Before I was an author, I was a scientist pursuing a PhD in molecular genetics. When I left the lab and started writing, that scientist’s need for real-world sense stuck with me and became a theme in everything I write. The authors I like understand that “suspension of disbelief” is a limited resource, so they’d better only ask readers for it when it counts. Get the baseline facts and logic right, and I’ll believe and enjoy the fantastical stuff spun from it so much more.
This has been one of my favorite books since I was a kid. I love it for two main reasons: The first is that I’m a fiend for exploring the real limits of ability (which the Bene Gesserit and Fremen do). The second is that as fantastical as the world is, it’s grounded in real science.
There are no giant sandworts on my own planet, but I completely believe why and how they’d exist on Arrakis. Herbert even includes an appendix to explain how it works, called “The Ecology of Dune.”
Fiction requires a leap of faith, but the real-science grounding in Dune makes that leap a whole lot easier because I believe where it’s coming from.
Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.
Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.
You can’t get more “real science" than this book! The author is an engineer who refuses to ask readers to take things on faith if there’s any way he can give them a real-world grounding with the science we already have.
I loved it because I completely and totally believed it. Weir works within the rules of the real world rather than ignoring them and hoping readers don’t notice, which is what so many books do. All you need to do is believe that a manned mission to Mars is possible, and the rest won’t raise a single “but wait; that wouldn’t happen” eyebrow!
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…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
This is one of my go-to re-reads. I love the quiet and isolation of it: just a small crew trapped beneath the ocean, weathering something heretofore unknown. That’s what I like first and foremost: the mood of it all.
But atop that is how believable it is for me. I always feel like I learn something when I read Michael Crichton. He had a knack for using real science and then twisting it just enough to create wonderful fictional situations. I’m not joyless enough to require learning to like a book, but I’ll put it this way: The less often an author asks me to suspend disbelief, the more willing I am to go for the ride when they finally do.
“Crichton keeps us guessing at every turn in his best work since The Andromeda Strain.” —Los Angeles Times
“Sphere may be Crichton’s best novel, but even if it ranked only second or third, it would be a must for suspense fans.” —Miami Herald
A classic thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Crichton, Sphere is a bravura demonstration of what he does better than anyone: riveting storytelling that combines frighteningly plausible, cutting edge science and technology with pulse-pounding action and serious chills. The gripping story of a group of American scientists sent to the…
This book blew me away! This time, it wasn’t about science in a strict sense but rather the “scientific mindset” the book was written with. Every aspect of a real zombie war is honestly considered—all the ramifications of an event so enormous—versus the simplistic way filmmakers portray it.
How do you fight millions of things that never back down or die? They’d spread out, for instance, so you’d be finding zombies for decades later, maybe in small pieces. They don’t need to breathe, so you could “lose” them underwater until they grab you one day. And what about military strategy? How hard would it be to fight an army of soldiers who can’t panic, never give up, and don’t care enough to retreat?
It began with rumours from China about another pandemic. Then the cases started to multiply and what had looked like the stirrings of a criminal underclass, even the beginning of a revolution, soon revealed itself to be much, much worse.
Faced with a future of mindless man-eating horror, humanity was forced to accept the logic of world government and face events that tested our sanity and our sense of reality. Based on extensive interviews with survivors and key players in the ten-year fight against the horde, World War Z brings the finest traditions of journalism to bear on what is…
4.5 billion years ago, Earth was forming - but nothing could have survived there…
From Cells to Ourselves is the incredible story of how life on earth started and how it gradually evolved from the first simple cells to the abundance of life around us today. Walk with dinosaurs, analyse…
I love it when a book shows me the real consequences of something I’d never considered, such as this book’s breakup of the moon. It creates true fear that hooks me into a story because once I see the truth, I find it hard not to believe it.
Everything that follows feels exactly the way Earth scientists would really deal with an apocalyptic event…and the way humans would, too, as they jockey for superiority and power. (Psychology is a science, too!) Exciting events are always grounded in the consequences of physics and biology…including the book's name, which took most of the story to make sense!
The astounding new novel from the master of science fiction. President Barack Obama's summer reading choice and recently optioned by Ron Howard and IMAGINE to be made into a major motion picture.
What would happen if the world were ending?
When a catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish race against the inevitable. An ambitious plan is devised to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere. But unforeseen dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain...
Five thousand years later, their progeny - seven distinct races now three…
Before the zombie plague had time to destroy us, pharma giant Hemisphere created the miracle drug Necrophage, which halts the disease wherever it stands. Take Necrophage soon, and you’ll be almost normal. Wait a while, and you’ll forever be half-undead. Wait too long, though, and you go feral and are sent to the Yosemite preserve to be hunted for sport.
But something’s always bothered reporter Alice Frank about Necrophage, and she thinks Hemisphere’s keeping secrets. As she investigates theories of conspiracy with the help of insider Ian Keys, the unthinkable begins to happen: the protection the drug gave us begins to wane, and the mixed society we’ve inherited—part human, part necrotic, becomes a time bomb.
Hunted by those who want to study his gravity powers, Jes makes his way to the best place for a mixed-species fugitive to blend in: the pleasure moon where everyone just wants to be lost in the party. It doesn’t take long for him to catch the attention of the…
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd…
