 
During his training, Sam begins to show that he has a knack for science and engineering, and he is plucked from the...

Author	Frederik Pohl
ISBN	0671460471

Frederik Pohl, one of the most honored science fiction writers of our time, gives us an extraordinary vision of a New York yet to come - from the wounded, struggling behemoth of tomorrow to the domed, atmospherically controlled megalopolis of the twenty-first century. In Pohl's prophetic novel, a...

Author	Barry N. Malzberg
ISBN	0881845515

MYSTERY IN SPACE!



a mystery in space of How Did the Captain of the Venusian Expedition Die? is not the mystery in space the mystery in space is the mystery of the inner space the mystery of the confined madman and hopeful author and failed husband and tragic victim and master...

Author	Wilhelmina Baird
ISBN	0441121632

Read for the LGBTQ Speculative Fiction Reading Challenge, the Second Best Reading Challenge, and the Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge.

I originally chose to read this book because I needed to read women I had not read for the Women of Genre Fiction challenge, this one had been nominated...

Author	Pat Cadigan
ISBN	0553295128

In her first novel, Mindplayers, Pat Cadigan introduced a very cool setting and technology. Unfortunately, in my opinion, she didn't do much with it, storywise. Cadigan returns to the setting of Mindplayers in her third novel, Fools, and this time she delivers an engrossing story that takes full advantage...

Author

John Shirley

"John Shirley's prophet-in-the-cyberwilderness voice deserves high billing among the best." -- Roger Zelazny
This classic of cyberpunk literature brings John Shirley's "A Song Called Youth" trilogy to a thrilling conclusion. After the fundamentalists of the Christian Fascist Second Alliance...

Author	Jack Williamson
ISBN	0312872003

When a giant meteor crashes into the earth & destroys all life, the small group of human survivors manage to leave the barren planet & establish a new home on the moon. From Tycho Base, they're able to observe the devastated planet & wait for a time when return will become possible. Generations...

Author	Tricia Sullivan
ISBN	0553577034

Kalypso Deed is a shotgun, riding the interface between the AI Ganesh and human scientists who solve problems through cyberassisted Dreams. But she's young and a little careless; she'd rather mix drinks and play jazz. Azamat Marcsson is a colorless statistician: middle-aged, boring, and obsessed...

Author	Ian R. MacLeod
ISBN	1906301212

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award: A future world of unrelenting change, strangeness, and uncertainty, experienced through the passions and memories of one remarkable old woman

Roushana Maitland has known great fame and great sorrow throughout...

Author	Kim Stanley Robinson
ISBN	0312890389

This is the second of the "Three Californias" series that I've read and it represents a huge improvement over the dull The Gold Coast, which probably would have put me off KSR forever if it had been the first book I'd read by him.

The Three Californias are really Three Orange Counties - three near...

Author

Paul McAuley

Rating: "A-". A stirring saga of science, Mars, and life, marred by a weak ending, but well-worth your attention.

Paul McAuley's usual topics and tropisms are well-employed in this biotech SF-thriller. In 2026 a Martian microbe, secretly brought back to Earth by a Chinese expedition, is...