I grew up on a diet of dystopian fiction, and when I first began taking craft more seriously and diving into short stories, that was the genre I found myself writing most. I suppose what draws me to the genre is how dystopian fiction has the ability to illuminate society’s faults and injustices and humanity as a whole, the bleak futures that it could create if certain ideologies were allowed to persist, the way individual behaviours and actions can well shape the future and dictate whether it becomes one filled with hope or one that falls into disaster.
I have read many stories and books about clones and the treatment of these beings whose genetic makeup and minds are much like our own.
Kazuo Ishiguro explores more than just the ethics of using clones as though they are not humans through a philosophical lens that brings us to question what exactly makes us human and what our true values are if our sole purpose from the moment of birth is to sacrifice ourselves, cut our lives short, for the sake of others.
One of the most acclaimed novels of the 21st Century, from the Nobel Prize-winning author
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense…
I recall reading this book during my undergraduate studies, and it was one of the ones I will never forget.
It speaks about the ways in which humans interact with alien species and how we might come to accept them despite our differences, what we can learn from them, and how it can reshape us for the better. This book explores identity and Otherness and whether we can coexist with a species other than ourselves.
The acclaimed trilogy that comprises Lilith's Brood is Hugo and Nebula award-winner Octavia E. Butler at her best.
Presented for the first time in one volume with an introduction by Joan Slonczewski, Ph.D., Lilith's Brood is a profoundly evocative, sensual -- and disturbing -- epic of human transformation.
Lilith Iyapo is in the Andes, mourning the death of her family, when war destroys Earth. Centuries later, she is resurrected -- by miraculously powerful unearthly beings, the Oankali. Driven by an irresistible need to heal others, the Oankali are rescuing our dying planet by merging genetically with mankind. But Lilith and…
What fascinates me most about this novella is its ability to capture such depth and fullness in such a short length.
This book explores the concept of time and language, and how the way humans perceive time vastly differs from the alien species, and the way language ultimately affects time perception and decision-making as well.
'A science fiction genius . . . Ted Chiang is a superstar.' - Guardian
With Stories of Your Life and Others, his masterful first collection, multiple-award-winning author Ted Chiang deftly blends human emotion and scientific rationalism in eight remarkably diverse stories, all told in his trademark precise and evocative prose.
From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth with the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty, to an alien language that challenges our very perception of…
This is one of the most heartbreaking yet thought-provoking books I’ve read in my life.
It is an experimental story that raises the question about intelligence and human connection and asks us whether having more knowledge is indeed a vice or virtue. For the narrator, they discover the reality of their relationship and friendship with others after gaining greater intellect before losing it once more.
With the growing fear of technology and the breach of privacy, as well as the way media consumption has been shaping audiences’ values, beliefs, and ideologies, never has this classic novel been more prevalent.
Given social media dominance, it feels as though we’re always being watched, that our actions are always being dictated by an outside force, whether it is Big Brother from the novel, or the watchful eyes of those who view our content.
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
If you had the opportunity to give up humanity for efficiency, mechanical invincibility, and to surpass human limitations...would you?
Ai is a cyborg, under the guise of an AI writing program, who struggles to keep up with the never-blinking city of Emit as it threatens to leave all those like her behind.
Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.
Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…
From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?
