mada85
The Cosmic Force
I don't know about new science fiction writers, but here are some of my favourites, some of whom are still writing today.
For those who like 'steam-punk' alternative history novels, I can highly recommend The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. Their premise is simple – how would the British Empire have unfolded had Charles Babbage succeeded in making his difference engine really work. It's a very detailed and atmospheric novel, and a highly entertaining page-turner to boot.
I'd also like to recommend Peter F Hamilton. I've just started reading his The Reality Dysfunction and I'm finding it to be very well written and entertaining and gripping. It's very long, though, at 1200 pages!
When I was younger I read everything I could by Michael Moorcock. Moorcock's fiction first introduced me to the idea of multiple realities – he calls it the Multiverse. At certain times and places, the various planes and dimensions of the Multiverse intersect, and characters sometimes meet themselves in other incarnations. Some characters have the ability to travel between the planes and dimensions, and all are waiting for the Conjunction of the Million Spheres, at which time everything – past, present and future – is renewed. The best examples of this are the Hawkmoon, Corum and Count Brass series.
Moorcock's trilogy The Dancers at the End of Time is excellent. Jherek Carnelian, a resident of Earth at the end of time, travels back in time to 1897, where he meets and falls love with Mrs Amelia Underwood. Moorcock gets an enormous amount of dry comic mileage from the juxtaposition of the completely amoral unlimited society of the end of time with the prim and proper middle class society of 1897. The novels however are not specifically comic novels in the sense of, say, Terry Pratchett, although their tone is generally light and entertaining. The relationship between Carnelian and Mrs Underwood is nicely portrayed as they slowly begin to acknowledge their love for each other, and begin to understand each other.
Moorcock's Gloriana is a tour de force of alternate history, set in an unspecified England, and is a kind of homage to Mervyn Peake, whose Gormenghast trilogy is possibly the gold standard for all dark fantasy series since. The Gormenghast novels (Titus Groan; Gormenghast; Titus Alone) are very densely written, and almost hallucinatory in their visual detail. Peake was an illustrator himself and had a gift for exacting visual description, not to mention characterisation. The third novel is not so good as the first two. Peake suffered from early onset dementia and this affected his writing.
For those who like 'steam-punk' alternative history novels, I can highly recommend The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. Their premise is simple – how would the British Empire have unfolded had Charles Babbage succeeded in making his difference engine really work. It's a very detailed and atmospheric novel, and a highly entertaining page-turner to boot.
I'd also like to recommend Peter F Hamilton. I've just started reading his The Reality Dysfunction and I'm finding it to be very well written and entertaining and gripping. It's very long, though, at 1200 pages!
When I was younger I read everything I could by Michael Moorcock. Moorcock's fiction first introduced me to the idea of multiple realities – he calls it the Multiverse. At certain times and places, the various planes and dimensions of the Multiverse intersect, and characters sometimes meet themselves in other incarnations. Some characters have the ability to travel between the planes and dimensions, and all are waiting for the Conjunction of the Million Spheres, at which time everything – past, present and future – is renewed. The best examples of this are the Hawkmoon, Corum and Count Brass series.
Moorcock's trilogy The Dancers at the End of Time is excellent. Jherek Carnelian, a resident of Earth at the end of time, travels back in time to 1897, where he meets and falls love with Mrs Amelia Underwood. Moorcock gets an enormous amount of dry comic mileage from the juxtaposition of the completely amoral unlimited society of the end of time with the prim and proper middle class society of 1897. The novels however are not specifically comic novels in the sense of, say, Terry Pratchett, although their tone is generally light and entertaining. The relationship between Carnelian and Mrs Underwood is nicely portrayed as they slowly begin to acknowledge their love for each other, and begin to understand each other.
Moorcock's Gloriana is a tour de force of alternate history, set in an unspecified England, and is a kind of homage to Mervyn Peake, whose Gormenghast trilogy is possibly the gold standard for all dark fantasy series since. The Gormenghast novels (Titus Groan; Gormenghast; Titus Alone) are very densely written, and almost hallucinatory in their visual detail. Peake was an illustrator himself and had a gift for exacting visual description, not to mention characterisation. The third novel is not so good as the first two. Peake suffered from early onset dementia and this affected his writing.