Starting with Tolkien’s novels as a child, I’ve devoured countless SF&F stories. My love of the genre, particularly high fantasy, combined with the irritatingly fashionable trend of so many fantasy authors to stop writing their stories partway through and leave we readers high and dry, motivated me to start writing, to see if I could create something that I was missing as I hunted for new material to read. As an intense hater of winter, spring always signified to me a time of hope, of new growth, of opportunity, of the ending of difficulty, and the start of a time when all things were possible.
While Piers Anthony boasts an amazing roster of books longer than my arm, one of my favorites, Shade of the Tree, reminds me of the primacy of nature.
A father moves himself and his two young children to an estate deep in the Florida woods, an inheritance from his odd uncle. I recall reading it first as a young teenager when it first came out and growing enthralled with Anthony’s skill at creating nature itself as a character; in this case the brooding, eerie forest surrounding the estate.
The estate was Joshua Pinson's inheritance from his oddball uncle Elijah: isolated in the deep Florida woods, with a half-built solar house stocked with enough supplies to weather a siege. Josh decided it was time to take his two young children away from New York and the memories of their murdered mother. Time to make a new life in sunny Florida. There was just one thing that Josh hadn't counted on.
Much SF&F literature has explored the concept of what the world might look like with fewer (or no) humans.
Weisman’s well-researched book imagines how our environment would recover; how nature might take back control without humans around to continue wrecking it.
He imagines the primacy of nature in a fascinating way and manages to avoid the normative language that might be off-putting, drawing the reader into a place that might as well be 1000 light years away from Earth.
Revised Edition with New Afterword from the Author
Time #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Over 3 million copies sold in 35 Languages
"On the day after humans disappear, nature takes over and immediately begins cleaning house - or houses, that is. Cleans them right off the face of the earth. They all go."
What if mankind disappeared right now, forever... what would happen to the Earth in a week, a year, a millennium? Could the planet's climate ever recover from human activity? How would nature destroy our huge cities and our…
The 3rd and final book in the Dragonlance Chronicles installment, Weis & Hickman finished an incredible tale inspired by their Dungeons & Dragons role playing group.
Elves, humans, dwarves, and kender must work together to beat back the rise of an evil goddess seeking its way into the world to ensave its inhabitants. Having been a Dungeon Master for many years, I devoured these books, and remain appreciative to this day that role playing geeks love to read novels as well.
The third title published in the Dragonlance line is now being released in a trade hardcover edition for the first time ever. Featuring the stunning art and design that graced the cover of the paperback edition, this new version is the final edition in the hardcover release of the entire Chronicles trilogy. This release also continues the planned release of all the core Dragonlance titles from Weis & Hickman in trade hardcover, allowing fans and collectors alike the first-ever chance to obtain the entire set in hardcover.
This book shattered my view of what science fiction could be.
A botanist gets left for dead by the rest of his departing crew during a storm on Mars, and must battle for life, alone, millions of miles from home. The way Weir crafted the story, using historic missions to the Red Planet, as well as creating his own orbital calculations to judge if what he wrote was possible, left me shaking my head in awe.
Who’d have thought you could grow crops on Mars? I would have lasted a day there before I broke something and accidentally killed myself.
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…
No list on any topic related to fantasy could be complete without the author that influenced everyone and everything that came after.
A gardener, seemingly content with his simple life of farming, eating, and smoking, goes on an adventure to reclaim the treasure of a group of homeless dwarves from a marauding dragon. This book and its sequels, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has never failed to make me cry, and I’ve read them a hundred times.
Every author strives to affect his or her readers the way Tolkien impacted his.
Special collector's film tie-in hardback of the best-selling classic, featuring the complete story with a sumptuous cover design inspired by THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY and brand new reproductions of all the drawings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End.
But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey 'there and back again'. They have a plot to raid…
Malthus Kierin always dreamed of adventuring, of making his mark upon the world of Kalan. After he earns his robe and staff, rewards for passing the tests required to become a wizard, the door to his dreams stands open. But a nightmare awaits him on the other side, a black-hearted wizard who, along with his vile undead minions, systematically assassinates all of Kalan’s heroes. The tale of Malthus and his small band of companions begins, as they flee from the Darkener on a seemingly hopeless quest for aid. Who now will become heroes? Or will Kalan fall into an age of darkness?
I always want to be where I am not. This was why I read sci-fi and fantasy as a child. This was why I left the country of my birth and became a professional nomad. This is why I am spellbound by mountains I will never climb and oceans I will never dive into. Imagination can take you everywhere. It took me to the academy, where speculative literature became my scholarly field, and to the publishing world, where I am now getting ready for the launch of my eighth novel. When you are at home nowhere, you are at home everywhere–including on the summits of impossible mountains.
In Svetlana's country, it’s a felony to break a mirror. Mirrors are conduits of the Voice, the deity worshiped by all who follow Light. The Voice protects humans of MotherLand from the dangers that beset them on all sides: an invading army of wolf-headed men on their borders and the infectious, ever-evolving, zombie-like Enemy that plagues them at home. When Svetlana meets Andrei, a traumatized and amnesiac soldier from another war, she embarks on a harrowing journey of adventure and self-discovery that leads her to question everything she was taught to…
A voice through Svetlana's mirror guides her beloved MotherLand from behind its' electric tower. The war with Wulfstan is not going as well as Sveta and her parents hope, but Sveta trusts the Voice. When her best friend Tattie goes missing, and Sveta saves Andrei, a soldier in summer uniform in the dead of winter, it takes Sveta through a crucible of Light, doubt, and back to the altar of true belief. Girl of Light unravels Sveta's beloved MotherLand in a war-torn adventure through monsters, missing eyes and broken mirrors.
