To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.Copyright © 2005-2024 Christopher P. Winter. All rights reserved.
This page was last modified on 10 August 2024.
| SCIENCE FICTION |
Science fiction as a genre of literature has always been difficult to define. Hard-science stories using warp drive spaceships fit easily; tales revolving around psychic phenomena, not so much. Neither has much scientific support. I prefer to be inclusive. Telepathy, for example, can be treated as a mode of perception as reliable as vision. It would obey different rules but be equally explainable — even if we can't currently explain it. So I'll put all "speculative fabulation" here, unless it relies on out-and-out magic. Examples include Lester Del Rey's Pstalemate and John Wyndham's Re-Birth. |
| PRINCIPAL AUTHOR |
TITLE (Linked to review) |
RATING (0-5) |
REVIEW DATE |
ONE-LINE DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aldrin, Buzz | Encounter with Tiber | 5.0 | 9/159/1996 | In this novel by Buzz Aldrin & John Barnes, a decoded ET signal reveals that visitors from Alpha Centauri once set up camp on Mars. |
| Anderson_Kurland | Ten Years To Doomsday | 5.0 | 6/23/2016 | The Federation has ten years to prepare for invasion — and it needs fifteen. |
| Anderson, Poul | Genesis | 4.5 | 12/15/2019 | Earth's future, and the future of the galaxy, are protected and managed by artificial intelligences. |
| Anderson, Poul | Tau Zero | 5.0 | 7/16/2022 | Launched on a mission to a star 32 light-years from Earth, Loenora Christine having to accelerate until time ends. |
| Anthony, Patricia | Brother Termite | 5.0 | 4/28/2012 | Reen is not really a termite — but he is White House chief of staff, and his people really are in charge here. But Reen has both external and internal conflicts. The way Anthony depicts those conflicts makes this a gripping and truly excellent novel. |
| Anthony, Patricia | Cradle of Splendor | 0.0 | 7/05/2001 | Here, the acclaimed author of Brother Termite presents an inconclusive mishmash of events which may or may not have happened to conflicted characters who, if they're male, are almost all weak or perverted. |
| Anthony, Piers | Isle of Woman | 5.0 | 10/07/2011 | Volume 1 of Piers Anthony's Geodyssey series dramatizes the ascent of humankind. |
| Anthony, Piers | Macroscope | 5.0 | 4/13/2012 | Packed with high-tech adventure and unconventionally inventive, this novel is one of Piers Anthony's best. |
| Bear, Greg | Eon | 5.0 | 5/05/2015 | Fascination and foreboding compete in this nvel by Greg Bear which depicts a future fraught with fear yet pregnant with promise. |
| Biggle, Lloyd | The Chronocide Mission | 5.0 | 5/14/2010 | In this novel by the late, great Lloyd Biggle, a contemporary man mistakenly swept 300 years into a barbaric future finds a way to return and set time to rights. |
| Bradley, Marion Zimmer | Heritage and Exile | 5.0 | 11/24/2011 | Two of Marion Z. Bradley's popular and engrossing Darkover novels — The Heritage of Hastur and Sharra's Exile — are collected in this volume. |
| Bradley, Marion Zimmer | The Ruins of Isis | 5.0 | 9/24/2011 | Dallard Malocq came to the matriarchal planet of Isis to study its million-year-old ruins, believed to be those of the mysterious Builders. But all he got was delay — while the women looked on him as his wife's plaything. |
| Bradley, Marion Zimmer | Web of Light | 4.0 | 7/24/2011 | Domaris is just coming of age when the Atlantean Micon comes to her city. He sets in her young heart admiration which blossoms into love — and he sets in motion events which lead to a war of magics. |
| Brunner, John | Quicksand | 5.0 | 2/18/2012 | A young woman out of time tests the psyche of psychiatrist Paul Fidler to destruction. |
| Brunner, John | The Sheep Look Up | 4.5 | 1/10/2013 | This is Brunner's dystopian sequel to Stand on Zanzibar: worth reading, even if the disasters are a bit overblown. |
| Burton, Levar | Aftermath | 4.5 | 4/26/2010 | Levar "Geordie LaForge" Burton's 1997 debut novel sends the inventor of a revolutionary medical device on a run for her life through an impoverished near-future America. |
| Card, Orson Scott | Ender's War | 4.5 | 7/16/2024 | After arduous training, Ender Wiggin succeeds in defeating the alien Buggers. But his war is only just beginning. |
| Cherryh, C. J. | Downbelow Station | 5.0 | 5/10/2012 | Here is the foundation of Cherryh's Alliance/Union tales: Downbelow Station. It's a great read — complex, but well worth the trouble. |
| Cherryh, C. J. | Rimrunners | 5.0 | 9/23/2011 | In the universe of Cherryh's Downbelow Station, spacer Bet Yeager is out of cash and down on her luck. She needs a berth on a ship. Will the arrival of Loki be a blessing or a curse? |
| Clarke, Arthur C. | The Rama Trilogy | 4.0 | 5/31/2020 | Links to these 3 novels (Rama II, The Garden of Rama, and Rama Revealed) are found on the Trilogy page. |
| Clement, Hal | The Nitrogen Fix | 5.0 | 12/19/2012 | Harry Stubbs, writing as Hal Clement, gives us another of his masterpieces of hard-science SF. |
| Cook, Gene | Stars' End | 5.0 | 8/04/2011 | To a region of the galaxy just recovering from the Human-Ulantonid War, and still plagued by Sangaree raiders, comes a new menace: a race out of galactic center that eradicates every living world it finds. Can the secrets hidden at Stars' End save the day? |
| Cooper, Edmund | The Overman Culture | 5.0 | 3/03/2019 | Young Michael has a problem: he can bleed; many other children cannot. He and some others who can bleed set out to find answers. When they do, those answers shake them to the core of their beings. |
| Crichton, Michael | State of Fear | 3.0 | 1/05/2011 | The late Dr. Crichton penned a decent adventure story, but it's intended as — and being used as — a scientific reference. That's its downfall. |
| Crichton, Michael | Sphere | 4.0 | 3/12/2013 | When he dips into the waters plumbed by H. G. Wells in The Man Who Could Work Miracles, Crichton once again spins a tale that's entertaining but shallow. |
| DeCandido, Keith R. A. | Articles of the Federation | 5.0 | 7/11/2012 | Star Trek fans will be delighted by the references to canon in this novel. Everyone else will have to settle for an absorbing and inspiring tale of how future government ought to be run. |
| DeCandido, Keith R. A. | Resident Evil: Extinction | 4.0 | 1/11/2012 | The unstoppable Alice Abernathy is back again in Keith DeCandido's third novelization of a Resident Evil film. |
| Del Rey, Lester | Pstalemate | 5.0 | 4/06/2012 | A surprisingly mundane plot twist is what makes this novel of telepathy and "alien possession" stand out. |
| Dickson, Gordon R. | Soldier, Ask Not | 4.5 | 4/06/2019 | This novel of Tam Olyn's recovery from destructive influences is a gripping but flawed part of the Childe Cycle. |
| Flynn, Michael | Firestar | 5.0 | 10/11/2012 | The future is what we make it, and here Michael Flynn imagines bold men and women, by means of arduous and innovative but plausible efforts, making a bright future indeed for the world. |
| Flynn, Michael | Rogue Star | 5.0 | 4/14/2013 | Michael Flynn's epic moves forward into a world with more shades of gray, as Mariesa van Huyten goes behind her corporation's board to make a deal she will come to regret. |
| Flynn, Michael | Lodestar | 5.0 | 6/24/2013 | Shifting the emphasis more toward character development, Michael Flynn's third volume of the Firestar epic brings the crisis Mariesa van Huyten foresaw to center stage. |
| Flynn, Michael | Falling Stars | 5.0 | 7/28/2013 | The Firestar saga concludes in fine fashion with a resolution of the crisis that is satisfyingly far from a "Hollywood ending." |
| Foster, Alan Dean | Bloodhype | 5.0 | 10/02/2011 | Ever on the hunt for ways to disadvantage their enemy the Humanx Commonwealth, minions of the AAnn Empire think they have something specially destructive in a creature called the Vom. They're right. But they're closer to the Vom. |
| Foster, Alan Dean | Cachalot | 5.0 | 5/02/2011 | Something is destroying the human settlements on the ocean world of Cachalot. Is it the whales that were moved there from Earth centuries ago, and have lived peacefully since? Everyone suspects human agency. Then the investigators catch whales in the act. |
| Foster, Alan Dean | The End of the Matter | 5.0 | 8/26/2011 | Flinx goes home to find the identity of his father, if he can. What he finds is a funny-looking, nonsense-babbling alien who is the key to a massive problem that menaces the whole of the Commonwealth. |
| Foster, Alan Dean | Flinx's Folly | 4.5 | 7/07/2023 | Flinx's dream of menacing evil returns, and he is also menaced by a death cult who mean to see he does nothing about that dream. |
| Foster, Alan Dean | For Love of Mother-Not | 5.0 | 9/27/2014 | Here, on the backwater world of Moth, begins the saga of Philip Lynx, or Flinx, that takes him to some strange places indeed. |
| Foster, Alan Dean | The Howling Stones | 5.0 | 4/30/2010 | Set in the universe of the Humanx Commonwealth created by Foster, this novel weaves an engrossing tale of a trade mission to the Parramati, who care nothing for trade, and the awesome secrets that make them that way. |
| Foster, Alan Dean | Mid-Flinx | 5.0 | 1/24/2013 | Bent on escaping a well-connected thug from Samstead, Flinx arrives by chance on mysterious and deadly Midworld. |
| Foster, Alan Dean | Orphan Star | 5.0 | 3/28/2018 | Seeking to learn the identity of his real mother, Flinx penetrates the blockade of a primitive world under Commonwealth Edict — only to find himself trapped by AAnn-supported criminals. |
| Foster, Alan Dean | Sentenced to Prism | 5.0 | 2/03/2018 | His company sends top troubleshooter Evan Orgell to Prism to find out what stopped their efforts to exploit that world's life. They give him the best protection money can buy, but Prism ruins it — and the troubleshooter too, but not in the same way. |
| Foster, Alan Dean | The Spoils of War | 5.0 | 8/06/2011 | Never mess with the bird-woman Lalelelang of Mahmahar. Sure she's small, physically fragile, and hates the sight of blood. But she's tough as they come where it counts — tough enough to end a thousand-year war. |
| Foster, Alan Dean | The Tar-Aiym Krang | 5.0 | 3/27/2018 | Flinx's first venture into space has him aboard a merchant's KK-ship, pursued by AAnn warships, in a race to reach the unknown world that may hold an artifact of the vanished Tar-Aiym race: the legendary Krang, whatever it may be. |
| Gibson, William | Neuromancer | 5.0 | 4/27/2012 | In William Gibson's unique universe, Case undertakes a mission he barely understands, half in cyberspace, half in the real world. |
| Gordon, Stuart | Time Story | 5.0 | 10/27/2011 | When he got a good look at the woman who rescued him from the well, Phil Kitson saw she was the same woman who had tried to kill him, and died herself. How could this be? And how did she know about the stolen moongems floating in the bag beside him? Time would tell. |
| Heinlein, Robert A. | For Us, the Living | 4.5 | 2/06/2004 | Heinlein's just-published first novel is a thinly disguised series of lectures, but enjoyable nonetheless. |
| Heinlein, Robert A. | Podkayne of Mars | 4.0 | 7/12/2019 | Here's a passable adventure story, but not one of Heinlein's best. |
| Heinlein, Robert A. | Revolt in 2100 | 5.0 | 3/21/2018 | The third volume in Heinlein's "Jeremiah Scudder" trilogy is a cracking good read. |
| Hickam, Homer H. | Back to the Moon | 4.0 | 6/28/2022 | Homer Hickam's first novel sometimes goes over the top, but his tale of Jack Medaris's "quest for fire" is a good read. |
| Hogan, James P. | Code of the Lifemaker | 5.0 | 11/10/2011 | The mission was headed for Mars. At least, that's what the public and most of the participants were told. But, after the ship left Earth orbit, a stage psychic named Zambendorf learned they were bound for Titan, and picked up rumors of an alien civilization there — a civilization of machines. |
| Hogan, James P. | The Genesis Machine | 5.0 | 12/27/2021 | Physicist Bradley Clifford has a first-class mind and a world-class theory. But he was trapped in a stifling government bureaucracy. How would he escape? |
| Hogan, James P. | Giants' Star | 5.0 | 9/08/2016 | Messages from the Giants' Star drop into Earth's lap a mystery that portends extreme danger for both humans and Ganymeans. |
| Hogan, James P. | Inherit the Stars | 5.0 | 12/10/2002 | Gifted scientist Victor Hunt embarks on an other-worldly quest that leads to a shattering conclusion. |
| Hogan, James P. | Mission to Minerva | 5.0 | 1/08/2011 | Victor Hunt finds himself once again venturing into the wonder-worlds of fiction and science. |
| Hoyle, Fred | October the First Is Too Late | 3.0 | 3/12/2015 | The narrator, a classical musician, improbably finds himself on military missions into areas of Earth that have mysteriously time-shifted to past or future eras. |
| King, Betty | Women of the Future | 5.0 | 12/15/2011 | The author traces the improving status of female characters in works of science fiction from the late nineteenth century through the 1980s. |
| Kurland, Michael | Pluribus | 5.0 | 12/26/2020 | Seventy years ago, America fell apart after a virulent pandemic. Now, with help from its Mars base, it must fight an even worse mutation of the virus. |
| Laumer, Keith | The Long Twilight | 5.0 | 12/26/2020 | Two immortal supermen, visitors from a long-vanished world, battle each other century after century, until they must join forces to stop Earth from bringing its own death. |
| LeGuin, Ursula | The Dispossessed | 5.0 | 4/06/2011 | LeGuin's award-winning novel of social criticism featuring Shevek, an idealistic temporal physicist, as the potential agent of change. |
| Leiber, Fritz | The Big Time | 5.0 | 9/20/2022 | The stresses felt by those condemned to live through an interminable war are vividly portrayed in this novel. |
| MacDonald, John D. | Time and Tomorrow | 5.0 | 4/22/2010 | From a master of the mystery form, three supremely fascinating tales of science fiction — including The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything |
| MacLeod, Ken | The Sky Road | 4.5 | 4/03/2015 | British writer MacLeod provides here a gripping, two-timeline tale of how we lost and are slowly regaining that road. |
| Magary, Drew | The Postmortal | 4.0 | 7/07/2019 | In this grim tale, practical widespread immortality brings only crime, war, and madness. |
| Mason, Douglas R. | Eight against Utopia | 3.5 | 6/05/2016 | This is a run-of-the-mill escape-from-stifling-civilization story, action-packed but not exceptional. |
| McCaffrey, Anne | Decision at Doona | 5.0 | 11/25/2019 | A solidly plotted and action-filled novel of first contact between two races with secrets. |
| McPherson, William | Tales of a Hot Planet | 3.0 | 5/12/2019 | Dr. McPherson has given us an interesting but mediocre work. |
| Miller Jr, Walter M. | A Canticle for Leibowitz | 5.0 | 10/27/2012 | Walter M. Miller's best known work is tragic but not hopeless, and the start of a series. |
| Nim, P. S. | Double Mobius Sphere | 4.0 | 3/30/2013 | An enjoyable tale of a voyage to seek out the Capacians, highly advanced aliens — with a disappointing ending. |
| Niven, Larry | Footfall | 5.0 | 12/27/2012 | Aliens that look like baby elephants invade and conquer Earth. But can they hold it? The answer depends on more than just technology in this well-crafted and engrossing novel. |
| Norton, Andre | Time Traders II | 4.5 | 3/20/2012 | Two novels set in Norton's Time Traders universe pit marooned agents against hostile forces. |
| Oreskes, Naomi | The Collapse of Western Civilization | 4.0 | 3/10/2015 | The authors' tale is not good fiction, but works as a warning. |
| Pangborn, Edgar | A Mirror for Observers | 5.0 | 9/10/2016 | Edgar Pangborn gives us a gripping tale of ethical conflict that mirrors much of today's politics. |
| Piper, H. Beam | First Cycle | 5.0 | 3/06/2018 | Completed by Michael Kurland from a manuscript found after Piper died, this novel is a grim allegory of Cold-War paranoia. |
| Pohl, Frederik | The Singers of Time | 5.0 | 2/26/2011 | Another hugely enjoyable collaboration from SF veterans Pohl & Williamson, with some surprising plot twists. |
| Pohl, Frederik | The Starchild Trilogy | 5.0 | 9/26/2011 | The Reefs of Space anchors this Pohl & Williamson classic, and is the standout of three enjoyable tales. |
| Reeves-Stevens, Judith | Prime Directive | 5.0 | 12/28/2012 | Talin IV's promising civilization has destroyed itself in thermonuclear war, and the officers of the Enterprise are held responsible. Now cashiered from Star Fleet, they race to uncover what really happened on Talin IV. |
| Russell, Eric Frank | The Mindwarpers | 4.5 | 10/18/2011 | Why had he killed Arline? Richard Bransome could not remember, though his memories of doing so were vivid. His home life in tatters, he had to take a leave from his defense job to track down the mystery. Soon he found a bigger one to grapple with. |
| Schmitz, James H. | The Demon Breed | 5.0 | 9/02/2016 | Seventy years ago, Parahuans invaded several water-worlds of the Federation and were brutally repulsed. Now they were back, infiltrating themselves into the seas of Nandy-Cline, preparing to prove their prior defeat was a fluke. But they didn't reckon with Dr. Nile Etland. |
| Schmitz, James H. | The Witches of Karres | 5.0 | 9/23/2015 | Captain Pausert buys himself three witches and tons of trouble in this rollicking, well-crafted space opera. |
| Sheffield, Charles | Summertide | 5.0 | 6/10/2019 | Mysteries within mysteries attend the backwater worlds of Opal and Quake, due shortly for a rare conjunction that will disrupt normal life and make the surface of the aptly named Quake lethal for visitors. Why, then, are visitors from throughout the spiral arm demanding access to Quake during the conjunction? |
| Silverberg, Robert | To Open the Sky | 5.0 | 7/30/2012 | Reynolds Kirby's high-level UN job has him frazzled. A girl with a cosmetic-surgery face persuades him to give it up for the scientific religion of the Vorsters. Then things really get interesting. Silverberg's tale throws the reader curve after curve, and in an Afterword Russell Letson places it in the context of the author's other work. |
| Smith, Cordwainer | Norstrilia | 5.0 | 4/27/2013 | A remarkable tale in which Rod McBan buys the planet Earth and then gives it away for the sake of liberty and justice for all. |
| Smith, E. E. | Imperial Stars | 5.0 | 3/07/2013 | The creator of the Lensman series here begins the saga of the Family D'Alembert with a comparatively lighthearted tale of plots and intrigues among the stars. |
| Stableford, Brian | Journey to the Center | 5.0 | 12/26/2017 | Asgard, a world of mystery with layers like an onion, reveals some of its secrets to treasure-hunter Mike Rousseau. |
| Sturgeon, Theodore | More than Human | 5.0 | 2/18/2015 | Sturgeon's best novel shows us a group of individuals whose powers push them out of the realm we think of as humanity. |
| Sturgeon, Theodore | A Touch of Strange | 5.0 | 3/15/2013 | This collection of nine stories may not be Sturgeon's best work, but it comes close. |
| Tubb, Edwin C. | Jondelle | 5.0 | 12/26/2018 | Volume 10 of Tubb's Dumarest of Terra saga is a well-constructed tale of action and intrigue. |
| Vonnegut, Kurt | Galápagos | 4.0 | 7/12/2022 | Vonnegut spins here a rambling tale of anti-human ennui. |
| West, Wallace | The Bird of Time | 5.0 | 4/27/2012 | The unscrupulous Pitaret Mura and a nearly immortal Martian demigoddess vie with invading Earthmen for the future of the two planets. Will Princess Yahna save the day? Will the Avron have her way? This rollicking tale from the 1950s is great fun. |
| West, Wallace | Lords of Atlantis | 5.0 | 7/08/2019 | A decent retelling of the Atlantis legend in a science-fiction context. |
| West, Wallace | The Memory Bank | 5.0 | 7/04/2019 | Another Golden Age classic, full of hurtling spaceships, ravening energy beams, and marauding barbarian hordes — with telepathic villainy for good measure. |
| White, James | Double Contact | 5.0 | 3/24/2019 | The twelfth and final "Sector General" novel is an excellent windup to the series. |
| White, James | Hospital Station | 5.0 | 1/08/2013 | Here is the inaugural novel in James White's famous "Sector General" series. |
| White, James | The Watch Below | 4.0 | 9/05/2017 | While intriguiging, this tale of humans and aliens surviving very similar problems in wildly differing environments drags in places. |
| Williamson, Jack | The Humanoids | 4.5 | 5/27/2019 | SF Grand Master Jack Williamson's widely known novel of oppressively beneficient robots. |
| Williamson, Jack | Lifeburst | 5.0 | 2/26/2011 | The first of two novels from SF Grand Master Jack Williamson about the world of SkyWeb has humans provisionally accepted by the eldren. |
| Williamson, Jack | Mazeway | 5.0 | 2/26/2011 | In the second of the two SkyWeb novels, humanity wins full acceptance through the actions of Benn Dain. |
| Williamson, Jack | Manseed | 5.0 | 2/26/2011 | SF grandmaster Jack Williamson gives us an original and engrossing tale with plenty of high tech. |
| Wyndham, John | Re-Birth | 5.0 | 8/01/2019 | In a post-apocalyptic world, young people who are different struggle to survive the fearful bigotry of their elders. |
| The books are rated from 0 to 5 in increments of 0.5. Colors represent the following quality ranges: | ||||
| 4.0 to 5.0 | Quality: | HIGH | (Color = Aqua) | Competent to exceptional; well worth the money |
| 2.0 to 3.5 | Quality: | FAIR | (Color = Lime) | Useful despite some flaws; may or may not be worth buying. |
| 0.5 to 1.5 | Quality: | POOR | (Color = Yellow) | Seriously flawed; read it if you wish, but don't buy it. |
| 0.0 to 0.0 | Quality: | YUCK | (Color = Fuchsia) | Avoid this book at all costs! |
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.