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The Best SF/F Books I Read Last Year


I've been plannig to write this for quite some time, but have always forgot it somehow. (It will have to be followed by this year's best reads soon…)

So here is my best of list:

 - Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveller’s Wife

A tale of time travel which is also a romance novel, a sort of Wuthering Heights for today's reader.

- Philip K. Dick: Blade Runner
One of the best sci-fi novels I have ever read. It's a shame that so many SF fans who love the movie are too lazy to read the book. I'm trying to advertise it to my friends.

- Susanna Clarke: The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
A collection of fantasy short stories about fairies in Jane Austen's England, with some strong female characters.

- Elizabeth Moon: The Speed of Dark
This is a very intriguing sci-fi novel which is asking questions about the human mind and our concept of intelligence, about tolerance, illness and the meaning of the self.
(It is definitely not for those of you who would like to read about spaceships, guns and things that are blown up.)

- Frederick Pohl: Gateway  

I like science fiction with some psychology in it, and I perfectly understand why this became such a classic. A very imaginative piece, great writing.

- The Machineries of Joy by Ray Bradbury
There is no need to explain this.

- Clifford D. Simak: City
A good old-fashioned sci-fi with interesting ideas, well-drawn characters and with some humor.

- Sergey Lukyanenko: Night Watch

A fascinating urban fantasy for you with all sorts of dangerous creatures. Read it if you have the possibility.

- Wolfgang Jeschke: The Last Day of Creation (Der letzte Tag der Schöpfung)
Another classic about war, soldiers, time-travel and this is also an alternative history piece. It is not very fast paced at the beginning, but later you just cannot put it down.


There were two more novels that I wanted to add to this best of list, but those are by Hungarian writers and surely will not be available in English. (I might write about them later, though.)
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