Making History


Stephen Fry - 1996
    And with their success is launched a brave new world that is in some ways better than ours--but in most ways even worse. Fry's experiment in history makes for his most ambitious novel yet, and his most affecting. His first book to be set mostly in America, it is a thriller with a funny streak, a futuristic fantasy based on one of mankind's darkest realities. It is, in every sense, a story of our times.

Armageddon: The Musical


Robert Rankin - 1990
    Elvis on an epic time-travel journey - the Presliad. Buddhavision - a network bigger than God (and more powerful, too). Nasty nuclear leftovers. Naughty sex habits. Dalai Dan (the 153rd reincarnation of the Lama of that ilk) and Barry, the talkative Time Sprout. Even with all this excitement, you wouldn't think a backwater planet like Earth makes much of a splash in the galatic pond.But the soap opera called The Earthers is making big video bucks in the intergalactic ratings race. And alien TV execs know exactly what the old earth drama needs to make the off-world audience sit up and stare: a spectacular Armageddon-type finale. With a cast of millions - including you! DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL - IT'S GONNA BE A HELLUVA SHOW!

Motel of the Mysteries


David Macaulay - 1979
    Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob)


Dennis E. Taylor - 2016
    Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty. The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.

Will Save the Galaxy for Food


Yahtzee Croshaw - 2017
    With the invention of Quantum Teleportation, space heroes aren't needed anymore. When one particularly unlucky ex-adventurer masquerades as famous pilot and hate figure Jacques McKeown, he's sucked into an ever-deepening corporate and political intrigue. Between space pirates, adorable deadly creatures, and a missing fortune in royalties, saving the universe was never this difficult!From the creator of Mogworld and Jam!Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw is a British-Australian comedic writer, video game journalist, author, and video game developer. He is perhaps best known for his acerbic video game review series, Zero Punctuation, for The Escapist.

Young Zaphod Plays It Safe


Douglas Adams - 1986
    It doesn't appear as a standalone work, but is included with several collections. The story is a prequel to the events in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and has the young Zaphod Beeblebrox working as a salvage ship operator. He guides some bureaucrats to a crashed spaceship which may be leaking some hazardous materials. The bureaucrats are determined to "make it safe". The comic asides in the story include some of the time travel paradoxes which are a common running theme in Adams' SF work, and plenty of material about lobsters

Dimension of Miracles


Robert Sheckley - 1968
    It was waiting for him, just as he had left it. But where? He only knew he was in the center of a galaxy in a universe of galaxies. Within them lay endless varieties of the planet Earth. And there was only one way to find his Earth again: he would have to visit each one. And he would have to hurry--because his search for home had turned into a race with death.

Take Us To Your Trump


Andrew Stanek - 2018
    Okay yes, all that stuff too, but I'm not talking about that right now. The government has also been lying to us about space aliens. Aliens have landed on the National Mall and are asking to speak with the President of the United States. For the sake of the planet, diplomat Michael Wallenson is tasked with keeping them away from Donald Trump at all costs. Will Michael succeed? Or will these heavily armed, easily offended aliens succeed in reaching our leader? Building the border dome, coal-powered missiles, and the true identities of the men in black - all in Take Us To Your Trump, another hilarious satirical comedy from author Andrew Stanek.

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil


George Saunders - 2005
    In a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, large enough for only one resident at a time, citizens waiting to enter the country fall under the rule of the power-hungry and tyrannical Phil, setting off a chain of injustice and mass hysteria.An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone.

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.

Lint


Steve Aylett - 2005
    In Slaughtermatic, he pushed the limits of science fiction, and for that he was named a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. Now, in Lint, he offers the first-ever biography of one of the great minds of our time: Jeff Lint, author of some of the strangest and most inventive satirical SF of the late twentieth century. Lint transcended genre in classics such as Jelly Result and The Stupid Conversation, becoming a cult figure and pariah. Like his contemporary Philip K. Dick, he was "blithely ahead of his time." Aylett follows Lint through his Beat days, his immersion in pulp SF, psychedelia, and resentment, his disastrous scripts for Star Trek and Patton, and his belated Hollywood success in the 1990s. It was a career haunted by death, including the undetected death of his agent; the controversial death of his rival, Herzog; and the unshakable "Lint is dead" rumors, which persisted even after his death. This hilarious mock biography is outrageous and remarkably funny, Aylett is an Evelyn Waugh for our time.

Oblivion: The Complete Series


Joshua James - 2020
    Captain Lee Saito's massive new starship is sent to seal the uneasy truce.But a series of terrorist attacks on Earth and the mysterious acts of a strange cult threaten to derail the fragile peace.When the mission goes awry, Saito must try to salvage what he can in deep space while his estranged son must navigate a conspiracy back on Earth that could implicate the highest levels of government.As it all spirals out of control, the future of humanity hangs in the balance.Includes all 9 books in the Oblivion series:Lost MissionFirst ContactFinal InvasionStar FallenBeyond RuinOrion InboundEnter AbyssEarth AriseLast StandFive star reviews for Lost Mission, book 1 in the series:★★★★★ "Plenty of high octane action sequences ... Readers should expect a twisting and curving wild ride."★★★★★ "This is a fast moving book that you won’t want to put down."★★★★★ "A rip roaring tale that does a fine job of world building and character development."

Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers


Grant Naylor - 1989
    But Lister didn't have a choice. All he remembered was going on a birthday celebration pub crawl through London. When he came to his senses again, with nothing in his pockets but a passport in the name of Emily Berkenstein.So he did the only thing he could. Amazed to discover they would actually hire him, he joined the space corps----and found himself aboard Red Dwarf, a spaceship as big as a small city that, six or seven years from now, would get him back to Earth. What Lister couldn't forsee was that he'd inadvertently signed up for a one--way jaunt three million years into the future---a future which would see him the last living member of the human race, with only a hologram crew mate and a highly evolved cat for company. Of course, that was before the ship broke the light barrier and things began to get really weird...

Brains: A Zombie Memoir


Robin Becker - 2010
    In fact, he can even write. And the story he has to tell is a truly disturbing—yet strangely heartwarming—one.Convinced he'll bring about a peaceful coexistence between zombies and humans if he can demonstrate his unique condition to Howard Stein, the man responsible for the zombie virus, Barnes sets off on a grueling cross-country journey to meet his maker. Along the way he recruits a small army of "super" zombies that will stop at nothing to reach their goal. There's Guts, the dreadlocked boy who can run like the wind; Joan, the matronly nurse adept at reattaching decaying appendages; Annie, the young girl with a fierce quick-draw; and Ros, who can actually speak. United they embark on an epic quest to attain what all men, women—and, apparently, zombies—yearn for: equality.Brains is a blood-soaked, darkly humorous story that will have readers rooting for Barnes and his zombie posse to the very end.

Freelance On The Galactic Tunnel Network


E.M. Foner - 2020
    Over half of Earth's population has emigrated to live and work on alien worlds and orbitals, and humanity now aspires to that signature vessel of advanced species, a jump-capable colony ship equipped to support millions of pioneers on the search for a new world. With trillions of creds at stake, are humans doomed to repeat the mistakes that led to Earth's first galactic bail-out? Or might a more experienced investigative journalist look for fraud closer to home?Join the intrepid reporters of the Galactic Free Press, a senior EarthCent Intelligence agent, and an independent trader, as they try to make a living and do their best for humanity with a little help from alien friends. Freelance On The Galactic Tunnel Network is a standalone novel that is the twentieth book in the EarthCent Ambassador / EarthCent Universe sequence, and can be read without starting back to the beginning.