From The Perfect Library - SciFi Selections

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The Perfect Library - 110 best books

The Scifi Section

SCI-FI
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
The great genius of Shelley's novel has often been overwhelmed by images of schlocky bolt-necked 'Frankensteins'. Brought to life by Dr Victor Frankenstein, Shelley’s creature is part gothic monster, part Romantic hero.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne
Among the deep-sea volcanoes, shoals of swirling fish, giant squid and sharks, Captain Nemo steers the Nautilus. Nemo is the renegade scientist par excellence, a man madly inventive in his quest for revenge.
The Time Machine
H.G. Wells
A seminal work of dystopian fiction, Wells's tale of the voyages of the Time Traveller in the distant future (AD802,701) is also a cracking adventure story.
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Ignorance is far from bliss in Huxley’s terrible vision of a future of rampant consumerism, worthless free love, routine drug use and cultural passivity.
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1984: chilling, wry and romantic, Orwell's novel is a passionate cry for freedom1984
George Orwell
So persuasive and chilling was the world summoned up here that 'Orwellian' has entered the language as shorthand for government control. Chilling, wry and romantic, it is above all a passionate cry for freedom.
The Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham
Shifty Soviets and the clipped vernacular make this a Fifties horror story. But as humans cope with disasters (mass blinding by meteor shower; ruthless walking, flesh-eating plants) the tale becomes taut, terrifying, and far from ridiculous.
Foundation
Isaac Asimov
'Great Galaxy!' It is not for literary brilliance that one approaches the first in the Foundation series, but rather for the sweeping grandeur of Asimov’s epic universe-wide tale of the decline and fall of empires. Once you've finished this, 14 novels and countless more short stories await.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Arthur C. Clarke
The first in Clarke's quartet was written as a novel and, in collaboration with Stanley Kubrick, as a film script. As the Discovery One mission drifts towards Saturn, Clarke creates the embodiment of the perils of computer technology, HAL9000.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. ****
****'s masterpiece questions what it is that distinguishes us as human, as we follow Rick Deckard on his mission to 'retire' recalcitrant androids. Spawned Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
Neuromancer
William Gibson
A violent slab of cyberpunk sci-fi, in which techie activities (artificial intelligence, hacking, virtual reality) are married with a grimy, anarchic, slangy sensibility, and a cast of hustlers, hackers and junkies trying to make sense of a world ruled by corporations.
 
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