Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert A. Heinlein Oh, Heinlein. I had my doubts about this one after my last foray into his work, but mention of Stranger in a Strange Land being on the bookshelf of an author I respect within another book I loved made me think that it might be worth a look. (Besides, the copy…
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The Amateurs

by Liz Harmer I find it interesting to consider what influences your opinion of a book while reading. The big thing that spurred this thought along was a passage in The Amateurs where the protagonist, Marie, realizes how starkly unique she is just before discussing architecture influenced by architecture influenced by architecture. (I won’t directly…
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Journey to the Centre of the Earth

by Jules Verne After discovering a coded note in an ancient book, Professor Otto Lidenbrock and his nephew, Axel, set out to an extinct volcano in Iceland said to hold a passage to the centre of the Earth. Along with their Icelandic guide, they embark on a voyage to a subterranean world filled with unknown…
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Brave New World

by Aldous Huxley In the future, everybody’s happy except Bernard Marx. Despite the selective breeding and the constant conditioning throughout his entire life, he doesn’t seem to fit in. (He prefers solitude to company, and he’s hardly promiscuous, so he’s quite a weirdo in this “ideal” society. People gossip that his problems stem from alcohol…
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Galápagos

by Kurt Vonnegut Vonnegut was a man who loved to skirt the line between science fiction and fantasy with at least a few of his books, and Galápagos isn’t an exception here, in this case marrying evolutionary theory with a ghost narrator. The story concerns a small group of people who find themselves marooned on…
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The Martian

by Andy Weir Well, here we are again. Usually I dislike trying to review a book that I don’t particularly care for, but this is an exception. Had it been hard to really hit on what my problem with The Martian was, I’d probably make vague points until something started to make at least a…
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Gravity Wells

by James Alan Gardner I didn’t actually know who James Gardner was until attending the 2015 Ad Astra science fiction and fantasy writers’ convention, where I had the pleasure of sitting in on several author panels in which he participated. Despite the clear knowledge he displayed within the intelligent discussions I witnessed, nothing really made…
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The Milkman

by Michael Martineck You can see the influence of authors such as Ray Bradbury and George Orwell on a work like The Milkman, but I suppose most science fiction can probably trace back to both of these authors. (Speaking with Martineck at this year’s When Words Collide, he mentioned the influences of Philip K. Dick…
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A Scanner Darkly

by Philip K. Dick You can really feel the influence of William Burroughs and Ken Kesey on a work like A Scanner Darkly. While I would assume this comes from Dick having read and being a big fan of the aforementioned authors, it could just as reasonably stem from being a part of the drug…
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The Road

by Cormac McCarthy In The Road, a man and his son wander through a post-apocalyptic America, searching out food and shelter, trying to avoid the “bad guys” who also roam the wastes. While the story is about survival in the most harrowing of scenarios, the focus is on the growing relationship between our two main…
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