Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson

Chosen for inclusion in both David Pringle's Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels and Cawthorn & Moorcock's Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, Three Hearts and Three Lions had long been on my "must read someday" list. This compactly written epic of "hard fantasy" was first serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953 and released in an expanded book format in 1961. Author Poul Anderson was seemingly well suited to wr... Read More

The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison

Listen to the beginning of The Stainless Steel Rat here.
At a certain stage, the realization strikes through that one must either live outside of society’s bonds or die of absolute boredom. There is no future or freedom in the circumscribed life and the only other life is complete rejection of the rules. There is no longer room for the soldier of fortune or the gentleman adventurer who can live both within and outside of society. Today it is all or nothing. To save my own sanity, I chose nothing.
In the future society where Jim DiGriz lives, most criminal and anti-social behavior has been weeded out of the human genome. It’s hard for bad guys to hide themselves in this antiseptic society — in order to survive, you gotta be a stainless ... Read More