Mixedplanetary pleasure for me not my favorite Windom kind of mid tier I enjoyed some aspects of it but it for many people that's their topnotch Winden it didn't work for me in that way
Review 1 of 2
The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
Others: Mostly positive In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears and all the inhabitants fall unconscious. A day later the object is gone and everyone awakens unharmed – except that all the women in the village are discovered to be pregnant.The resultant children of Midwich do not belong to their parents: all are blonde, all are golden eyed. They grow up too fast and their minds exhibit frightening abilities that give them control over others and brings them into conflict with the villagers just as a chilling realisation dawns on the world outside . . .The Midwich Cuckoos is the classic tale of aliens in our midst, exploring how we respond when confronted by those who are innately superior to us in every conceivable way.
- ISBN:
- 9780795302923
- Length:
- 219 pages
Genres: science fiction, mystery, classics
Lists: …
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The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut
1959 · 319 pages · 6 reviews
Others: Leaning positive"His best book," Esquire wrote of Kurt Vonnegut's 1959 novel The Sirens of Titan, adding, "he dares not only to ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it." This novel fits into that aspect of the Vonnegut canon that might be classified as science fiction, a quality that once led Time to describe Vonnegut as "George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer ... a zany but moral mad scientist." The Sirens of Titan was perhaps the novel that began the Vonnegut phenomenon with readers. The story is a fabulous trip, spinning madly through space and time in pursuit of nothing less than a fundamental understanding of the meaning of life. It takes place at a time in the future, when "only the human soul remained terra incognita ... the Nightmare Ages, falling roughly, give or take a few years, between the Second World War and the Third Great Depression." The villainous and super rich Malachi Constant is offered a chance to journey into the far reaches of outer space, to eventually live on the planet Titan surrounded by three beautiful sirens. There is the proverbial "small print" with this incredible offer, which Constant turns down, setting in motion a fantastic chain of events that only Vonnegut could imagine. The result is an uproarious, freewheeling inquiry into the very reason we exist and about how we participate and matter in the scheme of the universe. The Sirens of Titan is essential, fundamental Vonnegut, as entertaining as it is questing in search of answers to the mysteries of life. As a work of fiction, it is a sure leap, in terms of craft, over his first novel, Player Piano. His writing here is pared down, more concentrated and graceful, richly in the service of his remarkable ideas. Vonnegut summons greatness for the first time in The Sirens of Titan, where the search for the meaning of existence looks and sounds like a kaleidoscopic dream but leaves the reader with a clear and challenging answer.
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What made the match, strongest first
Also classics and mystery79%Outlaw Bookseller loved bothPersonalize your recommendations21%Player Piano
Kurt Vonnegut
1952 · 306 pages · 4 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveVonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut - wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
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Also classics and mystery80%Outlaw Bookseller loved both13%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations7%Century rain
Alastair Reynolds
2004 · 506 pages · 2 reviews
Others: Negative"Three hundred years from now, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. Archaeologist Verity Auger specializes in the exploration of its surviving landscape. Now, her expertise is required for a far greater purpose. Something astonishing has been discovered at the far end of a wormhole: mid-twentieth century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber. Somewhere on this alternate planet is a device capable of destroying both worlds at either end of the wormhole. And Verity must find the device, and the man who plans to activate it, before it is too late - for the past and the future of two worlds" -- Cover verso.
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Stanisław Lem
1976 · 179 pages · 1 review
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Stanisław Lem
1961 · 220 pages · 13 reviews
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William Hope Hodgson
1946 · 174 pages · 4 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveThe House on the Borderland is a supernatural horror novel by William Hope Hodgson. He went beyond the existing ghost story and gothic molds, synthesizing a new cosmic horror that made a huge impact on later writers of weird tales, notably H. P. Lovecraft. The two gentlemen Tonnison and Berreggnog head to a village in Ireland for a week's fishing. There they discover the ruins of a strange house and the diary of the house's former occupant, the words on its torn pages hinting at an evil far beyond anything that has existed in this world before.
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Mixed
Loved itit's my favorite Windom takes big bold philosophical positions at the end and develops those themes subtly over the course of the story that does get a little bit slow but I think this is Windam at his smartest and most mature and I really approve of it
Review 1 of 2
Loved itit's absolutely magnificent this is his best written book as well I think
Loved itwhich is another science fiction novel that I very much enjoy would recommend
Review 1 of 3