• Media mentioned in Ada Palmer's introduction to The Book of the New Sun:
  • The Night Land (1912)
  • Last and First Men (1930)
  • Star Maker (1937)
  • Against the Fall of Night (1948)
  • Smooth between sea and land, by A. E. Housman
  • The Dying Earth (1950)
  • Phoenix (1967-88)
  • The Dancers at the End of Time (1972-76)
  • Akira (1982)
  • Blade Runner (1982)
  • Neuromancer (1984)
  • Brazil (1985)
  • Neverness (1988)
  • Hyperion (1989)
  • Against a Dark Background (1993)
  • City of Diamond (1996)
  • From the New World (2008)
  • The Quantum Thief (2010)
  • Terra Ignota Series (2016-21)
  • A Memory Called Empire (2019)
  • Works of C. S. Friedman
  • Works of C. J. Cherryh

Media mentioned in Ada Palmer's introduction to The Book of the New Sun:

The Night Land (1912)

• Horror/fantasy novel by William Hope Hodgson
• Dying Earth subgenre
• Much shorter version of the novel: The Dream of X (1912)
• Praised by H. P. Lovecraft in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature

Last and First Men (1930)

• Subtitle: A Story of the Near and Far Future

• Future History science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon

  …it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first. The book employs a narrative conceit that, under subtle inspiration, the novelist has unknowingly been dictated a channelled text from the last human species.

Star Maker (1937)

• Novel by Olaf Stapledon

• History of life in the universe

  Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilisations.

Against the Fall of Night (1948)

• Novel by Arthur C. Clarke
• Later expanded, revised, and published in 1956 as The City and the Stars, a complete rewrite of Against the Fall of Night
• Sequel by Gregory Benford: Beyond the Fall of Night

Smooth between sea and land, by A. E. Housman

Smooth between sea and land Is laid the yellow sand, And here through summer days The seed of Adam plays.

Here the child comes to found His unremaining mound, And the grown lad to score Two names upon the shore.

Here, on the level sand, Between the sea and land, What shall I build or write Against the fall of night?

Tell me of runes to grave That hold the bursting wave, Or bastions to design For longer date than mine.

Shall it be Troy or Rome I fence against the foam, Or my own name, to stay When I depart for aye?

Nothing: too near at hand, Planing the figured sand, Effacing clean and fast Cities not built to last And charms devised in vain, Pours the confounding main.

The Dying Earth (1950)

• science fantasy/fantasy short fiction collection by Jack Vance
• first book in the Dying Earth series
  • The Eyes of the Overworld (1966)
  • Cugel's Saga (1983)
  • Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)

Phoenix (1967-88)

• Unfinished manga series by Osamu Tezuka

• Cansisting of 12 books, each an independent story in a different era

  Phoenix is about reincarnation. Each story generally involves a search for immortality, embodied by the blood of the eponymous bird of fire, which, as drawn by Tezuka, resembles the Fenghuang. The blood is believed to grant eternal life, but immortality in Phoenix is either unobtainable or a terrible curse, whereas Buddhist-style reincarnation is presented as the natural path of life.

The Dancers at the End of Time (1972-76)

• Series of science fiction novels and short stories by Michael Moorcock
• Set at the End of Time, where entropy is king and the universe has begun collapsing upon itself.
• Original trilogy:
  • An Alien Heat
  • The Hollow Lands
  • The End of All Songs

Akira (1982)

• Japanese cyberpunk post-apocalyptic manga series.
• Might read at some point. Probably not soon, though.

Blade Runner (1982)

• Adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• Dystopian future L. A. (2019)
• Synthetic humans are engineered to work in space colonies.
• Definitely want to read the novel, then probably watch the movie.

Neuromancer (1984)

• Beginning of the Sprawl trilogy:

  • Count Zero (1986)

  • Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)

    The Sprawl trilogy shares its setting with Gibson's short stories “Johnny Mnemonic” (1981), “Burning Chrome” (1982), and “New Rose Hotel” (1984), and events and characters from the stories appear in or are mentioned at points in the trilogy.

• Washed up hacker Henry Case is hired for one last job, which brings him in contact with a powerful artificial intelligence.

Brazil (1985)

The film centres on Sam Lowry, a low-ranking bureaucrat trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams while he is working in a mind-numbing job and living in a small apartment, set in a dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained (and rather whimsical) machines. Brazil's satire of technocracy, bureaucracy, hyper-surveillance, corporate statism, and state capitalism is reminiscent of George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it has been called Kafkaesque as well as absurdist.

Neverness (1988)

• Novel by David Zindell
• Related novelette: Shanidar (1985)
• Praised by Gene Wolfe

Hyperion (1989)

• Novel by Dan Simmons
• First book of the Hyperion Cantos series:
  • The Fall of Hyperion (1990)
  • Endymion (1996)
  • The Rise of Endymion (1997)

Against a Dark Background (1993)

• By Iain M. Banks
• Was going to include a short description, but this sounds pretty wild. Might deserve to be at the top of the shopping list.

City of Diamond (1996)

• By Jane Emerson

  Six centuries ago, the alien Curosa imparted the wisdom of their dying race to Adrian Sawyer and gifted him with three massive intergalactic ships to spread the Curosa Truth across the starways.

From the New World (2008)

• Japanese novel by Yusuke Kishi
• Titled after Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9
• Follows a girl with psychic abilities in the year 3013 AD

The Quantum Thief (2010)

• By Hannu Rajaniemi
• First of a trilogy:
  • The Fractal Prince (2012)
  • The Causal Angel (2014)

Terra Ignota Series (2016-21)

• By Ada Palmer
• Four novels:
  • Too Like the Lightning (2016)
  • Seven Surrenders (2017)
  • The Will to Battle (2017)
  • Perhaps the Stars (2021)

A Memory Called Empire (2019)

• By Arkady Martine
• 2020 Hugo Awards Best Novel

Works of C. S. Friedman

Works of C. J. Cherryh