The Inverted World
10 best books like The Inverted World (Christopher Priest): Drowning Towers, Rogue Moon, Greybeard, Pavane, Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord, R.U.R. & War with the Newts, Life During Wartime, Dark Benediction, The Ragged Astronauts, Dark Universe
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 | Algis Budrys |
| ISBN | 0380389509 |
Rogue Moon is a short sf novel by Algis Budrys, published in 1960. It was a 1961 Hugo Award nominee, losing to Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. A novella-length version of the story was included in the anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2, edited by Ben Bova.
Before...
| Author | Brian W. Aldiss |
| ISBN | 0755100638 |
A quote from The Twinkling of an Eye, Brian Aldiss' autobiography:
P D James, ordinarily a bestselling middle-class thriller writer, set The Children of Men in the future. The novel was published in 1992. I began to worry about her novel when readers wrote to me, pointing out many similarities...
| 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 | Olaf Stapledon |
| ISBN | 0140019995 |
Sirius is Thomas Trelone's great experiment - a huge, handsome dog with the brain and intelligence of a human being. Raised and educated in Trelone's own family alongside Plaxy, his youngest daughter, Sirius is a truly remarkable and gifted creature. His relationship with the Trelones, particularly...
| 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 | 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...
| 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 | Bob Shaw |
| ISBN | 0708882277 |
Land and Overland - twin worlds a few thousand miles apart. On Land, humanity faces a threat to its very survival - an airborne species, the ptertha, has declared war on humankind, and is actively hunting for victims. The only hope lies in migration. Through space to Overland. By balloon. The Ragged Astronauts...
| Author | Daniel F. Galouye |
| ISBN | 0575071370 |
The above rating graphic provides a pretty good assessment of my opinion of the story...which stands to reason in a "DUH, thank you Col. Obvious" sorta way since I created it. Well, at the risk of raining down obvious all over you, let me add that this is certainly a book on which I would recommend...
| Author | Thomas M. Disch |
| ISBN | 0881844438 |
The human society is in the terrible decline and On Wings of Song is a kind of cultural dystopia… Thomas M. Disch writes with so many realistic details that it starts appearing that the dystopia is now…
“They say we’re very conformist, don’t they?”
“Yes, that’s certainly one...
| 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 | J.G. Ballard |
| ISBN | 0374520968 |
J. G. Ballard's fourth novel, which established his reputation as a writer of extraordinary talent and imaginative powers, tells the story of a physician specializing in the treatment of leprosy who is invited to a small outpost in the interior of Africa. Finding the roadways blocked, he takes to the...
| Author | Wilson Tucker |
| ISBN | 0020298951 |
‘Chaney fitted two keys into the twin locks and shoved. A bell rang somewhere behind him. The operations door rolled easily on rolamite tracks. He stepped outside into the chill of the future…’
The first real test of the Time Displacement Vehicle – and Chaney still uncertain why he...
| 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 | William Tenn |
| ISBN | 0345295234 |
Giant, technologically superior aliens have conquered Earth, but humankind survives - even flourishes in a way. Men and women live like mice in burrows in the massive walls of the huge homes of the aliens, scurrying about under their feet, stealing from them. A complex social and religious order has...
| Author | Eric Frank Russell |
| ISBN | 0575070951 |
The war has raged for nearly a year and Earth desperately needs an edge to overcome the Sirian Empire's huge advantage in personnel and equipment. That's where James Mowry comes in. Intensively trained, his appearance surgically altered, Mowry secretly lands on one of the Empire's planets. His mission:...
| 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 | 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...
