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Inspired by David Pringle's landmark 1985 work Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, this volume supplements the earlier selection with the present authors' choices for the best English-language science fiction novels during the past quarter century. Employing a critical essay slant, the book provides a discussion of the novels and the writers in the context of popular literature. Moreover, each entry features a cover image of the novel, a plot synopsis, and a mini review, making it an ideal go-to guide for anyone wanting to become reacquainted with an old favorite or to discover a previously unknown treasure. With a foreword by David Pringle, this invaluable reference is sure to provoke conversation and debates among sci-fi fans and devotees.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01525CK32
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Nonstop Press (September 6, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 6, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1990 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
Reviewer: Gregory A. Benford
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: VERY USEFUL
Review: I've been sampling BEST 101 & am very pleased at the summaries indeed. It's an insightful way to consider the sprawl of great work over 25 years, a huge job! I've read the majority and agree they should be in. (There's even one of mine, an unexpected bonus. They treated my galactic series well and caught the flavor of it.) Glad to see Anderson's GENESIS, his last great work -- writ for me in a month! -- when Zelazny died and I had a slot to fill in the collection, FAR FUTURES. Anderson was a titan. Could've used an index, but still, immensely valuable. Thanks for this very useful book--must read some of these I missed!

Reviewer: Paul F. Brooks
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: As a reader of SF I accept this book as a collection of interesting book reviews.
Review: Science Fiction the 101 Best Novels 1985-2010 - Damien Broderick & Paul Di Filippo [review 0795 - Book Reviews - February 28, 2019] Two gentlemen with credentials selected their 101 best SF novels published during 1985-2010. The other criteria was that the books were English language not translations. I am certain other editors would of selected different books and included and excluded some authors. As a reader of SF I accept this book as a collection of interesting book reviews. You have to judge if the books are "the best" or not. Who knows I may be motivated to read an author I never had before. In fact of the 101 books included I have read only 2. I have to ding this book one star for the glaring omission on not including the authors names in the table of contents and the lack of an index. A reference book of this type should of included these items. For those who need an author's name along with the title of these 101 books you can drill down and find one on the ISFDB [Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base]. I cut and pasted the list printed it out and include it within the book. Now someone did the drudge work to created a useful table of contents - should of been included I contend.

Reviewer: Geezer27
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title: One star is at least one too many. Avoid! Avoid! Avoid! NOT SCIENCE FICTION!
Review: This book is found under Science Fiction. IT IS NOT!It is worse than a waste of money - it is even worse than a waste of your time - it is a trap and an insult!It contains only intellectual pontificaion and rambling ABOUT Science Fiction stories.Having paid, I read about a few stories I have not read. The text did not make me want to read them.I then read about one of my favourite stories - and had I not already read and enjoyed the original work, the tripe in this sorry excuse for a book would certainly not have induced me to read it.Shame on Amazon for calling this trash Science Fiction - clearly an error!You have been warned!Geezer27

Reviewer: CK_
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good but not as great as Pringle's book
Review: I bought David Pringle's "100 Best SF Novels" back in high school. It had a profound effect on my life because I ended up reading most of the books he reviewed- along the way, I became a PKD fan and a JG Ballard fan (authors whom I likely would not have read otherwise). Pringle's book was wonderful because it made you want to read the books. He described the books in CLEAR concise terms with a plot summary and gave you some context of the book's historical mileu.101 Novels is a worthy sucessor. The problem is the writing (while stylish) is too "post-modernish" for me. In some cases, it's hard to even tell what the book is about. Also, unfortunately, the font size is very small. Overall, this book is well worth getting (and there are many excellent picks). But it doesn't live up to Pringle's masterpiece.

Reviewer: Nix
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A good resource to find new authors
Review: Good to browse - I found a number of books I'd already read, but many authors I had never tried before. I had to be careful not to read too much of the summary of these to avoid learning too much about the plots, but based on the recommendations of this book I have tried books by authors I hadn't heard of before and have found some very enjoyable SF. Saved me a lot of trial and error...A handy reference. And gives a good background to the authors and books of this period.

Reviewer: John M. Ford
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: 101 Bottles of SF on the Wall
Review: This book has an unusually descriptive title. It contains 101 brief (2-5 page) reviews of the "best" 101 science fiction novels published in 1985 through 2010. It is a companion volume to David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels: 1949-1984. Both books guide readers through the relatively large universe of book-length science fiction. Authors Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo limit themselves to one entry per book author, using this entry to discuss multiple works by that author as appropriate.The entries include reviews of five of my favorites. They provide a general sense of the way these books are reviewed and evaluated.Ender's Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card. This novel about human cadets training to fight in an interstellar war launched Card's career. Its success is attributed to the inclusion of a dozen hot-button topics: "...an existential threat to the human race; the nature of alien intelligence and person-hood; genocide; means versus ends; the `great man' theory of history; the limits of government and the proper role of the citizen; the limits and nature of the educational system; the military ethos; the nature of sociopaths and power; family dynamics; sibling rivalry; and schoolboy rivalry."Use of Weapons (1990) by Iain M. Banks. The review outlines the book's history of protagonist Cheradenine Zakalwe, a perpetual soldier for various armies and causes. It also overviews Banks' other novels set in the "Culture" universe and the primary themes emphasized in its post-scarcity society. There is an insightful discussion of the book's twin helix narrative structure. And there is an *unforgiveable* spoiler for one of the other Culture books.A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) by Vernor Vinge. This story spans star systems across an entire sector of the galaxy and includes humans, an engagingly-strange collection of aliens, and strange, incomprehensible Powers with... strange, incomprehensible powers. The universe is partitioned into Zones which are concentric regions around the galaxy's center. The laws of physics differ in these Zones, with thought and spaceflight barely possible in the Unthinking Depths and artificial intelligence, faster-than light travel, and other wonders abundant in the Beyond. Bad things can happen when denizens of different Zones interact. The review discusses Vinge's the relationship between this work, its prequel A Deepness in the Sky, and the Singularity concept introduced in Marooned in Realtime.Perdido Street Station (2000) by China Miéville. This book introduced readers to the author's Bas-Lag series and to its central city, the sprawling, overcrowded, mucusy metropolis of New Crobuzon. The book is named for its largest train station, only one of an incredible set of locations that includes an enclave of cactus-people and an embassy of Hell. The story is about a scientist who accidentally looses deadly slake-moths on the City. But the story is just an excuse to explore the people, places, and improbabilities of New Crobuzon. There is also some discussion of Miéville`s subsequent Bas-Lag books, The Scar and Iron Council.The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger. This book isn't really about time travel in the traditional sense, nor may it "really" be considered science fiction. But it is close to both. Clair and Henry are friends, lovers, spouses, parents who have a life together, but many parts of it are out of sequence. Henry is an involuntary time traveler who jumps to different points in the past and future without will or warning. He knows Clair as a little girl, a teenager, a woman. And she waits for him, never knowing how old he will be when he appears. We see the implications across the span of their lives, if span is the right word. The review gives us a bit more of the author's perspective on her unique book.The reviews of books I am familiar with describe their characters and plots accurately and are reasonably free of spoilers--with a few exceptions. Reviews of books I have not read have convinced me to pick up some overlooked gems, including Cyteen, The Diamond Age, and The Handmaid's Tale. I recommend this book as a reference and reading guide to recent, higher-quality science fiction.

Reviewer: Mr. Robert A. Gilmour
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This is the sequel to David Pringle's brilliant Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. Don't know why I delayed so much in getting this because I loved all the other similar genre guides. Main differences with Pringle's earlier guide is that it adds an extra book more, Pringle always used 2 pages per entry and this uses 2-3 pages (Gene Wolfe was the only one to get 4 pages if I remember correctly). No author gets more than one book (or book series), while Pringle was quite happy to choose multiple books by the same author. It could be said that Broderick and Di Filippo cheat by cramming in lots of other recommendations as tangents (Attanasio's Radix is given a strong recommendation in the entry for Zindell's Neverness, they lament that he was overlooked for the previous book) and career run-throughs for lesser known authors (Liz Jensen gets a bundle of her books profiled). Some reviewers disliked all this extra cramming but I really appreciated it.Like other reviewers I sometimes suspected some books were included for being important and representative (perhaps to discuss developments in the genre) rather than the best, a surprising number of bestsellers are chosen and I wondered if this was a crowdpleasing move. Some later successes by the SF elders are chosen (including Poul Anderson, Vance, Vonnegut, Ballard, Moorcock, Le Guin, Aldiss) and many other reviewers felt these entries were just out of respect to the legends of the genre. Possibly some writers were chosen out of respect for their short fiction?Since I haven't read a single one of these books and cant read the minds of Broderick & Di Filippo, I cant say how honest the choices were.I normally welcome dense writing but when I read reviews, I rarely have the patience for it and sometimes feel like a traitor for this. But a lot of the descriptions are really confusing. They insist that science fiction rarely has much actual science in it but I was frequently lost with the mentions of singularity, quantum sciences and other such things. In a guide like this, which will probably attract newbies as much as huge SF fans, I felt they should have been more accessible like Pringle was. But I enjoyed the writing more than most people seemed to, I thought there was a glee to it.My biggest complaint is that the type size is too small, making the book much more difficult. Even if you're not fond of ebooks you might want to consider the ebook version to save your eyes.There was quite a lot of epic Hard SF and that's a hard sell for me despite my admiration for the scale of such stories, but Broderick and Filippo did quite a good job getting me to consider getting some of them. Half way through I was wondering how many women wrote this sort of thing and the entry on Linda Nagata answers that.I never thought I'd be interested in Michael Chabon or Orson Scott Card's Ender series but they also sold me on those. I recently passed by Cherryh's Cyteen in a charity shop and assumed it must be one of her lesser works but according to this guide it's one of her best!The book entries I was most excited by were...James Morrow - This Is The Way The World EndsPamela Sargent - Shore Of WomenJoan Slonczewski - A Door Into OceanPaul Park - Sugar FestivalDavid Zindell - NevernessGwyneth Jones - Aleutian trilogyRichard Calder - Dead Girls trilogyWalter Jon Williams - AristoiMichael Moorcock - Second Ether trilogyChristopher Priest - The SeparationJohn C Wright - The Golden Age (Strange to see him featured here considering what he done to his reputation since. 2012 was such a different time in the genre!)Ian McDonald - River Of GodsIan R MacLeod - House Of StormsDavid Marusek - Counting HeadsGeoff Ryman - AirLiz Jensen - My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time (along with a bunch of her other works discussed)Carol Emshwiller - Secret City (the crazy sounding The Mount even moreso)Ekaterina Sedia - Alchemy Of StoneHannu Rajaniemi - Quantum Thief series (seemed to do interesting things with the references)Please don't be put off by some of the drawbacks of this guide. I cant verify how good the choices are but I haven't found many better ways to aquaint myself with what has been going on in science fiction during the period covered. Speculative fiction (and maybe other genres) are perhaps getting too big for anyone to cover comprehensively and perhaps people wont be able to do this kind of thing convincingly anymore. But I pray there will be more guides like this. Fantasy really needs more top 100 guides like this because the last really good ones were in the 80s.

Reviewer: Pablo Marcos Oyarzun
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Espléndida continuación del clásico de David Pringle, donde éste lo dejó en 1984 con Neuromante, hasta el 2010. Incluye imágenes de las cubiertas de cada libro. Generará nuevos adeptos a la SF, garantizado!

Reviewer: Claude Couillard
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A very good book to read and to bring with you if you travel cos having short stories it's better that way

Reviewer: David L. Pulver
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I've read an awful lot of science fiction, but the detailed, thoughtful reviews in this book introduced me to a numberof excellent authors and works from the 90s and 00s who I had overlooked.I found it the best "best of" SF book I have read in terms of actually paying of by introducing me to authors in a fashion that made me want to read them, and generally proving correct in its judgement. Unlike some of the fussier books by certain British authors, it does not feel compelled to name check literary classics of dubious readability, and instead focuses on books that are still of broad interest today.The book's only flaw is that the table of contents is very inadequate: it lists only book by title and not by author. While this doubtless saved a page or two, this is so annoying in context when using the book as a reference as to warrant the reduction of one star from the total

Reviewer: Derek Smith
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: It is just a list with comments, but for someone like me, who's been away from scifi for some years and has recently retired, it was, in fact still is, very useful. The reviews are not in depth, despite there being only 101 of them, but for me, expecting to buy/borrow the books and read them, it had just enough information.It's not for someone wanting in-depth knowledge about the books.