Books I read last year --- 2006: A Sci-fi Odyssey
Explore a captivating sci-fi odyssey with the best books of 2006! Discover must-read titles and hidden gems from my personal reading journey last year.
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Divine Invasions
by Lawrence Sutin
An official portrait of the influential novelist's life and career explores how Dick's writings expanded the scope of the science fiction genre, served as the inspirations for blockbuster movies, and influenced the written works of such contemporaries as Thomas Pynchon, Don Delillo, and David Foster Wallace. Original.
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick
A masterpiece ahead of its time, a prescient rendering of a dark future, and the inspiration for the blockbuster film Blade Runner One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and “retire” them. But when cornered, androids fight back—with lethal force. Praise for Philip K. Dick “The most consistently brilliant science fiction writer in the world.”—John Brunner “A kind of pulp-fiction Kafka, a prophet.”—The New York Times “[Philip K. Dick] sees all the sparkling—and terrifying—possibilities . . . that other authors shy away from.”—Rolling Stone
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Permutation City
by Greg Egan
Transformed into an electronic code, a Copy must discover an alternate way out, back into its real body, because the original avenue of escape has been cut off by the human version from which its was originally copied. Original.
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The World of Null-A
by A. E. van Vogt
Presents the science fiction classic set in the year 2650, where the Games Machine--twenty-five thousand electronic brains--sets the course of people's lives.
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Burning Chrome
by William Gibson
Best-known for his seminal sf novel Neuromancer, William Gibson is actually best when writing short fiction. Tautly-written and suspenseful, Burning Chrome collects 10 of his best short stories with a preface from Bruce Sterling, now available for the first time in trade paperback. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson's characters and intensely-realized worlds at his absolute best, from the chip-enhanced couriers of "Johnny Mnemonic" to the street-tech melancholy of "Burning Chrome."
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Strange Relations
by Philip José Farmer
Three works by a grand master of science fiction are brought together in this original volume. Previously published as separate books, "Flesh, Strange Relations," and "The Lovers," one of the most controversial and groundbreaking novels in sci fi, are collected. Original.
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The Forever War
by Joe W. Haldeman
Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand.
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Gateway
by Frederik Pohl
The Heechee gateways, remnants of an ancient civilization, provide instantaneous passage to the far reaches of the universe but do not ensure destination, return, wealth, or survival.
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Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
by Frederik Pohl
In Book Two of the Heechee Saga, Robinette Broadhead is on his way to making a fortune by bankrolling an expedition to the Food Factory--a Heechee spaceship that can graze the cometary cloud and transfor the basic elements of the universe into untold quantities of food. But even as he gambles on the breakthrough technology, he is wracked with the guilt of losing his wife, poised forever at the "event horizon" of a black hole where Robin had abaondoned her. As more and more information comes back from the expedition, Robin grows ever hopeful that he can rescue his beloved Gelle-Klara Moynlin. After three and a years, the factory is discovered to work, and a human is found aboard. Robin's suffering may be just about over.... THE HEECHEE SAGA Book One: Gateway Book Two: Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Book Three: Heechee Rendezvous Book Four: The Annals of the Heechee
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Gnarl!
by Rudy Rucker
Though he is also a mathematician, computer scientist, and essayist, Rudy Rucker is best known for his ground-breaking science fiction. The companion volume to Seek!, Rucker's selected nonfiction, Gnarl! brings together three dozen of the writer's best science fiction short stories. His first major story collection in 17 years, the volume includes a number of previously unanthologized stories, including tales cowritten with Marc Laidlaw, Paul Di Filippo, and Bruce Sterling. Classics such as "The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka," a timely meditation on the paradoxes of cloning, are side by side with works of pseudomemoir like "The Indian Rope Trick Explained." The Rucker formula - cutting-edge physics, a wild but perversely logical imagination, and a decidedly punk attitude - illuminates this new collection.
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True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier
by Vernor Vinge
A collection of articles and essays about the new frontier of the Internet, especially a direct interface between brain and computer that enables game players of the future to actually experience the world of their fantasies.
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Neutron Star
by Larry Niven
Come to Larry Niven's Universe and meet all the natives: Thrints, Bandersnatchi, Puppeteers -- and a host of other wonderfully created characters. Visit Lookitthat, Down, and Jinx -- indeed, an entire galaxy of planets found only in these stories that trace man's expansion and colonization throughout Known Space. A spectacular cycle of the future . . . a 10,000-year history of man on Earth and in space!
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The Demolished Man
by Alfred Bester
In 2301, a psychopathic business magnate comes up with the ultimate plan to eliminate his competition and destroy the order of society.
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Axiomatic
by Greg Egan
A dazzling collection of short fiction, filled with invention and hard-science speculation, by the popular author of QUARANTINE, PERMUTATION CITY, and DISTRESS. Growing in reputation and sales with every book, Greg Egan, has filled this volume with the best of his short fiction work, that his growing audience is sure to appreciate.
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The Ascent of Wonder
by David G. Hartwell
Featuring more than sixty groundbreaking short stories by modern science fiction's most important and influential writers, The Ascent of Wonder offers a definitive and incisive exploration of the SF genre's visionary core. From Poe to Pohl, Wells to Wolfe, and Verne to Vinge, this hefty anthology fully charts the themes, trends, thoughts, and traditions that comprise the challenging yet rich literary form known as "hard SF."
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Porno
by Irvine Welsh
Ten years after the events detailed in "Trainspotting", Simon Williamson, a.k.a. Sick Boy, is back in Edinburgh to direct and produce a porn film along with university student Nikki Fuller-Smith and old friend Mark Benton.
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