I studied propaganda and it is a subject that we all should be familiar with. Our basic liberties are bound up in our understanding of information and how different systems use it. I am the author of over 20 novels, and my stories have been published in numerous magazines and over 34 anthologies. I was born in London, and I've lectured on English and American literature at the University of London. I currently teach creative writing at Universities and online.
Classic Bradbury. Seminal work depicting a dystopian future in which books are outlawed and any that are found are burned by firemen. This novel is all about the suppression of information. It predicts all too realistically the controls on human liberties seen in modern totalitarian regimes.
The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen.
Over 1 million copies sold in the UK.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.
Classic work of cut-up exploring addictions at all societal levels. Burroughs depicts the totalitarian government of Annexia. In the novel Dr. Benway is "an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing, and control," and he has been sent away from Annexia, because he claims to "abhor brutality." Annexia is portrayed as a totalitarian state in which citizens are subject to spontaneous searches and must keep track of ever-changing documents.
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century.
Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume—that contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs—is a valuable and fresh experience of a novel that has lost none of its relevance or satirical bite.
Perhaps the most apposite, the novel that became the movie Blade Runner, in which Dick predicts the totalitarian mechanisation of society, where humans risk becoming androids. In the novel, we follow the story of detective Rick Deckard in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco as he tracks down runaway androids, deals with his Virtual Reality-addicted wife, and keeps up the pretence that his electric sheep is in fact real. The point Dick makes is that if we succumb to the totalitarian mechanization of our world, we risk becoming androids ourselves, reduced to “humans of mere use—men made into machines” (187). To deny technology’s pervasive role in our existence means, then, to deny reality—the reality of a world in which we are advancingly imbricated in a mechanical presence. Only by recognizing how it has encroached upon our understanding of “life” can we come to full terms with the technologies we have produced.
As the eagerly-anticipated new film Blade Runner 2049 finally comes to the screen, rediscover the world of Blade Runner . . .
World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life.
Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were…
Ostensibly about crime and rehabilitation this is in fact Burgess’s dark look at free will and a totalitarian society that removes it for the sake of law and order. Alex is a charismatic anti-social delinquent who likes Beethoven. He and his gang, who speak in Nadsat, a form of bastardised Russian slang mixed with English, commit a series of crimes until Alex is sent to a rehabilitation centre. This is nothing more than a totalitarian system. A classic novel about the conflict between the individual and the state.
In Anthony Burgess's influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends' intense reaction against their society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess's introduction, "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."
"I see no butterfly wings in the Rorschach test, but a mountain of bones." So says Dale Helix, who is convinced he is being abducted by a shadowy group of rulers called The Assembly. He claims they have programmed him to kill.
International novelist Richard Godwin’s latest title is set in a dystopian city, and is an exploration of totalitarianism, paranoia and social engineering in a society where it is impossible to gauge the truth. The aim of the programme is to study the link between serial killers and dictators in order to clone the ideal dictator. And the Assembly are engineering a new gender. Is Dale insane or is his paranoia a key to a hidden truth?
As a child, I lived in a small valley sheltered from the night city lights. I could see the stars, and from that time, that is where my imagination dwelled. As a teenager, I read several of the books I have listed here, and from that point, I was inspired to read more and also to write myself. I sincerely believe that despite our current problems, humanity will outlive its troubled childhood and reach for the stars. We are destined for the stars, and only in the works of science fiction writers is that future explored. The books below helped me to become a successful author in my own right.
An alien starship appears in the Solar System! Humanity faces a glorious future, or total extinction, and only Joe Falcon can make the choice. Never would Joe have imagined it would fall to him to make the decision that would alter the destiny of two worlds, launching humanity towards a glorious future, or to extinction.
Falcon's Call is an action packed dive into the unknown, written in the style of the great, classic, science-fiction stories. If you like surprising plot twists, compelling characters and a hero who actually cares, you must read this new novel by Mike Waller.
Reader's Favorite Gold Medal winner 2019 B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree 2019 Chill With A Book Premier Award 2019
In a heart-pounding battle for humanity's survival, one man holds the key to a glorious future or utter extinction.
In a race against time, Earth and Mars race to claim a derelict alien ship as it enters the Solar System, both aware that whichever planet succeeds might in so doing achieve technological advantage over the other. But who should they send? Joe Falcon, an unlikely candidate, never saw himself as the "right" person. Accompanied by a crew of misfits, each fleeing their own…
