“My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.” (D. Adams)
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
So begins the exhilarating Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the first novel of a trilogy in five parts. From galaxy to galaxy, an alien accompanies the reader in an unexpected journey to discover the Universe as we’ve never imagined it.
In 1938 CBS radio broadcasts an alien attack to planet Earth: it’s The War of the Worlds by Orson Wells, the radio adaptation of the novel of the same title by Herbert George Wells (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) which frightened the entire United States. A story in which imagination meets science, shaping the idea of a possible and horrible future.
“You know the people that make it, Ray? […] It’s the ones that keep their eyes open. That keep looking at you. Keep thinking. They’re the ones that survive. Running, that’s what’ll kill you. And I’m dead set on living.”
10 suggested books
THE ULTIMATE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
Douglas Adams, Del Rey/Random House 2002
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
Herbert George Wells, Dover Publications/Random House 2015
THE FOUNDATION NOVELS (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, Foundation’s Edge, Foundation and Earth, Prelude to Foundation, Forward the Foundation)
Isaac Asimov, Spectra/Random House 1991
THE LITTLE BOOK OF SUPERMAN
Paul Levitz, Taschen 2015
FLOWER PHANTOMS
Ronald Fraser, Valancourt Books 2013
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH
Walter Tevis, Ballantine/Random House 1999
METROPOLI
Massimiliano Santarossa, Baldini & Castoldi 2015
DUNE
Frank Herbert, Penguin Galaxy 2016
PROFESSOR ASTRO CAT’S FRONTIERS OF SPACE
Ben Newman and Dominic Walliman, Flying Eye Books 2014
TO THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE
John Hersey and Raman Prinja, Carlton Books 2015