A feminist subversion of SF adventure on a snowbound world.

Joanna Russ was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy best known for her strident feminist perspective. Her most acclaimed book is The Female Man from 1975, in which several women - each from their own parallel universes - confront misogyny and patriarchy.

In Picnic on Paradise (1968), Russ' debut novel, a thief from ancient Tyre is recruited to save the day on a holiday planet plunged into a "commercial war".

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Exploring a unique alternate history and a classic of British SF.

It is the late 20th century - but not as we know it. There is no electricity, let alone nuclear energy. Steam-powered road trains are the fastest means of transport. And England is run not from London, but from Rome. This is the world of Pavane, a unique alternate history by Keith Roberts, published in 1968.

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Hundreds of years from now, there is not a single human being on Earth. The species has been exiled to the moon, Mars, and other worlds of the solar system. A powerful alien race has reserved the planet we think of as "ours", and given it over to the real intelligent life: dolphins and whales. Fortunately, humankind has mysterious friends in high places, who offer powerful technological fixes. 

John Varley's debut novel The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977) is a story of a changed and changeable human future in which transplants are trivial, body modification is easy, and death is optional - but in which our species may be running out of time.

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With another year drawing to a close, it's time to assess the ten best novels I read in 2024: all of them featured on the show at some point. Which books will make the cut? Also: my biggest reading disappointment of the year, some honourable mentions, and looking ahead to plans for 2025.

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Dramatic climate breakdown is causing extremes of weather never seen before, and contributing to a succession of convulsive wars, with no end in sight. This isn't the 21st century - it's a unique entry in the tradition of the British catastrophe novel.

Ice was written by Anna Kavan and published in 1967. It was the last novel by a uniquely talented, and uniquely troubled author. Similar in some ways to other disaster novels by authors like John Wyndham and J.G. Ballard, Ice differentiates itself with its surreal qualities and troubling resonances with the author's own life - which was marked by tragedy and addiction. 

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On the constantly stormy planet of Windhaven, elite messengers take to the skies using flying rigs made from the remnants of an ancient starship. But who deserves to wear the wings?

George R. R. Martin is one of the world's best-selling novelists, and Lisa Tuttle is a multi-award winning author and a regular critic of new SF and fantasy work. Back in the 1970s, they collaborated on stories in Analog magazine, which were later extended into a fix-up novel - Windhaven (1981).

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This is a neccesarily brief episode - because there is much in this book that must not be spoiled. The Palace of Eternity is an excellent 1969 novel by the Northern Irish writer Bob Shaw. It is a fast-paced, dynamic piece of work, full of surprising developments and wild ideas. Welcome to a fast-moving tale that explores interstellar war, environmental destruction, and even the source of artistic inspiration.

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Breakfast in the Ruins is a sometimes harrowing experimental novel by Michael Moorcock. Originally published in 1972, the novel is a loose sequel of sorts to Moorcock's earlier novel Behold the Man - covered in episode 96. This time, protagonist Karl Glogauer is split into many different lives, in which he becomes entangled, and increasingly guilty of, some of history's worst atrocities.

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Since he died in 1982, Philip K. Dick has become, and has remained, one of the best-known science fiction writers of all time. He has recognition not only from established fans of SF, but also from more general audiences - very unusual for a writer who started out publishing in Ace Doubles in the 1950s. To a significant extent, that wide acceptance has to do with the film adaptations of Dick's work, which began with Blade Runner - released shortly after he died.

This episode focuses on the novel that inspired that film: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, published at the midpoint of PKD's career, in 1968. It is an iconic SF classic of the 1960s, packed with brilliant speculations and questionings of the author's favourite themes and a deep philsophical insight. 

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Oddly, the British author Ian Watson may be best known today for his various novels in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Long before he flirted with "the grim darkness of the far future", Watson carved a space for himself as one of the most intellectually challenging and formidable British SF writers of the 1970s.

This episode covers Watson's bracing debut novel The Embedding. Originally published in 1973, it is a startling combination of linguistics, anthropology, geopolitics, and first contact with alien life. With settings in the UK, the US, Brazil, and in space, it is an expansive and ambitious debut posing big questions about humankind's search for meaning and a place in the universe. It also features a gonzo fusion of drugs, language theory, sex, and political violence.

J.G. Ballard once described Watson as the UK's only SF writer of ideas - and The Embedding is definitely packed with those. 

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