Written by Zeruhur
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My Appendix N - Part II: Science Fiction

Sometime in the summer of 1997, I was 13 years old, I was in a bookstore at the seaside and looking for something to read. I was already an avid reader at that age, but mostly I was reading mythology and mystery. For the past few weeks I had been hooked on Blade Runner, whose VHS recorded from its passage on television I had consumed. So the name Philip K. Dick was on my mind. It was a lucky accident of fate that among the remainder books on display was a copy of the anthology The Defenders of the Earth, sold as a tie-in to Total Recall (another movie I had enjoyed quite a bit). I bought it, read the first story, and was, in the words of my father (another big sci-fi fan) “thunderstruck by science fiction.” In fact, I never stopped.

Science fiction is the genre that has most shaped my tastes as a reader. I have read it extensively, ranging across different authors and subgenres. And the set of tropes on which I am most able to improvise, that is, to be a better facilitator. Too bad that for the most part, they play fantasy (a genre I appreciate but don’t love to the core).

Here is my favorite reading list. It will be much longer than the previous one, you are warned.

Hard Sci-fi

Soft Sci-fi

Space Opera

Cyberpunk

Future History

Misc.

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