A swashbuckling classic of elevated pulp, steeped in Einstein’s physics and the historical theories of Arnold J. Toynbee.

Born in Texas, Charles L. Harness (1915 - 2005) had an unusual, stop-start career in science fiction. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s he published just one novel per decade while also working as a patent lawyer. He is described by the science fiction encyclopedia (SFE) as a victim of “relative neglect”, and his work was quite unrecognised until towards the end of his life.

However, Harness’ first novel The Paradox Men has earned some degree of fame, often due to its fond reception in the UK. It was praised in an introduction by Brian Aldiss, and it is included in David Pringle’s landmark book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. There, it is memorably described as “one of the shlock classics of US magazine SF”. The Paradox Men is a dizzyingly fast-moving example of elevated pulp, called “shamelessly melodramatic” by the SFE and packed full of outrageous ideas, outlandish plot devices, and swordfights in outer space.

Delving into the mysteries of Jupiter with two stories which link two generations of the UK's greatest science fiction writers.

An enduring icon of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008) is best remembered for his novels, especially Childhood’s End (1953), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Rendezvous with Rama (1973). However, up until around 1962 he was also a prolific writer of short fiction. He published so much, in fact, that the most comprehensive collection runs to over 900 pages, or an intimidating 50 hours in audiobook form. 

Originally published in the December 1971 issue of Playboy, “A Meeting With Medusa” is generally thought of as Clarke’s last significant shorter work. Notably, it won the Nebula Award for Best Novella the following year. It was also an early inspiration for two of Clarke’s successors in the British SF scene. 45 years after the novella’s publication, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds delivered their novel-length sequel, The Medusa Chronicles.

Taken together, these two works form an exciting exploration of the possibility of life on Jupiter, the effects of transhumanism, and the relationship between humans and machines. They are also a fascinating link between two generations of British science fiction talent.

A genuinely harrowing and yet moving novel of an unstoppable assault on Earth by unknowable aliens.

Planet Earth has had some rough times in science fiction. Over the decades, writers have had it besieged, invaded, conquered, frozen, incinerated, and even stolen. Of course some stories have gone all the way and destroyed the Earth altogether. There are many ways to approach this narratively; in the British comics series Shakara, our world is glibly destroyed on the first page, followed shortly by the last surviving human. 

In The Forge of God (1987), the Earth’s demise is an inevitability. Greg Bear’s novel of apocalypse was published when he was establishing himself as a leader of American hard SF in the 1980s. This is a sophisticated, chillingly believable, and scientifically rigorous view of the end of the world. Crucially, Bear is as interested in human beings as he is in the devastation that unfolds. Knowing the outcome does not undermine the emotive power of his human-scale story.

While humankind makes a stab at self-preservation, this novel confronts the chilling idea of a broadly hostile universe for which Earth is woefully unprepared. In a way, though, The Forge of God is oddly uplifting - dealing as it does with the vanishing beauty of our world and that sturdy cliché, the strength of the human spirit.

A key novel in its author’s development is set in a world where a new religion could pave the way for humanity’s expansion to the stars.

Many science fiction authors have crafted one or more “future histories”, which trace humanity’s imagined development in the years to come. The product of a somewhat unusual writing and editing process, To Open the Sky was the first true future history written by the prolific American author Robert Silverberg. In this distinctive take on the idea, the journey beyond Earth’s solar system rests less on technology, and much more on religious belief.

In the 1950s, Silverberg was working at “assembly-line speed”, producing many competent SF stories for several magazines. Later, he entered a new phase in which he remained prolific but became more thoughtful and strategic in his approach. To Open the Sky is one of the novels which commenced the most praised part of his career, from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. It is a brisk projection of humanity’s future, steeped in the theme of religion and cleverly bringing together five carefully planned, previously published stories.

A look at the only two full-length works in the Thousand Worlds science fiction setting by the author of A Game of Thrones.

Few science fiction and fantasy writers can really be thought of as household names, but George R.R. Martin definitely qualifies. His as-yet unfinished epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, has sold over 90 million copies and its TV adaptation was an international phenomenon in its own right. Martin has been called “the American Tolkien”, and is almost synonymous with the fantasy genre. What even some of his fans may not realise, though, is that Martin was originally successful in the field of science fiction.

Between 1971 and 1986, Martin published 26 shorter works of SF which all formed a part of a single setting, which he called the “Thousand Worlds”. In this loose future history, humans have achieved interstellar travel and have colonised numerous planets. However, due to the vast distances involved and the impact of conflict, humanity has splintered into various disparate cultures. Many of the stories explore the differences between these societies, as well as with other forms of life. They range quite widely in style, from the military SF of “The Hero” (1971) to the horror of the novella Nightflyers (1980).

Here, we explore the only two full-length works in the Thousand Worlds setting. The first is the novel Dying of the Light (1977), Martin’s debut novel set on the declining rogue world of Worlorn. The second is Tuf Voyaging (1986), a collection of stories featuring the eccentric trader Haviland Tuf. Together, they are an interesting insight into the neglected SF works of an author who would become a dominant force in fantasy.

Two early novels released as part of Ace Doubles in 1960 show a different side to the UK's first winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Today, John Brunner (1934 - 1995) is best known for his four lengthy, unsettling, and prophetic “tract novels” published between 1968 and 1975. These were written during a period when he consciously elevated his ambition, and sought to grapple with the issues facing the world in the second half of the 20th century. The novels were critically successful. Most famously, the incredibly ambitious story of overpopulation Stand on Zanzibar made Brunner the first British winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel. However, these novels were not lucrative and “they in no way made Brunner’s fortune.”

But Brunner’s work cannot be reduced to four novels. In his heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, he was extremely prolific. Notably, in the six years from 1959 he published a massive 27 novels through Ace Books alone. Many of these formed one half of the US publisher’s famous “Ace Doubles”, which comprised two short novels printed back-to-back in the dos-á-dos or tête-bêche format. In books like these, Brunner’s works were paired with stories by authors like Poul Anderson, Philip K. Dick, and Samuel R. Delany.

This is a look at two of the four short novels which Brunner contributed to Ace Doubles during one year, 1960. The Atlantic Abomination and Sanctuary in the Sky are described by the Science Fiction Encyclopedia as “are typical of the storytelling enjoyment he was able to create by applying to ‘modest’ goals the formidable craft he had developed.”

Not a space opera but what we might call a “time opera”, Bayley’s fifth novel is a pulpy tale of imperial struggle in the shifting time streams.

Barrington J. Bayley (1937 - 2008) spent much of the 1970s writing space opera science fiction which blended the excitement of the pulp era with the experimentalism of the New Wave. Originally published in 1974, The Fall of Chronopolis is something different. It preserves the formidable ships, baroque plotting, and fundamental strangeness of something like The Garments of Caean (1976). But here, as the title implies, Bayley’s vessels travel not in space, but rather in time. 

In this setting, humans have not mastered spaceflight. Instead of dominating the stars they have sought to extend their control over time. The Chronotic Empire, ruled over by the Ixian dynasty, controls a swathe of hundreds of years of history. Its powerful Time Fleets are made up of time-travelling vessels which seek to head off any threats from other points in time. However in The Fall of Chronopolis, the Empire faces twin dangers both from within and from without, which threaten to bring the whole edifice crashing down.

The Futurians were likely the most famous and important fan group in the history of science fiction. Based in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, they included SF fans who went on to become successful writers, artists, editors, and agents in the field. Some of the most important writers in the group included Isaac Asimov, James Blish, and two men who formed possibly the most important collaboration in science fiction.

That partnership was between Frederik Pohl (1919 - 2013) and Cyril M. Kornbluth (1923 - 1958). They worked together from 1940 until the latter’s untimely death at the age of just 34. In that time, they collaborated on several short stories and four science fiction novels, of which three are considered classics. These are The Space Merchants (1952), Gladiator-at-Law (1955), and Wolfbane (1959). This special feature takes a brisk tour through these books, each a classic 1950s SF in its own right which add up to a memorable body of work.

The Culture discovers that even its abilities have limits, in the fourth novel in Banks’ revered series.

Following the publication of Useof Weapons in 1990, Iain M. Banks took a break from his Culture setting. Over the next several years, he published three so-called “mainstream” novels and Feersum Endjinn (1994), a standalone science fiction book which won the BSFA Award for Best Novel. Banks returned to his post-scarcity setting with Excession (1996), which secured Banks his second BSFA Award within three years. Today, Excession remains one of the most popular entries in the series, and some consider it to be the best.

The novel takes its title from a designation given by the Culture to a strange, vast artefact which suddenly appears on the edge of known space. The Excession is a black body sphere over 50 km across, which appears able to exert previously unseen influence on nearby space. Its emergence draws in two separate Culture factions, an ex-Culture splinter group, a militaristic empire known as the Affront, and a handful of humans. The novel allows Banks to explore how the Culture responds to an issue outside their previous experience, what he calls an “outside context problem”.

Cosmic-scale terror and wonder mingle in Poul Anderson's classic of hard science fiction.

Interstellar travel would require an extraordinary level of sustained acceleration. Many science fiction stories take this technology for granted. The idea of faster-than-light (FTL) travel conflicts with what we know about causality, but is a common trope in SF. Often, travel between stars is merely a means to an end, a way of getting to the next battle or galaxy-shaking discovery. Poul Anderson’s novel Tau Zero considers seriously the implications of massive acceleration. It is rooted in a question: what would happen if a starship was unable to stop accelerating?

Originally published in 1970, Tau Zero sets its characters on a genuinely mind-boggling trip through the cosmos, one which places an almost intolerable strain on their society, their relationships, and their very sanity. The book has been recognised as a landmark in hard science fiction for over 50 years. In 1985, David Pringle declared it “second to none” among novels which emphasise scientific plausibility.

Even today, Tau Zero impresses with its vast scale and scientific rigour. While these are the reasons it remains an SF classic, the book is also worth reading for its political and social themes which are rooted interestingly in Anderson’s personal background.