Reading Science Fiction brings together world class scholars and fiction writers to introduce the history, concepts and contexts necessary to understanding this fascinating genre. Comprehensive and engaging, Reading Science Fiction includes: * Explores a wide range of theoretical approaches to studying science fiction, such as gender studies, post-colonial studies and structuralism * Maps the definitions and history of science fiction, including its origin, influences and parallel development with modern society * Introduces major science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Roberts. This work provides valuable insights into the world of science-fiction, this thought-provoking textbook makes learning how to read science fiction an exciting and collaborative process for teachers and students alike.

An exploration of politics and the role of the 'soft sciences' in Science Fiction.

As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series. Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Includes "After Yang," the basis for the acclaimed A24 film After Yang, starring Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Haley Lu Richardson, and directed by Kogonada. A New York Times Notable Book “A darkly mesmerizing, fearless, and exquisitely written work. Stunning, harrowing, and brilliantly imagined.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven Children of the New World introduces readers to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and alarmingly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago. In “The Cartographers,” the main character works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories, while struggling to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by an addiction to his own creations. In “After Yang,” the robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become. Children of the New World grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary and singular voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.

A young man arrives at a remote hospital. He's burning with fever and barely conscious. He's also bleeding from his eyes. Fearing an Ebola-like outbreak, the World Health Organisation scrambles a rapid response team headed by leading epidemiologist Dr. Peyton Shaw. But what she finds in Kenya is beyond her worst fears. The world is facing an outbreak quite unlike anything previously documented. In just two weeks time every corner of the planet will be infected by a disease with a 95 percent fatality rate. Dr. Shaw is pitched into a race against time to trace the origin of the pathogen. But with each passing hour, her suspicions grow: this outbreak is no natural catastrophe. Haunted by her own dark secrets, Dr. Shaw will be drawn into a conspiracy of unimaginable scope and towards a revelation that will change the human race forever. Pandemic will take you inside the world's response to a deadly epidemic, blending meticulously researched science and history with the pulse-pounding fiction that has made A.G. Riddle an international bestseller.

Eight hundred years after the most horrific battle of the Idiran war, light from its world-destroying detonations is about to reach the Masaq Orbital, home to the Culture. Major Quilan has supposedly come to take the exiled Composer Ziller back to their war-ravaged home world, Chel. But despite the major's civilized veneer, his true mission may be the death and destruction of an entire civilization.

New Alternate History Fantasy series created by New York Times best-selling author Kevin J. Anderson and Sarah A. Hoyt. Arcane America A new world. New magic. New history. After Halley’s Comet was destroyed in a magical battle in 1759, the backlash separated the entire New World from the Old in an event known as The Sundering. Now isolated from the rest of the globe, America has become a very different place, where magic works and history has been changed forever. It is 1803—a new 1803. Young Meriwether Lewis, footloose and intrigued, goes to hear a lecture in St. Louis by the venerated old wizard Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s talk is disrupted by the attack of a winged fire-breathing beast, much like legends from Lewis’s own Welsh heritage. In the aftermath, Franklin tells the young man that he knows of a great, growing evil that lurks in the uncharted Arcane Territories west of the Mississippi. Using his own vast fortune, Franklin commissions Lewis and his own talented partner William Clark to embark on a remarkable voyage of exploration, to meet and document the indigenous tribes, to find a route all the way to the Pacific Ocean—and perhaps beyond the magical veil to Europe again—and to stop the growing evil that is filling the American West. For while the Sundering separated the rest of the world and granted the original colonists unexpected magical gifts, sorcery inspired by native legends has also been ignited. And the Arcane Territories may hold unparalleled dangers for the expedition, both natural and magical. Accompanied by the brilliant shape-shifting sorceress Sacajawea, Lewis and Clark set off on an unparalleled adventure across a landscape that no European has ever seen. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). About Kevin J. Anderson: "Anderson delivers action, engaging characters and credible fantastic worlds in spades . . . not to be missed."—Publishers Weekly "Wickedly funny, deviously twisted and enormously satisfying."—Jonathan Maberry "Anderson has become the literary equivalent of Quentin Tarantino in the fantasy adventure genre."—The Daily Rotation "Prepare to be entertained." —Charlaine Harris “Delivers solid action and will certainly satisfy.”—Booklist on The Winds of Dune About Sarah A. Hoyt: “[Three Musketeers creator] Alexandre Dumas would give [Sarah A. Hoyt] a thumbs up.” —Steve Forbes “[F]anciful and charming.” —Library Journal "First-rate space opera with a moral lesson. You won't be disappointed."—Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com “[A] tour de force: logical, built from assumptions with no contradictions . . . gripping.” —Jerry Pournelle “Exceptional, wonderful, and enormously entertaining.” —Booklist