Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century


Justine LarbalestierJoan Haran - 2006
    Justine Larbalestier has collected 11 key stories--many of them not easily found, and all of them powerful and provocative--and sets them alongside 11 new essays, written by top scholars and critics, that explore the stories' contexts, meanings, and theoretical implications. The resulting dialogue is one of enormous significance to critical scholarship in science fiction, and to understanding the role of feminism in its development. Organized chronologically, this anthology creates a new canon of feminist science fiction and examines the theory that addresses it. Daughters of Earth is an ideal overview for students and general readers.Content: 1. The Fate of Poseidonia - Clare Winger Harris, 19272. The Conquest of Gola - Leslie F. Stone, 19313. Created He Them - Alice Eleanor Jones, 19554. No Light in the Window - Kate Wilhelm, 19635. The Heat Death of the Universe - Pamela Zoline, 19676. And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill Side - James Tiptree Jr., 19717. Wives - Lisa Tuttle, 19768. Rachel in Love - Par Murphy, 19879. The Evening and the Morning and the Night - Octavia E. Butler, 198710. Balinese Dancer - Gwyneth Jones, 199711. What I Didn't See - Karen Joy Fowler, 2002

An Informal History of the Hugos


Jo Walton - 2018
    They are widely considered the most prestigious award in science fiction.Between 2010 and 2013, Jo Walton wrote a series of posts for Tor.com, surveying the Hugo finalists and winners from the award’s inception up to the year 2000. Her contention was that each year’s full set of finalists generally tells a meaningful story about the state of science fiction at that time.Walton’s cheerfully opinionated and vastly well-informed posts provoked valuable conversation among the field’s historians. Now these posts, lightly revised, have been gathered into this book, along with a small selection of the comments posted by SF luminaries such as Rich Horton, Gardner Dozois, and the late David G. Hartwell.Engaged, passionate, and consistently entertaining, this is a book for the many who enjoyed Walton’s previous collection of writing from Tor.com, the Locus Award-winning What Makes This Book So Great.

The Steampunk Bible


Jeff VanderMeerJake von Slatt - 2011
    The Steampunk Bible is the first compendium about the movement, tracing its roots in the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells through its most recent expression in movies such as Sherlock Holmes. Its adherents celebrate the inventor as an artist and hero, re-envisioning and crafting retro technologies including antiquated airships and robots. A burgeoning DIY community has brought a distinctive Victorian-fantasy style to their crafts and art. Steampunk evokes a sense of adventure and discovery, and embraces extinct technologies as a way of talking about the future. This ultimate manual will appeal to aficionados and novices alike as author Jeff VanderMeer takes the reader on a wild ride through the clockwork corridors of Steampunk history.Praise for The Steampunk Bible:"The Steampunk Bible is an informed, informative and beautifully illustrated survey of the subject." -The Financial Times"The Steampunk Bible is far and away the most intriguing catalog of all things steam yet written." -The Austin Chronicle “It’s hard to imagine how VanderMeer and Chambers could have put together a stronger collection. Its publication marks a significant, self-conscious moment in the history of the movement.”—PopMatters.com

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination


Margaret Atwood - 2011
    This is an exploration of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as "science fiction,” a relationship that has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time as a graduate student at Harvard, where she worked on the Victorian ancestor of the form, and continuing as a writer and reviewer.  This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: "Flying Rabbits," which begins with Atwood's early  rabbit superhero creations, and goes on to speculate about masks, capes, weakling alter egos, and Things with Wings; "Burning Bushes," which follows her into Victorian otherlands and beyond; and "Dire Cartographies," which investigates Utopias and Dystopias.  In Other Worlds also includes some of Atwood's key reviews and thoughts about the form. Among those writers discussed are Marge Piercy, Rider Haggard, Ursula Le Guin, Ishiguro, Bryher, Huxley, and Jonathan Swift. She elucidates the differences (as she sees them) between "science fiction" proper, and "speculative fiction," as well as between "sword and sorcery/fantasy" and "slipstream fiction." For all readers who have loved The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood, In Other Worlds is a must.  From the Hardcover edition.

Literary Wonderlands: A Journey Through the Greatest Fictional Worlds Ever Created


Laura MillerAbigail Nussbaum - 2016
    From Spenser's The Fairie Queene to Wells's The Time Machine to Murakami's 1Q84 it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning that can be extracted from the details of the work. With hundreds of pieces of original artwork, illustration and cartography, as well as a detailed overview of the plot and a "Dramatis Personae" for each work, Literary Wonderlands is a fascinating read for lovers of literature, fantasy, and science fiction.

Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture


Stephen H. Segal - 2011
    Clearly, geeks know something about life in the 21st century that other folks don’t—something we all can learn from. Geek Wisdom takes as gospel some 200 of the most powerful and oft-cited quotes from movies (“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads”), television (“Now we know—and knowing is half the battle”), literature (“All that is gold does not glitter”), games, science, the Internet, and more. Now these beloved pearls of modern-day culture have been painstakingly interpreted by a diverse team of hardcore nerds with their imaginations turned up to 11. Yes, this collection of mini-essays is by, for, and about geeks—but it’s just so surprisingly profound, the rest of us would have to be dorks not to read it. So say we all.

Iraq + 100: stories from a century after the invasion


Hassan BlasimDiaa Jubaili - 2016
    Along the way a new aesthetic for the ‘Iraqi fantastical’ begins to emerge: thus we meet time-travelling angels, technophobic dictators, talking statues, macabre museum-worlds, even hovering tiger-droids, and all the time buoyed by a dark, inventive humour that, in itself, offers hope.

Paris Adrift


E.J. Swift - 2018
    She falls in with the eclectic expat community as a bartender at the notorious Millie’s, located next to the Moulin Rouge.Here she meets Gabriela, a bartender who guides her through this strange nocturnal world, and begins to find a new family. But Millie’s is not all that it seems: a bird warns Hallie to get her feathers in order, a mysterious woman shows up claiming to be a chronometrist, and Gabriela is inexplicably unable to leave Paris.Then Hallie discovers a time portal located in the keg room. Over the next nine months, irate customers will be the least of her concerns, as she navigates time-faring through the city’s turbulent past and future, falling in love, and coming to terms with her own precarious sense of self.

Women of Futures Past: Classic Stories


Kristine Kathryn Rusch - 2016
    Stories by Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, Lois McMaster Bujold, CJ Cherryh and more. — Meet the Women of Futures Past: from Grand Master Andre Norton and the beloved Anne McCaffrey to some of the most popular SF writers today, such as Lois McMaster Bujold and CJ Cherryh. The most influential writers of multiple generations are found in these pages, delivering lost classics and foundational touchstones that shaped the field.Contents: * Acknowledgments * Introduction: Invisible Women by Kristine Kathryn Rusch * The Indelible Kind / by Zenna Henderson (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1968) * The Smallest Dragonboy / by Anne McCaffrey (Science Fiction Tales, 1973) * Out of All Them Bright Stars / by Nancy Kress (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March, 1985) * Angel / by Pat Cadigan (Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, June 1987) * Cassandra / by C.J. Cherryh (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1978) * Shambleau / by C.L. Moore (Weird Tales, November, 1933) * The Last Days of Shandakor / by Leigh Brackett (Startling Stories, April 1952) * All Cats Are Gray / by Andre Norton (Fantastic Universe, August/September 1953) * Aftermaths / by Lois McMaster Bujold (Far Frontiers: The Paperback Magazine of Science Fiction and Speculative Fact, Volume V, Spring 1986) * The Last Flight of Doctor Ain / by James Tiptree, Jr. (Galaxy, March 1969) * Sur / by Ursula K. Le Guin (The New Yorker, February 1, 1982) * Fire Watch / by Connie Willis (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February 15, 1982) * About the Editor.

Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture


Ytasha L. Womack - 2013
    From the sci-fi literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and N. K. Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, the book’s topics range from the “alien” experience of blacks in America to the “wake up” cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism. With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die


Peter Boxall - 2006
    Each work of literature featured here is a seminal work key to understanding and appreciating the written word.The featured works have been handpicked by a team of international critics and literary luminaries, including Derek Attridge (world expert on James Joyce), Cedric Watts (renowned authority on Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene), Laura Marcus (noted Virginia Woolf expert), and David Mariott (poet and expert on African-American literature), among some twenty others.Addictive, browsable, knowledgeable--1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die will be a boon companion for anyone who loves good writing and an inspiration for anyone who is just beginning to discover a love of books. Each entry is accompanied by an authoritative yet opinionated critical essay describing the importance and influence of the work in question. Also included are publishing history and career details about the authors, as well as reproductions of period dust jackets and book designs.

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land


Connie Willis - 2018
    It’s that simple. Of course, not everyone agrees. After Jim bombs a contentious interview with a radio host who defends the sacred technology of the printed, tangible book, he gets caught in a rainstorm only to find himself with no place to take refuge other than a quaint, old-fashioned bookshop. Ozymandias Books is not just any store. Jim wanders intrigued through stacks of tomes he doesn’t quite recognize the titles of, none with prices. Here he discovers a mysteriously pristine, seemingly endless wonderland of books—where even he gets nostalgic for his childhood favorite. And, yes, the overwhelmed and busy clerk showing him around says they have a copy. But it’s only after Jim leaves that he understands the true nature of Ozymandias and how tragic it is that some things may be gone forever… From beloved, multiple-award-winning, New York Times best-selling author Connie Willis comes I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land, a novella about the irreplaceable magic of books.

Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon's Firefly


Jane EspensonMichelle Sagara West - 2005
    From what was wrong with the pilot to what was right with the Reavers, from the use of Chinese to how correspondence between Joss and network executives might have gone, from a philosopher’s perspective on “Objects in Space” to a sex therapist’s analysis of Inara, Finding Serenity is filled with writing as exciting, funny and enthralling as the show itself.

The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction


Ursula K. Le Guin - 1979
    A Nebula and Hugo Award-winning writer of science fiction presents a collection of essays that explores the various issues, concepts, challenges, and paradoxes that confront the science fiction writer.

Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories


Naomi Kritzer - 2017
    Here are seventeen short stories, including her Hugo Award-winning story "Cat Pictures Please," which is about what would happen if artificial intelligence was born out of our search engine history. Two stories are previously unpublished. Kritzer has a gift for telling stories both humorous and tender. Her stories are filled with wit and intelligence, and require thoughtful reading.