I’ve now completed four books in my New Rock fantasy series; and, while the stories are full-on adventures in a strange (but strangely familiar) new world, they contain lots of comedic characters and situations. I come from a background of comedy writing. Comedy isn’t nice people telling jokes. That’s a dinner party. Comedy is all about pain, fear, misery, confusion, suffering, mistakes, betrayals, accidents, dangers, and things going horribly wrong—and what good adventure doesn't have those? And why wouldn’t any strange new world be full of them? New Rock New Role, the first book in the series, is published on December 12th 2023 by CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.
Robert Sheckley stands out from his contemporaries of the golden age of science fiction by being not just great but also often very funny.
Sheckley has a wry, insightful wit, which puts him in a class of his own among the giants of the post-WW2 era. Start with his eight stories of the AAA Ace Interplanetary Decontamination Service. Great idea, great characters, great settings (two shysters running a fly-by-night planetary fixer-upper service, on the cheap): they are light, effortless, unpretentious, insightful, and brilliant.
It’s basically Ghostbusters in space. What more could you want?
Robert Sheckley (July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005) was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist, and broadly comical. Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.This volume has the following great stories: Warm, Ask A Foolish Question, Beside Still Waters, Cost of Living, Forever, Keep your Shape The Leech, Seventh Victim, Watchbird, Warrior Race, One man's poison, The Perfect Woman
Hitchhiker began life as a BBC Radio series. And a lot of credit should go to Douglas’s writing partner, John Lloyd. After ten months on the scripts, Douglas knew that he needed help. He and John got the last two scripts done in two weeks.
John went on to become our generation’s leading comedy producer (Not the Nine O’clock News; Blackadder; Spitting Image; QI; The Museum of Curiosity). So, if you love the Hitchhiker books — who doesn’t? — give yourself the treat of listening to the original radio series. As the old saying goes, the pictures are better on radio.
This box set contains all five parts of the' trilogy of five' so you can listen to the complete tales of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Bebblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android! Travel through space, time and parallel universes with the only guide you'll ever need, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Read by Stephen Fry, actor, director, author and popular audiobook reader, and Martin Freeman, who played Arthur Dent in film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He is well known as Tim in The Office.
The set also includes a bonus DVD Life, the Universe and…
Another fantasy great who loves a laugh is Terry Pratchett. He is such a breath of fresh air, blowing the cobwebs out of the genre. His early Discworld books (the Rincewind volumes) are fun, but somehow more laboured than his later works, when he really hit his stride.
Out of many that I could pick, I have chosen Feet of Clay as a representative of his mature oeuvre. There are many Discworld stories as enjoyable at this, but this one has not only a very cute solution to a locked-room murder mystery, but also—golems!
Vimes is back, in all his curmudgeonly glory, in this classic, perceptive and laugh-out-loud Discworld mystery that will keep you turning the pages.
'In my opinion, this is the book where Pratchett *really* hits his stride in terms of the city watch books . . . Is this book worth your time? Yes. A thousand times yes' Patrick Rothfuss, New York Times bestselling author of The Name of the Wind
THERE'S A WEREWOLF WITH PRE-LUNAR TENSION IN ANKH-MORPORK. AND A DWARF WITH ATTITUDE AND A GOLEM WHO'S BEGUN TO THINK FOR ITSELF.
But for Commander Vimes, Head of Ankh-Morpork City…
Mervyn Peake was a writer, artist, and poet. His masterpiece is the Gormenghast trilogy (Titus Groan; Gormenghast; Titus Alone). Talk about world-building! Good lord, it’s wonderful.
A friend of mine read them over a summer holiday in blazing hot Greece, and all he could remember about it was the rain and cold and floods and clouds of Gormenghast. Peake was very ill when writing the third book, which is less satisfactory than the earlier volumes. He was too weak to give it the work that he knew it needed. Perhaps not laugh-out-loud humour, but plenty of sly, dark, often grotesque comedy.
The first volume of the GORMENGHAST trilogy of fantasy novels. Titus Groan is born the heir to Gormenghast castle, and finds himself in a world predetermined by complex rituals that have been made obscure by the passage of time. Along the corridors of the castle, the child encounters some of the dark characters who will shape his life.
I was ten when my parents gave me The Phantom Tollbooth. I loved it instantly, and read it again and again and again.
It has a magical balance of wit and adventure. The world through which it takes its young hero on his quest for Rhyme and Reason is filled with strange places and stranger inhabitants, all of whom are delightful—even the preposterous Humbug, one of literature’s greatest comic nincompoops.
Honorable mention also to another favorite of my childhood, equally loved: Norman Lindsay’s brilliant The Magic Pudding. If you ever get the chance to read either of these classics to a child, or children, you are guaranteed a lot of happy giggles.
With almost 5 million copies sold 60 years after its original publication, generations of readers have now journeyed with Milo to the Lands Beyond in this beloved classic. Enriched by Jules Feiffer’s splendid illustrations, the wit, wisdom, and wordplay of Norton Juster’s offbeat fantasy are as beguiling as ever.
“Comes up bright and new every time I read it . . . it will continue to charm and delight for a very long time yet. And teach us some wisdom, too.” --Phillip Pullman
For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only…
Tens of millions of viewers around the globe watch live as we win the World Championship of sword-and-sorcery. The others in my crew are Qrysta, a dual-wielding sword dancer, and Grell, the best damn Orc you’ll ever see with a battleaxe. In Real Life, I’m a retired teacher, and hard-core gamer; but in-game, I’m Daxx, an apex-level battlemage/healer. I built his avatar to be young and heroic—well, why would I want him to look like dull old me?
The next thing I know, I’m all alone, in the middle of nowhere, my only gear a crappy, noob-level sword and buckler. And I’m not who I was IRL anymore. I’m Daxx. For real. And I can hear wolves.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
