Tag: SF
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Cixin Liu: The Wandering Earth
In 2008, The Three-Body Problem was a global literary sensation, and now that the adaptation is on Netflix, it’s got all the hype. Whether you like the series or not, and have contemplated to read the by now 4-body tetralogy, starting with a shorter piece of Liu’s work may be a good idea. The Wandering…
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Robert Merle: The Virility Factor
Literary-prize winning French authors are not afraid of writing speculative fiction. Long before “The Anomaly”, renowned French author Robert Merle had already published several works that could be categorised either as soft SF or speculative fiction, including post-apocalyptic “Malevil,” ethology SF “The Day of the Dolphin,” and dystopian feminist “The Virility Factor.” Categories, as often,…
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Herve Le Tellier: The Anomaly
The Anomaly is a good reminder how artificial genre divisions are. It ticks all the boxes for a thriller: it is a dark, high stakes, suspenseful plot-driven story. It has tonnes of the common tropes: mysterious turbulence, arrogant Pentagon general, inexplicable stranger, nerdish math prodigy, prim FBI agent, double life contract killer. It is a…
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Rosa Montero: Bruna Husky Series
Titles in the series: Tears in Rain, Weight of the Heart, Los Tiempos del Odio Recently struggling to create lists of outstanding female SF authors and great non-English SF, having Rosa Montero on my radar has been a piece of good fortune on both counts. Montero, a Spanish mainstream author whose SF books are limited…
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S. K. Vaughn: Across the Void
It’s hard to imagine a more intriguing opening scene than an all-dark exploration vessel drifting in deep space, with the tune Silent Night reverberating on empty corridors, and the ship’s commander suddenly waking up buried in hypothermic gel in an intensive-care cocoon. Unremitting suspense is among the best qualities of Vaughn’s novel. Mysteries are everywhere…
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The 10 best SF books of all time
Sooner or later, all SF fans end up compiling their very own best-of list of science fiction books. There’s a risk of getting emotional – once I had an hour-long passionate argument (would not go as far as to say fight, but voices were raised) with a friend over which of Wyndham’s books to add,…
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Sue Burke: Semiosis
Could you have any shared values with a plant? Semiosis is an original first contact novel in the sense that it describes first contact with a plant species. The immediate parallel jumping to mind is Wyndham’s “Day of the Triffids” [10 Best SF books] – but there humans confront plants on Earth proper, and there’s…
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Ben H Winters: The Last Policeman
Waiting for the imminent end of the world is a well-navigated topic in SF – from absolute classic “On the Beach” (Shute) to Wilson’s amazing “Spin”. Reading The Last Policemen frequently brought to mind both novels – the narrative thread of searching for meaning in the face of annihilation, obviously, but with Spin, also in…