First 29 books of 2008
Explore the first 29 books of 2008 in this curated sci-fi reading list, featuring visionary works by Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks, and William Gibson, alongside cyberpunk classics like Snow Crash and immersive tales from the Mars Trilogy.
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Flatlander
by Larry Niven
Gil “The Arm” Hamilton was one of the top operatives of ARM, the elite UN police force. His intuition was unfailingly accurate; his detective skills second to none; and his psychic powers—esper sense and telekinesis—were awesome. Tough and deadly, Gil Hamilton could reach right into a person's brain for the truth . . . or for the kill! Read all the stories of the legendary ARM operative, collected here in one volume for the very first time: • Organleggers aren't stopping at robbing body parts from the corpses of the frozen dead. Now they're stealing from the living . . . and Gil is a prime target! • The most beautiful woman on Luna has been falsely accused of murder. Unless Gil can prove her innocence, she's doomed to end up as a sack of spare parts in the organ banks. . . . • And more . . . Plus an all-new, never-before-published Gil Hamilton adventure!
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The Player of Games
by Iain M. Banks
The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game...a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death. Praise for Iain M. Banks: "Poetic, humorous, baffling, terrifying, sexy -- the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things and more" -- NME "An exquisitely riotous tour de force of the imagination which writes its own rules simply for the pleasure of breaking them." -- Time Out
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Burning Chrome
by William Gibson
Best-known for his seminal sf novel Neuromancer, William Gibson is actually best when writing short fiction. Tautly-written and suspenseful, Burning Chrome collects 10 of his best short stories with a preface from Bruce Sterling, now available for the first time in trade paperback. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson's characters and intensely-realized worlds at his absolute best, from the chip-enhanced couriers of "Johnny Mnemonic" to the street-tech melancholy of "Burning Chrome."
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The Skinner
by Neal Asher
Three unusual travelers arrive on the remote ocean planet of Spatterjay, braving the perils of the world's voracious wildlife as they pursue their individual quests, unaware that their paths are about to converge as the palnet threatens to erupt into chaos.
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Count Zero
by William Gibson
William Gibson continues the visionary Sprawl Trilogy that began with Neuromancer in this frighteningly probable parable of the future. A corporate mercenary wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him, for a mission more dangerous than the one he’s recovering from: to get a defecting chief of R&D—and the biochip he’s perfected—out intact. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties—some of whom aren’t remotely human....
Book
Zima Blue and Other Stories
by Alastair Reynolds
A fabulous collection spanning the galaxies and career of SF superstar Alastair Reynolds
Book
Doomsday Book
by Connie Willis
Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit. “A tour de force.”—The New York Times Book Review For Kivrin, preparing to travel back in time to study one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours.