book review
Books reviews of the best science fiction stories, texts, educational texts, and journals.
Shout-Out to Jack Dann and Joseph F. Patrouch
This came up at Monday's conference on Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Intersection of Space Travel and Religion, which I organized at Fordham University. It arose in my answer to a question I posed to the panel on "Science Fiction Looks at Space Travel and Religion" about what was each panelist's most memorable, profound, or otherwise significant example of a science fiction story, book, movie, or TV series they read or saw, in which the subject was space travel and religion. On the panel with me were David Walton, Alex Shvartzman, and Lance Strate. Among others in the audience were conference participants Guy Consolmagno, Molly Vozick-Levinson, Brittany Miller, Michael Waltemathe, James Heiser, Mark Shelhamer, and Tom Klinkowstein.
By Paul Levinson8 years ago in Futurism
Best Science Fantasy Authors
The art of science fiction is that it can be, and simply represent, pretty much anything within or without the boundary of reality. Imagination, in this regard, is free and open for practically any formulation, connotation, and activity. If one presses even deeper into these vast confines of unreality and shape-shifted real worlds never before beheld, they will find the very contexts of sci-fi fantasy. This is the subsetting, or the subgenre, of science fiction, a place where not only the real can be distorted, but even that of the distorted can be compressed and compounded even further.
By Salvador Lorenz8 years ago in Futurism
He Wanted to Believe
Crashed spaceships. Alien abductions. Cattle mutilations. Bases that don't officially exist like Dulce Base in New Mexico. Thanks to countless movies and TV shows, these conspiracy theories regarding government cover-ups regarding the UFO phenomenon are known to millions around the world. The origins of such ideas are far more humble, troubling, and far closer to home as Greg Bishop reveals in his 2005 book Project Beta.
By Matthew Kresal8 years ago in Futurism
Every Reason Why You Shouldn't Read the 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' Series
Who hasn't heard of the book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams? Or at least the movie of the same name? For those who raised their hands, the first book and the movie follow Arthur Dent (portrayed by Martin Freeman in the 2005 movie) and his lackluster group of...friends may not be the right word...companions? There's Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox (the President of the Galaxy), Tricia McMillan, AKA Trillian, and a downright depressing robot named Marvin. Now, the plot of the film and book differ slightly and I don't want to make this too confusing for either of us, but both involve the end of life as we know it, the question of the universe, the answer to that question, and mice being the second smartest organisms on Earth (only because aliens don't understand that cars aren't organisms).
By Elijah James8 years ago in Futurism
2018 Nebula Award Nominees Are Coming to You in Audiobook Format!. Top Story - March 2018.
Sci-fi has very few awards that are solely dedicated to the genre, and of those awards, none are quite as esteemed as the Nebula Awards. Ever since Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America presented its first award in 1965, the Nebulas have become the ultimate achievement marker for any serious science fiction writer.
By Ossiana Tepfenhart8 years ago in Futurism
Review of Adam Roberts’ 'The History of Science Fiction'
I’m a long-time fan of science fiction. I love the genre in its ability to expand the reader’s mind into the ‘what-if.’ I ran across a review Adam Roberts had published on Margaret Atwood, while I was writing an article on speculative fiction. I ultimately sent the piece to Roberts, and in so doing, discovered his book, The History of Science Fiction.
By K.E. Lanning8 years ago in Futurism
Review: 'Silver Screen Saucers'. Top Story - February 2018.
2017 marked seventy years of the modern UFO phenomenon began with the sighting of pilot Kenneth Arnold and the still controversial events at Roswell, New Mexico. For much of time (indeed beginning within just a few years), Hollywood has made use of it to tell everything from 1950s B-movies to some of the biggest hits of all time. Taking in the width and breadth of these “silver screen saucers” is writer Robbie Graham whose 2015 book of the same name explores this sometimes murky mix of fact and fiction.
By Matthew Kresal8 years ago in Futurism
'Artemis': A Book Review
Andy Weir’s Artemis is an adventure story that happens on the moon. While the science foundation and accuracy of this book are as strong as his last blockbuster novel, The Martian, the characters are suffering from lack of developments and they fall into the trap of known clichés.
By Pouria Nazemi8 years ago in Futurism
Best Frank Herbert Books of All Time
Herbert's mastery of science fiction proves to be known and is drawn out most influentially throughout his library of various titles. In them, among the pages he sweeps with psychedelic philosophy and intergalactic societies ranging by the differentiated species he so creates, or given semblance of real life actualities, Herbert uses a number of concepts in every single work. Vying to keep his legacy in tact, and as organized as possible, most of his novels have been reorientated from short stories, or simply birthed a whole series of conceptual characters that make for some of the most intriguing realities yet put on paper.
By Salvador Lorenz8 years ago in Futurism
Review - 'Faction Paradox: This Town Will Never Let Us Go'
Nearly a decade ago, I attended a panel at the Chicago TARDIS convention on the topic of the novels of the wilderness years of Doctor Who (i.e. that time period between 1989 and 2005 when there was no TV show airing). On the panel were convention guests who had contributed to those books: Jonathan Blum, Paul Cornell, Kate Orman, and Gary Russell. Perhaps it was inevitable that the topic of Lawrence Miles, that looming but an immensely controversial author of the era, came up as the proverbial "elephant in the room." Despite Miles attacking them all in interviews, all four had great things to say about his work and it was Cornell who said that Miles, "should have been the next great British science fiction writer." In reading this, Miles' last published novel (which I bought at the same convention six years later), I can't help but feel he was right in that assessment.
By Matthew Kresal8 years ago in Futurism
