Science, History, and Fiction in Everyday Life
The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin, is an utopian SF novel. It belongs to the same fictional universe of the Left Hand of Darkness, where the Principle of Simultaneity makes possible instantaneous communication among interstellar systems, and it explores…
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Titan (1997) is a SF/ techno-thriller by Stephen Baxter. It examines Saturn’s moon Titan as the object of a manned mission aiming at discovering alien life, but also the more general issue of human exploration of the Solar System. More political than…
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Out of the Silent Planet (1938) by C. S. Lewis is the first of the Cosmic Trilogy and an early example of space travel novel featuring far-away planet – Malacandra – and various species of aliens. Allegedly written after a…
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The City & the City (2009) is a weird fiction novel by the British author China Mieville and based on the investigation of a mysterious murder. Brilliant, compelling and vaguely hallucinatory, it combines many cultural influences, Borges, Robbe-Grillet and Calvino…
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Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut is a novel about World War II experiences and journeys through time, narrated in a non-linear order by a soldier named Billy Pilgrim. In between dark fantasy, political satire and SF, controversial and ground-breaking, this postmodern novel…
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Last and First Men (1930) is a SF novel about the future history of mankind over the next billion year or so written by the British philosopher Olaf Stapledon. Complex, visionary and provocative, The Last and First Men is considered…
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Chasm City (2001) by Alastair Reynolds is a hard SF novel set in the universe of Revelation Space series. It portrays what remains of a glorious human civilisation in space that had collapsed when a an alien virus, the so-called…
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Parasite (2013) by Mira Grant/ Seanan McGuire is an interesting blend of techno-thriller, horror and SF. It features a near-future humanity made virtually disease-free by a gentle, genetically engineered parasite living symbiotically with its human hosts. It’s easy to figure…
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The Uplift War (1987) is a SF novel by David Brin and part of the Uplift Universe. It portraits a fictional future universe where species evolve with the help of more developed ones that help them in the “uplifting” process,…
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Neptune’s Brood (2013) is a SF novel by Charles Stross. The story is set in the same universe of Saturn’s Children, but 5000 years later and with different characters. It features clones, bank-employed historians, assassins and the fantastic water-world of…
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