Siddhartha Hermann Hesse http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3374 urn:isbn:0553208845 en 1922 Novels Philosophy Religion Siddhartha is an allegorical novel by Hermann Hesse which deals with the spiritual journey of an Indian boy called Siddhartha during the time of the Buddha. The book, Hesse's ninth novel, was written in German, in a simple, yet powerful and lyrical, style. It was first published in 1922, after Hesse had spent some time in India in the 1910s. It was published in the U.S. in 1951 and became influential during the 1960s. The word Siddhartha is made up of two words in the Sanskrit language, siddha (gotten) + artha (meaning or wealth). The two words together mean "one who has found meaning (of existence)" or "he who has attained his goals". The Buddha's name, before his renunciation, was Prince Siddhartha Gautama, later the Buddha. In this book, the Buddha is referred to as "Gotama". Source: Wikipedia This work was published before 1923 and is in the public domain in the USA only. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3374.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3374.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3374.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3374.mobi The Highest Treason Randall Garrett http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2174 en 1961 Short Fiction Science Fiction War The highest treason of all is not so easy to define--and be it noted carefully that the true traitor in this case was not singular, but very plural... Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/or check the copyright status in your country. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2174.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2174.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2174.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2174.mobi Frankenstein Mary Shelley http://www.feedbooks.com/book/91 urn:isbn:0743487583 en 1818 Novels Science Fiction Horror Gothic Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, generally known as Frankenstein, is a novel written by the British author Mary Shelley. The title of the novel refers to a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who learns how to create life and creates a being in the likeness of man, but larger than average and more powerful. In popular culture, people have tended to refer to the Creature as "Frankenstein", despite this being the name of the scientist. Frankenstein is a novel infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement. It was also a warning against the "over-reaching" of modern man and the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus. The story has had an influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films. It is arguably considered the first fully realized science fiction novel. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/91.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/91.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/91.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/91.mobi Little Brother Cory Doctorow http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2466 urn:isbn:0765319853 en 2008 Novels Young Readers Science Fiction Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems. But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days. When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself. Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/or check the copyright status in your country. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2466.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2466.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2466.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2466.mobi Cyberpunk http://www.feedbooks.com/list/26 Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life". It is also a musical subgenre of metal. The name is derived from cybernetics and punk and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk" published in 1983, though the style was popularized well before its publication by editor Gardner Dozois. It features advanced science such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or a radical change in the social order. According to Lawrence Person: "Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body." Cyberpunk music often features heavy bass, bass drums, and synthesized sound effects. It is considered a subgenre of metal or EBM (electronic body music). Lyrics tend to lean toward the obscene, but usually include a message of some meaning that fits in with the classic punk. These meanings are often modernized and anti-establisment messages are not quite as common as in regular punk music. Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and mega corporations. They tend to be set in a near-future Earth, rather than the far future settings or galactic vistas found in novels like Isaac Asimov's Foundation or Frank Herbert's Dune. The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias, but tend to be marked by extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its creators ("the street finds its own uses for things"). Much of the genre's atmosphere echoes film noir, and written works in the genre often use techniques from detective fiction. Primary exponents of the cyberpunk field include William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Rudy Rucker and John Shirley. Postmodernist investigation of cyberpunk became a fashionable topic in academic circles, and the genre reached Hollywood to become one of cinema's staple science-fiction styles. Many influential films such as Blade Runner, Hackers (film), the Matrix trilogy or the more recent adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly can be seen as prominent examples of the cyberpunk style and theme. Computer games, board games and role-playing games (such as Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020) often feature storylines that are heavily influenced by cyberpunk writing and movies. Beginning in the early 1990s, some trends in fashion and music were also labeled as cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is also featured prominently in anime, Ghost in the Shell being the most notable. As a wider variety of writers began to work with cyberpunk concepts, new-subgenres of science fiction emerged, playing off the cyberpunk label, and focusing on technology and its social effects in different ways. Examples include steampunk (cyberpunk themes in the early industrial age), pioneered by Tim Powers, K. W. Jeter, and James Blaylock, and biopunk (cyberpunk themes dominated by biotechnology, including Paul Di Filippo’s half-serious ribofunk). In addition, some people consider works such as Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age to be postcyberpunk. Some of the more popular cyberpunk bands include Angelspit, ASP, Chiasm, Combichrist, Das Ich, Seraphim Shock, Suicide Commando, and Zombie Girl. Source: Wikipedia 15 13 Doctorow, Cory 1971 en 25 310103 Cory Doctorow (born July 17, 1971) is a blogger, journalist and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is in favor of liberalizing copyright laws, and a proponent of the Creative Commons organisation, and uses some of their licenses for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, Disney, and post-scarcity economics. Source: Wikipedia Silverberg, Robert 1935 en 4 8414 Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is an American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Silverberg was born in Brooklyn, New York. A voracious reader since childhood, he began submitting stories to science fiction magazines in his early teenage years. He attended Columbia University, receiving an A.B. in English Literature in 1956, but kept writing science fiction. His first published novel, a children's book called Revolt on Alpha C, appeared in 1955, and in the following year, he won his first Hugo, as "best new writer". For the next four years, by his own count, he wrote a million words a year, for magazines and Ace Doubles. In 1959 the market for science fiction collapsed, and Silverberg turned his ability to write copiously to other fields, from carefully researched historical nonfiction to softcore pornography for Nightstand Books. In the mid-1960s, science fiction writers were starting to be more literarily ambitious. Frederik Pohl, then editing three science fiction magazines, offered Silverberg carte blanche in writing for them. Thus inspired, Silverberg returned to writing, paying far more attention to depth of character and social background than he had in the past and mixing in elements of the modernist literature he had studied at Columbia. The books he wrote at this time were widely considered a quantum leap from his earlier work. Perhaps the first book to indicate the new Silverberg was To Open the Sky, a fixup of stories published by Pohl in Galaxy, in which a new religion helps people reach the stars. That was followed by Downward to the Earth, perhaps the first postcolonial science fiction book, a story containing echoes of some material from Joseph Conrad's work, in which the Terran former administrator of an alien world returns after it is set free. Other popularly and critically acclaimed works of that time include To Live Again, in which the personalities of dead people can be transferred to other people; The World Inside, a look at an overpopulated future, which is still as relevant today, as when it was first published; and Dying Inside, a tale of a telepath losing his powers, set in New York City. In 1969 his Nightwings was awarded the Hugo as best novella. He won a Nebula award in 1970, for the short story Passengers, and two the following year (for his novel A Time of Changes and the short story Good News from the Vatican). He won yet another, in 1975, for his novella Born with the Dead. Silverberg was tired after years of high production; he also suffered stresses from a thyroid malfunction and a major house fire. He moved from his native New York to the West Coast in 1972, and he announced his retirement from writing in 1975. In 1980 he returned, however, with Lord Valentine's Castle, a panoramic adventure set on an alien planet, which has become the basis of the Majipoor series — a story cycle set on the vast planet Majipoor, a planet much larger than Earth, inhabited by no less than six types of planetary settlers. Following this release, he has kept writing ever since. In 1986 he received a Nebula for his novella Sailing to Byzantium, in 1990 a Hugo for the novelet Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another, and in 2004 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. In 1970, he was the Guest of Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention. Silverberg has been married twice. He married his first wife, Barbara Brown, in 1956. The couple separated in 1976 and divorced in 1986. Silverberg married science fiction author Karen Haber in 1987. The couple resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2007, Silverberg was elected president of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association. Source: Wikipedia The Oz Books http://www.feedbooks.com/list/4 The Oz books form a book series that begins with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and that relates the "history" of the Land of Oz. Oz was originally created by author L. Frank Baum, who went on to write fourteen Oz books. Although most of the Oz books are strictly adventures, Baum—as well as many later Oz authors—styled themselves as "Royal Historians" of Oz. Later authors wrote 26 other "official" books after Baum's death. Many other authors have put their own twists on Oz, notably Gregory Maguire's revisionist Wicked. Source: Wikipedia 40 18 Tom Corbett, Space Cadet http://www.feedbooks.com/list/69 Tom Corbett is the main character in a series of Tom Corbett — Space Cadet stories that were depicted in television, radio, books, comic books, comic strips, coloring books, punch-out books and View-Master reels in the 1950s. The stories followed the adventures of Tom Corbett, Astro, and Roger Manning, cadets at the Space Academy as they train to become members of the elite Solar Guard. The action takes place at the Academy in classrooms and bunkroom, aboard their training ship the rocket cruiser Polaris, and on alien worlds, both within our solar system and in orbit around nearby stars. The Tom Corbett universe partook of pseudo-science, not equal to the standards of accuracy set by John W. Campbell in the pages of Astounding. And yet, by the standards of the day, it was much more accurate than most media science fiction. Mars was a desert, Venus a jungle, and the asteroids a haunt of space pirates, but at least planets circled suns and there was no air in space. Contrast this with The Twilight Zone, years later, where people could live on asteroids wearing ordinary clothes, or Lost in Space, years after that, where a spaceship could be passing "Jupiter and Andromeda" at the same time. Before Star Trek, Tom Corbett — Space Cadet was the most scientifically accurate series on television, in part due to official science advisor Willy Ley, and later due to Frankie Thomas. Thomas read up on science and everyone on the set turned to him for advice on matters scientific. Source: Wikipedia 3 7 Citadel Algis Budrys http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2735 urn:isbn:B00183WVLO en 1955 Short Fiction Science Fiction He was looking for a privacy his strange personality needed. And never quite seemed to achieve it. All his efforts were, somehow great triumphs of the race, and great failures for him! Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/or check the copyright status in your country. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2735.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2735.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2735.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2735.mobi Doctor Who http://www.feedbooks.com/list/157 Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a mysterious alien time-traveller known as "the Doctor" who travels in his space and time-ship, the TARDIS, which appears from the exterior to be a blue police box. With his companions, he explores time and space, solving problems, facing monsters and righting wrongs. The programme is listed in Guinness World Records as the longest-running science fiction television show in the world and is also a significant part of British popular culture. It has been recognised for its imaginative stories, creative low-budget special effects during its original run, and pioneering use of electronic music (originally produced by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop). In Britain and elsewhere, the show has become a cult television favourite and has influenced generations of British television professionals, many of whom grew up watching the series. It has received recognition from critics and the public as one of the finest British television programmes, including the BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series in 2006. The programme originally ran from 1963 to 1989. After an unsuccessful attempt to revive regular production with a backdoor pilot in the form of a 1996 television film, the programme was successfully relaunched in 2005, produced in-house by BBC Wales. Some development money for the new series is contributed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which is credited as a co-producer. Doctor Who has also spawned spin-offs in multiple media, including the current television programmes Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and the 1981 pilot episode K-9 and Company. The show's lead character is currently portrayed by David Tennant. In the programme's most recent series, which ran from April 5 to July 5, 2008, Catherine Tate played the Doctor's companion, reprising her role of Donna Noble from the 2006 Christmas special. Another Christmas special will air in 2008, followed by four more specials in 2009; the next full series has been confirmed for airing in 2010. Source: Wikipedia 3 5 Dakan, Rick 1972 en 2 10999 Garrett, Randall 1927 1987 en 37 45618 Randall Garrett (December 16, 1927 - December 31, 1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a prolific contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure sf, and collaborated with him on two novels about Earth bringing civilization to an alien planet. Source: Wikipedia