Hello all, for May’s theme we’re opted for Far Future – so stories that explore the future of humanity, earth, and the universe eons from now. This obviously lends itself mainly to sci-fi (be it speculative fiction or space operas) but can also include fantasy and horror – such as post-apocalyptic worlds that have been rebuild with magic, or still swarming in radiated monsters.
As always you are free to read what you wish however strictly or loosely it fits the theme, and come and tell us about it on the day. Below are some EXAMPLES either suggested by Goodreads or the members to set the scene, but you are free to pick something else.
Examples
- “The Time Machine” (1895), by HG Wells – No.1 recommended on Goodreads for the theme. A time machine inventor takes trips into the ever distant future.
- “Last and First Men” (1930), by Olaf Stapledon – speculative fiction charting the rise and fall of civilisations across 2 billion years, and the evolution of humans.
- “The Dying Earth” (1950), by Jack Vance – a collection of slightly connected fantasy short stories set at a time when the Sun is almost burned out, and magic using humans survive in a post-apocalyptic barren world infested with monsters.
- “Dune” (1965), by Frank Herbet – Science-Fantasy set ten thousand years from now where noble houses play politics over planets. I expect we all know the plot – a house is given administrative control of a desert planet to mine its resources, leads to war.
- “DragonFlight” (Dragon Riders of Pern book 1) (1968), by Anne McCaffery – In far future, an Earth colony has devolved into a feudal society and uses dragons to fight against life-draining plant life from a neighbouring planet that rains from the sky when its orbit gets too close.
- “The Three-Body Problem” (2006), by Liu Cixin – No 2 recommended on Goodreads. China deals with alien invasion (I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but the Goodreads description is probably deliberately vague :p)
- “Hunger Games” (2008), by Susanne Collins – Post apocalyptic American dictatorship forces teenagers to fight to the death on television as a means to convince the starving brutalised masses not to rise up against them (… who exactly in this government thought this was a sustainable means of preventing revolt?)
- “House of Suns” (2008), by Alastair Reynolds – 6 million years from now humans have colonised the galaxy with heavy use of cloning. Follows the story of a line of clones from a 31st century woman called Abigail Gentian exploring the galaxy.
- “Legend” (2011), by Marie Lu – Nominie for Reader’s favourite Goodreads in 2012. Dystopian young adult book in a war torn US, focusing on relationship between a 15 year old girl born into the military elite, and a slum boy accused of assassinating her brother.
- “Lockstep” (2014), by Karl Schroeder – In the future the human elite make heavy use of cryogenics to live for millennia. Follows a teenager who wakes up from a 14,000 year hibernation to find his brother has become a galactic dictator.
- “Children of Time” (2015), by Adrian Tchaikovsky – One that appears on these recommendation lists a lot, even though its still on my reading list :D Earth is in ruin, humans go to space and find a previously terraformed world where Spiders have evolved to sapience.
- “Alien Virus Love Disasters” (2018), by Abbey Lei Otis – Washington Post Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2018. A series of short stories ranging from dystopian to horror portraying bleak futures for humanity.
