science fiction

Book Reviews

• Marcel Aymé: The Man Who Walked through Walls
  - surreal realist short stories from 1943 France
• Iain M. Banks: Consider Phlebas
  - the first Culture novel - elegant and intelligent space opera
• Iain M. Banks: The State of the Art
  - short science fiction
• Iain M. Banks: Use of Weapons
• Marleen S. Barr: Envisioning the Future
  Science Fiction and the Next Millennium
• Andrea L. Bell, Yolanda Molina-Gavilán: Cosmos Latinos*
  An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain
• David Brin: Earth
• Karel Capek: War With the Newts
  - sweeping science fiction satire
• C.J. Cherryh: The Faded Sun
  - science fiction with compelling aliens
• Ted Chiang: Stories of Your Life and Others*
  - big idea science fiction, intelligently handled
• Greg Egan: Axiomatic*
  - hard science fiction stories, drawing on physics, biology, computing
• Greg Egan: Diaspora
  - science fiction, but more science than fiction
• Greg Egan: Permutation City
  - science fiction with cellular automata
• Greg Egan: Quarantine
  - a novel about quantum mechanics: stop collapsing those wave functions!
• Ferenc Karinthy: Metropole*
  - trapped in a crowded city with an incomprehensible language
• Justine Larbalestier: The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction
  - a feminist history, from the earliest magazines to the Tiptree Award
• Justine Larbalestier: Daughters of Earth
  Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century
• Ursula K. Le Guin, Brian Attebery: The Norton Book of Science Fiction
  North American science fiction, 1960-1990
• Ursula K. Le Guin: A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
  - eight science fiction short stories
• Ursula K. Le Guin: Always Coming Home*
  - fictional ethnography: stories and poetry from a far-future California
• Stanislaw Lem: The Futurological Congress*
  - an inventive science fiction comedy
• Primo Levi: A Tranquil Star
  - realistic and fantastic short stories
• Ken MacLeod: The Cassini Division
  - anarchism, socialism, and capitalism in the 24th century
• Julian May: Jack the Bodiless
• Ian McDonald: River of Gods
  - science fiction in a 2047 India
• China Mieville: Iron Council
  - an inventive but otherwise disappointing fantasy
• Alexei Panshin, Cory Panshin: The World Beyond the Hill
  Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence
• Julie Phillips: James Tiptree, Jr.
  The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
• Marge Piercy: Body of Glass
  - original cyberpunk sf
• Marge Piercy: Woman on the Edge of Time**
  - parallel conflicts in a far-future utopia and a present mental hospital
• John Rieder: Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction
  - explorations in the ideological background of early sf
• Spider Robinson: Callahans
  Time Travelers Strictly Cash; Callahan's Lady
• Spider Robinson: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
• Robert J. Sawyer: Calculating God
  - the aliens have landed, and they are creationists...
• Tom Shippey: Fictional Space
  Essays on Contemporary Science Fiction
• George Slusser, et al.: Immortal Engines
  Life Extension and Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash
  - a fast-paced near-future cyberpunk thriller
• Bruce Sterling: Holy Fire
  - a future dominated by a gerontocratic medical-industrial complex
• Charles Stross: The Fuller Memorandum
  - comic espionage science fiction horror
• Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky: Definitely Maybe
• Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky: Roadside Picnic*
• John F. X. Sundman: Acts of the Apostles
  - an infotech conspiracy thriller with real tech
• Peter Swirski, Stanislaw Lem: A Stanislaw Lem Reader
  - interviews, essays, and bibliographies
• Sheri S. Tepper: Grass
  - ecological science fiction
• E.P. Thompson: The Sykaos Papers
  - an alien is studied by military anthropology
• James Tiptree Jr: Brightness Falls from the Air
  - aliens, time travel, genocide, torture, drugs
• James Tiptree Jr: Her Smoke Rose up Forever**
  - dark, powerful science fiction stories about sex and death
• James Tiptree Jr: Meet Me at Infinity
  - uncollected science fiction and nonfiction
• Joan D. Vinge: World's End
• Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep*
  - inventive and appealing space opera
• Connie Willis: Doomsday Book
  - parallel plagues in Oxford in 1348 and 2054
• Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light**
  - epic science fiction using Hindu and Buddhist themes

See also: alternative history | fantasy | fiction

This isn't all the science fiction I've read, by any means. When I was at high school in the first half of the 1980s I read pretty much all the science fiction and fantasy in my local library - probably two or three thousand books. But I haven't read nearly as much since then, and I only started writing book reviews in 1992...

Unreviewed but noteworthy: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War; Frank Herbert, Dune; George R.R. Martin, Dying of the Light; Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz; ...

See also my comments on Ursula Le Guin and Stanislaw Lem.