Books tagged with: oppression

Yoss is one of the most controversial and successful of Cuba's science fiction writers. As well known for his rock-and-roll style as he is for his portrait of Cuba under Communism, his work is modern, dynamic and yet deep and thoughtful. A Planet for Rent is set in the near future where Earth, wrack...

Cyberpunk has always concerned itself with the transformational relationship of man and machine. Times and technology changes, but the contemporary cyberpunk story is still concerned with this and Ada King by E. M. Faulds wholeheartedly embraces that essence whilst invoking new dystopian themes and...

Science fiction set in the near future, Azanian Bridges is a rough diamond, drawing on a variety of influences to deliver a real and wrenching story. Our setting is an alternative South Africa, where Mandela was never released and Apartheid didn’t end. We follow two characters, Martin and Sibusiso a...

Broken is a speculative fiction novel by Susan J Bigelow. When Broken lost her ability to fly, she thought she was finished with being an extrahuman, a superhero. Then the world around her started to break apart and the mysterious teenager Michael found her, bringing with him the promise of rebirth...

Code of the Lifemaker is a science fiction novel by James P Hogan. I can hardly believe that this is the same author, which wrote Realtime Interrupt. Okay, it's not exactly a character driven story, but it's much better than RI and Hogan has a lot of interesting things to tell here. Code of the Life...

Divine Endurance and Flowerdust, - two novels collected together for the first time exclusively as an e-book and known as "The Last Days Of Ranaganar" - are set within a far-future south-east Asia, a future that is hardly recognizable from the present and one that seems both medieval and futuristic...

A dystopian future novel set in Belfast after an alien invasion is a premise that immediately appeals and suggests a whole host of imaginative ideas. Inish Carraig is the second book from Jo Zebedee and sets humanity as a conquered plaything between two spacefaring alien civilisations; the Zelotyr a...

Man over Mind is a science fiction novel by Dean Warren. After about a thousand years of expansion, humanity has pretty much conquered the Milky Way with their FTL ships. The Plastowich – descendants of the guy who invented the hyperdrive – are doing a good job of running the show. Not really rulers...

Moxyland is the debut novel of Lauren Beukes and the first book published by Angry Robot Books. It is currently nominated in the longlist for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Set in Cape-town in the near future, four hip young adults live in a world where your online identity is just as...

One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy is a science fiction novel by Stephen Tunney. Two thousand years from now and the moon has been terraformed as an experiment - long before humanity perfected the technique on other planets. As a result the moon has a breathable atmosphere but has a bright red sky and is...

Orsinian Tales is a novel by the award winning author Ursula K Le Guin. This is not only the first non science fiction, but also the first short stories that I've read by Le Guin. Orsinian Tales is eleven stories and 215 pages of stories more alien to me than anything that I've read in a long time (...

Cory Doctorow has a unique way of capturing the technological challenges of current times that speaks volumes, provocative and blended perfectly into an entertaining, rewarding story. Pirate Cinema is no exception and the fact that it is labelled as a "Young Adult" book should not put the older read...

Ringturn is a science fiction novel by British Author John C Mawson. A number of people are abducted from earth during the time of the black death by alien forces and repopulated on a planet orbiting Epsilon Eridani, eleven light years from Earth. Slowly those frightened humans build a new civilisat...

Set within the same universe as the authors previous novel Tribes , Shades of Empire follows the ex-soldier Alexander Napier, merchant starship captain Madeline Pallestrino and a host of other colourful characters. Alexander still reluctantly wears the marks of his servitude to the Emperor but it's...

Son of the Tree is a science fiction novel by Jack Vance. SON OF THE TREE-Jack Vance. I loved this story even more. Head in the clouds the arrogant druids of Kyril fed and nutured the 5 mile wide by 12 mile tall tree that was the cornerstone of their religion. They have a full slave society with man...

Sunshine Republic is a dystopian science fiction novel by Ted Brownstein. It's the year 2130 and the newly independent Republic of Florida is deeply divided over the use of technology, the Futurist party believe that their society could be vastly improved by the use of cheap, abundant robot labour a...

Bees are quite complicated little creatures and most of us know very little about them. Those that practice apiculture are becoming worth their weight in gold (or bees). We've been collecting their honey for over 15,000 years and we are just beginning to understand just how important to our survival...

The Carhullan Army is a dystopian science fiction novel set in an around the cumbrian fells, written by Sarah Hall. With much of Britain underwater due to a biblical level of flooding, the surviving population exist in concentrated pockets and ruled by the rather sinister sounding "Authority". While...

The Dispossessed, a novel by the distinguished and award winning author Ursula K Le Guin It's been some time since I last read anything by LeGuin (I think that it was The Word for World is Forest, which I liked); I've never really been much into her for some reason. Got no idea why. She writes quite...

The Empire is a science fiction space opera by Elizabeth Lang. The Centuries old war with Andromedans is heating up and the Empire is the only force that can stand it's way. One brilliant scientist may hold the key to a weapon that could swing the tide and save the galaxy but the method's of the Emp...

The Genesis Machine is a science fiction novel by James P Hogan. (take a look at the clothes the guys are wearing on the cover - wow!) Written in 1978 and taking place a few of years from now, The Geneses Machine pretty much read as an alternative history story, even if it wasn't intended as such. I...

The year is 2175 and the Earth is a very different place with radiation from the long depleted ozone layer now reaching dangerous levels. A co-operation exists between the previously warring factions of humanity and their creation - the Cyborgs. An unexpected find on one of Jupiter's moons leads to...

The Miracle Inspector is a science fiction novel by Helen Smith. England is now a partitioned country with the capital an oppressive place where poetry has been banned, schools are shut and women no longer allowed to work outside of the home. Lucas and Angela decide to try and escape the confining r...

Philip K Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle is one of my favourite all time reads. An alternative history novel that sees the Axis winning the second World War and splitting the USA between Germany on the East coast,Japan on the West and a small neutral zone in the middle. There is an author wh...

The World Inside is a science fiction novel by Robert Silverberg. Silverberg's "THE WORLD INSIDE" is about the giant apartment communistic/yet caste ridden complex (the floors are divided up according to job 'importance), and thought this is the straight bullet shot to the future. Population goes fl...

I must admit that one of the reasons I picked up this novel is that it has my surname on it, the other being that it is of course Philip K Dick who still rates as one of my favourite authors. Written back in 1956 The World Jones Made is one of the authors very early novels and tells the story of Flo...

Timelike Infinity is a science fiction novel by Stephen Baxter. Having read Baxter's The Timeships I had quite high expectations for this book, maybe too high, because I found Timelike Infinity to be rather disappointing. In the first two thirds of the book nothing really happens and when I finally...

Hob is a slave, abandoned as a baby to be brought up with no hope of freedom or any chance of a normal life. On the world of Tribes any male babies born without a father figure to welcome him into his tribe becomes enslaved. Eventually Hob manages to escape and is rescued by a woman from a fighting...

Truth and Fear is the second novel in the Wolfhound Century series by the talented author Peter Higgins. The first book in the series Wolfhound Century was a seriously impressive novel. So much so that it won Book of the year on SFBook for 2013. The story continues right where we (quite abruptly) le...

This Frank Herbert fella wrote the book Dune which was a semi sleeper for me as it walked around this barren planet with some aristocracy stuff going on, got to try to read it again maybe I'm missing something? This other "WHIPPING STAR" is swell though. Frank's little obtuse and abstract words and...

What is  religion? Most of us aren’t used to contemplating that question too hard. The answer seems self-evident. In the world around us now, we have Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as the big three monotheistic religions. India and East Asia provide numerous examples of the polytheistic variety. I...

It is not hard to see where Marvel Studios get all their ideas from as they sit upon a rich heritage of characters and storylines that will take decades to exhaust. I am somewhat of an old school Marvel fan and know the classic runs. Therefore, the newer creations flummox me. Captain Marvel is more...

When embarking on a new work based on a beloved IP the creator must have a haunting voice whispering in their ear…. “Fear the fan.” The most ardent supporters of a property can also be the most adamant to tear it all down if something is not to their liking. How many times have you read an uproar ov...

If you look at the Star Wars timeline from afar it can seem a little depressing. An Old Republic falls only for an Empire to rise. That goes and you get The New Order. It seems that the rebels are always having to rebel against something.  However, for the Sith to rise, there  must  be moments when...

They all tell you that having children is not easy, but nothing prepared us for the first six weeks of having a  defenceless  little t y ke in the house. You may have read the books, been to a few classes or asked r elatives and friends, but when it comes down to it, this is all on your shoulders al...

Growing up my group of friends was obsessed with America and  all wanted to move there. They had all been taken in by the glossy American films and TV shows that suggested that even if you were  unemployed, you would own a swanky loft apartment. I had relatives who live there and was far more aware...

There are two ways that you can view the future. We are all doomed, or we will somehow save ourselves. The optimistic  The Day the Earth Stood Still  way of thinking is that humans will only get around to do something when we are really in a pickle. World ending disaster will be averted at the last...

Who are the goodies and who are the baddies? In most media, the baddies are normally some form of massive entity that is squashing the smaller rebels. These rebels become the de facto good guys as they fight against repression. However, what happens when the power shifts? If the rebels take control,...

The Golden Era of comic books began around the Second World War and into the 1950s. It was a time of nationalism as the World prepared for war and then a time of hope and optimism for the US in particular. The US was now the main world power and life was getting a little better for most people. The...

Typography has a larger role in your life than you may think. It is important to get the right font in the right place. No one wants to have Beware of the Cliff written in Comic Sans. Advertisers spend millions on typefaces to make a brand instantly recognisable. All these things are noble pursuits,...

When the apocalypse happens, science fiction has taught us that some of us will run below and others will be left on the surface. Pick a side. Down below could be a Fallout or Wool situation, better than being on the surface, dead or a mutant. Up above could be The Time Machine or Mary Baader Kaley’...

Science Fiction is one of the best genres because you can explore subjects via a prism of the future. Writing a book about how we treat others does not have to be told via a historic story, or the present, you can look far to the future and draw parallels between that world and ours. What would happ...

It can be hard for the casual Doctor Who viewer to see the character as alien. They may have two hearts, regenerate once in a while, but fundamentally the Doctor looks human. It does not help that they are obsessed with human culture and like to hang around on Earth a lot (cheap sets). But fundament...

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. For years, the Jedi have been considered a paragon of virtue, everything that is good to the Sith’s bad. But there must be a reason so many Jedi fall. The path to the Dark Side is not pathed with sex, drugs, and rock...

At its best science fiction can be a prism to view the current world’s ills in a more palatable manner. Reading about the destruction of our world in a dystopian future feels one step removed from simply looking out of the window. Like environmental catastrophe, some themes are too powerful to go un...

I have a soft spot for cyberpunk, the gritty noir feel mixed with high end science fiction. Like many subgenres it can be dismissed as a passing phase, in this case from the 80s, but fans know that there are still exceptional stories out there written today about crying androids or buildings that mu...

There is no doubt that Tchaikovsky is a prolific author - I'm counting at least 38 novels and many novellas and short stories. Every few months, there seems to be a new book on the horizon. But that regularity of releases doesn't seem to impact the quality of his writing or the sharpness of his visi...

The sheer number of comic books out there are a blessing and a curse. There are so many stories to catch up on and different versions of the same characters. It is wonderful for the explorer, but for the casual fan it can be daunting. We all know something about Black Panther , the character, Wakand...

After discovering what The Price of Safety and The Price of Rebellion are in the first two outings in Michael C Bland’s dystopian trilogy, we finally get to see what The Price of Freedom is in this final outing. In a world in which everyone has been rendered blind unless they wear technology, you ca...

If you read about the gods, most of them are a little messed up. If they are not descending to pretend to be a swan so they can sleep with woman, they are basically ignoring all the human suffering going on. Are gods omnipotent or just much more powerful than humans? Everything feels like magic, unt...

Last night a DJ saved my life. It can feel like that for some people as they crave the weekend, those hot sweaty nights dancing with the people they feel closest to. The community not of family or work colleagues, but the friends and family that you pick up on the way. In the case of The Disco at th...