The PKD Award is given for the best paperback original this year, and has been awarded to such classics as Neuromancer. Storybundle’s DRM-free collection of name-your-price ebooks includes some of my favorite books of all time: Walter Jon Williams’s Knight Moves, Kathe Koja’s The Cipher, Lewis Shiner’s Frontera, Lisa Mason’s Summer of Love, Elizabeth Hand’s Aestival Time, and more.
A bunch of these date to when I was a bookseller and I keenly remember hand-selling them and pinning my reviews next to them on the shelves. These are all outstanding novels that you should have in your sf collection. There’s a reason the PKD award is considered one of the most prestigious in the field.
Acts of Conscience by William Barton
“Here’s why you should be hunting down every Barton novel you can find … In William Barton’s books, the strong exploit the weak – until someone stronger comes along and exploits them in turn. And the universe rattles on, uncaring.” – iO9: Charlie Jane AndersKnight Moves by Walter Jon Williams
“Knight Moves uses an unmatched cast of characters, human and otherwise, to tell an intriguing story.” – Fred Saberhagen, author of the Book of Swords TrilogyReclamation by Sarah Zettel
Ms. Zettel’s confident treatment of her ambitious material shows just how entertaining the “grand tradition of Heinlein and Asimov” can still be in sympathetic hands. – The New York Times Book Review, Gerald JonasPoints of Departure by Pat Murphy
Although infused with a gentle sort of magic, the stories in Murphy’s (The City, Not Long After) enjoyable collection are also tinged with barbed humor, alternating between hope and despair. Nebula Award-winner “Rachel in Love” portrays a chimpanzee whose brain is implanted with the personality of a young girl who has died. When the researcher who cared for the chimp dies, the hybrid draws on her mingled primate and human knowledge to make her way in a world that can be at once hostile and kind. In “Prescience,” a fortune-teller learns that there’s a difference between seeing the future and changing it. Conversely, in “Orange Blossom Time,” a woman who travels through time cannot change the past or the present as she watches the city and the man she loves suffer painful deaths from rampant disease and the exhaustion of resources. Unappreciated wives get the last word in two stories: a wife’s spirit escapes her abusive husband to join the “Women in the Trees,” and a farmer who grows a spouse from a packet of seeds finds that “His Vegetable Wife” is more quiet than docile. – Publishers WeeklySummer of Love by Lisa Mason
The story is quite engrossing as the fated summer unfolds. . . a clear-eyed look at the past. [Mason’s] characters are captivating. . . Mason has given us an enchanting foray into the near past, as seen through the eyes of the people of its times, as well as through the eyes of an individual from our own all-too possible far future. In that sense it’s both a history lesson and cautionary tale, but one that doesn’t forsake the first tenet of good fiction: there’s an entertaining story at the heart of it all. – Charles De Lint, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science FictionFrontera by Lewis Shiner
“Frontera is hard-edged and colorful and relentless, and altogether a compelling read. Shiner paints his picture of the day after tomorrow with a gritty realism that makes you believe every minute of it.” – George RR Martin, author of A Game of ThronesDark Seeker by K. W. Jeter
“The real pleasure of this book is in the quality of the writing. Jeter places three-dimensional characters in authentic Southern California landscapes with more grit than glamor . . . DARKSEEKER provides an intense experience that sticks in the mind — further proof of Jeter’s versatile talent.” – LocusMaximum Ice by Kay Kenyon
“Full-bodied characters, palpable environs, layered mystery and heady suspense combine like the many facets of “Ice” in this sparkling SF novel. . . .Kenyon is a surprising new talent, and SF enthusiasts will appreciate her imaginative world and characters.” – Publishers WeeklyThe Cipher by Kathe Koja
“Winner of both a Bram Stoker Award and a Locus Award in 1991, Koja’s debut has yet to lose one iota of impact.” – BooklistLife by Gwyneth Jones
Like all of Jones’s work, Life demands—and amply repays—close reading. In addition to writing well about the thrills and tedium of scientific research, she manages to be both clinical and lyrical in describing her characters’ exploration of their sensuality. – New York Times Book Review, November 14, 2004Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand
“Hand is one of the writers of her generation … striving to write the kind of literate science-fantasy produced by Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance. Hand’s skills are formidable and impressive. Her descriptions of Araboth are given in swift, sure strokes; her command of the English language is far better than that of most science-fiction writers. At a time when too many sf writers are producing pale copies of great work, it is a pleasure to announce that Elizabeth Hand is a writer of considerable talent and power. If she persists, Hand may well become one of the major science fiction writers of her time.” – Washington Post
The Philip K. Dick Award Bundle [Storybundle]
(Thanks, Lew!)