I've been reading science fiction since I was old enough to hold a book upright, and writing it for almost as long. I grew up on the classics and still go back to them. I re-read books to study how their authors managed their craft, hoping to learn something useful in my own writing, but I also re-read books for the sheer pleasure of revisiting a favorite adventure. When I read something for the second (or the seventh) time, I know I'm going to enjoy it, and can savor the language as well as the story. It's like ordering a favorite meal in a restaurant: You know what you're getting, and can relax and enjoy it.
The trip to Alpha Centauri has been Ryan's whole life. He grew up on the starship; he likes it there; the immense void between stars is part of his world -- but others on board aren't so lucky. The other colonists all want the same thing: To find a habitable planet at the end of their journey, but nobody expects their hopes and prayers to be answered so abundantly. Finding one habitable planet would be cause for celebration, but finding two could tear the crew, and its families, apart.
I've probably read this book fifteen times. It's world-building taken to the extreme: The ringworld is an artifact big enough to encircle its sun, with habitable area greater than a million Earths. A starship crew of two humans and two aliens set out to explore this vast habitat, encountering wonders and surprises every step of the way. The world-building is truly amazing, but what makes this book so re-readable is the character interaction. The alien Kzin approaches everything with belligerence; the alien Puppeteer approaches everything with cowardice, and the humans approach everything with curiosity and delight.
Pierson's puppeteers, strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens, have discovered an immense structure in a hitherto unexplored part of the universe. Frightened of meeting the builders of such a structure, the puppeteers set about assembling a team consisting of two humans, a puppeteer and a kzin, an alien not unlike an eight-foot-tall, red-furred cat, to explore it. The artefact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its centre - the Ringworld. But the expedition goes disastrously wrong when the ship crashlands and its motley crew faces a trek across thousands of miles of…
Lord of Light came out of the 1960s, a time when the youth of the world were examining the assumptions of their parents and rebelling against "the establishment." Into that world, Zelazny introduced a society ruled by a technologically advanced elite so far above their subjects that they appeared as gods. They embraced that role, taking on the aspects of the Hindu pantheon, with Kali, Goddess of Destruction, Yama, Lord of Death, Brahma, the Creator, etc. Then there's Mahasamatman, known as Sam, Lord of Light, who leads the way to a renaissance among the downtrodden. Re-read this one for the joy of the language, which Zelazny has honed to perfection. When you open this book, you're there.
Imagine a distant world where gods walk as men, but wield vast and hidden powers. Here they have made the stage on which they build a subtle pattern of alliance, love, and deadly enmity. Are they truly immortal? Who are these gods who rule the destiny of a teeming world?
Their names include Brahma, Kali, Krishna and also he who was called Buddha, the Lord of Light, but who now prefers to be known simply as Sam. The gradual unfolding of the story - how the colonization of another planet became a re-enactment of Eastern mythology - is one of…
In a post-nuclear-war future filled with savagery and ignorance, a band of monks labor to preserve the relics of a forgotten age, waiting for the time to re-introduce science and literacy to a world that has forsworn both. Brother Francis discovers relics of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, the founder of the order, and that discovery sets in motion the return of civilization...and the return of the same problems that bedevil us today. Told in three parts, and with great humor, this is the story of humanity's cyclic struggle between the forces of creation and destruction.
In the depths of the Utah desert, long after the Flame Deluge has scoured the earth clean, a monk of the Order of Saint Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: holy relics from the life of the great saint himself, including the blessed blueprint, the sacred shopping list, and the hallowed shrine of the Fallout Shelter.
In a terrifying age of darkness and decay, these artifacts could be the keys to mankind's salvation. But as the mystery at the core of this groundbreaking novel unfolds, it is the search itself—for meaning, for truth, for love—that offers hope for humanity's rebirth…
Theodore Sturgeon was one of the best science fiction writers of all time. When I began writing, I told myself I would consider myself a success if I could produce even one story as good as any of his. More than Human is quite possibly his best work. It's a story of the next stage in human evolution, the creation of a gestalt being whose sum is greater than its individual parts. And unlike most stories about advanced beings, these don't come to a bad end, nor do they take over the world. Sturgeon loved his characters and treated them with respect and dignity, which makes reading about them a joy.
In this genre-bending novel—among the first to have launched sci-fi into the arena of literature—one of the great imaginers of the twentieth century tells a story as mind-blowing as any controlled substance and as affecting as a glimpse into a stranger's soul.
There's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts and make a man blow his brains out just by looking at him. There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles. There's Baby, who invented an antigravity engine while still in the cradle, and…
I can still quote the opening of this novel verbatim: "It was around the hub of the evening on the planet of Porlumma that Captain Pausert, commercial traveler from the republic of Nikkeldepain, met the first of the witches of Karres. It was just plain fate, so far as he could see." Thus opens the most delightful romp in all of science fiction. When Pausert rescues three enslaved young girls, he sets in motion a comedy of errors, conspiracy, piracy, and intrigue that expands to involve the entire galaxy. Just who are these mysterious witches of Karres, and how can Captain Pausert return them safely to their home when everyone who's anyone is out to get them...and him?
Virologist Dr. Rachel Bisette sees visions of a Kachina and remembers the plane crash that killed her parents and the Dine medicine woman who saved her life. Rachel is investigating a new and lethal hantavirus spreading through the Four Corners, and believes the Kachina is calling her to join the work against the spreading pandemic.
She finds Eva Yellow Horn, a medicine woman with the key to fighting the pandemic. When Eva demonstrates ancient healing powers beyond science, Rachel recognizes her as the medicine woman who saved her life years before. Eva reveals that Rachel’s father was investigating the 1979 nuclear disaster in Church Rock, when his plane crashed, killing her parents. Now, Rachel undertakes a new investigation, but she is not alone.
“Visions of kachinas guide doctor to spiritual healing in pandemic.”
2014 Finalist in the Willa Literary Award
This is a book that once closed and last line read, my mind wandered to explore certain character motivations and potential follow-up responses. I don’t think an author has to answer every possibility, art comes into play best when the reader’s own imagination can wander within the story.
Dr. Rachel Bisette is drawn to the Four Corners to lead the search for a vaccine against a lethal pandemic. One elusive indigenous woman, Eva Yellow Horn, carries the gift of immunity. In her search…
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