Involution Ocean

Involution Ocean
Author: Bruce Sterling
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2014-12-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1497686547

A far-future Moby-Dick by the author of Schismatrix: A desperate addict on a bleak, arid planet boards a whaling vessel to hunt the drug he craves. The powerful narcotic syncophine, commonly known as Flare, comes from only one source: the oil of the gargantuan whale-like beasts that swim the dust sea of Nullaqua. It was John Newhouse’s addiction to the substance that made him a dealer and forced him to move to this airless, inhospitable planet But when the all-powerful galactic Confederacy declares Flare illegal, the needs of Newhouse and his clientele leave the desperate off-worlder no choice but to sign on as an able seaman aboard a dustwhaler and hunt the giant creatures himself. Joining a crew of junkies and misfits, including a mad captain with his own dark and secret agenda and a bewitching, batlike alien woman who is pained by human touch, Newhouse sets out across the silica ocean at the bottom of a seventy-mile-deep crater in search of release and redemption . . . and sails toward a fateful confrontation between man and beast that could lead to catastrophe. Bruce Sterling’s debut novel is a remarkable feat of world building—imaginative, provocative, and smart, featuring an unforgettable cast of colorful characters. If Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick unfolded on Frank Herbert’s Dune, the result might be something akin to Sterling’s extraordinary Involution Ocean.

Involution Ocean

Involution Ocean
Author: Bruce Sterling
Publisher: Orbit Books
Total Pages: 175
Release: 1988-09-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9780099589204

Defined by a Hollow

Defined by a Hollow
Author: Darko Suvin
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2010
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9783039114030

Darko Suvin explores utopian horizons in fiction & utopian/dystopian readings of historical reality since the 1970s, focusing in the United States & United Kingdom, but drawing also on French, German & Russian sources.

Creators of Science Fiction

Creators of Science Fiction
Author: Brian Stableford
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2009-11-01
Genre: Science fiction
ISBN: 1434457591

Well-known critic and novelist Brian Stableford here discusses the writers, editors, and publishers who helped create the modern genre of science fiction: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Camille Flammarion, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Hugo Gernsback, John W. Campbell Jr., Edward E. "Doc" Smith, Robert A. Heinlein, James Blish, Gregory Benford, and Ian Watson. Complete with bibliography and index.

The Good New Stuff

The Good New Stuff
Author: Gardner Dozois
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1999-01-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780312198909

Seventeen page-turning science fiction adventure stories by such luminaries as John Varley, Bruce Sterling, Vernor Vinge, George R.R. Martin, and Paul J. McAuley.

100 Must-read Science Fiction Novels

100 Must-read Science Fiction Novels
Author: Nick Rennison
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1408103710

"A reliable guide to what science fiction is" Christopher Priest, award-winning science fiction author "A really good introduction to the genre" SFX Magazine "Perceptive and glorious" Ian Watson, author of the screenplay for Steve Spielberg's A.I. Want to become a science fiction buff? Want to expand your reading in your favourite genre? This is a good place to start! From the publishers of the popular Good Reading Guide comes a rich selection of some of the finest SF novels ever published. With 100 of the best titles fully reviewed and a further 500 recommended, you'll quickly become an expert in the world of science fiction. The book is arranged by author and includes some thematic entries and special categories such as SF film adaptations, SF in rock music and Philip K. Dick in the mass media . It also includes a history of SF and a new definition of the genre, plus lists of award winners and book club recommendations. Foreword by Christopher Priest, the multiple award-winning SF author.

The Year's Best Science Fiction

The Year's Best Science Fiction
Author: Gardner R. Dozois
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 678
Release: 1999
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0312209630

The 21st edition of the award-winning annual compilation of the year's best science fiction stories.

The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles

The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles
Author: Jason Guriel
Publisher: Biblioasis
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2023-08-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1771965525

The follow-up to Guriel's NYT New & Noteworthy Forgotten Work is a mashup of Moby-Dick, The Lord of the Rings, Byron, cyberpunk, Swamp Thing, Teen Wolf ... and more. It’s 2070. Newfoundland has vanished, Tokyo is a new Venice, and many people have retreated to “bonsai housing”: hives that compress matter in a world that’s losing ground to rising tides. Enter Kaye, an English literature student searching for the reclusive author of a YA classic—a beloved novel about teenage werewolves sailing to a fabled sea monster’s nest. Kaye’s quest will intersect with obsessive fan subcultures, corporate conspiracies, flying gondolas, an anthropomorphic stove, and the molecular limits of reality itself. Set in the same world as Guriel’s acclaimed Forgotten Work, which the New York Times called “unlikely, audacious, and ingenious," and written in rhyming couplets, The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles cuts between Kaye’s quest, chapters from the YA novel, and guerilla works of fanfic in a visionary verse novel destined to draw its own cult following.

Holy Fire

Holy Fire
Author: Bruce Sterling
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504063082

Memory, morality, and immortality merge in this “haunting and lyrical triumph” from the bestselling author of Schismatrix Plus (Time). In the late twenty-first century, technology has lengthened lifespans far beyond what was once medically possible. Existence itself has become relatively easy—if boring. In this futuristic paradise, ninety-four-year-old Mia Ziemann longs for something different and undergoes a radical new treatment that restores both her body and mind to that of a twenty-year-old. After her dramatic transformation, Mia finds herself lost in an avant-garde world of passion, designer drugs, and creative expression . . . “Ideas—big ideas—lurk beneath Mia’s romp through Sterling’s delightfully imagined newly post-human Earth. Art, artifice, the pursuit of immortality, and youth and aging bounce around the story, the characters, and their conversations in imaginative, engaging fashion. . . . In the end, Holy Fire is one of the most interesting, imaginative, and subtly humorous—and relevant for it—novels the cyberpunk/post-human era has produced. . . . Holy Fire may very well be [Sterling’s] best work.” —Speculiction “An intellectual feat, it is also a treat for the spirit and the senses.” —Wired “A patented Sterling extra-special.” —Newsday “The future Sterling traces is plausible and provocative, particularly his consideration of several contrasting cultures, and of the disenfranchised who are unable to become ‘post-human.’ Those interested in serious speculative conversation set within a very strange near-future will find this much to their taste.” —Publishers Weekly

William Gibson

William Gibson
Author: Tom Henthorne
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2011-07-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786486937

William Gibson, author of the cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer (1984), is one today's most widely read science fiction writers. This companion is meant both for general readers and for scholars interested in Gibson's oeuvre. In addition to providing a literary and cultural context for works ranging from Gibson's first short story, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" (1977), to his recent, bestselling novel, Zero History (2010), the companion offers commentary on Gibson's subjects, themes, and approaches. It also surveys existing scholarship on Gibson's work in an accessible way and provides an extensive bibliography to facilitate further study of William Gibson's writing, influence, and place in the history of science fiction and in literature as a whole.