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The Jewel-hinged Jaw: Notes On The Language Of Science Fiction

Books like The Jewel-hinged Jaw: Notes On The Language Of Science Fiction

28 science fiction books to read after The Jewel-hinged Jaw: Notes On The Language Of Science Fiction, by Delany, Samuel R., the closest match first.

  1. World-building

    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...

  2. James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life Of Alice B. Sheldon

    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...

  3. The History Of Science Fiction

    3. The History Of Science Fiction

    by Adam Roberts

    • On the same lists

    Okay, no two authorities will ever agree on the history of science fiction; we can't even agree on a definition of sf, so how on earth are we going to...

  4. The Oxford Handbook Of Science Fiction

    4. 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...

  5. New Maps Of Hell

    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...

  6. Trillion Year Spree: The History Of Science Fiction

    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,...

  7. The Language Of The Night: Essays On Fantasy And Science Fiction

    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....

  8. Red Planets: Marxism And Science Fiction

    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...

  9. The Cambridge Companion To Science Fiction

    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...

  10. The Pattern Of Expectation, 1644-2001

    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,...

  11. Benchmarks: Galaxy Bookshelf (cover not available)

    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...

  12. All Our Yesterdays

    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...

  13. The Battle Of The Sexes In Science Fiction

    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...

  14. H. G. Wells: Another Kind Of Life

    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...

  15. The Routledge Companion To Science Fiction

    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...

  16. In The Chinks Of The World Machine: Feminism And Science Fiction

    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...

  17. More Issues At Hand: Critical Studies In Contemporary Science Fiction

    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....

  18. The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays And Reviews

    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...

  19. Mechanics Of Wonder: The Creation Of The Idea Of Science Fiction

    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...

  20. Colonialism And The Emergence Of Science Fiction

    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...

  21. Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science And Science Fiction In Interwar America

    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...

  22. Triton

    22. Triton

    by Delany, Samuel R.

    • Same author

    Also published as Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia, the novel was conceived as a response to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Ambiguous Utopia, The Dispossessed. But at the core of...

  23. Babel-17 (1967)

    23. Babel-17 (1967)

    by Delany, Samuel R.

    • Same author

    The literary side of this Sci Fi book is high in its experimentation with language and its exploration of language's role in meaning, action, identity, politics, and culture.

    Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes won the 1967 Nebula Award for Best Novel along with Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany. This is the only time since the start of...

  24. Dhalgren

    24. Dhalgren

    by Delany, Samuel R.

    • Same author

    NOTE: THIS IS #26 on the TOP 100 LIST. The first 1-25 entries are found on THE TOP 25 BEST SCIENCE FICTION LIST. Dhalgren is one of the peculiarities of...

  25. Nova

    25. Nova

    by Delany, Samuel R.

    • Same author

    We've already included one example of what might be called new wave space opera, and in a sense this is another, but it is a very different novel. The novel...

  26. The Ballad of Beta-2

    26. The Ballad of Beta-2

    by Delany, Samuel R.

    • Same author

    The Star Folk left Earth centuries ago, but two of the twelve generation starships didn't make it. A galactic anthropology student is tasked with figuring out what happened to the two ships, now that faster-than-light travel is possible.

    The Star Folk left Earth centuries ago, but two of the twelve generation starships didn't make it. A galactic anthropology student is tasked with figuring out what happened to the...

  27. The New World

    The Age Of Discovery book 2

    27. 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...

  28. Frankenstein

    28. 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...

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