The History Of Science Fiction
Books like The History Of Science Fiction
25 science fiction books to read after The History Of Science Fiction, by Adam Roberts, the closest match first.
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1. World-building
by Stephen L. Gillett
- On the same lists
Strictly speaking, this isn't a book, not any more. It started out as a book, the first edition was published in 1979 (edited by Peter Nicholls and John Clute), a...
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2. James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life Of Alice B. Sheldon
by Julie Phillips
- On the same lists
In the mid-60s, sf editors started to receive stories from a new writer none of them had heard of before, James Tiptree, Jr. Right from the start they were good...
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3. The Oxford Handbook Of Science Fiction
by Rob Latham
- On the same lists
One of the best things that any book about science fiction can do is make you think again about what sf actually is. This book does it to an extraordinary...
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4. The Jewel-hinged Jaw: Notes On The Language Of Science Fiction
by Delany, Samuel R.
- On the same lists
Curiously, science fiction writers aren't always the best people to write about science fiction, they're too close to have the perspective that's needed. The result is often rather pedestrian, like...
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5. New Maps Of Hell
by Kingsley Amis
- On the same lists
In terms of literary culture, critical accounts of science fiction came rather late. Even so, there are some very early books that, if you can find a secondhand copy, are...
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6. Trillion Year Spree: The History Of Science Fiction
by Brian Aldiss
- On the same lists
I said there was another history of science fiction on this list, and here it is. In Billion Year Spree, Aldiss had written the first book-length history of the genre,...
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7. The Language Of The Night: Essays On Fantasy And Science Fiction
by Guin, Ursula K. Le
- On the same lists
As a critic of science fiction and fantasy, Ursula Le Guin is neither as prolific nor as academically inclined as Samuel R. Delany, but she is always readable and insightful....
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8. Red Planets: Marxism And Science Fiction
by Mark Bould
- On the same lists
Science fiction has long been more than just a branch of literature. In fact, science fiction film is now often thought to be at least as important as science fiction...
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9. The Cambridge Companion To Science Fiction
by Edward James & Farah Mendlesohn
- On the same lists
If you were looking for just one book to read as an introduction to the range and variety of science fiction, this would be the one. As with all the...
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10. The Pattern Of Expectation, 1644-2001
by I. F Clarke
- On the same lists
I.F. Clarke is probably best known now for all his work on future war stories, such as The Tale of the Next Great War and The Great War With Germany,...
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11. Benchmarks: Galaxy Bookshelf
by Algis Budrys
- On the same lists
There wasn't much in the way of serious criticism of science fiction until a trio of authors started writing reviews for the magazines. The three were James Blish (see The...
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12. All Our Yesterdays
by Harry Warner Jr.
- On the same lists
One of the unique features of science fiction has been the growth of a subculture around the genre known as science fiction fandom. Fandom first started to form around the...
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13. The Battle Of The Sexes In Science Fiction
by Justine Larbalestier
- On the same lists
Feminist thought has proved to be one of the most productive ways of approaching science fiction, resulting in a host of truly excellent books such as Decoding Gender in Science...
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14. H. G. Wells: Another Kind Of Life
by Michael Sherborne
- On the same lists
There are more books about H.G. Wells than any other science fiction writer, and it's not hard to see why. He led an extraordinary life: he had affairs with a...
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15. The Routledge Companion To Science Fiction
by Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts & Sherryl Vint
- On the same lists
Every major non-fiction publisher now seems to have a Companion to science fiction. In some respects, inevitably, they plough the same furrow, there are invariably essays on the history of...
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16. In The Chinks Of The World Machine: Feminism And Science Fiction
by Sarah Lefanu
- On the same lists
We said earlier how much feminist ideas had done for the study of science fiction, and this was, in effect, the pioneering work, the book that first laid out in...
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17. More Issues At Hand: Critical Studies In Contemporary Science Fiction
by James Blish (as William Atheling Jr.)
- On the same lists
William Atheling, Jr., was the name that James Blish took when he began writing science fiction criticism in the early 1950s. Before this, no-one had criticised science fiction like this....
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18. The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays And Reviews
by Joanna Russ
- On the same lists
You read Locus, don't you? It is the way we all keep up with what is happening in science fiction. And one of the chief joys of reading Locus is...
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19. Mechanics Of Wonder: The Creation Of The Idea Of Science Fiction
by Gary Westfahl
- On the same lists
Another collection of essays and reviews, but Joanna Russ was a very different reviewer from Gary Wolfe. She was excoriating, merciless in the way she would decry any failing no...
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20. Colonialism And The Emergence Of Science Fiction
by John Rieder
- On the same lists
Around 1911, Hugo Gernsback wrote a pretty crappy story called Ralph 124C41+, but the idea obviously stuck with him, because a few years later, when he was editing magazines like...
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21. Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science And Science Fiction In Interwar America
by John Cheng
- On the same lists
Throughout this list, we've tended to steer clear of too many academic books on sf. There are an awful lot out there now, and some of them are very good...
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22. Bête
by Adam Roberts
- Same author
Adam Roberts is another author who produced more than one book in the year. In fact, five books came out: a glorious pastiche of Jules Verne, Twenty Trillion Leagues Under...
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23. Jack Glass The Story Of A Murderer
by Adam Roberts
- Same author
Ever since his first novel, Salt (2000), Adam Roberts has established himself as one of the most prolific, challenging, and popular novelists writing in science fiction today. His work often...
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The Age Of Discovery book 2
24. The New World
by Stackpole, Micheal A.
- On the same lists
A startling look at the role of government, including eugenics.
The three grandchildren of the royal cartographer Qiro Anturasi, a mapmaker whose magic can reshape reality, must save their world from destruction. Nalenyr is besieged on all sides by those...
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25. Frankenstein
by Shelley, Mary
- On the same lists
Arguably the first Sci Fi novel and one that is also very much part of the Gothic tradition.
While not “strictly” a steampunk, this is one of the first science fiction novels, the ultimate science-gone-wrong story, and Victor Frankenstein is the quintessential mad-scientist, harnessing the power of a...
Matches come from series and authors, from the lists the books share, and from the books readers open together. They are rebuilt every night. Back to The History Of Science Fiction.
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