Science Fiction

16 Feb 2008 01:46

---

I pledge allegiance to the form
of science fiction and fantasy
and to the promise for which it stands:
one world,
polycultural,
genetically engineered,
with Internet access for all.

--- Tonio Roque

I've spun off my list of recommendations into a separate page.

The distinction between science fiction and fantasy, like that between animal and plant, is sometimes unclear; still, it doesn't do to call Dunsany SF any more than it does to give your true love a bouquet of hippopotami.

On-line SF resources (author's pages are on the recommendations page):
• Infinite Matrix
• David Langford and Ansible
• SFF Net
• John van Sickle maintains lists of science fiction cliches and really dumb, over-used ideas.

To read:
• Brian Aldiss
  • Helliconia Summer
  • Helliconia Winter
  • Hothouse
• Paul K. Alkon, Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology
• Kevin Anderson (ed.), War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches [Connie Willis on Emily Dickinson's encounter with the Martians is especially funny]
• Poul Anderson
  • A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows
  • The Man who Counts
  • Tau Zero
• Patricia Anthony
  • Conscience of the Beagle
  • Happy Policeman
• Eleanor Arnason
  • The Sword Smith
  • To the Resurrection Station
  • A Woman of the Iron People
• Isaac Asimov
  • Caves of Steel
  • The Naked Sun
• A. A. Attanasio
  • Last Legends of Earth
  • Radix
• Iain M. Banks
  • The Algebraist
  • Consider Phlebas
  • Feersum Endjinn
  • Matter
  • The Player of Games
  • Use of Weapons
• John Barnes [Memo to self: Kaleidescope Century and Mother of Storms are both reported to be pointlessly unpleasant by Reliable Sources...]
  • Finity
  • A Million Open Doors
  • Orbital Resonance
• Elizabeth Bear, Undertow
• Greg Bear
  • Dinosaur Summer
  • Moving Mars
  • Eon and Eternity
• Alfred Bester, The Dark Side of the Earth
• Lloyd Biggle, Monument [Humanity as the stupid alien invader with superior weaponry...]
• Terry Bisson
• John Boyd
  • The Pollinators of Eden
  • The Rakehells of Heaven
• Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
• John Brizzolara, Empire's Horizon
• Damien Broderick
  • The Spike [nonfiction]
  • Transcension
  • The White Abacus
  • X, Y, Z, T: Dimensions of Science Fiction [criticism]
• John Brunner
  • Bedlam Planet
  • Compleat Traveller in Black
  • The Crucible of Time
  • The Dramaturges of Yan
  • From This Day Forward
  • The Jagged Orbit
  • Listen!
  • The Long Result
  • The Maze of Stars
  • Muddle-Earth
  • Players at the Game of People
  • The Polymath
  • The Sheep Look Up
  • The Stars
  • Timescoop
  • The Whole Man
• Steven Brust
  • Cobwoy Feng's Space Bar and Grill
  • My Own Kind of Freedom [Free online]
• Tobias Bucknell, Crystal Rain
• Lois McMaster Bujold
  • Dreamweaver's Dilemma
  • Falling Free
• Stephen Bury (pseud. of Neal Stephenson and uncle)
  • Interface
  • The Cobweb
• Jayge Carr
  • Navigator's Sindrome
  • Leviathan's Deep
• Jeffrey Carver, The Infinity Link
• Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life
• C. J. Cherryh
  • 40,000 in Gehenna
  • Tripoint
  • The Faded Sun
  • Collected Short Fiction
  • Port Eternity
  • Finity's End
  • Brother to Earth
  • Wave without a Shore
  • Serpent's Reach
• Deborah Christian, Mainline
• Frank L. Cioffi, Formula Fiction? An Anatomy of American Science Fiction, 1930--40
• Arthur Clarke [You'll spare yourself a good deal of boredom if you don't read any of his "collaborations."]
  • 1984: Spring --- A Choice of Futures [Nonfiction]
  • 3001
  • Astounding Days: A Science Fictional Autobiography
  • Collected Stories of
  • The Exploration of Space [Nonfiction]
  • Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! Collected Essays, 1934--1998
  • The Lions of Comarre
  • Profiles of the Future
  • Report on Planet Three
  • The Snows of Olympus: A Garden on Mars
  • The Wind from the Sun
• Hal Clement, Mission of Gravity
• Brenda Clough
  • How Like a God
  • The Doors of Death and Life
• Alfred Coppel, Glory
• Richard Cowper, The Road to Corlay
• Maurice G. Dantec, Babylon Babies
• Avram Davidson
  • The Enemy of My Enemy
  • Masters of the Maze
  • The Redward Edward Papers
  • Mutiny in Space
• Bradley Denton, Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede
• Thomas M. Disch, The Genocides
• Terry Dowling, Wormwood
• Geo. Alec Effinger, What Entropy Means to Me
• Greg Egan
  • Axiomatic [Review by Danny Yee]
  • Diaspora
  • Luminous [No US edition; contains stories from first collection, Our Lady of Chernobyl]
  • Quarantine [Review by Danny Yee]
  • Schild's Ladder
  • Teranesia
  • An Unusual Angle [1st novel, out of print]
• Harlan Ellison
  • Approaching Oblivion
  • The Deadly Streets
  • Edgeworks
  • I, Robot [Screenplay based on Asimov's robot stories; unfilmable.]
  • Slippage
• M. J. Engh, Arslan
• Joe Clifford Faust, A Death of Honor
• John M. Ford
  • From the End of the Twentieth Century
  • Fugue State
  • Heat of Fusion
• Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Canary
• Valerie J. Freireich, Becoming Human
• C. S. Friedman, Madness Season
• Randall Garrett
  • Earth Invader [a.k.a. Anything You Can Do]
  • Starship Death
  • Unwise Child
  • Takeoff!
  • Takeoff Two!
• Mary Gentle
  • Golden Witchbreed
  • Ancient Light
• Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
• William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
• Kathy Ann Goonan, Queen City Jazz
• Phyllis Gotlieb
  • Blue Apes
  • Doctor Umlaut's Earthly Kingdom [!?]
  • Heart of Red Iron
  • Sunburst
  • Why Should I Have All the Grief?
• Nicola Griffith, Ammonite
• Jon Courtenay Grimwood
  • Effendi
  • Pashazade
• Karl S. Guthke, The Last Frontier: Imagining Other Worlds, from the Copernican Revolution to Modern Science Fiction
• Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
• Elizabeth Hand
  • Winterlong
  • Aestival Tide
  • Icarus Descending
  • Glimmering
• David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (eds.), The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF
• Zenna Henderson, The People: No Different Flesh
• Carol De Chellis Hill, The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer
• Russell Hoban
  • The Lion of Boaz-Jachim and Jachim-Boaz
  • Ridley Walker [Read it in high school, can't remember a damn thing about it except that I'd probably like it better now]
• Ernest Hogan, High AzTech
• Holdstock, Earthwind
• Alexander Jablokov
  • Carve the Sky [About 3/4 finished, damn good]
  • Deepdrive
  • Nimbus
  • River of Dust
• K. W. Jeter
  • The Glass Hammer
  • Farewell Horizontal
  • Infernal Devices
  • Moorlock Night
  • Noir
• Gwyneth Jones
  • Flowerdust
  • White Queen
• Richard Kadrey, Metrophage
• Janet Kagan, Hellspark
• James Patrick Kelly, Burn
• John Kessel
  • Good News from Outer Space
  • Corrupting Dr. Nice
• Caitlin R. Kiernan, The Dry Salvages
• Crawford Kilian, Eyas
• Nancy Kress, Beggars In Spain et seq.
• Brooks Landon, Science Fiction after 1900: From the Steam Man to the Stars
• David Langford
  • Different Kinds of Darkness
  • The Leaky Establishment
  • The Space Eater
  • Up Through an Empty House of Stars
• Ursula Le Guin
  • Left Hand of Darkness
  • The Wind's 12 Quarters
  • The Lathe of Heaven
  • A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
  • The Telling
  • The Word for World Is Forest
• Fritz Leiber
  • The Green Millennium
  • The Wanderer
• Stanislaw Lem
  • The Chain of Chance
  • Fiasco
  • Mortal Engines
  • Highcastle
  • Return from the Stars
  • Microworlds
  • The Investigation
  • A Stanislaw Lem Reader [Review by Danny Yee]
• Jonathan Lethem
  • Amensia Moon
  • Girl in Landscape
  • Gun, with Occasional Music
  • As She Climbed Across the Table [about really falling in love with your experiment]
• Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen [now available under Creative Commons]
• Elizabeth A. Lynn, The Sardonyx Net
• Ken MacLeod
  • The Bright Command [To be written: "an addition to the still small sub-genre of Dark Lord revisionism... where the multiracial horde with lowly accents and ugly faces who build noisome factories all over fantasyland are the good guys.... It won't be fantasy. It'll have some fantasy look-and-feel, at least at first, but it's straight SF. The setting is a planet elsewhere in the infinite universe that is another Earth with a different history and geography, but with enough similarity in languages that I don't have to make up funny names."]
  • Newton's Wake
  • The Stone Canal
• George R. R. Martin
  • The Armageddon Rag
  • Dying of the Light
  • Nightflyers
  • Portraits of His Children
  • Sandkings
• David Marusek, Counting Heads
• Paul J. McAuley
  • Eternal Light
  • Four Hundred Billion Stars
  • The Invisible Country
  • The King of the Hill
  • Of the Fall
  • Red Dust
  • Secret Harmonies
  • The White Devils
  • The Whole Wide World
• Jack McDevitt [Engines of God panned by reliable sources on rasfw]
  • A Talent for War
  • Ancient Shores
  • Eternity Road
• Ian McDonald
  • The Broken Land [=Hearts, Hands and Voices]
  • Desolation Road
  • Empire Dreams
  • Evolution's Shore [=Chaga]
  • Kirinya [Sequel to Chaga]
  • Sacrifice of Fools
  • Speaking in Tongues
  • Terminal Cafe [=Necroville]
• Maureen McHugh
  • Mission Child
  • Nekropolis
• Sean McMullen, Eyes of the Calculor
• John Meaney, Paradox
• Walter Miller
  • A Canticle for Leibowitz
  • St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman
• Laura Mixon, Glass Houses
• James Morrow, This Is the Way the World Ends
• Elizabeth Moon
  • Phases
  • Remnant Population
  • The Speed of Dark
• Lyde Morehouse, Fallen Host
• Derryl Murphy, Wasps at the Speed of Sound
• Pat Murphy
  • Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell
  • The City, Not Long After
• Linda Nagata
  • Deception Well
  • Limits of Vision
  • Memory
  • Vast
• Patrick O'Leary, Door Number Three
• Rebecca Ore, Becoming Alien et seq.
• Alexei Panshin, Heinlein in Dimension [Full text free online, along with other critical writings by Panshin on Heinlein]
• Paul Park
  • Celestis
  • The Cult of Loving Kindness
  • The Sugar Festival
• Marge Piercy, He, She and It
• Doris Piserchia, A Billion Days of Earth
• Frederik Pohl
  • Age of the Pussyfoot
  • Chernobyl: A Novel
  • The Cool War
  • The Coming of the Quantum Cats
  • Drunkard's Walk
  • Jem
  • Man Plus
  • Stopping at Slowyear
  • The Voices of Heaven
  • The Way the Future Was
• Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, Gladiator-at-Law
• Robert Reed
  • Beneath the Gated Sky
  • An Exaltation of Larks
  • Marrow
  • Sister Alice
• Alastair Reynolds
  • Absolution Gap
  • Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days
  • Galactic North
  • The Prefect
  • Zima Blue and Other Stories
• Chris Roberson, Paragaea: A Planetary Romance
• Keith Robertson, Pavane
• Kim Stanley Robinson
  • Antractica
  • Forty Signs of Rain
  • Three Californias trilogy
  • Red Mars trilogy
• Justina Robson, Silver Screen
• Mary Rosenblum, Horizons
• Richard Paul Russo
  • Carlucci [= omnibus of Destroying Angel, Carlucci's Edge and Carlucci's Heart]
  • Ship of Fools
• Geoff Ryman
  • Air
  • The Child Garden: A Low Comedy
• Joanna Russ
  • The Adventures of Alyx
  • The Female Man
  • The Hidden Side of the Moon
  • Picnic on Paradise
  • Souls
  • And Chaos Died
• William Sanders
  • The Ballad of Billy Badass and the Rose of Turkestan
  • Journey to Fusang
  • The Wild Blue and the Gray
• Pamela Sargent
  • Venus of Dreams
  • Venus of Shadows
  • Earthseed
  • Shore of Women
• Robert Sawyer
  • Frameshift
  • Terminal Experiment
• John Scalzi
  • The Ghost Brigades
  • The Last Colony
  • The Sagan Diary
  • The Android's Dream
• Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
  • Nothing Sacred
  • Last Refuge
• Hilbert Schenck, Steam Bird
• Melissa Scott, Dreamships
• James H. Schmitz
  • A Pride of Monsters
  • The Eternal Frontiers
  • Legacy
• Carolyn See
  • Making History
  • Golden Days
• Carol Severance ["anthropological" sf]
• Sheckley, Options
• Lucius Shepard
  • Beast of the Heartland, and Other Stories
  • Kalimantan
  • Life During Wartime
• Robert Silverberg
  • The Alien Years
  • The Gate of Worlds
  • Hot Sky at Midnight
  • The Mountains of Majipoor
  • Thorns
  • Tower of Glass
• Clifford Simak
  • City
  • Ring Around the Sun
  • Cemetary World
  • Time Is the Simplest Thing
  • Time and Again
• Dan Simmons
  • The Hollow Man
  • Ilium and Olympos
  • Phases of Gravity [Well, not really SF, he says]
  • Rise of Endymion
• The Best of John Sladek
• Joan Slonczewski
  • Daughter of Elysium
  • The Wall Around Eden
  • The Children Star
  • Brainplague
• Cordwainer Smith (pseud. of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger)
  • Norstrilia
  • The Rediscovery of Man
• Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward
• Brian Stableford
  • Architects of Emortality
  • The Werewolves of London
• Olaf Stapeldon [One of the true greats, if only for his Last Men books, which warped my thinking at a tender age]
  • Odd John
  • Sirius
  • Star Maker
• Allan Steele, The Tranquility Alternative
• Neal Stephenson, Zodiac
• Bruce Sterling
  • The Artificial Kid
  • Globalhead
  • Involution Ocean
  • (ed.), Mirrorshades
• Caroline Stevermer, River Rats
• John E. Stith, Manhattan Transfer
• Peter Stockwell, The Poetics of Science Fiction
• Charles Stross
  • Accelerando
  • Glasshouse
  • Halting State
  • The Iron Sunrise
  • Missile Gap [online]
  • Toast
• The Brothers Stugartski
  • The Final Circle of Paradise
  • Noon: 22nd Century [and many more, of course, but those should give me some idea of whether or not they're really as good as my Russian classmates said]
• Theodore Sturgeon
  • E Pluribus Unicorn
  • The Golden Helix
  • Venus Plus X
  • The Dreaming Jewels
  • The Ultimate Egoist
• Michael Swanwick
  • Gravity's Angels
  • In the Drift
  • Tales of Old Earth
• Sheri S. Tepper, Raising the Stones
• Jeffrey Thomas, Monstrocity
• Joyce Thompson, Conscience Palace
• Diann Thornley
  • Ganwold's Child
  • Echoes of Issel
  • Dominion's Reach
• "James Tiptree, Jr." (pseud. of the late Alice Sheldon, CIA (ret.))
  • Brightness Falls from the Air [Review by Danny Yee]
  • Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
  • Up the Walls of the World
• Karen Traviss, City of Pearl
• Wilson Tucker
  • Ice and Iron
  • The Year of the Quiet Sun
• Jack Vance [gets his own page]
• John Varley
  • The Golden Globe
  • Millennium
  • The Ophiuchi Hotline
  • The Persistence of Vision
  • Steel Beach
• Joan Vinge
  • Eyes of Amber, and Other Stories
  • The Outcasts of Heaven's Belt
  • Snow Queen
• Vernor Vinge
  • A Fire Upon the Deep [Review by Danny Yee]
  • Collected Stories
  • A Deepness in the Sky
  • True Names
• Elisabeth Vonarburg, The Silent City
• Howard Waldrop
• Sage Walker, Whiteout
• Patricia S. Warrick, The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction
• Kate Wilhelm
  • The Best Defense
  • Crazy Time
  • The Killing Thing
  • Welcome, Chaos
  • Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang
• Walter Jon Williams, Frankensteins and Foreign Devils
• Connie Willis
  • Lincoln's Dreams
  • Miracle
  • Passages
• Gene Wolfe
  • Book of the New Sun [Read when I was 11 or 12...]
  • The Book of the Long Sun
  • The Book of the Short Sun
  • Endangered Species
  • The Fifth Head of Cerebrus
• John C. Wright, The Golden Age
• Dingbo Wu and Patrick Murphy, eds., Science Fiction from China
• John Wyndham
  • Chocky
  • Consider Her Ways
  • The Hidden People
  • Jizzle
• Jim Young, Armed Memory
• George Zebrowski
  • Ashes and Stars
  • Cave of Stars
  • The Killing Star
  • Macrolife
• Roger Zelazny
  • Today We Choose Faces
  • Bridge of Ashes
• Sarah Zettel
  • Kingdom of Cages
  • Playing God
  • The Quiet Invasion
  • Reclamation
• David Zindell