Topic: Novels (Page 2)
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π The Machine Stops
"The Machine Stops" is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories. In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.
The story, set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide its needs, predicted technologies similar to instant messaging and the Internet.
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- "The Machine Stops" | 2015-05-14 | 93 Upvotes 26 Comments
π Last and First Men
Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first. The book employs a narrative conceit that, under subtle inspiration, the novelist has unknowingly been dictated a channelled text from the last human species.
Stapledon's conception of history is based on the Hegelian Dialectic, following a repetitive cycle with many varied civilisations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, but it is also one of progress, as the later civilisations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates the science of genetic engineering, and is an early example of the fictional supermind; a consciousness composed of many telepathically linked individuals.
In 1932, Stapledon followed Last and First Men with the far less acclaimed Last Men in London. Another Stapledon novel, Star Maker (1937), could also be considered a sequel to Last and First Men (mentioning briefly man's evolution on Neptune), but is even more ambitious in scope, being a history of the entire universe.
It is the 11th title in the SF Masterworks series.
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- "Last and First Men" | 2020-02-22 | 92 Upvotes 26 Comments
π The Toynbee Convector
"The Toynbee Convector" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury. First published in Playboy magazine in 1984, the story was subsequently featured in a 1988 short story collection also titled The Toynbee Convector.
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- "The Toynbee Convector" | 2021-10-16 | 76 Upvotes 40 Comments
π Axiomatic by Greg Egan
Axiomatic (ISBNΒ 0-7528-1650-0) is a 1995 collection of short science fiction stories by Greg Egan. The stories all delve into different aspects of self and identity.
The Guardian described it as "Wonderful mind-expanding stuff, and well-written too."
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- "Axiomatic by Greg Egan" | 2024-07-17 | 84 Upvotes 24 Comments
π Philosophus Autodidactus
αΈ€ayy ibn YaqαΊΔn (Arabic: ΨΩ Ψ¨Ω ΩΩΨΈΨ§Ω, lit.β'Alive son of Awake'; also known as Hai Eb'n Yockdan) is an Arabic philosophical novel and an allegorical tale written by Ibn Tufail (c.β1105 β 1185) in the early 12th century in Al-Andalus. Names by which the book is also known include the Latin: Philosophus Autodidactus ('The Self-Taught Philosopher'); and English: The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan. αΈ€ayy ibn YaqαΊΔn was named after an earlier Arabic philosophical romance of the same name, written by Avicenna during his imprisonment in the early 11th century, even though both tales had different stories. The novel greatly inspired Islamic philosophy as well as major Enlightenment thinkers. It is the third most translated text from Arabic, after the Quran and the One Thousand and One Nights.
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- "Philosophus Autodidactus" | 2024-04-25 | 73 Upvotes 29 Comments
π The Red One
"The Red One" is a short story by Jack London. It was first published in the October 1918 issue of The Cosmopolitan, two years after London's death. The story was reprinted in the same year by MacMillan, in a collection of London's stories of the same name.
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- "The Red One" | 2021-05-07 | 69 Upvotes 23 Comments
π Beatrice the Sixteenth
Beatrice the Sixteenth: Being the Personal Narrative of Mary Hatherley, M.B., Explorer and Geographer is a 1909 feminist utopian novel by the English transgender lawyer and writer Irene Clyde, about a time traveller who discovers a lost world, which is an egalitarian postgender society.
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- "Beatrice the Sixteenth" | 2020-09-22 | 55 Upvotes 36 Comments
π A Canticle for Leibowitz
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it.
The novel is a fixup of three short stories Miller published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction that were inspired by the author's participation in the bombing of the monastery at the Battle of Monte Cassino during World War II. The book is considered one of the classics of science fiction and has never been out of print. Appealing to mainstream and genre critics and readers alike, it won the 1961 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel, and its themes of religion, recurrence, and church versus state have generated a significant body of scholarly research. A sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, was published posthumously in 1997.
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- "A Canticle for Leibowitz" | 2024-03-02 | 59 Upvotes 16 Comments
- "A Canticle for Leibowitz" | 2020-06-20 | 12 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Siddhartha
Siddhartha: An Indian novel (German: Siddhartha: Eine Indische Dichtung; German: [ziΛdaΚta] ) is a 1922 novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautama Buddha. The book, Hesse's ninth novel, was written in German, in a simple, lyrical style. It was published in the United States in 1951 by New Directions Publishing and became influential during the 1960s. Hesse dedicated the first part of it to the French writer Romain Rolland and the second part to Wilhelm Gundert, his cousin.
The word Siddhartha is made up of two words in the Sanskrit language: siddha (achieved) + artha (what was searched for), which together means "he who has found meaning (of existence)" or "he who has attained his goals". In fact, the Buddha's own name, before his renunciation, was Siddhartha Gautama, prince of Kapilavastu. In this book, the Buddha is referred to as "Gotama".
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- "Siddhartha" | 2025-02-20 | 50 Upvotes 40 Comments
π Neuromancer was released 40 years ago today
Neuromancer is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy. Set in the future, the novel follows Henry Case, a washed-up hacker hired for one last job, which brings him in contact with a powerful artificial intelligence.
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- "Neuromancer was released 40 years ago today" | 2024-07-01 | 52 Upvotes 35 Comments