Science Fiction Books

The Host: A Novel

Stephenie Meyer

Amazon Price: $15.59 List Price: $25.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Little, Brown and Company Amazon Marketplace: 74 new & used starting at $12.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Science Fiction & Fantasy -> Science Fiction
Subjects -> Romance -> Vampires

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 438 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Falls Flat in a Big Way 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I'm an adult fan of the Twilight series, so I (like everyone else) bought The Host. I'm not comparing them, but Meyer does cut-and-paste obvious phrases directly out of Twilight (i.e. my eyes filled with moisture).

None of the characters are likeable, and the protaganist is one of the most annoying characters I've ever read. Every opportunity for excitement has a big build up but then never goes anywhere. For example, she has Wanderer roaming aimlessly in a cave, and Meyer spends 2 pages of dialog describing the blackness and this object that she has fallen against. It was just a bag of rice! And she spent 2 pages describing it!

The book is so thick because she does things like this over and over. It has an interesting premise, but Meyer just doesn't do anything with it. I wouldn't recommend it. I was so bored I had to make myself slog through to the end.

Editorial Review:

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: Stephenie Meyer, creator of the phenomenal teen-vamp Twilight series, takes paranormal romance into alien territory in her first adult novel. Those wary of sci-fi or teen angst will be pleasantly surprised by this mature and imaginative thriller, propelled by equal parts action and emotion. A species of altruistic parasites has peacefully assumed control of the minds and bodies of most humans, but feisty Melanie Stryder won't surrender her mind to the alien soul called Wanderer. Overwhelmed by Melanie's memories of fellow resistor Jared, Wanderer yields to her body's longing and sets off into the desert to find him. Likely the first love triangle involving just two bodies, it's unabashedly romantic, and the characters (human and alien) genuinely endearing. Readers intrigued by this familiar-yet-alien world will gleefully note that the story's end leaves the door open for a sequel--or another series. --Mari Malcolm

Replay

Ken Grimwood

Amazon Price: $8.37 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 2 to 3 weeks By: Harper Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 4 new & used starting at $8.37

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Science Fiction & Fantasy -> Fantasy

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 281 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fascinating Novel 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Out of so many science fiction books, my favorite theme is time-travel stories or related thereof. There can be similar plots from many stories, but Grimwood's "Replay" is different in such respect because one would have no idea what the outcome to be. The plot of "Replay" is unique and fascinating.

This is a story about a man who died in 1988 of a heart attack, then suddenly finds himself back in time as a college student in 1963 with all of the memories of his future intact. There lies a paradox: will he change the future or re-experience the same life as he lived before? The main character, Jeff, chose the former. He tried to changed things for the "better," in his view, but things do not always work out as he expected. He would gain some things, but he would lose others. Each time he died, he would experience his life over and over, with several attempts to change things. But, as one read on, he is not the only one who is experiencing the replays.

I personally enjoyed reading this book, and I could not put it down as I felt enthralled by its twisting and intriguing plot and the fascinating details. My fascination with time travel may have to do with my enjoyment of this novel, but it is a well worth reading in general.

While the novel is fascinating and won an award in 1988, it actually holds a moral lesson for the readers: will you set your life on a different direction if you knew your own future?

Editorial Review:

Jeff Winston, forty-three, didn't know he was a replayer until he died and woke up twenty-five years younger in his college dorm room; he lived another life. And died again. And lived again and died again -- in a continuous twenty-five-year cycle -- each time starting from scratch at the age of eighteen to reclaim lost loves, remedy past mistakes, or make a fortune in the stock market. A novel of gripping adventure, romance, and fascinating speculation on the nature of time, Replay asks the question: "What if you could live your life over again?"

The Road (Oprah's Book Club)

Cormac McCarthy

Amazon Price: $8.97 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Vintage Books Amazon Marketplace: 279 new & used starting at $4.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Literary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> ( M ) -> McCarthy, Cormac

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1475 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Best known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century," Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including the bestselling No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books we've read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham

---

Guest Reviewer: Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane, master of the hard-boiled thriller, generated a cult following with his series about private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, wowed readers with the intense and gut-wrenching Mystic River, blew fans all away with the mind-bending Shutter Island, and switches gears with Coronado, his new collection of gritty short stories (and one play).

Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane

---

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

Amazon Price: $6.99 List Price: $6.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Del Rey Amazon Marketplace: 279 new & used starting at $1.42

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> Classics -> General
Subjects -> Science Fiction & Fantasy -> Fantasy
Subjects -> Science Fiction & Fantasy -> Science Fiction

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1252 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.

Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 10: Whys and Wherefores

Brian Vaughan

Amazon Price: $10.19 List Price: $14.99 By: Vertigo Amazon Marketplace: 37 new & used starting at $7.68

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Comics & Graphic Novels -> Graphic Novels -> Science Fiction

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A MAN not for all seasons. 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 3 people found this review helpful.

An excellent graphic novel with colorful and memorable characters including an exasperatingly hero who really never becomes the hero we all expect him to become no matter how many of him we meet. Can't wait to see how the big screen depicts him and his world.

Satisfying 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The Last Man finally comes to an end. This issue contains the coolest moments and one of the best endings I've read in a long time. It kind of fast forwards a little bit and there's a few unexpected twists, but it all works up in a way that makes sense and doesn't let you down. You can tell in both the writing and artistry that a lot of thought and work went into this final issue.

Brian K. Vaughan is a master of the Craft!!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

OH MY GOD!!! What a terrific ending to one of the best stories ever told. I am so sad to see Y the last man come to an end. I have never felt so close and protective of fictional characters. This is hands down my favorite story of all time.
Anyway what to say about the end. Its simply: Perfect.
I cant say much without giving too much away. Things happen that will anger you, sadden you, and make you laugh.
I was almost in tears so many times reading the last 2 issues. It is soooooo sad. But in the end when it all soaks in you'll except that it was the best possible ending we could ask for.
You will not be disappointed!!!

Valiant (The Lost Fleet, Book 4 of 6)

Jack Campbell

Amazon Price: $7.99 List Price: $7.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Ace Amazon Marketplace: 27 new & used starting at $4.36

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Science Fiction & Fantasy -> Science Fiction

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Is eveyone else nuts? 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book seems as good as the previous books unlike what others say. The female characters are not bothersome except to young men (insecure ones at that).and the story line seems fine and leaves you wanting more (that's what a good science fiction book is supposed to do!) Buy it you will like it. This is one of the best recent science fiction series is recent memory, not since area 51 have I enjoyed a book more and I have thousands of volumes of science fiction books in my library.

Book 4 does not disappoint 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I was somewhat discouraged after reading the negative reviews about this book, but since I loved the first 3, I went ahead and downloaded it anyway (ebook). I am very pleased to say this one is as good as the first 3. IMO it all depends on what you expect out of your reading material.. are you the type of person who will relish a 12 book saga like the wheel of time.. or do you like your books short and sweet. I am of the former category and so.. I really liked this one. Characters get threshed out further.. yes Rionne gets even more irritating but it is necessary to allow a certain twist in Geary's personal life. Some new developments occur within the fleet captains that only adds an element of subterfuge and mystery to the day to day struggle of remaining alive against the syndicate. The alien menace storyline proceeds a little further, not much though. This is fine as I hardly expect much to happen in that direction without the syndicate problem being resolved first. The battles and ship maneuvres are as always, excellent. I look forward to Geary's return in #5!!

Editorial Review:

“Black Jack” Geary has ordered his fleet back to the Lakota Star System where the Syndics nearly destroyed them, a desperate gamble that may give them a fighting chance of survival—or tear them apart.

1984 (Signet Classics)

George Orwell

Amazon Price: $9.99 List Price: $9.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: New American Library Amazon Marketplace: 264 new & used starting at $1.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Classics
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> ( O ) -> Orwell, George -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> ( O ) -> Orwell, George -> Paperback

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1368 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere."

The year is 1984; the scene is London, largest population center of Airstrip One.

Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant "correction" of such records. "'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"

In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.

Newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime--in 1984, George Orwell created a whole vocabulary of words concerning totalitarian control that have since passed into our common vocabulary. More importantly, he has portrayed a chillingly credible dystopia. In our deeply anxious world, the seeds of unthinking conformity are everywhere in evidence; and Big Brother is always looking for his chance. --Daniel Hintzsche

The Dangerous Days of Daniel X

James Patterson

Amazon Price: $12.73 List Price: $19.99 Not yet published By: Little, Brown and Company

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Thrillers -> Suspense
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Authors, A-Z -> ( P ) -> Patterson, James -> General
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Authors, A-Z -> ( P ) -> Patterson, James -> Hardcover

Editorial Review:

The greatest superpower of all isn't to be part spider, part man, or to cast magic spells--the greatest power is the power to create.

Daniel X has that power.

Daniel's secret abilities -- like being able to manipulate objects and animals with his mind or to recreate himself in any shape he chooses -- have helped him survive. But Daniel doesn't have a normal life. He is the protector of the earth, the Alien Hunter, with a mission beyond what anyone's imagining.

From the day that his parents were brutally murdered before of his very eyes, Daniel has used his unique gifts to hunt down their assassin. Finally, with the help of The List, bequeathed to him in his parents' dying breath, he is closing in on the killer.

Now, on his own, he vows to take on his father's mission--and to take vengeance in the process.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Dial Press Trade Paperback Amazon Marketplace: 133 new & used starting at $6.35

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Humor -> Satire
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Genre Fiction -> Historical

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 693 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where the POWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--and humor.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harvest Books Amazon Marketplace: 422 new & used starting at $2.27

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Women's Fiction -> Domestic Life
Subjects -> Romance -> Time Travel

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1642 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

His body goes places and times he has no control over where or when. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

"The Time Traveler's Wife"

So many stories are based on the life and experiences of the author, as this story is, in a roundabout way, is, but, oddly enough, it is not the focus of the story. It is refreshing to read such an unusual story. The author is a paper maker and sculptor, as is the wife in this story. The really interesting part is the husband is a time traveler. His body goes places and times he has no control over, though he does seem to end up in places that are, eventually, familiar and comfortable to him.
Top start reading the story, you need to realize that it will jump around from places to people to times. It takes a bit to realize that the chapter headings are a guide to where and when the chapter is happening.
The characters are folks you would like to share a beer with. They are normal and nice and neighborly.
It is a sad story, but, hey, life is essentially sad: people live, people die, it happens and you go on. The fun is in the love the husband and wife have for each other. I am lucky to be so in love (like Tom Hanks said, "I won the lottery.") as well, so I can relate. In the end you realize there is a lot that the author did write in or chose to leave out, it would have been extraneous. There was a lot of joy and sadness, but you enjoyed reading about it all.

Editorial Review:

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.

An enchanting debut and a spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love, The Time Traveler's Wife is destined to captivate readers for years to come.