Literary and fantastic novelties of 2014. How to replenish the home fiction library



    We have long wanted to make a similar post, but everyone was waiting for the right occasion. And so he turned up - the New Year, a time for summing up all kinds of results and creating ratings. And we decided to recall the eternal - the fantastic literature. There is hardly anyone among us who does not like science fiction. What kind of IT person does not keep in his soul, in a nook, the memories of books that once shocked his imagination with his fictional stories ?!

    And if in the bustle of everyday life you threw up reading books, then you are in vain. High technologies have not yet stifled the writing profession (we hope this will not happen), and many interesting books are published every year worthy of carving for half an hour or an hour a day for reading. Perhaps these books will be a starting point for you. By the way, in late November, now last year, Ursula Le Guin said :

    “Difficult times are coming when we will need the voices of writers who can offer alternatives to our lives today. Which, through our fearful society and obsessive technologies, will be able to see other types of being, and maybe even give us hope. We will need writers, poets and dreamers who remember the freedom of realists. ”


    We want to warn you right away: since most books are foreign novelties, they have not yet been published (or will not be published at all) in Russian. On the other hand, this is a great reason (and way) to tighten your English.

    The book of strange new things, Michael Faber




    The book tells about the missionary’s journey to an exoplanet called Oasis. The goal is obvious - to bring the word of God to alien aborigines. Those, it must be said, showed considerable zeal in the development of religion. Using aliens as an example, the author clearly illustrated our own, human, craving for self-destruction. Sketches of the life of a missionary on another planet, surrounded by another race of sentient beings, look interesting. And the future of the human race in the book is depicted quite bizarrely.

    Locked up, John Scalzi (Lock In, John Scalzi)




    This book partly exploits our fears of all kinds of epidemics. In the near future, some people were struck by an ailment called Haden Syndrome. They lose the ability to communicate with the outside world, their consciousness is locked inside the bodies. That is, the effect is comparable to paralysis. However, it appears that a small number of people have an innate talent for communicating with victims of Hayden's Syndrome. Such favorites were called Integrators. The plot is built around an investigation into the murder of one of the Integrators, and the book raises the issue of discrimination of vulnerable patients.

    The three-body problem, Liu Cixin




    This is a tale translated into English by the writer Liu Qixin , one of the pillars of modern Chinese fiction. The plot focuses on the story of the first contact of people with an alien civilization. However, then everything unfolds into a much more complex picture with a conspiracy theory about the change in the laws of physics in the solar system. All kinds of moral dilemmas are raised along the way in situations where science itself becomes a dogma.

    The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North




    The main character of the book , Harry Augustus, returns to his “starting point” after death and lives a new life. And so on and on. And this is not reincarnation. Moreover, in general, all people (somehow) have the same gift - or a curse. Such a "multi-series" allows them to send unique messages to the past, as well as unite against each other. Someone uses this bizarre form of immortality in order to change the future, which leads to the emergence of a rather strange friendship between the characters. Here is such a strange psychological fiction.

    The Martian, Andy Weir




    A very interesting story , according to which Ridley Scott is currently making a film with Matt Damon in the title role. In fairness, this is not new, Andy Weir published it on the Internet back in 2012. But on paper it was published already in 2014. The book tells about an astronaut who was left alone on Mars, and is trying to survive by all means. Real space survival fiction, very correct from a scientific point of view. The triumph of ingenuity over seemingly hopeless circumstances.

    Defenders, Will McIntosh




    In the future, the Earth was attacked by an alien race. The aggressors possessed the gift of telepathy, so the earthlings had to create an army of defenders, whose mind was not subject to scanning by aliens. The war is over, we managed to fight back. And the question arose of what to do with the veterans, who fully grasped the charms of war. It was decided to settle them all in Australia. It can be seen that the karma of this continent is to be an exiled territory. Naturally, it is not easy for society to accept people with similar mental injuries, and even with the side effects of antiseptic protection.

    Empire of Dust, Jacey Bedford (Empire of Dust: a Psi-Tech Novel, Jacey Bedford)




    One of the favorite fantastic stories: the distant future and the megacorporation of evil . She introduces Psi-Tech implants, giving telepathic abilities to her agents. Alas, they have a side effect - a person with a similar implant is gradually going crazy. But one of the agents, Kara Karlinni, finds a way around this and not lose his mind.

    Behind the rear, Scott Magner (Homefront, Scott magner)




    Fighting Fantasy . The distant future, the Earth is devastated, but still inhabited. Dzhantin (this is a woman), a genetically modified super-soldier, is given the task to go to Earth and establish a secret settlement. However, arriving at our old woman, Djantin discovered that a civil war was in full swing here. As a result, in order to survive, she has to look for allies.

    The Peripheral, William Gibbson




    One of the most interesting fantastic works of the past year. In the utopian world of the future, the main character Burton works as a beta tester in a new virtual reality game. His responsibilities include finding bugs in his own virtual body. However, his sister Flynn after some time discovers that the tested “game” is something much more serious than it seems to her brother.

    Proxima, Stephen Baxter




    By the XXVII century, mankind was already able to break out of the limits of the Solar system and is now actively colonizing Proxima Centauri. The novel takes place simultaneously in two times: in fact, in the XXVII century and in the very distant future, when our Galaxy turned into one gigantic artificial intelligence, which had existed by that time for 100,000 years. And our very distant descendants discovered something that could affect the future of the entire known Universe.

    The game in the halls of death, Dmitry Kazakov




    This is the first book from the new fantasy series "Allods" dedicated to the game of the same name. The series will be dedicated to the game universe, will reveal the secrets of the plot and explain the history of many famous artifacts, characters and islands.

    The plot of the first book: mortal enemies - the elven mage disfigured by the astral and the Khadagan saboteur, forced to hide from former associates - are doomed to meet, although they still do not know about it. They will encounter in one of the most mysterious places in the world of Allods - near the pyramid lost in the jungle of the Holy Land, access to which is blocked by powerful and strange spells. Heroes will have to forget about hostility when it becomes clear that both are pawns in the game, on the outcome of which the fate of the world depends.

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    On this we want to complete our literary review. Surely you know a lot of other interesting science fiction books published in 2014. Write about them in the comments, preferably with cover images. Together, it turns out to put together a pretty good selection of new products.

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