I find stimulation, knowledge and
entertainment in a wide range of reading material, from crime fiction to true crime,
horror and westerns and science fiction.
This tale of a space ship named
Providence and its four-member crew battling a new alien species ranks among my
science fiction favorites, alongside Justin Cronin’s Passage trilogy and the
Wool books now being serialized on Apple TV as Silo. Published in 2020 by
veteran SciFi author Max Barry, it recounts a future voyage into deep space to
scout the new species after first contact 17 years before.
Besides non-stop
action and in-depth character development for each member of the crew, Barry
also provides a greedy corporate villain with a secret agenda using an AI to
actually control the ship.
Following characters as they face survival
challenges and solve problems offers the kind of inspirational reading experience
that lingers long after I finish a book.…
When I was bored or stressed out at school as a kid, I used to pretend that I was an alien posing as a person and that I’d come to earth to learn about humans. It was fun and helped me to relax. (Look, we all have our own ways of relaxing, I don’t know why “pretending to be an alien” isn’t on more self-care lists these days). Given my tendency to drift toward other worlds, it’s amazing that it took me so long to write a book featuring aliens! The trouble-making Sneaks provide the action in my most recent MG book, which also deals with very real middle-school struggles with friendships and family.
On Take Your Kid To Work Day, Jillian is thrilled that she gets to go to space with her parents. The routine trip goes terribly wrong, their shuttle crashes, and Jillian has to figure out how to survive – and save her injured parents – with only her own ingenuity and the help of a sarcastic, TV-loving AI nanobot swarm called SABRINA.
The bantering Jillian-Sabrina relationship is the highlight of the book, and Jillian is a pitch-perfect MG protagonist. It was a delight to read about a super anxious kid solving problems in the absolute worst of situations.
The Aliens: Primarily, a very creepy parasite – but the descriptions and fictional-science behind all the various life forms on the planet are fantastic.
Can an anxious eleven-year-old find her chill and save her family from creepy aliens? Only if she’s the most awesome, super-brave astronaut since Spaceman Spiff! So take a deep breath, grab your sidekick, and blast off with Jillian to Parasite Planet.
Eleven-year-old Jillian hates surprises. Even fun ones make her feel all panicky inside. But, she’s always dreamed of joining her space-explorer parents on a mission. It’s Take Your Kid to Work Day, and Jillian finally has her chance to visit an alien world!
The journey to Planet 80 UMa c is supposed to be just a fun camping trip.…
In my day job I’m a professor in a hard science and, unsurprisingly, a lesbian. I love sapphic fiction, especially speculative sapphic fiction, but it can be hard to find as the books are seldom labeled as such. Because I write in this genre I’ve been able to ferret out a lot of them, and have made it a mini mission to read as many as possible. I’m particularly drawn to those that get science right (bad science to a science professor is like nails on a chalk board), and those that have at least a little bit of kissing.
Good space opera is built on time-honored tropes, and Pratt hits them all on the head. Space princess? Check. Ragtag crew? Check. Strange, otherworldly aliens and a dash of romance? Double check. The Wrong Stars is space opera at its finest, with a classic adventure between humans and aliens, good versus evil, and technological innovation that makes you stop and consider current trends.
The romance line is sapphic, age gap, flirtatious and commanding. Callie is our commanding captain, cool and in charge. Elena has been in cryosleep on a generational ship that was attacked by violent aliens and has some trauma to work out. Who better to help than Callie? And of course the whole crew needs to go investigate these new aliens. The fate of the galaxy is at stake!
The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials... and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.
Unlike the typical tales of a flawless fighting unit, this story follows Commander Kami Trenn and her ragtag squad of mixed-race space marines.
Dog Squad fights a mysterious adversary whose presence remains shrouded in secrecy. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance, but will they be able to make enough of a difference?
Can they hope to uncover the enemy’s plans for galactic dominance before the Alliance falls? Maybe. If they can stop fighting each other.
Across the void formed by two galactic spiral arms, vast forces face each other.
The tenuous Alliance, sixty civilizations united only by fear of invasion, prepare to resist the encroachment of their as-yet unseen enemy, known only as the Creeps.
The Void has become a battleground. Three thousand light years across, and populated by a scattering of ten thousand ‘dark’ worlds, it is the Alliance’s last chance to protect their way of life. Self-destructive, robotic drones pour across the Void in ever-increasing numbers, testing the Alliance fleets to breaking point.
Looking back, I was surprised at the things I'd done and the distance I'd traveled from my lower-middle-class upbringing in an industrial town. Destined for a life on the hot beds at the steel mill, I worked my way through college, found a job as a cub copywriter, learned documentary filmmaking, won an EMMY Award, moved to Hollywood, and started my 'sho biz' career.
What I love most about this story is the fresh new take on ‘the aliens among us.’ The author picks a ‘backwoods country boy’ to confront and eventually be chased by powerful creatures from outer space. Lucky for the country boy, he is given some superpowers to help him survive.
I liked how the story moved along with snappy enthusiasm (this is the first of six volumes).
The adventure begins when JB Tucker, a simple, backwoods country boy–born and raised in the Carolina swamps–accidentally becomes infected with tiny, autonomous alien tech.
The hundreds of millions of sub-molecular robots coursing through his bloodstream have evolved far beyond their original design and capabilities. The freak pairing of the off-world medical protocols and JB’s unique human body chemistry result in immediate and dramatic consequences.
Now, relentlessly hunted by off-worlders intent on both the retrieval of their stolen technology and his utter destruction, JB finds himself thrust into the center of an intergalactic conflict that he can neither comprehend, nor escape.…
As a long-term advocate of space colonization I’ve always been drawn to Mars, not by adventure stories but by the idea that ordinary people may someday live there. So this was the theme of my first novel. I wrote it before we had gone to the moon, though it wasn't published until 1970, after my better-known book Enchantress from the Stars. When in 2006 I revised it for republication, little about Mars needed changing; mainly I removed outdated sexist assumptions and wording. Yet the book still hasn’t reached its intended audience because though meant for girls who aren’t already space enthusiasts, its publishers persisted in labeling it science fiction rather than Young Adult romance.
Buzz Aldrin, best known for having been one of the first two astronauts to walk on the moon, has been active throughout the time since then in promoting an expanded space program. In this book he goes into detail—but not too much detail for non-technical readers—about how space activity can help to preserve Earth, in addition to describing various proposals for returning to the moon and reaching Mars, He believes explorers should go there to stay permanently and build a base rather than return to Earth between trips. The book, published in 2013, was overoptimistic in suggesting that as early as 2020 selected astronauts could be asked to commit to spending the rest of their lives on Mars, but I’m sure that when opportunity arises there will be volunteers.
Can astronauts reach Mars by 2035? Absolutely, says Buzz Aldrin, one of the first men to walk on the moon. Celebrated astronaut, brilliant engineer, bestselling author, Aldrin believes it is not only possibly but vital to America's future to keep pushing the space frontier outward for the sake of exploration, science, development, commerce, and security. What we need, he argues, is a commitment by the U.S. President as rousing as JFK's promise to reach the moon by the end of the 1960s-an audacious, inspiring goal-and a unified vision for space exploration. In Mission to Mars, Aldrin plots that trajectory, stressing…
I'm a linguist by trade with an MA in Intercultural Communications. I'm also an immigrant in my chosen country. You could say I have a fascination for different worlds/cultures in my blood. But those cultures only really come alive with the people that live in them, the way they think, feel, and talk, and especially where their cultures meet, with all the tensions, heartbreaks, love and hate, misunderstandings, fear, and courage that reverberate in those encounters.
A seemingly perfect society and its ugly underbelly always make for a compelling read. But this one goes a step beyond with compassion, culture-clash, inclusivity, sheer storytelling genius, and characters I was rooting hard for through every page. Luckily, since I couldn't get enough, there are quite a few sequels.
In a world where the marginalized of society are sent into space on suicide missions, one woman decides to fight back: “Riveting” (David Feintuch).
In Expendable, the first volume of the League of Peoples, Festina Ramos is assigned to escort an unstable admiral to planet Melaquin. Little is known about Melaquin, for every explorer who’s landed there has disappeared. It’s come to be known as the “planet of no return,” and the High Council has made a habit of sending troublesome admirals there in an attempt to get rid of them. It’s clear that this is intended to be Ramos’s…
My 15 seasons at Grand Canyon inspired me to understand its story of revelation, which led to a fascination with the history of exploration overall. This has resulted in a series of books about explorers, places explored, and a conceptual scaffolding by which to understand it all: a geologist of the American West (Grove Karl Gilbert); Antarctica (The Ice); revisiting the Rim with better conceptual gear, How the Canyon Became Grand; and using its mission as a narrative spine, Voyager: Exploration, Space, and Third Great Age of Discovery. The grand sweep deserved a grand summary, so I’ve ended with The Great Ages of Discovery.
The current era of exploration began after World War II, announced by the International Geophysical Year. With Antarctica as a pivot, exploration moved down to the world’s ocean depths and out to interplanetary space. Space got the most attention – it was visible and had a literature that ice and abyss couldn’t match.
With vigor, clarity, and a lively tempo, This New Ocean narrates the space race in both its manned and robotic expressions, its American and Soviet versions, its technology, and its politics. Burrows is an enthusiast, but not an ideologue or a blinkered astrofuturist. A good survey and introduction, This New Ocean makes a lively read.
It was all part of man's greatest adventure--landing men on the Moon and sending a rover to Mars, finally seeing the edge of the universe and the birth of stars, and launching planetary explorers across the solar system to Neptune and beyond.
The ancient dream of breaking gravity's hold and taking to space became a reality only because of the intense cold-war rivalry between the superpowers, with towering geniuses like Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolyov shelving dreams of space travel and instead developing rockets for ballistic missiles and space spectaculars. Now that Russian archives are open and thousands of…
As a scientist, I love hard science fiction, especially when the story makes me think about the true nature of reality or takes me on an adventure to places unknown. We’ve all read the classics from Clarke, Heinlein, Bear, or Asimov. But books written decades ago are becoming increasingly dated as society progresses into a new century. (Will people of the future really chain smoke? And why are all the characters men?) Never fear, modern hard sci-fi is alive and well. Here are five recent books that tell an intriguing, uplifting, or awe-inspiring story. Even better than the classics, it’s hard sci-fi for the 21st century!
I normally avoid dystopian, but this story doesn’t dwell in misery like so many apocalyptic stories do.
Last Man Standing is more like Andy Weir’s book, The Martian, because it’s about one man’s survival under extreme conditions. A scientist is stranded on a space station after an attack that has killed everyone else onboard. What happened, and why? He doesn’t know, but he’ll do anything to stay alive and find a way to get back to Earth despite a thousand obstacles in his path and little knowledge of spaceflight.
This story can be intense, but the character stays positive and has a lot of heart.
I love to read, and sometimes I want to be lost in a story or world for just an hour or two. Oh, I’m always sorry when a good story ends, no matter how long or short. But a good novella is like a slice of homemade chocolate cake. I might want to eat more, but if it’s perfectly done, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as that first, warm slice out of the oven.
Lindsay Buroker weaves great characters into her books and novellas. This is the best of space opera with an important “rescue” at the heart of the mystery. No worthy man, guard dog, or even android will be left behind.
The series develops into a romantic series set in outer space. This book stands on its own, with a lovely main character who has enough brains and talent to solve a mystery and enough heart to save those worth saving. It's a fun read and a great introduction to Buroker’s work.
McCall Richter works as a skip tracer, tracking down criminals, con men, and people who stop making payments on their fancy new spaceships.
Her job description says nothing about locating vast quantities of stolen maple syrup, but thanks to her helpful new android employee, she finds herself tramping through a “sugar house” on a frosty moon full of suspicious characters. The only witness to the crime? The junkyard dog next door.
Junkyard is a stand-alone novella set two years before Fractured Stars.
When I was a child, the thing that plagued me most about my favorite genre, sci-fi, was that none of the protagonists were women! As a daughter to doctors and research scientists, it felt strange that the only female characters in sci-fi were these buxom, mystical healers or seamstresses who meekly repaired their crewmates’ uniforms. While that problem has been remedied over the last two decades of excellence in mainstream sci-fi with some truly unforgettable female heroines, they’re not as plentiful in the niche market of humorous sci-fi. I am thrilled to share this list of my favorite lighthearted, humorous sci-fi reads with female protagonists.
Cuban-descended protagonist Eve Innocente is trying to rescue her kidnapped sister from a galactic crime syndicate known as the Fridge. What really carried me through the story were the whacky shenanigans along the way, including a cargo hold full of psychic cats. This book had such a fun feel!
"Jam-packed with weird aliens, mysterious artifacts, and lovable characters... a tremendous good time and an impressive debut." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred)
A hilarious, offbeat debut space opera that skewers everything from pop culture to video games and features an irresistible foul-mouthed captain and her motley crew, strange life forms, exciting twists, and a galaxy full of fun and adventure.
Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo…
