Saturday, September 8, 2018

Five SFF worlds that definitely want to kill you

At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Joel Cunningham tagged five favorite invented locations that don’t plan to let you leave, including:
Mars (The Martian, by Andy Weir)

Even though Mars is (purportedly) an actual planet and not an invented world like the others on this list, the hostile environment in Andy Weir’s 2011 novel rivals any author-envisioned hellscape. Stranded alone on the surface, astronaut Mark Watney deals with starvation, explosive decompression, and being impaled by an antenna. And that’s before he decides to go on a freezing road trip across his atmosphere-free home. Much of the horror in this story comes from the fact that it is so grounded in science that it could actually happen to the first Mars explorers. Luckily, they’ll have a Tesla up there with them to drive to safety. Truly, the only enjoyable part of being stranded on Mars is that you get to eat baked potatoes every day.
Read about the other entries on the list.

The Martian is among Tim Peake's five top books to take to space, Jeffrey Kluger's five favorite books that make epic drama out of space-faring history, Elisabeth Delp's seven classic science fiction space odysseys, Alexandra Oliva's five novels that get important aspects of survival right, Jeff Somers's seven works of speculative fiction that don’t feel all that speculative and  five top sci-fi novels with plausible futuristic technology, Ernest Cline’s ten favorite SF novels, and James Mustich's five top books on visiting Mars.

--Marshal Zeringue