This year I had the pleasure of finally reading the work of science fiction author Larry Niven when I ran across a 50-cent thrift-store copy of Protector. Like Arthur Koestler's Case of the Midwife Toad it is a work of science, but also an intense and thrilling page-turner. I finished it in a few days, and have since tracked down and devoured copies of the Hugo Award-winning Ringworld and The Mote in God's Eye — the best account of mankind's first encounter with an alien species that I've heard. —Joran Oppelt, CL marketing & promotions director
This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2011.