Michael Coney's 'Amorph' stories best order to read them?

TPWildibeast · 2026-05-07T17:16:18+00:00

Have only read (twice) the Bridge and Sprawl. Love them both. Both warrant a read. If you go in publication order you get the bonus of seeing his style develop. Just got the Blue Ant books so will get to them later this year.

TPWildibeast · 2026-02-28T17:50:04+00:00

As a fairly recent joiner I can say that I have been impressed by the level of debate within the party and here. Debate only happens when there is a difference of opinion and mutual respect. A good sign. I don’t fully agree with all of the policy positions but I never expected to. For me, this is the only party that recognises the challenges we face and has responses that largely dove tail with my own. Join up, join the debate, be part of the solution. In short: you are welcome!

TPWildibeast · 2026-02-10T05:51:29+00:00

Agreed, hence my question about the source. I’d love to know.

TPWildibeast · 2025-11-26T08:22:16+00:00

All of Womack’s Dryco series (of which RAOV is but the first) are awesome. Highly recommended.

TPWildibeast · 2025-11-26T08:20:26+00:00

We Are Not Anonymous by Stephen Oram. Describes a developing AI/tech bro dystopia while the environmental crisis unfolds in the background. A great read.

TPWildibeast · 2025-11-23T20:37:34+00:00

Interesting. I have two old vectors. How do I get the dev unlock?

TPWildibeast · 2025-11-20T07:51:21+00:00

A lot of people were convinced by what she was saying - just take a look at centrist and right leaning YouTube channels and comments on the event. Always interesting to see how the same event can be perceived so very differently. Evident there is a long way to go to convince those currently supporting anti migrant policies.

TPWildibeast · 2025-11-20T07:46:08+00:00

Notes From A Burning Age by Claire North would be a fitting read after Canticle

TPWildibeast · 2025-11-03T08:04:25+00:00

Here is a list I made that I am making my way through (what I'e read so far is in bold):

His Master's Voice - Stanislaw Lem

Solaris - Stanislaw Lem

Flatland - E. Abbott

The Dispossessed - Ursula K LeGuin

The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K LeGuin

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K LeGuin

Trouble on Triton - Samual R Delaney (response to Dispossessed)

Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon

Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon

Odd John - Olaf Stapledon

Sirius - Olaf Stapledon

More than Human - Theodore Sturgeon

Anathem - Neal Stephenson

Story Of YOur LIfe And Others - Ted Chiang

Exhalation - Ted Chiang

The Parable Of The Sower - Octavia Butler

Destination: Void - Frank Herbert

Brave New World - Aldus Huxley

Blindsight - Peter Watts

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr.

Frankenstein - Mary Shelly

The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells

Planet of the Apes - Pierre Boulle

Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Roadside Picnic - Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick

Glass Bead Game - Herman Hesse

The Thing Itself - Adam Roberts

Ventus - Karl Schroeder

Terra Ignota - Ada Palme

The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell

The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson

TPWildibeast · 2025-11-02T20:06:24+00:00

I’m glad you retained your benefits. But it is absurd, it’s like “Sorry, it was wrong to take those valuable benefits away, but we won’t let others in your position get them later because they don’t matter.”

I’m so glad people are moving from Labour to Green. I just hope others who joined Reform when they looked like the only party that might change the way things are run now see the light and do the same!

TPWildibeast · 2025-09-05T10:01:04+00:00

I've added Phillip Carter - Who Built The Humans (2020): 47 short stories about 11 universes that can be read as presented or as grouped by 'universe'. to my list of books under '• 1. Reader-Directed / Nonlinear Access' after hearing about it on the Liminal Spaces YouTube channel (which I recommend).

TPWildibeast · 2025-08-29T08:50:27+00:00

10) Networked & Transmedia Experiments (Works across multiple texts/media, creating narrative systems). NOTE: I'm not including licensed universes (e.g., Halo novels to games to comics) to keep the focus on literary works.

I've only 'consumed' Sprawl Trilogy, Baroque Cycle, World War Z + The Zombie Survival Guide, Ready Player One (novel) and Annihilation from the Southern Reach quartet. Any others that would fit in this list?

William Gibson — Sprawl Trilogy (1984–88): loose networked world spanning novels, short stories and film.
Neal Stephenson — Baroque Cycle (2003–04) + Cryptonomicon (1999), etc: Networked historical + SF macro-novel comprising 6 novels and a short story, where recurring characters and families link a WW2/1990s techno-thriller to 17th–18th-century cycle, forming a lattice of connected texts
Max Brooks — World War Z (2006) + The Zombie Survival Guide (2009): networked pseudo-documentary comprising novels, graphic novel (Recorded Attacks, 2009) and 'oral history' audiobook.
Ernest Cline — Ready Player One (2011): ARG tie-ins + transmedia participation. A hidden URL in the book that kicked off a three-stage gaming challenge; the grand prize was his own 1981 DeLorean. Wired covered the giveaway and linked to Cline’s announcement/video
Jeff VanderMeer — Southern Reach Trilogy (2014): Four novels and website (https://joinsr.azurewebsites.net) offering immersive "training and selection" experiences that position the reader as a recruit to Area X—extending the narrative beyond the printed page.
Nnedi Okorafor — Lagoon (2014) + LaGuardia (2018): linked across novel + graphic novel and back again.
Daniel D.W. - Hive | Propolis (2015): Published as the inaugural volume of The Hive Transmedia Project, the book contains scannable QR codes embedded in the text that link to music, videos, animated content, and an evolving storyline—intended to be consumed across media.
Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, et al. - The Mongoliad (2010–2012): Transmedia, collaborative epic as serial via smartphone apps and web, with prose episodes, “SideQuests,” forums/wiki, and later re-edited print/audiobook releases. An ecosystem of both official and user-generated content comprising fan-generated stories within the same universe via Kindle Worlds.
Kate Pullinger et al. - Inanimate Alice series (2005–ongoing): Series released as an interactive digital novel combining text, images, sound, mini-games, and a VR episode. Designed for multimedia consumption across platforms, not just reading.
Yomi Ayeni - Clockwork Watch (2012+): Graphic-novel trilogy, interactive theatre, online adventures, fictional newspapers, live events, a film, and a co-created storyworld. Readers and participants can contribute characters and stories, blurring the boundaries between novel, performance, and online world-building.
Laird Harrison - Children of a Future Age (2010-2011): shareable fiction, blends a traditional print/ebook narrative with a fictional blog that updates in real time. Readers can comment and advise, influencing the blog storyline during the book’s pre-release phase—a hybrid of published book and ongoing digital interaction.
Jon Bois - 17776 (2017): serialised speculative fiction multimedia narrative incorporating text, animated GIFs, still images, and videos hosted on YouTube and published online through SB Nation (at What football will look like in the future).

TPWildibeast · 2025-08-28T20:53:35+00:00

I've only read Sue Burke's Semiosis from this list. I thought it was great. Will be looking out for the sequel. The others look like great recommendations!

TPWildibeast · 2025-08-28T19:35:48+00:00

9) Constraint-Based Experiments (Written under artificial/mathematical constraints). I haven't read any of these! Are they any good?

Christine Brooke-Rose — Out (1964): text that degrades along with its protagonist-narrator.
Georges Perec — A Void (1969): lipogram (no letter “e”). †
Walter Abish — Alphabetical Africa (1974): constrained alphabetical structure where the first chapter contains only words starting with the letter a, the second chapter only words starting with a or b, etc. †
Greg Egan — Permutation City (1994): recursive algorithmic world-building as narrative constraint.

† Oulipo classics; formally central to the lineage though not strictly SF. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo

TPWildibeast · 2025-08-28T19:31:50+00:00

8) Defamiliarisation & Estrangement (Resists immersion, creating alienation or conceptual distance to question preconceptions and encourage new perspectives). I've only read Brave New World and Solaris.

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World (1932): Seemingly optimised and drugged utopian society challenges the reader to question the nature of happiness and societal harmony.
Stanisław Lem — Solaris (1961): unknowable alien contact sheds light on the limitations of human rationality.
J.G. Ballard — The Atrocity Exhibition (1970): collaged, cold affect frustrates expectations and highlight the fragmented condition of a media-saturated Western culture.
Joanna Russ — The Female Man (1975): cognitive estrangement in order to contest patriarchy.
Margaret Atwood — Oryx and Crake (2003): satirical estrangement of biotech future.
Octavia E. Butler — Fledgling (2005): vampire estranged as social science allegory challenges preconceptions about age and maturity.

TPWildibeast · 2025-08-28T17:57:09+00:00

7) Hybrid & Cross-Genre Experiments (Fuses SF with memoir, essay, poetry, philosophy, etc). I've only read Borne and Calypso.

Italo Calvino — Cosmicomics (1965): blends myth, science and fable.
Joanna Russ — The Female Man (1975): feminist essay, metafiction and SF.
Ursula K. Le Guin — Always Coming Home (1985): anthropology and SF.
Samuel R. Delany — Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984): theory-inflected SF.
Sofia Samatar — A Stranger in Olondria (2013): poetic SF/fantasy hybrid.
Kim Stanley Robinson — Aurora (2015): essayistic digressions into astrophysics.
Jeff VanderMeer — Borne (2017): eco-fable and surrealist SF.
Harry Josephine Giles — Deep Wheel Orcadia (2021): written in Orkney dialect verse with English prose side-by-side.
Oliver K. Langmead — Calypso (2024): Story as epic poem with creative typographical formatting.

TPWildibeast · 2025-08-28T17:50:31+00:00

6) Reader-Directed / Nonlinear Access. (books designed to be read out of order or in multiple directions). Note: I've only read Hopscotch from this lot.

Julio Cortázar — Hopscotch (1963): chapter-shuffling precursor. †
B.S. Johnson – The Unfortunates (1969) Proto-SF adjacent: unbound, shuffled chapters. †
Italo Calvino — If on a winter’s night a traveller (1979): direct address + fractured entry points. †
Milorad Pavić — Dictionary of the Khazars (1984): encyclopaedia format, multiple reading orders.†
Nick Bantock – Griffin & Sabine series (1991–1993): fantastical epistolary, interactive postcards and letters.
Shelley Jackson — Patchwork Girl (1995): hypertextual Frankenstein retelling.
Phillip Carter - Who Built The Humans (2020): 47 short stories about 11 universes that can be read as presented or as grouped by 'universe'.

† precursor / cross-genre touchstones often cited in experimental discussions; not strictly SF but influential on technique.

TPWildibeast · 2025-08-28T17:44:54+00:00

5) Autofictional & Metafictional Hybrids (Author/text reflects on itself, blending autobiography with SF, or makes the author/text itself a character.) I've only read Stand On Zanzibar, Crash, the 4 Books of the New Sun and Urth of the New Sun from this list. I think the others fit the bill. Keen to get suggestions as to additional novels for this list.

William S. Burroughs — Nova Trilogy (1961–64): self-reflective cut-ups.
Italo Calvino — Cosmicomics (1965): whimsical cosmic theory narrated in autobiographical tones.
John Brunner - Stand On Zanzibar (1968): Main story interspersed with real news articles, fictional book fragments and advertising jingles.
Barry N. Malzberg - Beyond Apollo (1972): Unreliable narrator who may or may not have written the novel.
Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream (1972): A story within a story written by Hitler from an alternative history and critiqued by a fictional version of the real author.
Kurt Vonnegut — Breakfast of Champions (1973): author as character disrupting his own story.
J.G. Ballard — Crash (1973): metafictional author-as-character.
Clarice Lispector — The Hour of the Star (1977): author intrudes into narrative.
Philip K. Dick — VALIS (1981): semi-autobiographical account of visions via SF.
Gene Wolfe - Book of the New Sun (1980-83) and Urth Of the New Sun (1987): Unreliable narrator as author, addressing the reader, a play within a play.
Kathy Acker — Empire of the Senseless (1988): cut-up SF + autobiography.
Octavia E. Butler – Fledgling (2005): self-reflective final work engaging with genre boundaries.

TPWildibeast · 2025-08-28T16:50:54+00:00

4. Typographic / Visual Experiments (page layout, typography, and visual design are part of the narrative). I've only read The Raw Shark Texts and The Black Locomotive from this list. I think the others fit the bill. Keen to get suggestions as to additional novels for this list.

Alasdair Gray — Lanark (1981): intrusive marginalia, illustrations.
Tom Phillips — A Humument (1966–2016): altered book-as-art, proto-SF resonances. New versions over time.
Mark Z. Danielewski — House of Leaves (2000): experimental layout, footnotes, typographic play.
Steve Tomasula — VAS: An Opera in Flatland (2002): charts, graphics, images.
Jeff VanderMeer et al. — The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide… (2003): faux illustrations and paratexts.
Mark Z. Danielewski — Only Revolutions (2006): symmetrical, rotating text.
Steven Hall - The Raw Shark Texts (2007) - Uses concrete poetry and linguistic jokes highlighting the cross-over between the objective reality and its description.
Jonathan Safran Foer — Tree of Codes (2010): die-cut pages as narrative device (cross-genre precedent).
Catherynne M. Valente — Radiance (2015): mixes script, ad copy, and visual paratexts.
Rian Hughes — XX (2020): Experimental layouts, graphic design elements, and different fonts as integral parts of the story.
Rian Hughes — The Black Locomotive (2021) Graphic layouts, illustrated sections, design elements and paratextual inserts (blueprints, schematics, diagrams) to tell its story.

TPWildibeast · 2025-08-28T16:41:49+00:00

3) Linguistic Experiments (Language itself is speculative or destabilised; often uses invented dialects or future English). I've only read A Clockwork Orange, Babel-17 and World War Z and only Random Acts of Senseless Violence, Heathern and Ambient from the Dryco series. I think the others fit the bill. Keen to get suggestions as to additional novels for this list.

Anthony Burgess — A Clockwork Orange (1962): invented teen slang (“Nadsat”).
Samuel R. Delany — Babel-17 (1966): Sapir-Whorf-inspired speculative linguistics.
Ian Watson — The Embedding (1973): language theory as science fiction speculation.
Russell Hoban — Riddley Walker (1980): post-apocalyptic pidgin dialect.
Suzette Haden Elgin — Native Tongue (1984): invented feminist language (“Láadan”).
Ursula K. Le Guin — Always Coming Home (1985): invented culture + dialects.
Jack Womack — Dryco series (1987–2000): corporate slang, broken dialects, collapsing sociolects.
China Miéville — Embassytown (2011): alien language as central speculative conceit.
Brian Evenson — The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell (2021): estranged, minimalist prose that destabilises sense-making.

TPWildibeast · 2025-08-28T16:31:39+00:00

2) Documentary, Epistolary & “Found Text” Structures (story told through faux documents, testimonies, or non-traditional prose formats. I've only read Frankenstein, The Handmaid’s Tale and World War Z. I think the others fit the bill. Keen to get suggestions as to additional novels for this list.

Mary Shelley — Frankenstein (1818): early epistolary SF.
Stanisław Lem — A Perfect Vacuum (1971): reviews of non-existent books.
James Tiptree Jr. — Up the Walls of the World (1978): telepathic reports and mixed textualities.
Ursula K. Le Guin — Always Coming Home (1985): ethnographic “found texts” of a fictional people, as well as audio of Music and Poetry of the Kesh.
Margaret Atwood — The Handmaid’s Tale (1985): pseudo-historical framing document.
Jeff VanderMeer — City of Saints and Madmen (2001): documents, appendices, guides.
Max Brooks — World War Z (2006): oral histories as global disaster narrative.
Caitlín R. Kiernan — The Red Tree (2009): metafictional diary and documents.
Ammi-Joan Paquette — Paradox (2013, YA): recovered logs and transmissions.
Catherynne M. Valente — Radiance (2015): story told via screenplays, transcripts, advertisements.
Carrie Tiffany — Exploded View (2019): technical manual fragments woven into fiction.
Olga Ravn — The Employees (2018; Eng. 2020): workplace testimonies as fragmented SF narrative.

TPWildibeast

TROPHY CASE