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As it's come up on one of my feeds, here I have an absolute classic for you:

Fredric Brown's 1954 short story Solipsist

Whilst he wrote novels, too, I always consider Fredric as one of the grand masters of the short - sometimes very short - story, frequently with an surprising twist to it that can turn an entire story on its head and forces the reader to start again. This is not one of those, but the twist is a classic.

For those not familiar with the term, Wikipedia provides the following definition for Solipsism:


 from Latin solus, meaning 'alone', and ipse, meaning 'self', is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.

 

 

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Doris Lessing – The Sirian Experiments

 

Iain Sinclair - Radon Daughters

 

Liz Williams - Empire of Bones

 

Tricia Sullivan – Occupy Me

 

Peter Watts - Blindsight


Andy Weir - The Martian

 

Peter Watts – Maelstrom

 

Ian Sales – Adrift on the Sea of Rains

 

Doris Lessing - Shikasta

 

Somtow Sucharitul – Starship & Haiku

 

Ken MacLeod - Cosmonaut Keep

 

Thomas Pynchon – Gravity’s Rainbow

 

Somtow Sucharitkul - The Throne of Madness

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