Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligence agencies. It was given new impetus by the development of fascism and communism in the lead-up to World War II, continued to develop during the Cold War, and received a fresh impetus from the emergence of rogue states, international criminal organizations, global terrorist networks, maritime piracy and technological sabotage and espionage as potent threats to Western societies. As a genre, spy fiction is thematically related to the novel of adventure, the thriller and the politico-military thriller.
David John Moore Cornwell, better known by his pen name John le Carré, was a British author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. A "sophisticated, morally ambiguous writer", he is considered one of the greatest novelists of the postwar era. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Near the end of his life, due to his strong disapproval of Brexit, he took out Irish citizenship, which was possible due to his having an Irish grandparent.
Bernard Cornwell is a British-American author of historical novels and a history of the Waterloo Campaign. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe. He has also written The Saxon Stories, a series of 13 novels about the making of England.
Tor Books is the primary imprint of Tor Publishing Group, a publishing company based in New York City. It primarily publishes science fiction and fantasy titles.
Ian McDonald is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
Peter Watts is a Canadian science fiction author. He specializes in hard science fiction. He earned a Ph.D from the University of British Columbia in 1991 from the Department of Zoology and Resource Ecology. He went on to hold several academic research and teaching positions, and worked as a marine-mammal biologist. He began publishing fiction around the time he finished graduate school.
Ursula Vernon is an American freelance writer, artist and illustrator. She has won numerous awards for her work in various mediums, including Hugo Awards for her graphic novel Digger and fantasy novel Nettle & Bone, the Nebula Award for her short story "Jackalope Wives", and Mythopoeic Awards for adult and children's literature. Vernon's books for children include Hamster Princess and Dragonbreath. Under the name T. Kingfisher, she is also the author of books for older audiences. She writes short fiction under both names.
Kathleen Ann Goonan was an American science fiction writer. Several of her books have been nominated for the Nebula Award. Her debut novel Queen City Jazz was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and her novel In War Times was chosen by the American Library Association as Best Science Fiction Novel for their 2008 reading list. In July 2008, In War Times won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Her novel This Shared Dream was released in July 2011 by Tor Books.
Tom Doherty is an American publisher and the founder of the science fiction and fantasy book publisher Tor Books. He started as a salesman for Pocket Books and rose to be Division Sales Manager. From there, he went to Simon & Schuster as National Sales Manager, then became publisher of paperbacks at Grosset & Dunlap, including Tempo Books, in 1969. In 1975, he became publisher for Ace Books. In 1979, he left Ace to establish his own company, Tom Doherty Associates, publishing under the Tor Books imprint starting in 1980, which has grown to become the largest publisher of science fiction and fantasy in the United States.
Gillian Schieber Flynn is an American author, screenwriter, and producer. She is known for writing the thriller and mystery novels Sharp Objects (2006), Dark Places (2009), and Gone Girl (2012), which are all critically acclaimed. Her books have been published in 40 languages, and according to The Washington Post, as of 2016 Gone Girl alone has sold more than 15 million copies.
The Gone-Away World is the debut novel of British author Nick Harkaway, a science fiction story set in a post-apocalyptic world crippled by the 'Go-Away War'. The book was first published in June 2008 by Heinemann.
The Three-Body Problem is a story by Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin, the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The series portrays a fictional past, present and future wherein Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system of three Sun-like stars orbiting one another, a representative example of the three-body problem in orbital mechanics.
Triggers is a science fiction novel by Canadian writer Robert J. Sawyer. It was originally serialized in Analog.
Gone Girl is a 2012 crime thriller novel by American writer Gillian Flynn. It was published by Crown Publishing Group in June 2012. The novel was popular and made the New York Times Best Seller list. The sense of suspense in the novel comes from whether Nick Dunne is responsible for the disappearance of his wife Amy.
Max Gladstone is an American fantasy author. He is best known for his 2012 debut novel Three Parts Dead, which is part of The Craft Sequence, his urban fantasy serial Bookburners, and for co-writing This Is How You Lose the Time War.
Ancillary Justice is a science fiction novel by the American writer Ann Leckie, published in 2013. It is Leckie's debut novel and the first in her Imperial Radch space opera trilogy, followed by Ancillary Sword (2014) and Ancillary Mercy (2015). The novel follows Breq—who is both the sole survivor of a starship destroyed by treachery and the vessel of that ship's artificial consciousness—as she seeks revenge against the ruler of her civilization. The cover art is by John Harris.
AnnaLinden Weller, better known under her pen name Arkady Martine, is an American author of science fiction literature. Her first novels A Memory Called Empire (2019) and A Desolation Called Peace (2021), which form the Teixcalaan series, each won the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Catriona Ward is an American and British horror novelist.
Gnomon is a 2017 science fiction novel by British author Nick Harkaway. The book deals with a state that exerts ubiquitous surveillance on its population. A detective investigates a murder through unconventional methods that leads to questions about her society's very nature.
Philip Fracassi is an American writer of horror, thriller, and science fiction. He has written multiple novels, screenplays, and short stories. His 2021 collection of short stories, Beneath a Pale Sky, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection. The short story "Death, My Old Friend", featured in this collection, was optioned in 2022 by Christopher Riggert for a feature film adaptation.
