Showing posts with label speculative fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speculative fiction. Show all posts

Time Travel Fans

Take a trip through time with these time travel stories:

The 13th Hour by Richard Doetsch
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer
11/22/63 by Stephen King

The Company of the Dead by David Kowelski
Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan
Blackout by Connie Willis

  • The 13th Hour by Richard Doetsch - A tale told in reverse finds an innocent man sitting in jail after being accused of his wife's murder and given an opportunity by a gray-haired stranger to go back in time on an hour-by-hour basis to discover what happened, an opportunity that poses a painful dilemma.
  • The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer - To alleviate her suffocating depression after the death of her twin brother and the break-up with her long-time lover, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment that has an unexpected side effect, which transports her to the lives she might have had if she had been born in a different era.
  • 11/22/63 by Stephen King - Receiving a horrific essay from a GED student with a traumatic past, high-school English teacher Jake Epping is enlisted by a friend to travel back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a mission for which he must reacclimate to 1960s culture and befriend troubled loner Lee Harvey Oswald.
  • The Company of the Dead by David Kowelski - March 1912. A mysterious man appears aboard the Titanic on its doomed voyage. His mission? To save the ship. The result? A world where the United States never entered World War I, thus launching the secret history of the 20th Century. Joseph Kennedy, grand-nephew to the president, is one of the six people who can set history to its rightful order, even if it means his non-existence.
  • Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan - Upon learning that he is terminally ill, Ellis, a man who has always played it safe, decides to throw caution to the wind and use the time machine he has constructed in his garage.
  • Blackout by Connie Willis - Stranded in the past during World War II, three researchers from the future investigate period behavior and seek each other out in a shared effort to return to their own time.
Looking for more? Ask one of our reference librarians for recommendations.

Connie Willis wins SFWA Grand Master Award

Congratulations to Connie Willis, whose contributions to speculative fiction have been recognized with the 2011 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).  Works of speculative fiction by this newest Grand Master that are available from your Community Library include Blackout and its sequel All Clear, in which time-traveling historians get stranded in World War II, or her short story collection The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories.

2011 Top Speculative Fiction


With 2011 about halfway over, what works of speculative fiction have really stood out so far this year? This is the question Booklist attempts to answer in this article from the May 15th issue. Here is a selection of the titles named; all are available right here at your Community Library.

All the Lives He Led by Frederick Pohl.
It’s 2079 and Pompeii has become a theme park. Pohl is a master of everything that goes into a cracking good novel, and for this one, he has clearly boned up on vulcanology to boot.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.
Diana Bishop is the last of the Bishops, a powerful family of witches, but she has refused her magic ever since her parents died. Essential reading across literary mystery and epic and fantastic romance genres.

Hellhole by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
This is a militaristic sf story of galactic proportions that also offers characters easy for the reader to believe in.

Pale Demon by Kim Harrison.
The ninth Rachel Morgan novel finds our tough and feisty witch on a mission to get her shunning rescinded; this is an excellent series entry that is guaranteed to satisfy the author’s following.

What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz.
This novel is deliberate, highly supernatural, somber throughout, and motivated by religious dread—one of Koontz’s weightiest performances.