Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick asks a basic question that is all the more pressing today. What’s the difference between a human being and an android? Dick goes beyond the current debate about the potential replacement of humans by robotic software to produce creative works we feel should only […]
Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith
Norstrilia (written as two short novels in the 1960s but not published as one until 1975 after the author’s death), is a unique masterpiece by Paul Linebarger who wrote under the name Cordwainer Smith. The story begins with an odd preface that throws the key elements of the book at you in the manner of […]
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin – A Review for #VintageSciFiMonth
For me, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is a treasure — along with The Left Hand of Darkness and The Lathe of Heaven, I think, her finest work in science fiction. It brings together so many of her themes in a complex story that is beautifully written and deeply engaging. Themes like coming home, […]
The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov – A Review for #VintageSciFiMonth
Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity combines ideas about time travel with a questioning of the direction humanity could or should take over millions of years. However, the big issues about society, the development of humanity and the nature of Eternity are left to the end when a powerful turnabout occurs where expectations and assumptions […]
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin – A Review for #VintageSciFiMonth
Ursula K. Le Guin wrote that Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We was the greatest science fiction novel that had yet been written. I’m not as well-read as she was, but We, so influential on later books like Brave New World and 1984, is definitely the greatest one in my experience. From the beginning, its narrator, known like […]
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick – A Review for #VintageSciFiMonth
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick drew me in with one tightly written, deeply engaging scene after another. And like so many of Dick’s novels, it turns the protagonist’s life upside down and inside out in the first couple of chapters. It’s a must-read for any fan of Dick’s fiction. The […]
