It must be half a million words long,” says Charles Yu, author of the story collection Sorry Please Thank You: Stories. It’s almost 1000 pages long, and those are big pages. Stephenson’s 1999 novel features World War II code-breakers and 1997 geeks in a complex, interlocking storyline. But these books are classics for a reason - and they’re worth reading.Ĭlassic sci-fi books you should read 1. And it’s not that hard to fake a first-hand knowledge of these books, because they’re everywhere, and we’ve heard people talk about them so many times. We asked some of our favourite writers, and they told us the 10 classic books that everyone pretends to have read, and why you should actually read them.įrom Asimov to Pynchon, science fiction contains some fantastic, ambitious works of genre fiction.

Science fiction and fantasy offer a rich legacy of great books – but that abundant pile of reading material can also be daunting. BTW - prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. Her other books include the novels Dervish Is Digital, Tea from an Empty Cup, and Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine, and, as editor, the anthology The Ultimate Cyberpunk, as well as two making-of movie books and four media tie-in novels.At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. Clarke Award as the year’s best science-fiction novel, as did her third novel, Fools, making her the only writer ever to win the Clarke Award twice. Her first novel, Mindplayers, was released in 1987 to excellent critical response, and her second novel, Synners, released in 1991, won the Arthur C. Her short fiction–which has appeared in most of the major markets, including Asimov’s Scienceįiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction–has been gathered in the collections Patterns and Dirty Work. Her story “Pretty Boy Crossover” has appeared on several critic’s lists as among the best science fiction stories of the 1980’s, and her story “Angel” was a finalist for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the World Fantasy Award (one of the few stories ever to earn that rather unusual distinction).

She made her first professional sale in 1980, and has subsequently come to be regarded as one of the best new writers of her generation. Pat Cadigan was born in Schenectady, New York, and now lives in London with her family.

Dervish is Digital by Pat Cadigan