Alan is a middle-aged entrepeneur in contemporary Toronto, who has devoted himself to fixing up a house in a bohemian neighborhood. This naturally brings him in contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings--wings, moreover, which grow back afte...more
Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future—where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as bo...more
ANIMAL FARM, Orwell's 1945 fable about the power struggles among animals on a farm, parallels the situation in Russia at the time as Orwell saw it; the characters include the ruthless pig Stalin, his idealistic Trotsky-like adversary, and the simple, kindly horse who represents the common man. 1984, Orwell's 1948 vision of a world subsumed in tyran...more
A desperate young man plans the perfect crime -- the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old women no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just, he reasons, for a man of genius to commit such a crime, to transgress moral law -- if it will ultimately benefit humanity? So begins one of the greatest novels ever written: a powerful psychologica...more
Orson Scott Card's SF career began with Ender's Game, a 1977 story expanded into an acclaimed 1985 novel. Unwittingly responsible for xenocide--destruction of an alien species--while still a boy, Ender expiates his guilt on another world in Speaker for the Dead. This confronts humanity with a deadly alien-built virus whose elimination seems to dema...more
George R.R. Martin writes sword-and-sorcery which concentrates on the swords. A Clash of Kings is the second volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, the sequence which began with A Game of Thrones and will take another four volumes to complete. The Seven Kingdoms are divided by revolt and blood feud; beyond their Northern borders, the men of the Nigh...more
Because he ran out of pages and deadlines, author George R. R. Martin picks up only half the threads of the amazingly intricate tapestry left unfinished in A STORM OF SWORDS, the previous volume of the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. The remaining storylines continue in the following book, A DANCE OF DRAGONS. As this fourth installment ...more
"In 'A Game of Thrones', George R. R. Martin has created a genuine masterpiece, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill the pages of the first volume in an epie series sure to delight fantasy fans everywhere."
-- from back cover
"Reminiscent of T. R. White's 'The Once and Future King', this...more
Is George R.R. Martin for real? Can a fantasy epic actually get better with each new installment? Fans of the genre have glumly come to expect go-nowhere sequels from other authors, so we're entitled to pinch ourselves over Martin's tightly crafted Song of Ice and Fire series. The reports are all true: this series is the real deal, and Martin d...more