Sci-Fi

Written by Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem is a hard science fiction novel that shines when it’s subverting the genre and developing its main themes. It can both fascinate us with its creative world and disappoint us with its underdeveloped characters and anticlimactic ending. The protagonist is the Chinese scientist Wang Miao, whose research in nanotechnology is put in check …

The Wrong Stars is a fast-paced space opera structured around the dangerous allure of mysteries. The main characters are perfectly aware that some things are better left alone, untouched, but they can’t help it. Human beings are drawn to the unknown like moths to light, so our characters must uncover the many secrets the universe holds, even if that means facing …

The Water Knife, a sci-fi thriller written by Paolo Bacigalupi, presents a dystopian world that is disturbing in its verisimilitude. The novel, however, is ultimately dragged down by shallow main characters, having to resort to shock value to hold our attention. The story is built around three main points of view: there’s the journalist Lucy, who needs to find out …

Shift is a pointless prequel to the great dystopic world of Wool, choosing to put its focus on all the wrong places: instead of building on the fascinating discussions of its predecessor and crafting an engaging story, it decides to spend a lot of time explaining pointless things about its worldbuilding and grinding the pace to a halt with fan-service. …

Ready Player One, a sci-fi novel written by Ernest Cline, uses the vastness of the geek universe to compose the base of its narrative without capturing a fraction of its wonder. The book is plagued by one-dimensional characters and fails to deliver anything more than glorified references. The story takes place in a decrepit society dominated by mega-corporations, where hunger, …

Daemon is a book that seeks to illustrate the mastery of technology over humanity. While many stories focus on technological dependence and create apocalyptic settings based on the horrible scenario where people suddenly no longer have it available – the total absence of electrical energy is a recurring device –, Daniel Suarez’s work has another purpose in mind: to show …

Altered Carbon is little concerned with the philosophical implications of its incredible premise, preferring to put all its focus on the political aspects of its fantastical world. Written by Richard Morgan, this cyberpunk novel is not interested in how the characters deal with issues of memory and identity, but in how they manage to resist the constant oppression of a …

A society where just a handful of people have control over the transmission of information, where history is being constantly revised to hide the nature of uncomfortable events, where certain gestures and thoughts are subject to severe punishment – not because they’re harmful to other people, but to the status quo -, and where the government doesn’t hesitate to violently …