Some Science Fiction for June
Discover the best science fiction books for June with our curated list of top reads. Explore thrilling new releases and classic picks for your next adventure.
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The Stars My Destination
by Alfred Bester
In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men--and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive.
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The Essential Ellison
by Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison is probably best known as a script writer for sci-fi and fantasy movies and TV series such as the original Outer Limits, The Hunger, Logan's Run, and Babylon Five. But his range is much broader than that, encompassing stories, novels, essays, reviews, reminiscences, plays, even fake autobiographies. Essential Ellison includes contains 74 unabridged works, including such classics as A Boy and His Dog, Xenogenesis, and Mefisto in Onyx. Includes black-and-white photos.
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Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
The first novel in Isaac Asimov’s classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series THE EPIC SAGA THAT INSPIRED THE APPLE TV+ SERIES FOUNDATION • Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future—to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire—both scientists and scholars—and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation. The Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are among the most influential in the history of science fiction, celebrated for their unique blend of breathtaking action, daring ideas, and extensive worldbuilding. In Foundation, Asimov has written a timely and timeless novel of the best—and worst—that lies in humanity, and the power of even a few courageous souls to shine a light in a universe of darkness.
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Hebrewpunk
by Lavie Tidhar
Lavie Tidhar gathers some of his best work in one collection. Stories that are infused with centuries of tradition and painted with Hebrew mythology. We meet the Tzaddik as he faces off against a vengeful angel intent on sending the Fallen to hell. The shape shifting Rat fights lycanthropic Nazis. The Rabbi takes us on a thoughtful and amusing journey into the possibilities of a Jewish state in the heart of Africa. Finally, all three protagonists appear in an old-fashioned caper story that will leave you breathless. Table of Contents "The Heist" "Transylvania Mission" "Uganda" "The Dope Fiend" Special introduction by Laura Anne Gilman "How well I recall, as a lad aged some ten years, circa 1937, reading Lavie Tidhar's stirring adventures in such pulps as Thrilling Hebrew Tales and Yiddish Excitement Quarterly. Even then, these tales possessed a fascinating air of archaic menace and occult power. Now, some seventy years after their original publication, they positively radiate the uncanny sensibilities of a bygone era. What a cast of characters--the Rabbi, the Rat and the Tzaddik, as memorable as Doc Savage and his crew! And what a set of venues--the London underworld, the African jungles, and more! Plus robust menaces galore! Lavie Tidhar surpassed those who went before him, such as H. Rider Haggard, and inspired those who came after, viz, Avram Davidson and Alan Moore. Having these rousing romps gathered at last into the volume HebrewPunk marks a milestone in the literature of the fantastic." --Paul Di Filippo, author of The Emperor of Gondwanaland and Other Stories "Lavie Tidhar has staked out (no pun intended) his own territory by imagining a Judaic mystical alternative history into which he injects vampires, zombies, werewolves, Tzaddiks, golems, and Rabbis. These four stories are wondrous, adventurous, and thought-provoking." --Ellen Datlow, editor of The Year's Best Horror "Here we have stories of Tzaddik, The Rat, the Rabbi... Lavie is mining ancient traditions and recent history to write stories of modern despair and a weird sort of redemptive compassion, messing with our expectations and always, always, leading with our humanity, even when those heroes are, by some standards, monsters." --Laura Anne Gilman, author of Burning Bridges "Lavie Tidhar has a unique and fascinating voice, as well as a good sense of history-- both History Surreal and History Literary, as well as the more mundane kind. Imagine Hard-Boiled Kabbalah, a Godfather Rabbi whose gang includes vampires, werewolves and (naturally) golems. If you like your otherworld fun noir, have I got a book for you!" --Kage Baker, author of In the Garden of Iden "I did read the book, and the good thing is that I loved it--kick-ass kosher adventures. Tidhar writes a sort of intensified supernatural action-surrealism that fair rattles along and is full of surprises--not only plot-twists and thrills, but a level of conceptual surprise, a reinvigoration of some of the more tired conventions of the fantasy-horror genre. Zombies, golems, werewolves, Rabbis, Kabbala, it's all here, and all saturated with a sense of exotic roundedness, an eerie solidity and reality. Not to be missed." --Adam Roberts, author of Gradisyl
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Salon Fantastique
by Ellen Datlow
Featuring pieces set in the contemporary, historical, and alternate-world arenas, a collection of thirty original fantasy tales includes contributions by such writers as Delia Sherman, Peter Beagle, Kelly Link, Pat Murphy, Garth Nix, and Gregory Maguire. Original.
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Into the Dreamlands
by Jason Andrew
Through our dreams, we explore our greatest fears and desires. Some believe that we tap into a vast ocean of human consciousness and experience. Other believe that we live with one foot in the material world and one that is unknowable. Journey with us into the Dreamlands. Featuring stories by: Caitlin R. Kiernan, Christa Faust, Bev Vincent, Jane Gwaltney, James S. Dorr, Amy J. Benesch, Gary McMahon, Gill Ainsworth, Larisa Walk, Louise Bohmer, Lisa Mantchev, and AC Wise
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God Laughs When You Die
by Michael Boatman
A host of drug dealers meets a foe they cannot kill. The president accidentally invites demons into the country and watches the pope turn into a sabertooth tiger. A man, dead since 1920, lives again in present day Los Angeles to satiate a malevolent goddess. These tales by Michael Boatman will disturb, terrify and traumatize you. Boatman grabs you by throat and drags you kicking and screaming through his prose. With a dash of Lansdale and a smattering of Martina's Wild Cards, the tales within inhabit the dark and nasty side of our souls, and throughout Boatman infuses it all with a keen wit and an eye for detail. And when he lets you up to breathe, like God, you might just find yourself laughing. This is the sort of stuff I like to read as the bells sound midnight. Paul Haines award-winning author of Doorways for the Dispossessed Boatman's debut collection will knock you down and kick you in the teeth. Alternatingly hysterical, grotesque, bizarre, and fantastic, Boatman's collection is a must-read for anyone itching to get their hands on fresh new fiction that pulls no punches. Ronald Damien Malfi, author of The Nature of Monsters and The Fall of Never Michael Boatman writes like a visitor from hell. Someone out on short term leave for bad behavior. I love this stuff. He's one of the new, and more than promising, writers making his mark, and a dark and wonderful mark it is. Joe R. Lansdale
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Queen of the Country
by dgk Goldberg
This isn't your daddy's collection of dark fiction. In fact, it's your mama's. From the suicide bombers of Palestine to the whooping fans of NASCAR, Kelly Goldberg was the queen of the country where pink drinks were sacraments and everyone slept till noon. Read along with her tour, and find out the secrets behind the melungeon moon, the fate of Princess Di, and what it feels like to wake up next to a corpse. With special essays by her friends Scott Nicholson (The Red Church, The Home) and Karen E. Taylor (The Vampire Vivienne, Blood Red Dawn) Queen of the Country will take you on a journey you'll never forget.
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Anathem
by Neal Stephenson
Raz, a mathematician, is among a cohort of secluded scientists and philosophers who are called upon to save the world from impending catastrophe.
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Cryptonomicon
by Neal Stephenson
With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century. In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detatchment 2702-commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe-is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces. Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia - a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails grandaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi sumarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty...or to universal totalitarianism reborn. A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, CRYPTONOMICON is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought, and creative daring; the product of a truly icon
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Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions. Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary. But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state). Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He’ll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.
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Mona Lisa Overdrive
by William Gibson
William Gibson, author of the extraordinary multiaward-winning novel Neuromancer, has written his most brilliant and thrilling work to date . . .The Mona Lisa Overdrive. Enter Gibson's unique world—lyric and mechanical, sensual and violent, sobering and exciting—where multinational corporations and high tech outlaws vie for power, traveling into the computer-generated universe known as cyberspace. Into this world comes Mona, a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is on a collision course with internationally famous Sense/Net star Angie Mitchell. Since childhood, Angie has been able to tap into cyberspace without a computer. Now, from inside cyberspace, a kidnapping plot is masterminded by a phantom entity who has plans for Mona, Angie, and all humanity, plans that cannot be controlled . . . or even known. And behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yazuka, the powerful Japanese underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes . . . or so they think.
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Neuromancer
by William Gibson
Case, a burned-out computer whiz, is asked to steal a security code that is locked in the most heavily guarded databank in the solar system, in a special twentieth anniversary edition of the influential Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel.
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A Good Old-fashioned Future
by Bruce Sterling
Presents seven short science fiction stories by Bruce Sterling.
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Holy Fire
by Bruce Sterling
The 21st century is coming to a close, and the medical industrial complex dominates the world economy. It is a world of synthetic memory drugs, benevolent government surveillance, underground anarchists, and talking canine companions. Power is in the hands of conservative senior citizens who have watched their health and capital investments with equal care, gaining access to the latest advancements in life-extension technology. Meanwhile, the young live on the fringes of society, ekeing out a meagre survival on free, government-issued rations and a black market in stolen technological gadgetry from an earlier, less sophisticated age. Mia Ziemann is a 94-year-old medical economist who enjoys all the benefits of her position. But a deathbed visit with a long-ago ex-lover and a chance meeting with a young bohemian dress-designer brings Mia to an awful revelation. She has lived her life with such caution that it has been totally bereft of pleasure and adventure. She has one chance to do it all over. But first she must submit herself to a radical--and painful--experimental procedure which promises to make her young again. The procedure is not without risk and her second chance at life will not come without a price. But first she will have to escape her team of medical keepers. Hitching a ride on a plane to Europe, Mia sets out on a wild intercontinental quest in search of spiritual gratification, erotic revelation, and the thing she missed most of all: the holy fire of the creative experience. She joins a group of outlaw anarchists whose leader may be the man of her dreams...or her undoing. Worst of all, Mia will have to undergo one last radical procedure that could cost her a second life. In Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling once again creates a unique and provocative future that deals with such timeless topics of the human condition as love, memory, science, politics, and the meaning of death. Poginant, lyrical, humorous, and often shocking, Holy Fire offers a hard unsparing look into a world that could become our own.
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Humans
by Robert J. Sawyer
Robert J. Sawyer, the award-winning and bestselling writer, hits the peak of his powers in Humans, the second book of The Neanderthal Parallax, his trilogy about our world and parallel one in which it was the Homo sapiens who died out and the Neanderthals who became the dominant intelligent species. This powerful idea allows Sawyer to examine some of the deeply rooted assumptions of contemporary human civilization dramatically, by confronting us with another civilization, just as morally valid, that has made other choices. In Humans, Neanderthal physicist Ponter Boddit, a character you will never forget, returns to our world and to his relationship with geneticist Mary Vaughan, as cultural exchanges between the two Earths begin. As we see daily life in another present-day world, radically different from ours, in the course of Sawyer's fast-moving story, we experience the bursts of wonder and enlightenment that are the finest pleasures of science fiction. Humans is one of the best SF novels of the year, and The Neanderthal Parallax is an SF classic in the making. Humans is a 2004 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.
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Golden Fleece
by Robert J. Sawyer
Aboard Argo, a colonization ship bound for Eta Cephei IV, people are very close--there's no other choice. So when Aaron Rossman's ex-wife dies in what seems to be a bizarre accident, everyone offers their sympathy, politely keeping their suspicions of suicide to themselves. But Aaron cannot simply accept her death. He must know the truth: Was it an accident, or did she commit suicide? When Aaron discovers the truth behind her death, he is faced with a terrible secret--a secret that could cost him his life.
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Unwelcome Bodies
by Jennifer Pelland
Pain. Pleasure. The sensation of touch... we feel everything through our skin, that delicate membrane separating "I" from "other," protecting the very essence of self. Until it breaks. Or changes. Or burns. What would you do if you were the one called on to save humanity, and the price you had to pay was becoming something other than human? Or if healing your body meant losing the only person you've ever loved? Wander through worlds where a woman craves even a poisonous touch.a man's deformities become a society's fashion.genetic regeneration keeps the fires of Hell away.and painted lovers risk everything to break the boundaries of their caste system down. Separate your mind from your flesh and come in. Welcome.
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The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy
by Ellen Datlow
An anthology of contemporary original science fiction and fantasy short stories features such works as "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall" by Elizabeth Bear, "Daltharee" by Jeffrey Ford, and "The Goosle" by Margo Lanagan.
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Red Spikes
by Margo Lanagan
A collection of ten tales to take you to places that you do not usually go.
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The Tankermen
by Margo Lanagan
A vivid, scary fantasy adventure about sinister bionic Tankermen who take people prisoner and pump poison into Sydney's drains.
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The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One 1929-1964
by Robert Silverberg
Twenty-six of the greatest science fiction stories ever written. Robert Heinlein in "The Roads Must Roll" describes an industrial civilization of the future caught up in the deadly flaws of its own complexity. "Country of the Kind," by Damon Knight, is a frightening portrayal of biological mutation. "Nightfall, " by Isaac Asimov, one of the greatest stories in the science fiction field, imagines a planet where the sun sets only once every millennium and is a chilling study in mass psychology.
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Trapped
by Douglas E. Richards
This fast-paced science fiction adventure about an underground city built by an advanced alien civilization teaches children about science and technology while engaging their imaginations. Determined to learn why their scientist parents forced them to suddenly move to a boring town in Pennsylvania, Ryan and Regan follow them to work and discover that their parents are really working on a top secret investigation of an underground city. After cracking passwords, dodging barbed wire, and defeating laser beam alarms, they find themselves trapped in the abandoned city and under attack by a swarm of insect-like creatures. While trying to determine the nature of the creatures and how to escape them, scientific concepts such as the immune system, nanotechnology, and black holes are explained and explored.
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The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection
by Gardner R. Dozois
Collects short stories exploring themes of time and space travel, self-discovery, and science and technology.
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Breakfast in the Ruins
by Barry N. Malzberg
Barry N. Malzberg reflects back over four decades of writing science fiction, giving an insiderAs view of the field during that time which few can match, both for its authority and for the sharp and witty way he describes the highs and lows of one science fiction writerAs career. He also writes vivid profiles of writers and editors, ranging from the titans who transformed the field, such as John W. Campbell, to once popular writers who are now all but forgotten, such as Hugo Award-winner Mark Clifton. AIf there is any particular cachet to my perspective, A he writes, Ait comes because my career is, perhaps more than some, metaphoric.A The original, shorter version of the book was widely praised, as by the San Francisco Chronicle: AContains literary criticism ranging over the whole history of the field. . . . this is a mordant, brilliant book, A and by The Washington Post Book World: AMalzberg makes persuasively clear that the best of science fiction should be valued as literature and nothing else.A Breakfast in the Ruins is an indispensable book for every science fiction reader.
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On a Planet Alien
by Barry N. Malzberg
SCOPis the tale of a time traveller trying to stop some of history's worst moments before they happen. He has witnessed the last minutes of Jack Kennedy, King, Malcolm, Robert Kennedy. But Scop, in trying to alter, has merely reinforced the future. In the ENCLOSURE is the story of Quir, an alien forced to endure endless interrogations following the first meeting of creatures from space with the people of Earth. An alien whose only thoughts are of escape. For those arriving ON A PLANET ALIEN, the mission was to educate the native inhabitants of Folsom's planet and bring them withing the Federation. But something had happened on the voyage there. Could it be start some unknown force was controlling the crew's minds, a force that could bring disaster to the mission?
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Gypsies Stole My Tequila
by Adrienne Jones
Like most people on the cusp of turning 40, former punk rock star Joe Blood is wrestling with the demons of his past. Unfortunately, one of them is living in his wall. Determined to hold him to a suicide pact made twenty years before, Joe's Time Demon starts the countdown on the last weeks of his life, calling for death on his 40th birthday. Washed up and defeated, the downtrodden has-been is willing to accept this fate. Until a final test presents itself, challenging Joe Blood to save his own life by becoming the one thing he despises - himself. Adrienne Jones is wonderful new voice in humorous speculative fiction. This time out the author of the critically acclaimed The Hoax, offers up a often hilarious, yet always poignant look at coming to terms with growing older. Under JonesÂż masterful storytelling, Joe Blood jumps off the page as he struggles against the demons of his own past, while confronting the stubbornness and arrogance of youth in the form of an unfocused, wanna-be rock band. Oh yeah, plus some punk gypsies and meat market full of animal costumed employees. This is a story that simply comes more and more to life with each turn of the page.
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Neverwhere
by Neil Gaiman
Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinarylife, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.
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Seedlings on the Solar Winds and Other Stories
by J. Alan Erwine
America as a fascist state, soldiers driven to terrorism, insane computers, insane humans, insane aliens, these are just some of the things waiting for readers in the pages of this new collection from prize winning science fiction author J Alan Erwine. Seedlings on the Solar Winds contains sixteen stories that will have readers questioning what reality really is, and wondering what the future of humanity might be.
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Gods and Monsters
by Jason Andrew
Caught up in the bright lights of the modern world, it is easy to pretend that the old myths and legends have lost their hold over our hearts and imaginations. Sometimes, when we least expect it, the old archetypes return in terrifying new forms. Gods and Monsters is an anthology that explores these themes with fifteen new tales of the fantastic from some of the brightest new talent in fantasy and horror.