I've always loved science fiction, but first developed my love for storytelling as a prosecutor in the Bronx where I would weave the tale of a crime into a coherent story for a jury’s consideration. After several years of prosecuting sex crimes and crimes against children, and publishing a book about that experience, I had enough of the real world and returned to my first love for novel writing. Science fiction is a male-dominated field and most sci-fi heroes are male. My greatest influences are male characters and authors, but I always wished for more diversity in the genre. I’m excited to share this passion and hope it will inspire authors and readers!
I love a book where the character finds strength she never knew she possessed. Cassie is just a regular high school kid until the Others arrive. She thinks she has to depend on others to survive the alien invasion, but after her little brother Sam is recruited into the military’s resistance force, Cassie realizes that she’s capable of far more than just cheerleading.
As a fellow “fake it ‘til you make it” girl, I love Cassie’s willingness to put on a brave face and her “I can handle this,” facade, until she finds out that she actually can handle it. Cassie is resourceful and intelligent, and while she’s not ruthless, she’ll do what she has to to protect those she loves.
After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.
Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look…
Shards of Earth is a rip-roaring science fiction
adventure story full of the things I love.
A rag-tag space
salvage crew trying to survive and maybe profit against a backdrop of war and
invasion finds themselves at the very center of events with the fate of
humanity in the balance. There are vast, inscrutable alien death machines
wrecking whole planets for reasons nobody can figure out. It even has weird human
societies and weirder extraterrestrials.
It's a great space opera with vivid
characters, amazing but plausible technology, and a grand scope.
From the author of the thrilling science-fiction epic Children of Time, winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award. Shards of Earth is the first high-octane, far-future space adventure in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Final Architecture trilogy.
'One of the most interesting and accomplished writers in speculative fiction' - Christopher Paolini
The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .
Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade his mind in the war. And one of humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.
Mark Landau has an MA in Linguistics and is an ordained Interfaith Minister and Spiritual Counselor. He has written eight books on meditation, healing, evolution, politics, sex, fantasy and saving our world, one musical play, and many songs, poems, and essays. After devoting a lifetime to healing and awakening himself, others, and the world utilizing therapy, meditation, energy, and bodywork, 12-step programs, Rebirthing, Shamanic Journey, Soul Retrieval, DNA Activation, and esoteric Hindu, Vedic, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Hawaiian and Native-American practices, he began developing his own meditations and healing modalities. He does individual healing sessions utilizing six modalities, teaches three new, evolution-boosting meditations for our times and lives in Santa Fe.
And since Speaker for the Dead, number 2 in OSC’s Ender series and another Nebula and Hugo Award winner, is my favorite of all his books, I must include it as well. After the great, terrible war, Ender disappears and many years pass. A mysterious figure, the Speaker for the Dead, arises to reveal the souls and redeem those who have passed on. I very much related to someone who really could grok the life of one recently deceased and speak to the survivors in a way that clarified, resolved, revealed, and redeemed the deceased’s entire existence for them. And the whole new, recently discovered world with a new intelligent race of beings again pulled me and the Speaker right into it. More than with any other author, I felt I was right there living and experiencing what the characters were. And, of course, the dynamic question of what…
'There aren't too many recent sf novels we can confidently call truly moral works, but Speaker for the Dead is one. It's a completely gripping story.' - The Toronto Star
'Achieves and delivers more than almost anything else within the science fiction genre, Ender's Game is a contemporary classic' - New York Times on Ender's Game
A FALLEN HERO - HAUNTED BY HIS PAST, BUT CAN HE CHANGE THE FUTURE?
Ender Wiggin was once considered a great military leader, a saviour for mankind. But now history judges his destruction of an alien race as monstrous rather than heroic.
Creative expression has been one of my most cherished values since childhood. I've always had a creative hobby of some kind since I was a kid. Not sure how that happened – my parents were tolerant of my interests at best. I made my day job career in the arts, fostering the creativity of community members and supporting the work of artists. Art (in the general sense of all forms of creative expression) is, to me, a defining characteristic of humanity, it makes life worth living, and the way it’s devalued under Capitalism both saddens and inspires me as a creator myself. I’m a writer of speculative fiction and I write about creative people.
Hunted by those who want to study his gravity powers, Jes makes his way to the best place for a mixed-species fugitive to blend in: the pleasure moon where everyone just wants to be lost in the party. It doesn’t take long for him to catch the attention of the crime boss who owns the resort-casino where he lands a circus job, and when the boss gets wind of the bounty on Jes’ head, he makes an offer: do anything and everything asked of him or face vivisection.
With no other options, Jes fulfills the requests: espionage, torture, demolition. But when the boss sets the circus up to take the fall for his about-to-get-busted narcotics operation, Jes and his friends decide to bring the mobster down. And if Jes can also avoid going back to being the prize subject of a scientist who can’t wait to dissect him? Even better.
Hunted by those who want to study his gravity powers, Jes makes his way to the best place for a mixed-species fugitive to blend in: the pleasure moon where everyone just wants to be lost in the party. It doesn't take long for him to catch the attention of the crime boss who owns the resort-casino where he lands a circus job, and when the boss gets wind of the bounty on Jes' head, he makes an offer: do anything and everything asked of him or face vivisection.
With no other options, Jes fulfills the requests: espionage, torture, demolition. But…
I teach writing and children's literature at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and for many years worked as a librarian. (Once a librarian, always a librarian!) First and foremost, I'm a reader. The real world can be an unpleasant and depressing place, so I regularly escape inside books. Although serious books are great, it's also nice to escape to a world where you can laugh and not worry about anything too bad happening.
I may be cheating here. Rapunzel is an old-time fairy tale, and Cress is a science fiction re-writing of that story, so I'm going to count it in this list as "historical." This is the third book in Meyers' Lunar Chronicles and it is my favorite of the bunch. Cress (Rapunzel) is incredibly smart and completely naive to the world. Her romantic interest is a completely dopey bad guy, who you shouldn't waste your time disliking. The odd situations they get themselves into mirror, to an extent, the famous fairy tale. Lots of fun.
Cress is the third book in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles series, following Cinder and Scarlet.
Incarcerated in a satellite, an expert hacker and out to save the world - Cress isn't your usual damsel in distress.
CRESS grew-up as a prisoner. With only netscreens for company she's forced to do the bidding of the evil Queen Levana. Now that means tracking down Cinder and her handsome accomplice Emperor Kai. But little does Levana know that those she seeks, and the man she loves, are plotting her downfall . . .
As paths cross and the price of freedom rises, happily…
I’ve been a gamer all of my life and am a teacher of elementary school students. After finding the LitRPG genre I wished to share this with other kids... like the one I had once been. Most parents in the genre push full 200k books on their children with an expectation of found love. While I imagine it works for a few of them, I rather expect that the majority of those attempts end in failure. Kids have their own world and their own sense of humor. I write to them, to inspire them and make them laugh, to make them entertained even as I teach them universal morals and lessons about the world.
I bought the book out of curiosity not even knowing it was for kids. And once I realized what it was, I read it to my son. He loved it. Let me describe it in the style it is written:
High-energy text right from the beginning. Honestly the inspiration for my own series and its style of writing. The protagonist has special powers that are ranked in a game-like manner using levels. It appeals to the gamer youth of today, relating to the games that they play even now despite having been written thirty years ago. A solid A plus production.
Fifteen-year-old alien hunter Daniel X is on a mission to finish the job that killed his parents - to wipe out the world's most bloodthirsty aliens on The List. At the number-one spot, The Prayer is Daniel's ultimate target. With mind-blowing skills like telepathy and the ability to transform and create, Daniel's got more than a few tricks up his sleeve. Along with his friends Willy, Joe-Joe, Emma and Dana, Daniel hunts down the aliens on The List one by one. But as he battles towards his top target he can't forget one thing: he's got a host of aliens…
I’m a stay-at-home working dad, and have handed my boys countless books to keep them entertained so I could get some work done. There’s something magical about giving your kid a book that sparks their love of reading. In my own experience, adventure books that made my boys laugh out loud would captivate my kids for hours…and keep them out of my hair.
The Glorkian Warriors Delivers a Pizza is a great book for early readers. There isn’t a complicated plot, instead, it’s so jam-packed with wonderful nonsense and silly jokes that it’s as fun to read to your kids as it is to see them read it themselves. I also love buddy comedies, and the Glorkian Warrior’s banter with his backpack is a delight.
The Glorkian Warrior isn't the brightest bulb in the box, so it's good he's got his trusty talking backpack to advise him as they set out on a perilous journey to deliver a pizza. The pizza's got clams and peanut butter on it, so it's not clear who's going to want it, but deliver it they will. With bright, lively illustrations and classic prat-falls, this graphic novel for kids is 112 pages of super icky gross-out humour and ludicrously bad decisions- in other words, The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza is a winner.
I discovered science fiction at age nine with Rocketship Galileo and Red Planet and have never lost my love for speculative worlds, even after growing up to follow a career teaching and writing about the history of cities and city planning. In recent years, I’ve also begun to write about the field of SF. So it is one-hundred-percent natural for me to combine the two interests and explore science fiction cities. I try to look beyond the geez-whiz technology of some imagined cities to the ideas of human-scale planning and community that might make them fun places to visit or live in if we could somehow manage to get there.
I get bored when aliens always seem to land on the National Mall in Washington or hover over Los Angeles, so I was delighted to discover that at least one alien ship prefers to land in the lagoon off Lagos, Nigeria.
It’s a city as big or bigger than New York, after all. There is the challenge of dealing with very enigmatic visitors, but the time is the present and readers get a whirlwind tour of one of the world’s megacities. It’s like having the most highspeed guide you can imagine… who happens to be one of the most compelling SF writers today.
Three strangers, each isolated by his or her own problems: Adaora, the marine biologist. Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa. Agu, the troubled soldier. Wandering Bar Beach in Lagos, Nigeria's legendary mega-city, they're more alone than they've ever been before.
But when something like a meteorite plunges into the ocean and a tidal wave overcomes them, these three people will find themselves bound together in ways they could never imagine. Together with Ayodele, a visitor from beyond the stars, they must race through Lagos and against time itself in order to save the city, the world... and themselves.
I grew up with a scientist dad who often discussed bits of research or new discoveries around the dinner table. I didn’t follow in his footsteps and get a Ph.D., but I did develop a fascination with scientific happenings, particularly of the weird or unexplained variety. In college, I worked as the science reporter for my university’s newspaper, where I wrote on topics like nanotech tweezers, poultry farm pollution, and the nighttime habits of spiders and snakes. I’m also the author of two science fiction books for young readers.
I’m a sucker for a good alien invasion story. Add in some weird extraterrestrial plants taking over the world and I’m hooked!
It all began with the rain. Then, the strange seeds spread. Bit by bit, deadly plants cropped up everywhere. These things are no joke—I’m talking about man-eating varieties that release deadly pollen and have tentacles that won’t let go. The only people who might be able to fight back are a group of kids with unexplained abilities.
I loved how fast-paced and smart this book was. I also found it delightfully creepy!
"The perfect book right now for young readers searching for hope, strength, inspiration — and just a little horticultural havoc."—New York Times
The first book in a can't-put-it-down, can't-read-it-fast-enough action-thriller trilogy that's part Hatchet, part Alien!
The invasion begins--but not as you'd expect. It begins with rain. Rain that carries seeds. Seeds that sprout--overnight, everywhere. These new plants take over crop fields, twine up houses, and burrow below streets. They bloom--and release toxic pollens. They bloom--and form Venus flytrap-like pods that swallow animals and people. They bloom--everywhere, unstoppable.
Or are they? Three kids on a remote island seem immune to…
I’m a British author who has always had a fascination with magical realism and novels that blend the serious with the strange. For that reason, though I write literary fiction for adults, I take so much of my inspiration from children’s literature. There’s something so simple about how kids’ books stitch the extraordinary into the every day without having to overexplain things. I now live not far from the forest that inspired A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood, and my latest novel is set in and inspired by this part of rural England–with all the mystery and magic that a trip into the woods entails.
Natsuki is an outsider to polite Japanese society. She is content with an asexual-by-design marriage and comfortable questioning the norms and expectations of marriage and babies. She also has an alien called Piyyut living in her backpack, which happens to be a talking plush hedgehog.
Wherever you think this bizarre, bonkers novel is going, it goes even further–I read the final pages with my jaw basically detached.
Natsuki isn't like the other girls. As youths, she and her cousin Yuu spent the summers in the wild Nagano mountains, hoping for a spaceship to transport her home. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the cousins for ever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what.
Now, Natsuki is grown. She lives quietly in an asexual marriage, pretending to be normal, and hiding the horrors of her childhood from her family and friends. But dark shadows from Natsuki's past are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains, Natsuki prepares for a reunion with Yuu. Will…
I am an astrophysicist with a passion for narratives that stare unflinchingly at the inherent hostility of outer space. Professionally, I study graduate astrophysics and research the ways high-energy celestial objects impact cosmic evolution. Creatively, I use my training to write science fiction horror exploring the spookiest things the universe has to offer. I particularly love stories that throw wrenches in the best-laid plans of star-faring protagonists, and will never get tired of a good old space mission gone terribly and tragically awry.
Binti combines some of my favorite flavors of science fiction into one bittersweet treat: brutal interspecies politics, cultural misunderstandings, and the struggle for coexistence in a galactic community.
The tragic encounter between students on their way to attend a prestigious university on another world and a violent alien species starts this story off with heart-pounding, heart-rending stakes. It goes on to interrogate war and peace between species and the act of true communication and tolerance.
Those who are interested in stories with a raw but hopeful outlook on what it would mean for multiple civilizations in the Milky Way to find harmony will enjoy this read.
Winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novella! Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs. Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has…
