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The Deep is a 1975 speculative fiction novel by American writer John Crowley, who described it as being "based quite closely on events in the English Wars of the Roses". [2] The novel is set in a medieval world where the two factions, the "Reds" and the "Blacks", struggle for supremacy through battle.
A visitor arrives in the conflict between the two factions, the "Reds" and the "Blacks". It soon becomes apparent that he (it) is only superficially human. Damaged in a skirmish between Protectors and the Just at the start, he and we spend the rest of the book finding out how and why he was made and sent. Early, Fauconred quotes their book: "the world is founded on a pillar which is founded on the Deep". This turns out to be true.
Whilst a war of succession plays out, the visitor becomes secretary, then recorder; and travels to the edge of the world to meet Leviathan, an immemorial creature who built the world to shelter his sleep from the heaven stones. Meanwhile, the slow stable world which has been immortal because repeating for uncounted years begins to spiral into the unknown path of development.
Critics Brian W. Aldiss and David Wingrove praised The Deep as "a remarkable first novel, well written and darkly true to human nature." They described it as "a complex novel of many layers [whose] people live and breathe and die horribly in [its] pages. [3]
Brian Wilson Aldiss was an English writer, artist, and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s.
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, better known by his pen-name Cordwainer Smith, was an American author known for his science fiction works. Linebarger was a US Army officer, a noted East Asia scholar, and an expert in psychological warfare. Although his career as a writer was shortened by his death at the age of 53, he is considered one of science fiction's more influential and talented authors.
The New Wave was a science fiction (SF) style of the 1960s and 1970s, characterized by a great degree of experimentation with the form and content of stories, greater imitation of the styles of trendy non-science fiction literature, and an emphasis on the psychological and social sciences as opposed to the physical sciences. New Wave authors often considered themselves as part of the modernist tradition of fiction, and the New Wave was conceived as a deliberate change from the traditions of the science fiction characteristic of pulp magazines, which many of the writers involved considered irrelevant or unambitious.
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; astronomical, such as an impact event; destructive, such as nuclear holocaust or resource depletion; medical, such as a pandemic, whether natural or human-caused; end time, such as the Last Judgment, Second Coming or Ragnarök; or more imaginative, such as a zombie apocalypse, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics or alien invasion.
Harry Max Harrison was an American science fiction author, known mostly for his character The Stainless Steel Rat and for his novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966). The latter was the rough basis for the motion picture Soylent Green (1973). Long resident in both Ireland and the United Kingdom, Harrison was involved in the foundation of the Irish Science Fiction Association, and was, with Brian Aldiss, co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group.
The Mote in God's Eye is a science fiction novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, first published in 1974. The story is set in the distant future of Pournelle's CoDominium universe, and charts the first contact between humanity and an alien species. The title of the novel is a reference to the Biblical "The Mote and the Beam" parable and is the nickname of a star. The Mote in God's Eye was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards in 1975.
Star Maker is a science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. The book describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing in scale Stapledon's previous book, Last and First Men (1930), a history of the human species over two billion years. Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations.
Chung Kuo is a series of science fiction novels written by David Wingrove. The novels present a future history of an Earth dominated by China.
Bring the Jubilee is a 1953 novel of alternate history by American writer Ward Moore.
More Than Human is a 1953 science fiction novel by American writer Theodore Sturgeon. It is a revision and expansion of his previously published novella Baby is Three, which is bracketed by two additional parts written for the novel . It won the 1954 International Fantasy Award, which was also given to works in science fiction. It was additionally nominated in 2004 for a "Retro Hugo" award for the year 1954. Science fiction critic and editor David Pringle included it in his book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels.
David Wingrove is a British science fiction writer. He is well known as the author of the Chung Kuo novels. He is also the co-author of the three Myst novels.
Fire on the Mountain is a 1988 novel by the American author Terry Bisson. It is an alternate history describing the world as it would have been had John Brown succeeded in his raid on Harper's Ferry and touched off a slave rebellion in 1859, as he intended.
A sense of wonder is an intellectual and emotional state frequently invoked in discussions of science and biology, higher consciousness, science fiction, and philosophy.
Beasts is a novel by American writer John Crowley, published in 1976 by Doubleday.
The 45th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), also known as Conspiracy '87, was held on 27 August–1 September 1987 at the Metropole Hotel and The Brighton Centre in Brighton, United Kingdom.
Darker Than You Think is a science fantasy novel by American writer Jack Williamson. Originally a novelette, it was expanded into novel length and published by Fantasy Press in 1948. The short version was published in Unknown in 1940. It was reprinted by UK-based Orion Books in 2003 as volume 38 of their Fantasy Masterworks series.
The Legion of Space is a science fiction novel by the American writer Jack Williamson. It was originally serialized in Astounding Stories in 1934, then published in book form by Fantasy Press in 1947 in an edition of 2,970 copies. A magazine-sized reprint was issued by Galaxy in 1950, with a standard paperback following from Pyramid Books in 1967. The first British edition was published by Sphere Books in 1977. The Legion of Space has been translated into German, French, Italian and Japanese . It has also appeared in the omnibus Three from the Legion, which compiles the novel and all but one of its sequels.
Ring Around the Sun is a science fiction novel by American writer Clifford D. Simak. Its anti-urban and pro-agrarian sentiments are typical of much of Simak's work.
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897 by Pearson's Magazine in the UK and by Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. The novel's first appearance in hardcover was in 1898 from publisher William Heinemann of London. Written between 1895 and 1897, it is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between mankind and an extra-terrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of both an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and of his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians. The novel is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.
The Paradox Men is a science fiction novel by American writer Charles L. Harness, his first novel. Initially published as a novella, "Flight into Yesterday", in the May 1949 issue of Startling Stories, it was republished as The Paradox Men in 1953. The "science-fiction classic" is both "a tale dominated by space-opera extravagances" and "a severely articulate narrative analysis of the implications of Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History." Boucher and McComas described it as "fine swashbuckling adventure ... so infinitely intricate that you may never quite understand what it's about." P. Schuyler Miller described it as "action-entertainment, fast-paced enough that you don't stop to bother with inconsistencies or improbabilities."