The Book of the New Sun
10 best books like The Book of the New Sun (Gene Wolfe): The Dying Earth, A Night in the Lonesome October, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, Titus Groan, The Stars My Destination, The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, The Female Man, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Jupiter's Travels, The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith
| Author | Jack Vance |
| ISBN | 0671831526 |
I did not like this book much the first time I read it, but after reading it a second time while visualizing its characters as puppets, I found I liked it much more.
This book—particularly the first three stories—irritated me. I found its wizards to be contemptible creatures, morally...
A Night in the Lonesome October
| Author | Roger Zelazny |
| ISBN | 0380771411 |
Review updated yet again (and again) on November 1, 2018
A group read with some of my greatest friends: OhWell, Sarah, and Tadiana.
First a disclaimer: I lost count to the number of times I read the book. Seriously. I still find something new with each reread. I would also like to welcome...
| Author | Stephen R. Donaldson |
| ISBN | 0006473296 |
Since its publication in 1977, Stephen Donaldson's award-winning trilogy has become an indisputable fantasy class, hailed by the critics and loved by millions of readers around the world. Now all three books are available in one paperback volume for the first time.
Thomas Covenant, an embittered...
| Author | Mervyn Peake |
| ISBN | 0879514256 |
What an odd fantasy! No swords, no sorcery, no elves, no thieves, no imaginary beasts, no multiple planes of existence . . . nothing but a cavernous castle peopled by eccentrics with Dickensian names (Sepulchrave, Prunesquallor, Swelter, Flay) whose lives are determined by centuries--perhaps...
| Author | Alfred Bester |
| ISBN | 0679767800 |
In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men—and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous...
The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
| Author | Neal Stephenson |
| ISBN | 0553380966 |
The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. It is to some extent a science fiction coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, and set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. The novel deals with themes...
| Author | Joanna Russ |
| ISBN | 0807063134 |
I've seen people argue, both here and elsewhere, that this book is outdated and no longer topical.
I'm really confused what rose-colored glasses they're wearing, because as far as I can tell, the majority of this book is still far too true. I've been in these places far, far too often to write...
The Lifecycle of Software Objects
| Author | Ted Chiang |
| ISBN | 1596063173 |
What's the best way to create artificial intelligence? In 1950, Alan Turing wrote, "Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it...
| Author | Ted Simon |
| ISBN | 0965478521 |
Simon rode a motorcycle around the world in the seventies, when such a thing was unheard of. In four years he covered 78,000 miles through 45 countries, living with peasants and presidents, in prisons and palaces, through wars and revolutions. What distinguishes this book is that Simon was already...
| Author | Cordwainer Smith |
| ISBN | 0915368560 |
The third story in this volume takes place 16,000 years in the future. When you realize that the 33 stories are ordered chronologically, you begin to grasp the scale of Cordwainer Smith's creation. Regimes, technologies, planets, moralities, religions, histories all rise and fall through his millennia.
These...
| Author | Chip Kidd |
| ISBN | 0060507403 |
After 15 years of designing more than 1,500 book jackets at Knopf for such authors as Anne Rice and Michael Crichton, Kidd has crafted an affecting an entertaining novel set at a state university in the late 1950s that is both slap-happily funny and heartbreakingly sad. The Cheese Monkeys is a college...
| Author | Jack Vance |
| ISBN | 0312874561 |
Earth is on its last leg. The sun is a red giant, the moon has vanished, and magic has returned.
This omnibus includes the following four books:
The Dying Earth: The Dying Earth is a collection of linked short stories. And here they are:
Turjan of Miir: Turjan, a wizard, seeks the help...
| Author | Robert E. Howard |
| ISBN | 0575077662 |
Conan the Barbarian: born on a battlefield in Cimmeria, his life was spent wandering the world of the legendary Hyborian Age. From boy-thief to pirate, mercenary and outlaw, ultimately becoming King of Aquilonia, Conan carved a red swathe through lost cities and unexplored jungles, facing hideous...
| Author | Ted Chiang |
| ISBN | 1596061006 |
In medieval Baghdad, a penniless man is brought before the most powerful man in the world, the caliph himself, to tell his story. It begins with a walk in the bazaar, but soon grows into a tale unlike any other told in the caliph's empire. It's a story that includes not just buried treasure and a band of thieves,...
The Broken Empire Trilogy: Prince of Thorns / King of Thorns / Emperor of Thorns
From being a privileged royal child, raised by a loving mother, Jorg Ancrath has become the Prince of Thorns, a charming, immoral boy leading a grim band of outlaws in a series of raids and atrocities. The world is in chaos: violence is rife, nightmares everywhere. Jorg has the ability to master the living...
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen
| Author | Steven Erikson |
| ISBN | 0765376857 |
Nothing to see here, traveler. Move along. Just me tracking my UMCRO progress.
What is
UMCRO?
While, it's an
Ultimate Malazan Chronological Reading Order,
silly.
1.) Forge of Darkness 3.83 ✔
2.) Fall of Light 3.91 ✔
3.) Walk in Shadow*
4.) Dancer's Lament...
| Author | Frank Herbert |
| ISBN | 0441385397 |
A determined group of colonists are attempting to establish a bridgehead on the planet Pandora, despite the savagery of the native lifeforms, as deadly as they are inhospitable. But they have more to deal with than just murderous aliens: their ship's computer has been given artificial consciousness...
Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism
| Author | Alvin Plantinga |
| ISBN | 0199812098 |
This book is a long-awaited major statement by a pre-eminent analytic philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, on one of our biggest debates -- the compatibility of science and religion. The last twenty years has seen a cottage industry of books on this divide, but with little consensus emerging. Plantinga,...
