As a boy I was fascinated by stories about going to other planets, which has persisted even though I became a research chemist who wished to understand. I am curious where society will go, and some of my SF books strongly suggest what not to do if we go there. With my writing, I want to entertain, but leave the reader with something to think about. I hope this list will show the writing I enjoy, and maybe you will too.
Mars is to be colonized. The extraordinary hype means suckers will be attracted to floats, while nobody can check on them, and Mars will have no law enforcement.Most settlers set out with visions of a great adventure, but they are soon disillusioned. Fraud is exposed, but a murder shows only the fraudster has guns.
Where The Martianshowed the science behind one person surviving for a modest period, Red Goldshows the science and technology, much of which is yet to be developed, needed for many colonists to survive indefinitely. An appendix shows how the writing of this novel led to a novel explanation for the presence of Martian rivers. A story with crime, action, science, and the harsh Martian environment.
Hoyle was a genuine leading scientist, and I recognize his views on how the science community works, including how the hacks behave. He combines the "slices of spacetime" concept from relativity and the many-worlds interpretation from quantum mechanics to construct a story where Earth suddenly gets fragmented into a number of different time zones. Like Wells in The Time Machine Hoyle proposes how the future will turn out. To keep the science simple, the story is recorded by a composer.
I am also involved in quantum theory, I write science fiction, and I compose music as a hobby. Leaving aside Hoyle's talent, I can see myself here, and see Hoyle's understanding of both science and music.
Renowned scientist John Sinclair and his old school friend Richard, a celebrated composer, are enjoying a climbing expedition in the Scottish Highlands when Sinclair disappears without a trace for thirteen hours. When he resurfaces with no explanation for his disappearance, he has undergone an uncanny alteration: a birthmark on his back has vanished. But stranger events are yet to come: things are normal enough in Britain, but in France it's 1917 and World War I is raging, Greece is in the Golden Age of Pericles, America seems to have reverted to the 18th century, and Russia and China are thousands…
Again, personal. I was one of the very early people to review this when Andy was independent. Andy made spectacular use of the "Journal Entry" form, which usually does not work, he had a good understanding of science and of Mars, and how life could work. The storm that stranded him was wrong, but needed to get the story going, and the chemistry behind making water was poor, but overall an extremely clever story about how to use science to get out of very poor circumstances. I applaud his descriptions of the Martian terrain, geography, and how he used them to make the story interesting.
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.
Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old human error are…
About the colonization of Mars and the interplay of governance and economics, it strongly influenced me. First published in 1992, it includes a historical perspective of the then accepted science and descriptions of Mars. I found the enthusiasm for terraforming to be over-optimistic, but only when I put some numbers on it did I realize by how much. We are now reasonably convinced terraforming is not possible. Nevertheless, it made me more realistic about my Mars stories, so it had a big influence on me. I found it very strong on the social aspects of the settlement, and the conflict that will arise. I find it excellent for a story about people. The book had the first human on Mars in 2019. Oops.
The first novel in Kim Stanley Robinson's massively successful and lavishly praised Mars trilogy. 'The ultimate in future history' Daily Mail
Mars - the barren, forbidding planet that epitomises mankind's dreams of space conquest.
From the first pioneers who looked back at Earth and saw a small blue star, to the first colonists - hand-picked scientists with the skills necessary to create life from cold desert - Red Mars is the story of a new genesis.
It is also the story of how Man must struggle against his own self-destructive mechanisms to achieve his dreams: before he even sets foot…
Crichton was very close to my age, and my first effort at writing preceded his, but it was not a success, and when this book came out, I saw what was wrong with mine. It took some time before I returned to writing. The Andromeda Strain cleverly presents a crisis, and it cleverly leads the reader along a red herring path, then it introduces something that probably should have been seen first up. Crichton had an easy style to read, and always followed a logical path.
From the author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a captivating thriller about a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism, which threatens to annihilate human life.
Five prominent biophysicists have warned the United States government that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, a probe satellite falls to the earth and lands in a desolate region of northeastern Arizona. Nearby, in the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. What could cause such shock and fear? The terror has begun, and…
The fifth book on my list was a difficult choice; so many to exclude. I chose this because it is about the colonization of an alien world, in this case one tidally locked to a red dwarf. The description of the planet is good, although it begs the question of why the atmosphere did not freeze out on the dark side. I was struck by the highlighting of some of the sociological problems of colonizing such a strange world. It touches on the scientific aspects, the sociological aspects of being that far from home, and the economic issues. There is also a good story; I found it both entertaining and imaginative.
How would you survive on a planet that doesn't spin?
An awe-inspiring Planetary Romance from Terry Pratchett's co-author on the Long Earth Books
The very far future: The Galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous Galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light ...
I became fascinated with 16th-century and 17th-century Europe after reading Don Quixote many years ago. Since then, every novel or nonfiction book about that era has felt both ancient and contemporary. I’m always struck by how much our environment has changed—transportation, communication, housing, government—but also how little we as people have changed when it comes to ambition, love, grief, and greed. I doubled down my reading on that time period when I researched my novel, Dulcinea. Many people read in the eras of the Renaissance, World War II, or ancient Greece, so I’m hoping to introduce them to the Baroque Age.
Dolça Llull Prat, a wealthy Barcelona woman, is only 15 when she falls in love with an impoverished poet-solder. Theirs is a forbidden relationship, one that overcomes many obstacles until the fledgling writer renders her as the lowly Dulcinea in his bestseller.
By doing so, he unwittingly exposes his muse to gossip. But when Dolça receives his deathbed note asking to see her, she races across Spain with the intention of unburdening herself of an old secret.
On the journey, she encounters bandits, the Inquisition, illness, and the choices she's made. At its heart, Dulcinea is about how we betray the people we love, what happens when we succumb to convention, and why we squander the few chances we get to change our lives.
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