Mining the Genre Asteroid: The Saga of Pliocene Exile by Julian May
22nd Century Earth is a pretty nice place. Earth is becoming more and more integrated into the Galactic Milieu, with alien trade and technology rapidly fixing the problems of Earth and making life better for everyone. Mental powers, for so long disbelieved, distrusted and unreliable, have proven to be a Thing, and it is in fact Man’s discovery of these metapsychic powers that caused First Contact to happen in the first place back in 2013. Yet, even in a Earth heading toward utopia, there are going to be people who are dissatisfied. There are people not so happy with the idea of alien cultures influencing and affecting Earth. There are those who seek a “final frontier”, one even more exotic than colonizing nearby star systems. There are those who seek to disrupt this happy society.
Mining the Genre Asteroid: The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
The early 19th century. A plot against King George. Egyptian gods, magicians, gypsies, and other mysterious characters on the streets of London in a struggle for control and dominance. Enter a 20th century professor, Brendan Doyle. By turns, he has not only wound up in the thick of events, he has become trapped in that time. Can Doyle foil the plots, survive in the dangerous 19th century world and underworld, and even prosper? And most of all, like Sam Beckett…can Doyle find the right Time Gate to send him back home?
Mining the Genre Asteroid: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
Donald Hogan is a spy. Meanwhile, his roommate, Norman House, suspects nothing of this. To him, Donald is a self employed dilettante. Bookish, maybe, but not a bad guy. Norman has other things to occupy him, like his rising star at General Technics. General Technics is a corporation vast enough and powerful enough to contemplate a political and economic takeover of an small, refugee-laden African nation which by all rights should be absorbed, conquered, or writhing in civil war and discontent like much of the continent. And yet it is not. Why?
Mining the Genre Asteroid: Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin
A century and a half after Earth has been wrecked, humanity exists in two spheres. There are the hardscrabble colonies, where survival is the watchword, as man tries to live on alien, often unfriendly environments. The people are often poor, desperate and technologically backward. And then there are the Ships that travel the spaceways. Technologically advanced and relatively rich, the Ships have a strict regime for keeping themselves from being overpopulated. Every person who reaches their fourteenth birthday must train for an ordeal called the Trial.
Mining the Genre Asteroid: The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
A mysterious source of energy from another universe and the emergence of particles that should not exist according to principles of modern physics and chemistry. And thus, when they decay, they release free, clean energy. Who cares about the motives of the para-men in the parallel universe who are sending the atoms of impossible Plutonium 186 to us in exchange for atoms of Tungsten 186 (equally unstable in their world), right? The Electron Pump is a benefit to both sides, right? Or is it? Is the Electron Pump really that benign, or is it a devilish energy trap designed to foster dependency on it, or worse, be actively harmful to both humans and aliens alike? Once the Pump is in operation, can a source of limitless free energy that threatens the survival of two civilizations even
Mining the Genre Asteroid: Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp
In late 1930’s Rome, American archaeologist Martin Padway is having a holiday from his dig in Lebanon. Over dinner with his Italian friend Tancredi, a discussion of the nature of time and how a man might change the web of time becomes of eminently practical use when, a few hours later while studying the Pantheon, Martin finds himself cast back in time, to 6th Century Rome. In 535 AD Rome, The Roman Empire is a half century dead, in the West anyway. The Gothic Kingdom rules Rome and Italy. The Byzantines lurk to the East, dreaming of reconquering Italy for the Eastern Roman Empire. Martin himself is a stranger in a strange land, of competing Christian sects and ambitious nobles. Its going to take all of Martin’s wits to not only survive in an alien country, but to forge an even grander scheme. You see, at the cusp of the long slide after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Martin realizes he is at an important moment of history, and as per his old friend, might be able to tackle the greatest challenge of all: To keep the Dark Ages from occurring. Lest Darkness Fall is a classic time travel story by L. Sprague De Camp. In six decades of writing, L. Sprague De Camp, separately and in collaboration, wrote over 100 books and numerous stories. From straight historical novels like Dragon at the Ishtar Gate to time travel stories like Lest Darkness Fall to reconstituting Burroughs like Sword and Planet stories with the Viagens Interplantarias series, De Camp was a seminal figure of early science fiction and fantasy who quietly but inexorably influenced generations of contemporaries and successors. While the conceit and methodology of sending Padway into the past is clearly just a literary device, once Padway finds himself in Rome, the novel goes into a “hard alternate history” sort of mode. No more fantastic elements. Padway struggles with the language; his Latin is rusty, and it gives De Camp a
