From Blood Diamonds to Immortality? A Chiiling tale of Stolen Time (1)

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I wouldn't say he was a gentle soul but he was a pure one. When he and his brothers chose to seek the fountain to gain immortality, Garreth questioned their choice.. Until he almost froze and his brothers chose for him, literally pouring the rejuvenating water down his throat.

His punishment to be frozen to death over and over again. Yes, he will live forever but will he ever again be warm? Sarielle is a servant but a powerful one. She has managed to merge with a dragon and commands his power. Only the ruler of their town holds her family hostage and Sarielle must serve as a battle mage as opposed to a woman with her own power. Cosseted though she may be, Sarielle is as much a prisoner as any other.

When an army comes to lay siege to their town, Sarielle is forced to send her dragon out. A blessing in disguise because by sending out the dragon Sarielle is brought to Garreth's attention and passion reigns.. Cursed by Ice has some interesting parts to.. Race and racism play a huge part and Sarielle is part of those who are subjugated, it seems they are a darker purple than the lavender ruling class..

I liked that there was more to Sarielle than just a beautiful woman totally controlled by a powerful man. Initially, Sarielle was conditioned by her community and culture to believe herself less worthy, so even though she fights for what she believes in, she must also fight the values that have been ingrained in her and her neighbors. A thing I didn't like.. He was a total jerk through most of this book. While he found his HEA, he was constantly harping on Garreth to focus, to turn away from love and to put his family first. I know his concern for his brothers was real but his selfishness totally astounds me.

He was given his heart's desire but he tried to manipulate his brother into walking away from the same chance. It really made me angry.. But it made for a great secondary story. It made me think.. I mean they have flaws.. Altogether, a wonderful book. Mar 12, Dianne rated it really liked it Shelves: A deal made by one of his brothers sets him partially free, providing he does the bidding of the gods until his penance is complete. Until then, every night he would experience the torture of being frozen again.

On a mission to conquer over realms, he comes upon a beautiful woman, who has the gift of communicating with a wyvern. Her master holds her heart hostage to do his bidding by keeping her twin sisters captive. Both of their worlds are lived as slaves to another, but the fierceness of Sarielle has Garreth longing for a life that includes more than being a warrior, but she cannot know his secret, of what he suffers every night. As Garreth brings out the independent spirit lying within this slave girl, he risks his own heart and his very life as they fall in love. As they learn to trust, they slowly open up about the secrets they carry, except for one, which may cost Garreth the woman of his dreams.

Is love worth the risk of eternal torment or even death? The tension of a new love grows slowly between two well-matched characters, and it feels right, good and sigh-worthy as this tale goes on. March 31, Publisher: March 31, ISBN Fantasy Paranormal Romance Print Length: Jan 27, Jess the Romanceaholic rated it really liked it.

I'm not familiar with this series, but as a standalone I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice and sexy with plenty of action, and a satisfying ending even if it did leave plenty open for the next book. Very entertaining, and I can't wait for the next installment. May 31, Desi rated it liked it.

A bit simplistic, preachy and whiney by turns. No particularly endearing characters. I could have done without the Gods. On the whole I guess I just got the impression that this could have been so much more.

It had good bones, one could say, but was barely sketched out to meet it's potential. Let me start off by saying that this book was a lot better, to me, that Cursed by Fire. I liked Garreth and he was definitely more likeable than Dethan was. Garreth's curse is to freeze to death over and over again, but never allowed to die because of his immortality. Garreth is brought back by the Goddess to be her full time warrior. Here he meets Sariella, a slave, much like himself.

Sariella has a rare gift and is currently being used by the lord to control, Koro, a mythical beast. Sarielle is Let me start off by saying that this book was a lot better, to me, that Cursed by Fire. Sarielle is in charge of caring for her two siblings and they being held by the lord as leverage against her so that she has to use her gift to control the beast for him. I liked that Garreth and Sariella were both slaves to somebody else, so they kind of knew what each other was going through. Garreth and Sarielle's journey to was wonderful and their love story gives the book a very good ending.

I am so glad that I didn't give up on the series after Cursed by Fire, because this one was really, really a lot better. ARC was provided by Netgalley for an honest review. Apr 08, DemetraP rated it it was ok. Book 1 was better. In this book, the brother and the king's ex-mistress conspire to break up the hero and the heroine. Then the heroine forgives this mistress and asks her to be the nanny for her kids. I liked the fighting and the battles and conquering cities I just wish there would have been a little more of this. I feel like the majority of the book focused more on their relationship which is fine, I simply would have enjoyed a bit more plot.

Still looking forward to book 3. Mar 28, Kati rated it liked it Shelves: I won this book through Goodreads in a First Reads drawing. Ok, first things first. According to goodreads, this book is only pages long. It's actually the mass market copy I won pages of story. Just had to clarify that. It means nothing as far as the story itself was concerned. Ultimately I'd say I liked this story. The characters were pretty decent, the story was reasonably well told. But, it didn't jump off the page. I'm not closing the book, wondering what happens next with Sarielle I won this book through Goodreads in a First Reads drawing.

I'm not closing the book, wondering what happens next with Sarielle and Garreth. They were just ok characters. They never got beyond two dimensional. I want to close a book and feel sorry that these PEOPLE won't be in my life again until I reread their story, instead I found myself feeling like these were just characters, not real people.

It's hard to explain, but when I read a well written character Gabaldon's Clare and Jamie Fraser are two that come to mind! I feel like they're friends whom I'll miss till I read the next letter from them book about them. That never happened here, and I'm sorry it didn't. I felt like Jacquelyn Frank was on the right track, it just didn't work out.

Perhaps part of that is because so many of the actions and reactions felt Not like outright lies, just like prettied up versions of how a person might act in that situation. It never felt honest, or real. I did appreciate that the author never dumped a word or concept on us without explaining it.

I've read books that dump a whole lot of foreign words or concepts on the reader without giving the reader a reason, explanation or definition. Frank didn't do that. She started off with new words such as "wrena" but quickly followed it with enough detail that I wasn't lost as far as what a "wrena" was.

It never felt like she over-detailed, but she'd start with a basic definition, then let the story carry more definition gradually. I'll probably pic up the next book Jaykun's story if I come across it at my local library, and I'll probably chit-chat with other romance readers about the book, but it's not on my list of favorite books that I think I'll want to reread. Feb 27, Amanda rated it liked it. Jacquelyn Frank's world building in all of her books is top notch and Cursed by Ice is no different. She does a magnificent job of combining paranormal, fantasy, sci-fi to create captivating stories.

Cursed by Ice is the second installment within the Immortal Brothers series. Garreth is a sensible with a strict honor code. He kind of reminded me of a Robin Hood character — championing the underdog. Like his brothers, Garreth has been cursed by the Gods for stealing immortality. Every night he is m Jacquelyn Frank's world building in all of her books is top notch and Cursed by Ice is no different. Sarielle has been kept as a slave and is forced to use her wyren to do the bidding of the king. But now that Garreth and his brother, Dethan, everything the citizens within the castle know is about to change.

The plot was well thought out and there is action from beginning to end — with a few predictable plot twists. If you enjoy paranormal romance with a touch of sci-fi and urban fantasy, Jacquelyn Frank is the perfect author. Mar 30, Angela Cramer rated it it was amazing. I have from the very first Nightwalker book I picked up from the library. I have since voraciously devoured everything she has written and when I discovered she wrote under the name JAX, well I did one of those giddy happy dances. After reading and reviewing Cursed by Fire, I wondered how Ms.

Franks could write Cursed by Ic Review: Franks could write Cursed by Ice without it being a carbon copy of the previous book. Did I find out my answer!

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Another wow in The Immortal Brothers series. In this installment we meet Garreth who had been cursed by the Gods and Goddesses to suffer the debilitating pain of being frozen over and over again without reprieve. Until, that is, his brother sacrificed his immortality for Garreth. A land of the haves and have nots, masters and slaves, Kith relied on the wyvern to keep its walls safe.

A bad choice when confronted with someone like Garreth. Now that he has conquered the city, he finds himself conquered by the former Slave Sarielle. Face with insurmountable odds, the Wyrena losses her heart and her innocence to the strong, immortal Warrior. However, the HEA is not as easy as all that. Frank has introduced us to twists and turns that I did not see coming and found myself reading one more page, just one more chapter to discover what happened next. A must read for old and new fans of Jacquelyn Frank. Mar 09, April Symes rated it really liked it. BUT As a reprieve, a goddess offers him a possble boon; serve her by fighting for her in the war between the gods and she will only freeze him at night.

Then we meet Sarielle, who is a slave in the city Garreth and his brother Dethan are trying to over throw for their goddess.

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Sarielle has a special connection with a wyren and due to her having the wyren, she is forced by the city rulers to use her wyren to protect the city. When Garreth finally takes the city, Sarielle now refuses to be a slave any longer. They fall for each other with high passion.

However the betrayal of others will tear them apart. Do they get back together or will the other keep them apart? Garreth and Sarielle's journey too was fantastic and their love story gives the book a very lovely ending. Another great story by Ms. Frank —I cant wait to see what book 3 will be like. Oct 10, The Book Junkie Reads. Garreth had to suffer freezing every night for centuries now all because he wanted to steal immortality for himself.

With his opportunity to be freed he pledge to a goddess to fight in her name. He never wanted to go on the quest to being with. While following through on his promise to fight for his goddess. He finds a beautiful warrior woman named Sarielle, who commands a beast and has a powerful bond to it. She was but a slave to the people of the cit Garreth had to suffer freezing every night for centuries now all because he wanted to steal immortality for himself.

The spellbinding quality of Wolfe's prose by itself qualifies this as an all-time SF great, as a book we can all point to when someone accuses SF of not being literature. But there's so much more happening here. Twin alien worlds, decadent, decaying French colonies, and an aboriginal, shapeshifting race that seems to have vanished like a dream.

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Three narrators, but somewhere in the twists and turns of their narratives, we lose them and find we're holding someone else's hand. I've read this book ten times now and I'm still finding new things to love about it. I read this when I was a young angst ridden sixteen year old and fell in love with it.

It's a great little story of going back in a time machine to the days of christ in search of a meaning to life Excellent riff on the alien invasion sub-genre with aliens we never actually meet. Add political and social satire and a mildly unreliable narrator and you've got it made.

Foresaw the dangers of the polar cap melting as well! I love the multilayered approach and the phonetic spelling, and then the main protagonist is such a nice kid! One of the great space operas. Some critics have said it's too complicated. The richest most complete creation in the whole genre. Comparisons with the contemporary Vietnam War aside, the book was quite simply un-put-down-able! A great story of grunt soldiers training and fighting aliens over a possible misunderstanding with the added concept that the great distances they need to travel to the war zone means the Earth they know goes through changes they could not have foreseen.

This is one of those novels that non sci-fi fans can read without having to think that they are reading a sci-fi story. In other words it is happy to be called 'speculative fiction'. It is funny, witty, insightful, harrowing and shocking and utterly gripping from the start to the finish. This book displays the broad spectrum of humanity from our best to just how low and evil we can stoop.

It moves through time from the past to an awesomely realised post apocalyptic future and back again showing a playful and excellent grasps of multiple literary styles along the way. This was the book I gave my girlfriend who is not a fan of sci-fi as the one example of this genre that she agreed she would read, mainly just to keep me quiet. Well written, extremely good plotting and characterisation, and has elements which stay with you for years after reading it which is the whole point, isn't it? A novel which focuses on how a military-run government would look. Also gives a good description of uber-cool space suits and fighting aliens.

Really makes you think about how OUR world works by looking at another. Am almost completely realised universe, very smart and incisive. I found the contrast between the connections of the culture through neural laces and the inhabitants of Yoleus to be very thought provoking, as it brought up a host of questions about the causes and effects of instant information through the internet. I first read this book as a pre teen and found it an atypical examination of prejudice and the fear that inspires it. It is however, a very enjoyable, well written read.

I have read it in every subsequent decade of my life and found no less enjoyable. I would recomend it for young and old alike. By far my favorite John Wyndham book. All books of the Robotic series together with the Foundation Series. Alternate history squared, Spinrad posits a world where Hitler went to the US in the late s and became a science fiction writer of the golden age.

A spoiler proof story and not actually a very good one, but the shock is realizing how close so much SF comes to it. Spinrad includes an academic article criticizing HItler on a literary basis to help you process the experience. It has everything, hard Sci-Fi ideas, fantasy politics, religion, philosophy, romance Sprawling SF on a vast scale, violent and hilarious in equal measure, Banks' Culture Novels are peerless, and this is one of his best.

Even non-sf fans like this. Heinlein probably created more libertarians with this book than Hyeck! The first of Smiths books and the first one I had read, picked up at random from a newsagents. From the first page you are hooked by the vivid imagery and shocking storyline. It was a lesson in how you can put wild imagination onto the page and let it run away with itself. Despite it's complex concepts the vivid imagery and flowing dialogue reall lets you enter the Culture world for the first time with a great understanidng for me the best Sci fi book ever written.

Best of the 'culture' novels. Games at multiple levels, very black and very entertaining. There was just something about this book and all the thought that author Clarke put into it that made it stand out for me. There was no wild imaginings just simple and logical prediction. The only thing that was a little hard to believe was the physical size of Rama.

Given the cost and complexity of building the ISS, one has to wonder how long and how much it took to be built and sent on it's way. A super read though. Bill is a pal of mine for starters. He was working on this book years before I met him. He let me read his rough draft when it was done and after that, I hope he will write more. I've downloaded his ebook and it's even better finished.

He said that it's the kind of story he wantes to read about. He's shared it with some other people I work with and everybody loves it. I think he had his brother make a video, but I'm not sure. He was talking about it. Bill can draw, too. I'm friends with him on facebook, and his characters are really cool so now you can actually see what his characters look like as he sees them.

I would recommend this book even if Bill wasn't my friend, it's that good. I thought it was too obvious, but apparently not, based upon the comments below. Dune, along with Stranger in a Strange Land, catapulted sci fi out of the "golden age", and re-defined the genre. These two books are to sci-fi what the Beatles were to rock. Everything after was different. This novel is set in a post environmental holocaust future with both a dystopia and a Utopia. It presents beautifully drawn characters in a technological wonderland with a hellishly corporate backdrop.

The novel revolves around Shira and her quest to be reunited with her son - taken from her by the company she used to work for. In her quest she is joined by a wonderful cyborg named Yod and the novel tells of their relationship and brings into question what it is to be human. The story is interspersed with the tale of the Golem in Prague which brings the questions around what is life into a longer history and gives it weight.

As a science fiction novel it is so frighteningly possible - and in the not very distant future - but its real power is that we can already see how close we are to becoming a world in which corporations control private lives. There's some really wonderful moments like when Shira and co hack into the company's computer system using their minds, but flying in the shapes of birds, and when Shira is trying to teach Yod to understand the beauty of roses.

I don't want to give anything else away as there are also unseen twists. Plus there are kittens! Too dense, too pretentious, no likable characters and then for the last quarter Suddenly transformed to profound, disturbing, beautiful and lyrical. As someone else on this thread says, "Quite unlike anything else i've read". Start with the creation of a mind then follow it on a post-human diaspora through the multiverse. Over 2 generations ahead of its time - Still a contemporary science fiction novel of the highest quality - the central tenet still stands the ravages of time as a truly inspiring and though provoking possibility.

Not sure if it's SF, biography, satire, or a combination of all these and more, but it's a genius little book which I read over 20 years ago for the first time; I re-read it ocassionally, and it's still fresh to me. An amazing series detailing the interactions between a number of species includinfg humans on a grandiose scale. A must read for any true lover of SF. When the author tries to explain what a twelve dimensional planet might look like in an alternative universe it boggles my poor little four dimensional mind, but in that giddy, vertigionous way Stephen Hawking sometimes managed in a Brief History of Time.

Except theres no spaceships, aliens, virtual realities in Hawkings book, which makes this book quite a lot better. Diapsora is a novel of big ideas. From the birth of a gender neutral new mind in a virtual reality where most of humanity live in the near future AD to exploration of the galaxy and on to other universes of increasing multidimensional complexity to the ultimate fate of our species and others, all in a pursuit of a mystery - how does the universe hmm, multiverse really work?

How can we survive its indifferent violence? And where are the mysterious species who left microscopic clues behind in the structure of an alien planet warning of galaxy wide catastrophe? As the book progresses the relative importance of these questions and answers change. What happens when the answers are complete? It does take a while to get going particularly if you're not familiar with 'hard sci-fi' but there are no 'cheats' used in traditional sci fi.

No transporters, FTL travel and the intelligent aliens are so utterly unlike the 'human' heroes they need several layers of 'relay-team' interpreters even to communicate. I look forward to the day mind wipes become more widely available so I can read it again for the first time. Like the best science fiction, it portrayed a plausible world growing out of our present - and the central figure is a believable human being doing currently-unbelievable things who grows, over the course of the book.

And totally gratuitously, it led to a number of sequels as rich and believable, in their way, as the first in the series was itself. Larry Niven is mainly know for his Ringworld series books. Generally his books are set in "known space" - a universe not too distant in the future - or close parallels to this creation. In "World of Ptavvs", Larry brings an alien known in "known space" as being extinct for millions of years to the present day. The alien a Slaver had been in stasis and is unintentionally released and then sets about trying to enslave the earth.

Fortunately Larry Greenberg, who had been trying to reach the alien telepathically whilst in stasis, is here to save the day. Without giving too much away, humans are related to the Slaver race, meaning of course that the World of the Ptavvs is earth. Some Slavers that have lost all their family rather than committing suicide will decide to protect the whole Slaver species. If only Larry knew someone like that to protect earth from this Slaver What I like about the book is that the complete story spans from years into past and future. Space Opera it is not as the books are far too easy to read a couple hours to read this book but none-the-less Larry Niven creates a rich and compelling universe.

It is prescient in its understanding of memes, no one else has come close. Not neccesarily the best SF book ever-that would in my opinion be one of Iain M. Banks's 'Culture' novels-but quite possibly the weirdest. If you thought the end of Herbert's Dune series was getting a bit strange, it has nothing on this-truly out there WTF! By the way, are we including the Gormenghast trilogy in this? It's a beautiful balance of drama, speculation, humor, and the PKD's own special brand of paranoia. Well written, wll thought out, great plot develpoment, and all around awesome!!!! This book so beautifully demonstrates the point that what falls between two opposing, hard-held points of view is truth.

Not science fiction by the contemporary definition. This novel deals with what has been coined "inner space" rather than the more outer-space oriented, Le Guinesque fantasies. JG Ballard was a prominent figure of the new wave of science fiction: This was a time when events of the so-called real world began to seem stranger than fiction.

As a result, novelists of this era began to write about dystopian near-futures rather than settings vastly remote in time and distance. High Rise deals with the effects of the man-made, physical landscape, in this case an east London aparment block - on the physcology of the tenants. The rigidly defined social structure, too-easy access to amenities and desire of the tenants to resign from their lives as mindless functionaries, sets in motion a descent into a microcosmic catastrophe.

Ballard's ruthless imagination is on show here in all its glory. This book changed my life. Strictly not Sci-Fi, but a theological meditation on perception, sanity and counterculture. One of my favourite books, up there with Camus and Satre in my opinion. The protaginist is a man undergoing a nervous breakdown who interprets his psychosis as religious revelations. Astoundingly well-written, profound and funny.

The Skull Beneath The Skin: Culture & Immortality - 3:AM Magazine

Refutes the view of science fiction as 'Cowboys and Indians in Space. The author is a bit of a nutter, but the Mission Earth books are an excellent read. And, the hero grows up a little. Eurasia including Britain has been conquered by Bolshevism. All because Adolf Hitler emigrated to New York in to become a science-fiction writer. That's the framing story. LOTS tells of a mythologized Germany "Heldon" in a future post-nuclear world that rose up to defeat the evil mutant forces of Zind and their humanity-destroying rulers the Dominators.

The only reason it's not more popular is because it's too real in many respects. It lacks that warm and fuzzy Hollywood-like ending needed for today's pop culture. Still, it's a brilliant series of books. I recommend them all. Like all great science fiction Shikasta and its four companion volumes has a serious philosphical core; It is beautifully written, and is a cracking read. It is plausible and utopic, offering a glimpse of a future of equality and sexual freedom with humankind and nature in balance, while pointing at the frailties of current reality and pertinently criticising organised religion, ideology, and colonialism.

Lessing's imagination runs riot, and the fourth volume, although slim, has one of the finest takes on survival in a hostile environment I have ever read. One of the most compelling compendium of five book s. Fast paced, excellently written and many thought provoking ideas playing merry hell with history, time, space and logic. Not to mention a great cliffhanger ending. This is not a book, it is a short story, a very short story, but it was the inspiration for Clarke And Kubrick's collaborative epic It sums up humanities constant desire to discover 'someone else, out there.

We are so lonely, like a kid who has lost it's mom. So much SF is devoted to our quest for contact, but the original short sums up the anticipation so well. This collection of short stories is full of wit humour and dystopian futures. Book bindings that rewrite books, aliens infiltrating society as four foot high VW mechanics and faulty time travellers taking part in their own autopsy and ticker tape parade. This book is the most imaginative i have ever read and i'm overwhelmed by its brilliance whenever I read it.

I have laughed, cried almost and felt almost every emotion in between and if one person reads it because of me i shall be happy. Most people read the dystopia - Brave New World, but Island was a utopian dream - one of the first books that really affected me. Also anything by John Wyndham - many of his books successfully made it to films, Day of the Triffids and Village of the Damned. I also loved The Chrysalids - never understood why it didn't become a film. But the sci-fi crown must go to Peter F Hamilton - he has the ability to create entire universes and includes the entire shebang of sci-fi within each series - aliens, technologies, societies, superhuman abilities, etc.

I'd just like to put in a moan about the way bookshops display Sci-Fi - they integrate it into Fantasy. I've nothing against fairies, elves and goblins, but this genre tends to look backwards to times when knights were armed and everyone else was nervous. Sci-fi generally looks forward to the future with technology or societies or takes alternative universes and extrapolates.

So why do bookshops display them together? Do they have no concept of either genre? Moan of the day over. Serves up visual imagery of technological advances that we have now attained or on the way to achieving. Corporate pervasiveness in holographic advertising projected anywhere, futuristic ways of engaging with celebrity idols, cosmetic surgery making people look like an amalgamation of famous stars, old technology lying around in scrap heaps in amongst hi-tech wonderment.

And who could forget the way Razor girl introduces herself to Case after hes just had in effect an organ transplant? In mho, it marks the emergence of contemporary SF as Literature. And because Dan Simmons wrote such a beautiful novel back in , a generation of SF writers has emerged to compose a species of fiction unprecedented in the history of Literature, a species that thenceforth redefined the idea of the SF novel.

That may be overstating the case, but the purity and overpowering poetical sensibility of Simmon's writing cannot be disputed. And in no way to diminish the achievements of Gene Wolfe and Robert Silverberg - the grandfathers of literary SF - but I thihnk that Simmons was the first novelist to deliberately embrace the so-called literary canon and weave it into a profound and beautiful SF tapestry.

But it is not simply a story well told, it is SF. And that means it is about ideas. They are, in point of fact, novels that provoke wonder - which is exactly what science fiction has always been about. Unknown to him or us early on in the story is that he is in fact helping the military intercept missiles fired at earth from rebels on a moon base. Wry observations on the military and humanity from the returning soldiers isolated from society by the effects of relativity on time caused by near to light speed travel. A pacy read, sexy and like all good SF wrong on lots of details but contains many truths about mankind.

In a near-future world where technological progress has been frozen by the all powerful peace authority, renegade scientists discover the secret of the bobbles used to cloak weapons, bases and even cities and turn the technology to their own advantage to bring down the peace authority. At the local library when I was 17, I discovered the Uplift Saga. Starting with book 2. I loved its exploration of conciousness with the idea of spreading sapience to other animals on earth - dolphins and chimps. I found it very positive about humanity as alien hordes threatened to destroy human cultures or humanity itself.

I've not read many sci fi where despite flaws you get drawn into such a pro humanity narrative. The setting was enjoyable, marooned on a water world with a crew of dolphins. I can easily imagine from his writings that such a place must exist. I would recommend the rest of saga but for me startide rising stood out. It completely changed my view on life, the universe and everything - literally: Just absolutely, unequivocally a masterpiece of joyful reading.

As madly inventive as anything Dick wrote. From memory it has space travel, timeslips, psychics AND anti-psychics, half dead souls feeding off one another's life force in vats, inexplicable kinks in the nature of reality - but it's also tightly, economically constructed, which some of his books aren't.

Plus it's hands down the scariest book I've ever read. Because it is one of the best novels I've read in the past four years, and I don't just mean SF. It doesn't really matter it is so on the button that you just know that this is how things will be. Cyberpunks lost in the cities of the future with exactly the same angst and doubts that we here on earth suffer today. Gibson is at the height of the game in SF I simple can't think of anyone, with the exception of Michael Faber and his Under the Skin that comes anywhere near. In a world heating up and regressing back to an ancient state, a man who lives in the lagoons above a flooded London struggles with the dying remains of old-world society and instead of heading north to safety decides to head south, towards the heat and towards the primal chaos the world is descending into.

Ballard's second novel and possibly the clearest examples of his highly metaphorical science fiction novels. In The Drowned World we start see the J. Ballard use his objective, unemotional style that is a characteristic of his early short stories in a novel. Sci fi at its worst is nothing more than cheap thrills - an update on the penny dreadful. At its best it offers nothing less than new stages on which to explore the nature of humanity. Le Guin's novel is at the best end of SF. It doesn't really matter that the setting is on some mythical planets; what is important is the people in the story, their struggles to make sense of life and society, their sufferings and their joys.

It is a deeply human book. Le Guin has a gift for looking beneath surface inessentials, even those connected with gender, and seeing through to the real. Finally, although this obviously won't appeal to all, it is the most faithful and gripping account of the process of scientific discovery I have ever read. A lovely, memorable book, not just a good SF book but a great novel as well. Frankenstein is the seminal novel that deals with the human condition versus the unknown. Shelley takes us on a finely detailed journey among science and what can be created from it even from back in the recesses of the imagination.

I first read Frankenstein when I was Shelley created a story where I hadn't felt such flow of sympathy between the creator and the monster. It compelled me to think of my own existence in an unsure world. What better way to start a SF journey such as with Frankenstein's monster's thirst for knowledge and acceptance in a society that only saw terror in the unknown. Russian precursor to Brave New World and , which are probably on everyone's list.

His Master's Voice is one of the purest, most philosophical and accomplished SF novels I've ever read. I'd recommend people read this because it's either, as Theodore Sturgeon said, "a literary landmark" or, as P K Dick claimed, "trash". Folk should read it and decide for themselves. A compelling, complex speculative fictional work. One of the best examples of its genre combining nuanced social commentary and interplay of dystopian and utopian imagination. Great ships, great robots and a knock-out plot from an author who takes general relativity seriously enough to work through its mind-scrambling implications.

It proclaims the glories of science, technology and industry while at the same time reminding us of the poignancy of our own personal fragilities. That, I think, is the real experience of us all in the 21st Century, sci-fi aside. This novel speaks with a poet's voice, as well. As relevant now as it was when written in the 's. The themes of genetic engineering and mutations in crops were way ahead of their time. A very British apocalypse, the first encounters of the man-eating plants are on Hampstead Heath.

The rest of the book, often described as a 'cosy catastrophe', winds it's way through an eerily empty London and the English countryside. The now common theme of a motley band of survivors combing vacated cities for food and water has been copied endlessley. Alex Garland admitted that the first 20mins of 28 Days Later was an 'exact replica' of the opening chapters of Day of the Triffids. Read it now if you haven't. Read it again if you have. Published in ; he was one of the founding fathers of Sci-Fi and helped lift the status of the genre from tacky cliche invasions, to a really rewarding choice of literature.

Egan's book opens with an investigator looking into an odd abduction and takes us through a world where any ability TM can be uploaded into the narrator's head. The investigation leads him to a bizarre experiment with quantum physics--and the discovery that loyalty, too, can be installed in the human brain. Egan plays with the idea of the quantum wave with deftness and assurance, and the way round the loyalty chip is a marvellous but logical twist in the tale. To continue along your lines, if all the fantasy books should burn in a cataclysm tomorrow, one which I would like to survive is "A wizard of Earthsea".

A book which teaches you something about human nature is a wise book. Sparrowhawk, an indisputably intelligent young man falls victim to his own vanity, causing great tragedy to himself as well others, and then goes trough great difficulties to make amends. Despite being a fantasy and the world is something you've never experienced before, nor will you experience it after , it is relevant, especially today, when a handful of young man and women admittedly less often have so much power bestowed upon them think Gates, the Google owners, then Zuckerberg.

On the bookshelf of my mind, it sits together with Mann, Beckett, Dostojevski, and Shakespeare. Unfortunately, today it is less know than many over-marketed, multi volume rainforest destroyers. This book kicks off one of the greatest SF story arcs of all time. Throw in the death of a beloved character in the Star wars Universe and the fultiliy of the events in the book What's different and great about The Sirens of Titan is that it's one of the few sci-fi novels to posit cock-up theory as the main driver for universal history, as it takes a sweeping, entertaining romp through the universe.

As Dougas Adams observed, its seemingly casual throwaway style is in fact the result of very tight writing. Oh, and it's very very funny. Technically SF as set in a postulated future as seen from , and very funny. It's a complex story with themes of religious fanaticism and patriarchy By the end there are, perhaps, as many questions raised as answered. But for me, it is the strength of the women.

Their stories, lives and sacrifices. Thought provoking about how Society works and human foibles - incredibly prescient I fear as Climate Change begins. But all the while, truly gripping as a straightforward adventure. I would recommend this book as it covers a one-year period in the time-frame of the planet Heliconia, a period of some several hundred Earth years, and presents a fine analogy of the rise and fall of a human civilisation that in the end cannot help, due to a major seasonal change, fall victim to the weather itself and the rulers of the planet become those whom the humans enslaved and trod upon during the hot portion of the year.

All the while, the planet is being observed from space by scientists who must endure their own evolution. I found the series to be well imagined and well written and have read it twice in the last 25 years, or so. John Windham was in the happy position of being able to write good prose whilst at the same time being a terrific ideas man. The story about a group of weird children born into a rural English village after some rum doings asks big questions about competition, survival and who really is in control. It was made into a fairly solid horror film called Village of the Damned and the Hollywood remake wasn't too bad either.

I know, it's not exactly SF but it's not even only an horror setting. There's the fear of unknown, the cosmic terror, the deep space and alien stars Gets right into the action without long-winded delving into the minutia of the fictional society's functioning; no moralizing on the superiority of the fictional society; doesn't rely on technology that wouldn't be available given current scientific understanding; fully-fleshed characters, especially female characters, the protagonist in particular; imaginative mirror society quirks. A good antidote to the typical space warrior sub-teen crap We live in a time of possible nuclear war.

Oil and other pollutants have caused irreversible damage to our ecosystem. This is great grown up and very prophetic sci-fi, written by a newly sober Walter Tevis The Hustler, Man who fell to Earth etc in the early 80s. Basically its the story of a bored and literally impotent millionaire as he stumbles through an energy starved future where the US can no longer afford to light its skycrapers and China is the number 1 economic power thanks to a strangely familiar form of capitalism, dressed in communist clothes.

It is so unbelieveably prophetic one of the key characters is a charming, well educated and articulate former Black president but the focus for Teavis is less on technology and more on political and economics, and people okay he still has something called the USSR bouncing around in the early s but he was an author, not Mystic Meg.

There's also some wonderful stuff when Tevis' protagonist takes a trip to a very alien world to cure his boredom and lose weight read the book and it will make sense and accidently cures his impotence yes really! Tevis also manages to create real characters you can believe in with real personal problems, and that's not something you always get done well anyway in sci-fi or speculative fiction.

I'd recommend it to buy but its long out of print. I bought my tatty 2nd hand copy from a New York state library, via the tinternet. Neither the radio or TV versions have done any justice at all to this great, great book. Not only is every bit as funny as you'd expect for Adams, it also has one of the most fabulously cryptic plots you could hope for.

I first read it a couyple of times in my late teens and enjoyed it enormously but it was three years later before it's true brilliance dazzled me. I sat in a university tutorial listening to the tale of Coleridge dreaming up Kubla Khan in a laudanum haze but being disturbed by the man from Porlock, before he could set it down. I gasped and embarrassed myself in front of my tutor as the penny dropped regarding one of the finer points of the plot of DG. I made my way home, ignored my course work and the godawful "two part prelude" I was supposed to be reading and launched into Dirk Gently once again.

Adams was not only one of the funniest writers about, he also managed to examine ideas and science with a skill and a level of understanding that is often not appreciated. I delight in this book still and reread it regularly. It is a masterpiece and I wish somebody would make a proper film of it and not bugger it up.

The first Banks book I read, this is a stunning introduction to the universe of the Culture, his egalitarian, post-scarcity society. The book follows the journey of Morat Jernau Gurgeh, a cynical, arrogant, and brilliant game player to an imperialistic civilisation rife with inequality, sexual slavery and the brutal application of power.

It's filled with Banks trademark witty dialogue, discomfiting themes and vivid, brilliant imagination. I read it when I was a child. Lovecraft's descriptions of a meteorite's odd substance that feed on live, disseminate and has an indefinable color triggered my imagination and populated some nightmares.

It is a very imaginative, yet credible, tale of a lone human's impressions of two opposed alien civilizations. The portrayal of the human and non-human characters involved is extremely well done, and novel is thought-provoking throughout. Though the story is set in a post-apocalypse America, it breaks with the 'traditional' disaster scenarios usually portrayed. Instead there is a beautiful child-like quality to it, enhanced by the sufi-like 'the end is the beginning' conclusion.

I'd picked up Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" trilogy before finding Cryptonomicon and was instantly swept away by the astonishing depth and breadth Stephenson achieved while still keeping me turning the pages as fast as I could. After finishing those first three books I felt completely bereft of Stephenson's world and went out to get Cryptonomicon as soon as possible.

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Told in two time periods and with multiple protagonists not to mention graceful and fascinating infodumps on cryptology, mathematics, early computing, financial systems, corporate law Each characters is thoroughly drawn, each landscape evoked in vivid colour, and all the while it remains brilliant fun.

This is a first rate example of the alternate history branch of science fiction. Brave New World is perhaps the most terrifying and relevant dystopian novel written. Social engineering and a mass produced society is counterpointed by the 'savages' outside, whilst stuck in the middle is John a reject from both societies. Written fantastically, keeping the reader on the edge.

Its suspense kept me going, amazing Sc-fi from the 60s. I choose this because it is a brilliantly non-sf, sf book. There are no guns, no super technologies, no obvious male heroes, no wars, etc. There is a spaceship but we never see it. All these cliches seem to be shunned as examples of very male-centric sf writing.

The novel deals with themes of gender, sexuality, politics, religion and more. The inhabitants of the planet Gethen are entirely androgynous and visited by a male from the distant, more technically advanced planet Earth who tries to understand them. The author seems to suggest that the duality inherent in the human race could be at he heart of negatives such as war Gethen has never known one as well as positives such as technological progress. I'll admit to not being a massiv fan of SF.

This impressed because it is undoubtedly science fiction yet it drops nearly all of the conventions. A ship setting off to visit an alien world, unseen by most humans. A narrator pondering his place withing his homeworld and his own society and speculating on the lives, motives and drives of the giant, unknowable, half unseen aliens he encounters, all explained in enthralling terms to an audience as unfamiliar with whaling as most modern readers are with the surface of Europa.

Blew me away when I first read it and still holds up when I re-read. A highlight from the pulp age, and pre-Hitchhiker sf humour. A Rat book was the first book I borrowed from the 'big' ie adult library and started a life-long love of sf. This trilogy is epic science-fiction at its best. Hamilton covers may characters and planets in a brilliant adventure through space, with the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance.

As ever, Hamilton's books are sci-fi marvels, and I can safely say Night's Dawn is the best trilogy I have read, of any genre. For us then the Falling Man is forever statuesque in that pose of boldness and grace, a man who chose to dive rather than simply fall or sucumb to the flames. In the photograph and only in the photograph, he never has to land. The photograph, on the other hand, deceives.

We believe what our eyes tell us. Photography can be the beautiful lie that seeks to comfort us against the harshness of truth, a counter-myth to the spectre of Memento Mori. He was on his way back from a routine shoot when a police car overtook him and speed away. Out of curiosity, he followed it to the hotel where a troubled recently divorced guest Mary Miller was out on the ledge. She waved to the assembled onlookers and dropped. Life will go on even after this, one world ends yet a billion continues, a thought that seems obscene and is at the root of our delusional urge to survive indefinitely.

Photographers have sometimes fallen for the beautiful lie themselves. When you create, something survives because of you but in your absence that would not have existed otherwise. The fact that mundane things from advertising slogans to inanimate objects outlive even the most extraordinary of people seems so unjust we feel we must rail against it. Surely it cannot be so.

The photographer Garry Winogrand knowing that he was dying of cancer, took photos continually in his last months, leaving several thousand undeveloped rolls of film over a quarter of a million shots that document his attempt to somehow remain in this life. A similar story is that of Vivian Maier a remarkable photographer who captured over , street photographs during her life.

She died virtually unknown and penniless, the boxes containing the collections being discovered just prior to her death. The subsequent resurrection if you like of critical discovery and acclaim can offer no comfort to her now. It may not be life, it may be ethereal spectacle, life twice removed, but it is something. And in absence of any alternative it may be the best we have. One of the great techniques of literary immortality is elusiveness. Some of your thoughts will endure if, for example, your books are read or your ideas make it into the common consciousness.

Some glimpses of personality, interests, loves, fears, obsessions and so on will remain dormant within the pages and reactivate upon reading. Elusiveness intensifies this experience. If your work is engaging enough a degree of indecipherability will amplify interest. We know less about the playwright than we do the surface of other planets. In other words, we can never be fully satisfied. Similarly the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch remain not only fascinating to us but also immortal because we can never fully understand them, the metaphors and parables within them have been lost or escape us.

Sometimes indecipherability is virtually the only thing maintaining our ongoing interest in a work of art. The mysterious Voynich Manuscript , which has defied cryptographers for centuries, would likely join other arcane masterfully-engraved texts amongst the great halls of unread books were it not for the fact we still cannot comprehend it. Lost books also possess this ephemeral quality. They are immortal and unassailable in a sense because we can never read them. They exist as long as our willingness to imagine does. No matter how good your work is, you will however be dead, as non-existent as you were before you were born.

His countryman Italo Calvino created a recurring character in his stories called Qfwfq , a creature so old he could recall his childhood as an amoeba. It is also a mildly depressing view for those of us without children and probably depressing for those with children too. From a purely reproductive perspective, Genghis Khan remains the most successful person in the history of the human race some geneticists have estimated 1 in men are direct descendants of the Mongol Emperor.

There has to be more though than spreading seed and the possibility of making an cameo appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? I want to achieve it through not dying. Only the outlines remain if they find us, cavities to be filled in with plaster to make discernible shapes. Mark Twain twice opened the newspaper to be greeted with his own obituary; the first through illness, the second when thought lost at sea.

Some take the news less jovially. Recovering from a stroke, the great Black nationalist writer and rights activist Marcus Garvey chanced upon his own damning obituary in the Chicago Defender , saying he had died forgotten and reviled. The shock precipitated a second stroke which definitively killed him. Ruin and death, he thought, cover all. The life of man ends in the grave. Well posterity may well then follow, through skill and luck but sometimes not in the form you wished for.

The poet William MacGonagall is today remembered as being the author of the worst verse ever written. So atrocious are his works with their faltering rhythms, inability to scan, inept rhymes and the unrestrained bathos of their subject matter, they become weirdly entrancing. MacGonagall would have been horrified with such a legacy. The first man to throw a plate of peas at me was a publican. You cannot entirely choose how you are remembered and even if it is for being a cultural abomination perhaps its better than not being remembered at all.

This is not terrifying but consoling. The priest duly obliges. In exchange, she would sleep with the Sun God Apollo. As punishment, he allowed age to ravage her. She shrivelled until she was a dried husk small enough to be kept in a jar. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all. Amongst the inhabitants, he encounters beings known as Struldbrugs who, because of some apparent genetic condition, are born immortal and marked with a dot above their left eye which changes colour. Gulliver rejoices upon hearing of their existence and cannot wait to see what wonders and wisdom they have attained.

But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive.

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Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years… from what I had hear and seen, my keen appetite for perpetuity of life was much abated. I grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed; and thought no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure, from such a life.

Given his fate, you could say that Oscar Wilde realised the perils of decadence too late but the truth is he only underestimated the power and venom of those in the establishment he had brilliantly mocked. Nevertheless The Picture of Dorian Gray seems prophetic in terms of his destruction at their hands. I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful.

But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June… If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that-for that-I would give everything!

Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that! As with all Faustian tales, there is an inevitable terrible payback; the devil is a lawyer specialising in contracts after all. Gray is destroyed yet could have survived forever had he lived a pious life but then where is the fun in that as Wilde knew to his ruin?

Assuming that you are spared aging or retribution, what would you do with all that time? Another creature by the name of Agrajag is continually reincarnated and inadvertently and unwittingly killed by the main protagonist Arthur Dent. The latter is a nod to the Buddhist and Hindu ideas of reincarnation. You may evade punishment temporarily but the All Seeing I is taking account. Your soul is immortal and what you do now will damn or absolve you for all eternity.

O, dread and dire word. What mind of man can understand it? And remember, it is an eternity of pain… At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. Could you get used to it? People adapt after all and experience and the perception of experience is relative.

Would there be tortures marginally less bad than others?

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