Sci-Fi

Chronosis
Reza Negarestani, Keith Tilford, Robin Mackay
Urbanomic - 20.00€ -  out of stock

Approaching the comic medium as a supercollider for achieving maximum abstraction, in Chronosis artist Keith Tilford and philosopher Reza Negarestani create a graphically stunning and conceptually explosive universe in which the worlds of pop culture, modern art, philosophy, science fiction, and theoretical physics crash into one another.

Taking place after the catastrophic advent of the birth of time, Chronosis narrates the story of a sprawling multiverse at the center of which monazzeins, the monks of an esoteric time-cult, attempt to build bridges between the many fragmented tribes and histories of multiple possible worlds. Across a series of dizzying overlapping stories we glimpse worlds where time flows backward, where the universe can be recreated every five minutes, or where rigid facts are washed away by the tides of an infinite ocean of possibility.

A unique fusion of comics culture and philosophical cogitation, this conceptually and visually mind-expanding tale takes the reader on a dizzying rollercoaster ride through time, space, and thought.

This volume contains the entire Chronosis series in full color, along with additional background materials including early sketches, script notes, and alternative covers.

The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin
Harper Voyage - 9.50€ -  out of stock

A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras, a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart.

To visit Urras, to learn, to teach, to share, will require great sacrifice and risks, which Shevek willingly accepts. But the ambitious scientist's gift is soon seen as a threat, and in the profound conflict that ensues, he must reexamine his beliefs even as he ignites the fires of change.

Dawn: Xenogenesis Series 1
Octavia E. Butler
Aspect Science Fiction - 17.50€ -  out of stock

One woman is called upon to rebuild the future of humankind after a nuclear war, in this revelatory post-apocalyptic tale from the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower. 

When Lilith lyapo wakes from a centuries-long sleep, she finds herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. She discovers that the Oankali--a seemingly benevolent alien race--intervened in the fate of the humanity hundreds of years ago, saving everyone who survived a nuclear war from a dying, ruined Earth and then putting them into a deep sleep. After learning all they could about Earth and its beings, the Oankali healed the planet, cured cancer, increased human strength, and they now want Lilith to lead her people back to Earth--but salvation comes at a price. 

Hopeful and thought-provoking, this post-apocalyptic narrative deftly explores gender and race through the eyes of characters struggling to adapt during a pivotal time of crisis and change.

Octavia E. Butler was a renowned writer who received a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. She was the author of several award-winning novels including Parable of the Sower, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future. Sales of her books have increased enormously since her death as the issues she addressed in her Afrofuturistic, feminist novels and short fiction have only become more relevant. She passed away on February 24, 2006.

Published April 1997

Adulthood Rites: Xenogenesis Series 2
Octavia E. Butler
Aspect Science Fiction - 17.50€ -  out of stock

In this sequel to Dawn, Lilith Iyapo has given birth to what looks like a normal human boy named Akin. But Akin actually has five parents: a male and female human, a male and female Oankali, and a sexless Ooloi. The Oankali and Ooloi are part of an alien race that rescued humanity from a devastating nuclear war, but the price they exact is a high one the aliens are compelled to genetically merge their species with other races, drastically altering both in the process. 

On a rehabilitated Earth, this "new" race is emerging through human/Oankali/Ooloi mating, but there are also "pure" humans who choose to resist the aliens and the salvation they offer.These resisters are sterilized by the Ooloi so that they cannot reproduce the genetic defect that drives humanity to destroy itself, but otherwise they are left alone (unless they become violent). 

When the resisters kidnap young Akin, the Oankali choose to leave the child with his captors, for he the most "human" of the Oankali children will decide whether the resisters should be given back their fertility and freedom, even though they will only destroy themselves again. 

This is the second volume in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series, a powerful tale of alien existence.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned writer who received a MacArthur Genius Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. She was the author of several award-winning novels including Parable of the Sower, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future. Sales of her books have increased enormously since her death as the issues she addressed in her Afrofuturistic, feminist novels and short fiction have only become more relevant. She passed away on February 24, 2006

Published April 1997

Imago: Xenogenesis Series 3
Octavia E. Butler
Aspect Science Fiction - 17.50€ -  out of stock

Human and Oankali have been mating since the aliens first came to Earth to rescue the few survivors of an annihilating nuclear war. The Oankali began a massive breeding project, guided by the ooloi, a sexless subspecies capable of manipulating DNA, in the hope of eventually creating a perfect starfaring race. Jodahs is supposed to be just another hybrid of human and Oankali, but as he begins his transformation to adulthood he finds himself becoming ooloi—the first ever born to a human mother. As his body changes, Jodahs develops the ability to shapeshift, manipulate matter, and cure or create disease at will. If this frightened young man is able to master his new identity, Jodahs could prove the savior of what’s left of mankind. Or, if he is not careful, he could become a plague that will destroy this new race once and for all. 

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned writer who received a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. She was the author of several award-winning novels including Parable of the Sower, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future. Sales of her books have increased enormously since her death as the issues she addressed in her Afrofuturistic, feminist novels and short fiction have only become more relevant. She passed away on February 24, 2006.

Published April 1997.

EAAPES – reader #2
Clara Pacotte, Charlotte Houette (edx.)
The Cheapest University - 21.00€ -  out of stock

Recherches du groupe EAAPES initié par Clara Pacotte et Charlotte Houette autour des questions queer et de féminismes dans la littérature de science-fiction/fiction spéculative.

Contient des traductions de nouvelles de plusieurs autriX tirées du recueil Sisters of the Revolution publié par Ann & Jeff Vandermeer, des interviews, des textes originaux, des articles plus contemporains, des extraits de fictions déjà publiées.

Les textes en langue étrangère sont tous traduits en français.

Avec les contributions de Alexia Foubert, Antoine Trapp, Ariane Sirota, Barbara Sirieix, Camille Pageard, Dora Diamant, Hélène Baril, Laetitia Paviani, Loraine Furter, Louise Truc, Luz De Amor, Mélodie Simonnet, Mirion Malle, Rosanna Puyol, Roxanne Maillet, Théo Robine Langlois.

Pub. dec 2018

EAAPES — reader #1
Clara Pacotte, Charlotte Houette (edx.)
The Cheapest University - 21.00€ -  out of stock

Recherches du groupe EAAPES initié par Clara Pacotte et Charlotte Houette autour des questions queer et de féminismes dans la littérature de science-fiction/fiction spéculative.

Contient des traductions des essais de Joanna Russ du recueil To Write Like A Woman, des interviews à la Wiscon, des textes originaux, des articles plus contemporains, des extraits de fictions déjà publiées.

Les textes en langue étrangère sont tous traduits en français.

Avec les contributions de Adèle Iris, Adèle Rolland, Maïwenn Le Mouée, Esmé Planchon, Nana Benamer, Josèfa Ntjam, FLG.

Pub. 2018

Unknown Language
Hildegard von Bingen, Huw Lemmey (ed.)
Ignota Press - 20.00€ -  out of stock

Long, long before the Information Age ended, young Hildegard of Bingen finds beauty in the moral and spiritual ruins of her medieval world. In her forty-third year, she inscribes her cosmic visions into Scivias, an indescribably beautiful codex of writing and illuminations thought to be destroyed during the evacuation of Earth.

In a sea cave with cracked amethyst walls on Avaaz, Pinky Agarwalia discovers fragments of this visionary text containing hitherto unknown pathways to a lost vision of human co-existence with plants and non-humans - and the seeds of its rebirth on Avaaz.

Bursting with mythic quantum energy, Hildegard's vital linguistic potion viriditas, threaded throughout her communiqués, is a lush, verdant, renewable life-force. Her ecological message may be just the magic needed for rebirth on Avaaz. Hildegard's mystic toolkit for the future includes a cosmology, medicine, a morphology of crystals, recipes - and the symbols of a new language.

As Pinky Agarwalia traces the diagrams with her fingertip, she suddenly understands - a vision that appears without warning in her own mind - that she must first immerse these materials in water, a guarded substance. In the water, the molecules of the hidden language dissolve, freeze then reconfigure into new shapes, the crystalline language communicated not through sound but by feeling and light. Lingua Ignota, Hildegard's mysterious invented 'unknown language', arrives just in time for a world in flux, one whose coordinates are being recast.

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath. She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.

Huw Lemmey is a writer and publisher. He writes on culture, politics and sexuality, and is the author of the novels Chubz and Red Tory (Montez Press).

Tales of Nevèrÿon (Return to Neveryon, Book 1)
Samuel R. Delany
Wesleyan - 18.00€ -  out of stock

The eleven stories, novellas, and novels in Return to Nevèrÿon's four volumes chronicle a long-ago land on civilization's brink, perhaps in Asia or Africa, or even on the Mediterranean. Taken slave in childhood, Gorgik gains his freedom, leads a slave revolt, and becomes a minister of state, finally abolishing slavery. Ironically, however, he is sexually aroused by the iron slave collars of servitude. Does this contaminate his mission -- or intensify it? Presumably elaborated from an ancient text of unknown geographical origin, the stories are sunk in translators' and commentators' introductions and appendices, forming a richly comic frame.

The City We Became
N. K. Jemisin
Orbit Books - 22.00€ -  out of stock

Three-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts her most incredible novel yet, a story of culture, identity, magic, and myths in contemporary New York City. In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels. And they're not the only ones. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six.

N. K. Jemisin is the first author in history to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugo Awards, all for her Broken Earth trilogy. Her work has also won the Nebula, Locus, and Goodreads Choice Awards. She has been a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, and an instructor for the Clarion and Clarion West writing workshops. In her spare time, she is a gamer and gardener, and she is also single-handedly responsible for saving the world from King Ozzymandias, her dangerously intelligent ginger cat, and his phenomenally destructive sidekick Magpie.

Published March 2020

The New Atlantis
Robert Silverberg (Ed.)
ReAnimus Press - 15.00€ -  out of stock

Three short novels by some of science fiction's greatest writers - Ursula K. Le Guin, James Tiptree, Jr., and Gene Wolfe, edited by Robert Silverberg.

The New Atlantis, by Ursula K. Le Guin: In a dark near-future, global warming and a ruined ecology is causing the continents to sink into the oceans just as the towers of Atlantis re-emerge above the sea. Locus award winner and Hugo finalist.

Silhouette, by Gene Wolfe, and A Momentary Taste of Being, by James Tiptree, Jr., present two different masterpieces on a similar theme: A deep-space colony exploration ship approaches their target planet, where they must investigate whether or not it's hospitable enough to signal Earth to send more colonists. Things are not as they seem... Nebula / Locus award finalist stories.

Three of science fiction's most gifted writers-winners of Hugos, Nebulas, and a National Book Award-unleash their imaginations to present startling glimpses of humanity's future on Earth and in space. Blended into that future are age-old mysteries of the human psyche, mythicized fragments of the past, and the eternal question of biological purpose.

In "Silhouette" Gene Wolfe creates a self-contained world, an immense starship on a multi-generational mission to assure continuation of the race by colonizing the stars. It is a world, devised and constructed through man's technical genius, that comes to be threatened by the primitive superstitions and petty jealousies carried into space by the very technicians who serve in science's most ambitious project. The salvation of the mission and of the hundreds of lives bound to it comes to depend on a curious interplay of technology and occult human abilities.

Ursula Le Guin remains earthbound, but on a "brave, new world" where a bureaucratic tyranny proves less and less able to cope with supplying the needs of a burgeoning population. A subtle irony pervades her story, "The New Atlantis." Even as government strives to assure permanence of control, geologic upheavals awaken a haunting racial memory of antediluvian civilizations and grandeur long buried beneath the seas.

James Tiptree, Jr., confronts a disciplined space crew with humanity's first encounter with a wholly alien life form. Here again the survival of the human race depends on successful location of a new planet where mankind can establish its society with renewed vigor. But out of the questions of how to survive any threat that may be posed by an unknown life form arises a more central question: Is it intended that humanity survive?

Published August 2020

Clay's Ark
Octavia E. Butler
Aspect Science Fiction - 13.50€ -  out of stock

A gripping tale of survival as an alien pandemic irrevocably changes humanity, from the critically acclaimed author of Parable of the Sower. In a violent near-future, Asa Elias Doyle and her companions encounter an alien life form so heinous and destructive, they exile themselves in the desert so as not to contaminate other humans. Resisting the compulsion to infect others is mental agony, but succumbing would mean relinquishing their humanity and free will. Desperate, they kidnap a doctor and his two daughters as they cross the wasteland -- and, in doing so, endanger the world.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned writer who received a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. She was the author of several award-winning novels including Parable of the Sower, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future. Sales of her books have increased enormously since her death as the issues she addressed in her Afrofuturistic, feminist novels and short fiction have only become more relevant. She passed away on February 24, 2006.

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
Sheree R Thomas (Ed.)
Aspect Science Fiction - 20.00€ -  out of stock

A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora.

An important new anthology, the first of its kind, Dark Matter explores a century of fantastic fiction by preeminent and emerging luminaries of the African Disapora. A richly vibrant collection of stories and essays, it displays the brilliance of writers ranging from early pioneers such as W.E.B Du Bois, to famed authors including Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler, to such luminaries of the literary tradition as playwright-critic Amiri Baraka and satirist Ishmael Reed, as well as a spectrum of acclaimed new writers. 

Astonishing, compelling, erotic, and profound stories of worlds within and beyond abound in Dark Matter. From the bittersweet legacies of Africa to utterly phantasmagoric future civilizations, here is a compliation of stories that transmute our human experience. 

Published 2001. 

Ickles, Ad Infinitum
Mark Von Schlegell
Inpatient Press - 16.00€ -

In the 2090s, Earth is somehow still here. Drones and clones are big business and Henries Ickles, debonair New Los Angeles infoarchitect, wants in on the action. Metaphysical theories are put into practice, invisible art is critiqued, quasicrystals are crafted, yogurt is spilled. From diplomatic misadventures with metallic herds in RealSweden to an underwater rendezvous in the free domes of MiamiVII, Ickles, ad Infinitum is a compendium of the exuberant and the abject, a refracted hologram of the absurdities of cultural production that swerves between incisive ode and knowing lampoon.

Mark von Schlegell has been pushing the envelope with independently-published experimental fiction and theory since the 1990s. He was born in New York, moved to L.A. in 2000, and currently lives in Cologne. His first novel, Venusia (Semiotext(e), 2005) was honor's listed for the Otherwise Award in Science Fiction.

The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ace Books - 16.00€ -  out of stock

The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary's mission to Winter, an unknown alien world whose inhabitants can choose, and change, their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters. Exploring questions of psychology, society, and human emotion in an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of science fiction.

Cygnet
Season Butler
Harper - 26.00€ -  out of stock

Season Butler makes her literary debut with an ambitious work of bold imagination. Tough and tender, compassionate and ferocious, understated and provocative, Cygnet is a meditation on death and life, past and future, aging and youth, memory and forgetting, that explores what it means to find acceptance, of things gone and of those yet to come.

The seventeen-year-old kid doesn't know where her parents are. They left her with her grandmother Lolly, promising to return soon. That was months ago. Now Lolly is dead and the Kid is alone, stranded ten miles off the coast of New Hampshire on tiny Swan Island. Unable to reach her parents and with no other relatives to turn to, she works for a neighbor, airbrushing the past by digitally retouching family photos and movies to earn enough money to survive.

Surrounded by the vast ocean, the Kid's temporary home is no ordinary vacation retreat. The island is populated by an idiosyncratic group of the elderly who call themselves Wrinklies. They have left behind the youth-obsessed mainland--"the Bad Place"--to create their own alternative community, one where only the elderly are welcome. The adolescent's presence on their island oasis unnerves the Wrinklies, turning some downright hostile. They don't care if she has nowhere to go; they just want her gone. She is a reminder of all they've left behind and are determined to forget.

But the Kid isn't the only problem threatening the insular community. Swan Island is eroding into the rising sea, threatening the Wrinklies' very existence there. The Kid's own house edges closer to the seaside cliffs each day. To find a way forward, she must come to terms with the realities of her life, the inevitability of loss, and an unknown future that is hers alone to embrace.

Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation ( hardback)
Octavia Butler
Abrams Comicarts - 24.00€ -  out of stock

In this graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, the author portrays a searing vision of America's future. In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny... and the birth of a new faith.

In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny... and the birth of a new faith.

Rewordling Ramallah
Callum Copley
Onomatopee - 12.00€ -  out of stock

Critical science fiction, on its most basic level, is an opportunity to experiment with new ways of existing in the world; imaging different, economic, political and social structures. Within its pages, science fiction holds the space to test ambitious projects without the fear of failure. Reading and writing science fiction is, in all its imaginative and disruptive potential, something which I believe is valuable to anyone living under conditions which they wish to change.

‘Reworlding’ is the name given to a concerted effort to reimagine the places and spaces we inhabit, by generating a multiplicity of futures with which to affect the present positively. Reworlding takes the notion of worldbuilding beyond any ostensible purpose as art or entertainment and deploys aspects of it as a radical tool to instigate change in the world.

The stories compiled in this book were the outcome of a writing workshop series led by Callum Copley in a town called Birzeit, a few miles north of Ramallah, Palestine. From alien experiments, to fortune-tellers and telepathic conspiracies; the stories compiled here represent visions of the West Bank and beyond, reworlding both the local and the interplanetary. Although the contributions in the collection vary in form, length and style, all join a rapidly growing but comparatively small niche of Palestinian science fiction.

Mind of My Mind
Octavia Butler
Aspect Science Fiction - 16.50€ -  out of stock

A young woman harnesses the power of a viral mutation and challenges the ruthless man who controls her.

For 4,000 years, an immortal has spread the seeds of a master race, using the downtrodden as his private breeding stock. But now a young ghetto telepath has found a way to awaken--and rule--her superhuman kind, igniting a psychic battle as she challenges her creator for her right to free her people.

Octavia E. Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.

Published 1994. 

 

Memoirs of a Spacewoman
Naomi Mitchison
Kennedy & Boyd - 19.00€ -  out of stock

Naomi Mitchison, daughter of a distinguished scientist, sister of geneticist J B S Haldane, was always interested in the sciences, especially genetics. Her novels did not tend to demonstrate this, and she did not publish a Science Fiction novel until almost forty years into her fiction-writing career.

Isobel Murray's introduction here argues that it is by no means 'pure' Science Fiction: the success of the novel depends not only on the extraordinarily variety of life forms its heroine encounters and attempts to communicate with on different worlds: she is also a very credible human, or Terran, with recognisibly human emotions and a dramatic emotional life. This novel works effectively for readers who usually eschew the genre and prefer more traditional narratives.

Explorers like Mary are an elite class who consider curiosity to be Terrans' supreme gift, and in the novel she more than once takes risks that may destroy her life. Her voice, as she records her adventures and experiments, is individual, attractive and memorable.

The Judas Rose
Suzette Haden Elgin
Feminist Press - 18.00€ -

In the second volume of the Native Tongue trilogy, the time has come for Láadan—the secret language created to resist an oppressive patriarchy—to empower womankind worldwide. To expand the language’s reach, female linguists translate the Bible into Láadan, and a group of Roman Catholic nuns are tasked to spread the language. But when outraged priests detect their sabotage, they send a double agent to infiltrate and destroy the movement from the inside.

With a foreword by Rebecca Romney

Suzette Haden Elgin (born Patricia Anne Wilkins; 1936–2015) was an American science fiction author. She founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and was considered an important figure in the field of science fiction constructed languages. Elgin was also a linguist; she published non-fiction, of which the best-known is the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense series.

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