The Child Garden
10 best books like The Child Garden (Geoff Ryman): Drowning Towers, Jem, Pavane, The Rediscovery of Man, R.U.R. & War with the Newts, Emphyrio, Life During Wartime, The Centauri Device, Dark Benediction, Unquenchable Fire
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 | Frederik Pohl |
| ISBN | 8445074679 |
En un futuro muy lejano, la Tierra vive un equilibrio precario: la población crece inversamente a los recursos, y una suerte de guerra fría divide el mundo en tres bloques irreconciliables. Con el descubrimiento de Jem, un planeta rico y habitable, surge la oportunidad de empezar de cero. Sin embargo,...
| Author | Keith Roberts |
| ISBN | 0345440919 |
In the year 1588, Queen Elizabeth was assassinated. That single tragedy set off a whole series of events, resulting in the Spanish Armada's defeat of England and subsequent demise of Protestantism. Now it's the 20th century, and the Church of Rome reigns supreme. People live a pastoral existence of...
| Author | Cordwainer Smith |
| ISBN | 1857988191 |
This is the 1999 British edition from Gollancz that includes 12 of the most famous short stories from Cordwainer Smith's "Instrumentality of Mankind" universe. His complete stories are collected in the 1993 NESFA edition called "The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer...
| Author | Karel Čapek |
| ISBN | 0575099453 |
Two dystopian satires from one of the most distinguished writers of 20th-century European science fiction. R.U.R. is the work that first introduced the word 'robot' into popular usage.
Written against the background of the rise of Nazism, War With the Newts concerns the discovery in the South...
| Author | Jack Vance |
| ISBN | 0440023459 |
Halma, a world where humans were ruled by a race of effete and arrogant lords; where a neo-feudal system banned all work by machines; where a mock welfare state rewarded painful hand labor with a pitiful dole.Young Ghyl Tarvok was a rebel. In a pirated spaceship, he began his search through the civilizations...
| Author | Lucius Shepard |
| ISBN | 0575077344 |
look inside, young soldier. look inside your fellow soldier, see the nothing there, see the nothing that has been put there as a reason why, see the nothing that has become a something, a reason for being a reason for acting a reason for dying. look inside your own self, young soldier. see the...
An alternate cover for this isbn can be found here.
John Truck was to outward appearances just another lowlife spaceship captain. He peddled drugs when they were available, carried cargo when they weren't. But he was also the last of the Centaurans - or at least, half of him was - which meant that...
| Author | Walter M. Miller Jr. |
| ISBN | 0575079770 |
Distinguished short story collection produced by one of the best writers in the science fiction world, previously published as The Best of Walter M. Miller Jr in 1980. This essential collection contains fourteen short stories from the 1950's: 'You Triflin' Skunk!', 'The Will', 'Anybody Else Like...
| 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 | Robert Silverberg |
| ISBN | 0451044975 |
Who knoweth the spirit of men that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? -Ecclesiastes 3:21
Okay, they did resemble elephants, it can't be denied. That led many people to underestimate the Nildoror and their obviously more fearsome commensals, the Sulidoror.
But...
| Author | John Sladek |
| ISBN | 1585675873 |
Roderick is a robot and this is his autobiography. Educated by watching television, he is adopted by an elderly couple in Kansas and tries to adjust to American society. Sladek conveys, with great sensitivity and insight, the innocence of an artificial intelligence and asks profound questions about...
| 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 | M.J. Engh |
| ISBN | 0312879105 |
Arslan is a young Asian general who conquers the world in a week without firing a shot and shortly thereafter sets up his headquarters in a small town in Illinois.
A masterpiece of political science fiction and a book to challenge such works as Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed, Arslan is a...
| Author | Cecelia Holland |
| ISBN | 0575071427 |
2000 years in the future, runaway pollution has made the Earth uninhabitable except in giant biodomes. The society is an anarchy, with disputes mediated through the Machiavellian Committee for the Revolution. Mars, Venus and the Moon support flourishing colonies of various political stripes....
| Author | D.G. Compton |
| ISBN | 0575118318 |
A forgotten SF classic that exposed the pitfalls of voyeuristic entertainment decades before the reality show craze.
A few years in the future, medical science has advanced to the point where it is practically unheard of for people to die of any cause except old age. The few exceptions provide...
| Author | Paul J. McAuley |
| ISBN | 0380794292 |
In the next century, an underground chemist meets and becomes obsessed with Milena, a child genius who is the ultimate product of gene-splicing technology. Milena is an advocate of the dolls--artificial constructs that have replaced extinct companion animals. Milena wishes to free the dolls from...
| 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 | 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 | 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 | Brian W. Aldiss |
| ISBN | 0006482236 |
Helliconia is a planet that, due to the massively eccentric orbit of its own sun around another star, experiences seasons that lasts eons. Whole civilisations grow in the Spring, flourish in the Summer and then die in the brutal winters. The human-like inhabitants have been profoundly changed by their...
| 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...
