Blackfish City


Sam J. Miller - 2018
    The city’s denizens have become accustomed to a roughshod new way of living; however, the city is starting to fray along the edges—crime and corruption have set in, the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside direst poverty are spawning unrest, and a new disease called “the breaks” is ravaging the population.When a strange new visitor arrives—a woman riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side—the city is entranced. The “orcamancer,” as she’s known, very subtly brings together four people—each living on the periphery—to stage unprecedented acts of resistance. By banding together to save their city before it crumbles under the weight of its own decay, they will learn shocking truths about themselves.Blackfish City is a remarkably urgent—and ultimately very hopeful—novel about political corruption, organized crime, technology run amok, the consequences of climate change, gender identity, and the unifying power of human connection.

Uglies


Scott Westerfeld - 2005
    In just a few weeks she'll have the operation that will turn her from a repellent ugly into a stunning pretty. And as a pretty, she'll be catapulted into a high-tech paradise where her only job is to have fun.But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to become a pretty. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world—and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally a choice: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. Tally's choice will change her world forever....

Clypsis


Jeffrey A. Carver - 1987
    Share the dream of Mike Murray as he makes his way from the racing pit to the cockpit of the universe's most dangerous and exhilarating challenge.Roger Zelazny and Jeffrey A. Carver launch a sensational series with technical blueprints of the racing ships by visionary automotive designer Hayashi.A Byron Preiss Book

The Gate to Women's Country


Sheri S. Tepper - 1987
    Here, in a desperate effort to prevent another world war, the women have segregated most men into closed military garrisons and have taken on themselves every other function of government, industry, agriculture, science and learning.The resulting manifold responsibilities are seen through the life of Stavia, from a dreaming 10-year-old to maturity as doctor, mother and member of the Marthatown Women's Council. As in Tepper's Awakeners series books, the rigid social systems are tempered by the voices of individual experience and, here, by an imaginative reworking of The Trojan Woman that runs through the text. A rewarding and challenging novel that is to be valued for its provocative ideas.

All Rights Reserved


Gregory Scott Katsoulis - 2017
    The moment she turns fifteen, Speth must pay for every word she speaks, for every nod, for every scream and even every gesture of affection. She’s been raised to know the consequences of falling into debt, and can’t begin to imagine the pain of having her eyes shocked for speaking words that she’s unable to afford.But when Speth’s friend Beecher commits suicide rather than work off his family’s crippling debt, she can’t express her shock and dismay without breaking her Last Day contract and sending her family into Collection. Rather than read her speech—rather than say anything at all—she closes her mouth and vows never to speak again, sparking a movement that threatens to destroy her, her family and the entire city around them.

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus


Orson Scott Card - 1996
    In one of the most powerful and thought-provoking novels of his remarkable career, Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch interweaves a compelling portrait of Christopher Columbus with the story of a future scientist who believes she can alter human history from a tragedy of bloodshed and brutality to a world filled with hope and healing.

The Ninth Metal


Benjamin Percy - 2021
    The first of a cycle of novels set in a shared universe.It began with a comet. When it came into view on a close pass by Earth, people took off work, gathering on sidewalks and in parking lots to watch it burn by. One year later, Earth spun into the debris field the comet left behind. Minnesota seemed to bear the brunt of the damage: meteors annihilated barns and silos, cratered pastures and hardwood forests, tore up county highways, and evaporated one small town in an instant. At first, it seems to be a disaster. Until the people of Minnesota notice deposits of unusual metal in the comet's debris. Not gold, silver, copper, tin, iron or any of the noble metals, it's a previously unknown ninth metal: omnimetal. With high-density charging capabilities and conductive properties that can change the world as an energy source, the deposit might be the best thing that ever happened to the northern section of the state, where the economy has been dying for a long time. Or it might be the worst. It is then that the "gold rush" begins. Farmers sell their metal-rich land for millions. Comet-worshipping cults set up compounds and repeat the phrase "Metal is" as their mantra. Roughnecks flood the town, hungry for work and trouble. Prostitutes flourish. Businesses rise. Families are divided. Saudis bid against the Chinese on land grabs. Bodies lie in shallow graves. As witnessed when oil was discovered in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota, the heartland in our story goes from the middle of nowhere to the center of everything. And one family--the Frontiers--hopes to control it all.

Mardock Scramble


Tow Ubukata - 2003
    as a human anyway. Taken in by a devious gambler named Shell, she became a slave to his cruel desires and would have been killed by his hand if not for a private investigator and his self-aware Universal Tool, Oeufcoque. Now a cyborg, Balot has not only physical powers, but the ability to disrupt social environments. She chases after Shell, his partner-in-crime Boiled, and faces down a variety of insane villains in this pulse-pounding cyberpunk noir adventure.

Flood


Stephen Baxter - 2008
    Another wet summer, another year of storm surges and high tides. But this time the Thames Barrier is breached and central London is swamped. The waters recede, life goes on, the economy begins to recover, people watch the news reports of other floods around the world. And then the waters rise again. And again.Lily, Helen, Gary and Piers, hostages released from five years captivity at the hands of Christian Extremists in Spain, return to England and the first rumours of a flood of positively Biblical proportions…Sea levels have begun to rise, at catastrophic speed. Within two years London and New York will be under water. The Pope will give his last address from the Vatican before Rome is swallowed by the rising water. Mecca too will vanish beneath the waves.The world is drowning. A desperate race to find out what is happening begins. The popular theory is that we are paying the price for our profligacy and that climate change is about to redress Gaia’s balance. But there are dissenting views. And all the time the waters continue to rise and mankind begins the great retreat to higher ground. Millions will die, billions will become migrants. Wars will be fought over mountains.

Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology


James Patrick KellyMichael Swanwick - 2007
    Cyberpunk freewheels with punk rock energy, careening between the internet, bioengineering, and international politics, its influence saturating entertainment and the mass media. Drawing on the traditions of the pioneering cyberpunk manifesto, Mirrorshades, each story delves into the gritty world of technological change. Legendary Mirrorshades editor and contributor Bruce Sterling is back, alongside such cutting-edge writers as Cory Doctorow, Jonathan Lethem, Gwyneth Jones, Hal Duncan, Charles Stross, and Pat Cadigan. With a daring introduction from James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, editors of the controversial Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, this collection is an exhilarating snapshot of a vibrant literary movement.Contents“Introduction: Hacking Cyberpunk” by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel“Bicycle Repairman” by Bruce Sterling“Lobsters” by Charles Stross“The Voluntary State” by Christopher Rowe“When Sysadmins Rules the Earth” by Cory Doctorow“The Wedding Album” by David Marusek“Two Dreams on Trains” by Elizabeth Bear“Yeyuka” by Greg Egan“Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland” by Gwyneth JonesSterling-Kessel Correspondence“How We Got in Town and out Again” by Jonathan Lethem“Search Engine” by Mary Rosenblum“The Dog Said Bow-Wow” by Michael Swanwick“The Calorie Man” By Paolo Bagciaglupi“The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry With a Completely Remastered ‘Soundtrack’” by Pat Cadigan“What’s Up Tiger Lily?” by Paul Di Filippo“Daddy’s World” by Walter Jon Williams“Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City” by William Gibson

Futureland


Walter Mosley - 2001
    For all its denizens, from technocrats to terrorists, celebs to crooks, "Futureland" is an all-American nightmare just waiting to happen.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe


Charles Yu - 2010
    . . through quantum space–time.  Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life.

The Raft


Fred Strydom - 2015
    In people's minds there was no actual event … and thus it could be followed by no period of shock or mourning. There could be no catharsis. Everyone was simply reset to zero."On day zero, humankind collectively lost its memory. The collapse of civilisation was as instantaneous as it was inevitable. For a man named Kayle Jenner, confined by a regime to a commune on a remote beach, all that remains is the vague and haunting vision of a son … That, and a wooden raft.It is a raft that will set Kayle on a journey across a broken world to find his son.Braving a landscape of elusive encounters, a maze of other people's dreams, and muddled memories, Kayle will discover more than just his lost past. He will discover the truth behind Day Zero – a truth that makes both fools and gods of men.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World


Haruki Murakami - 1985
    Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.'

Earth Abides


George R. Stewart - 1949
    One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.