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CommentAuthorDr. Orphusi
- CommentTimeMar 30th 2006 edited
As the topic suggests, what are the best science fiction novels you’ve had the pleasure of reading? I’ve only just started getting into the genre myself, but my favorites have to be as follows:
Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke
Top of the tier. Everything about is perfect. The idea of an Alien-controlled Utopia was masterfully conceived, and the Overlords themselves were extremely interesting. The ending is one of the best endings I’ve read in a book – I shan’t spoil it, but suffice to say it goes far deeper than I thought any science fiction novel could. Combine all of that with some beautiful descriptions (namely when Clarke starts describing various heavenly bodies and other natural wonders), and you have one awesome book. I’ve yet to read 2001: Space Odyssey… is it as good? I’ll pick it up immediately if it is.
The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury.
An awesome collection of short stories which are interwoven into a single tale via a man with tattoos that come alive and describe entire worlds. Some extremely interesting stories and themes, and some very nice description at times. Far, far better than Bradbury’s more famous novel, Fahrenheit 451, which was somewhat disappointing after reading this.
Well, those are my two picks. However, I welcome the more knowledgeable science fiction fans to make a few more suggestions than that. -
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I would definitely call myself a sci-fi fan, but when I come to actually name books it gets difficult. The problem lies in the definition of what sci-fi really is. Many of the books I internally think of as sci-fi, on deeper inspection, contain few of the elements synonomous with the genre.
Take dystopian fiction for instance. Instinctively I want '1984' (Orwell) to be under the same header as say 'Brave New World' (Huxley) or 'The Machine Stops' (short story by E.M. Forster) [all great fictions by the way]. Problem is, 1984 contains very very little of the techno-future conceptions inherent in the other dystopias. Missing too is the sense of a time and a place projected far beyond the mere present we now inhabit. This same contrast pops up throughout my favourite novels and short stories.
Sooooo, I like to use the term 'Speculative Fiction' (a favourite of Margaret Atwood) i.e. fiction that speculates on the future of mankind, on the nature of mankind, or the nature of science and societies yet to come. This somewhat gets rid of a lot of sci-fi that just handles massive species battles or voyages across the stars (the space opera kind of sci-fi) but it better fits for me what makes good examination of the human condition. So, anyway, here's a couple of my favourites:- Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick:
I could have picked 5 or 6 different Dick books as my favourite, all of which are outstanding for their originality (even by today's standards). Somehow though MITHC is clearer in conception, better organised and certainly more finely researched than Dick's other novels.
It is set in what appears to be an alternate reality where the German's and the Japanese won WWII and the present day North American Continent is split between their control. In the anti-establishment underworld a mysterious book begins to circulate which speaks of an alternate world where the Allies became victorious. Dick's genius lies in merging not only the two realities described, but the very one we observe as our own. Double, triple, quadruple times whilst reading I had to stop and pinch myself to make sure I was still real. - Starmaker, Olaf Stapledon:
Wow. I have commented on this book before on my site, but a not even a million blog entries would suffice to sum up the nature of its brilliance, its vision, its sheer beauty.
You think you've read books that stretch the very boundaries of this universe? You haven't... Starmaker is a 'novel' with no central characters, no human drama, no beginning, middle or end to its narrative. It takes place over a span of time greater than the entire life of this, or ANY number of universes, and manages to intertwine the fates of all possible conscious life forms in every possible realm of reality.
If mankind were to fall tomorrow and I was given the task of choosing one book to fire off into space to represent the breadth of imagination our species is capable of, this would be it. Still breathtaking almost 80 years after its publication. Read it...
- Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick:
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CommentAuthorDr. Orphusi
- CommentTimeMar 30th 2006
I’d consider science fiction to be any fiction novel that deals with the Universe at large (and anything in it) or with a predicted future of human civilization. There’s plenty of sub-genres within that, of course.
I saw your recommendation of Starmaker a while ago while browsing through your archives and it's been at the top of my 'to-read' list since. I had a feeling you'd recommend it here. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it in any bookstores around where I live so I plan to order it off Amazon at some point soon. It sounds fantastic. You should read Childhood’s End if you haven’t already, I think you’d like it. -
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Toss of the reading, nothing quite comes close to an evening of next gen, with Deanna Troi, Jean Luct Picard and Data.
Although, I did read a Brave New World the other day - interesting, although failed to grip me. Day of the Triffids is up next - anyone read that? -
In the end I think 'Starmaker' woke me up. I was mid teens, finally telling the Jesuits to bugger off, give me the living universe anyday. I love Greg Egan for showing that there is no boundary between life and technology...Ian M Banks for coming up with the Culture, I want to be a part of it...Lets not forget the new Dr. Who..I wept for joy watching the Dalek episode...And I remember the ecstacy of watching Star Trek when it was new, though now I'd say I'm a Voyager man. Triffids is fun, ambulatory celery stinging the world into submission...1984 was originally 1948 but the publisher thought that a little too provocative , Mr. Blair was not pleased. Back to Wyndam..'The Midwich Cuckoos" I enjoyed the most. Oh and if you can get some biographical stuff on Dick it really will provide great insight into the origin of his themes, he was a wonderful, crazy bastard.
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It is good to see that Olaf Stapledon'S Starmaker is on your list, I was first introduced to his work when given a well worn copy of his "last and first Men" and this has been my most favored ever since, Starmaker a close second. William Wyndham was a little too light for my taste when I first read his books, maybe I should reread now that I'm aged... Clarke, Bradbury, Dick, Asimov, Herbert, are some of my other favorites and I devoured the short stories of Harlan Ellison.
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Yeah, 'last and fist men' was also a superb ride for me, I read that a lot more recenty than Starmaker too so it's very fresh in my mind.
I have really missed out on a lot of the auteurs of sci-fi. I have only ever read Clarke short stories, same with Asimov and Bradbury. I tried Dune once, but got lost in its depth of description. I wasn't in the mood for that kind of book at the time I read it, I hope to go back some day and give it more of a chance. Wyndam i read when I was about 13 14 so I pretty much remember none of it. The original black n white day of the triffids had an enormous impact on me as a kid. When I came to write stories at school years later I copied copiously from the imprint it had made on my brain.
They don't make sci-fi like they used to.
As for Dick, bring it on... -
While I'm in the cannibal mood..."Stranger in a Strange Land" by Heinlein...of course he was madder than Dick but this one is a must.
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- CommentAuthorellenclarke81
- CommentTimeApr 4th 2006
octavia butler, just so you can say you've read one of the only female black sf writers! (they're not very good tho oops) -
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CommentAuthorMole of Production
- CommentTimeApr 4th 2006
Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" is amazing. I don't know how many times I've read it, or "them," I guess: it's four books and a sequel. -
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it took me 1500 pages to realise Julian May was a woman. i kept thinking 'this bloke is really into describing womens clothing'.
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Its a sad fact that I have read very little female literature, not by any sort of choice, it's just that is what I find myself reading. To go out and purposely choose a book written by a female author kind of defeats the whole point of balance in the first place.
Any great female authors you can recommend? -
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CommentAuthorMole of Production
- CommentTimeApr 7th 2006 edited
Ursula K. Le Guin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin
I haven't actually read any of her novels, but her short stories are great. -
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Just heard from a friend of mine that Hayao Miyazaki (of 'Spirited Away' fame and creator of one of my all time favourite films, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind) is set to turn one of Le Guin's novels into an animated epic.
If I could only remember more than that... -
Regarding the comment I made above, here are details of Miyazaki's new Le Guin inspired epic:
The balance of the world is collapsing. People moving restlessly without a purpose. Something reflected in their eyes: a dream, death, or a world somewhere else.
People’s faces become estranged. Archmage Ged left to search for the source of this disaster and meets Arren, a boy who has the darkness in his mind.
The boy had been chased by the shadow. Theru, a girl with a burn on her face, meets Arren, the boy frightened by the shadow.
This summer, Man and Dragon will be one!"
More details can be found here... and here... -
I love science fiction, however defined. Some sci-fi elitists of the sort I encountered when attending my first WorldCon (aka "Interaction") in Glasgow last summer are keen to separate the plebian sci-fi of the unwashed masses of Star Trek fans from the afficianados of "the good stuff" like Iain Banks. Not me. I love 'em both!
Here are some of my favorites:
- The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. This is his first novel, a re-write of his novella Against the Fall of Night. Some folks criticize this as a simple story with simplistic characterization, but I appreciate the ideas broached by Clarke including AI (both good and evil), life extension (including a sort of episodic immortality with periods of sleep between lives), and an eternal city (an idea I find fascinating) in non-violent conflict with a pastoral civilization.
- Permutation City and Diaspora by Greg Egan. I think Egan has explored the implications of uploads, life in virtual worlds, and the creation of synthetic life forms (artificial life) more deeply than any other author I've read. Sometimes his prose gets a little hard to follow, such as when he's trying to explain life in a 5-dimensional world, and his training as a mathematician leads him to presume that his readers can visualize these concepts as easily as he does. But if you stick with him, you will be rewarded.
- Consider Phlebas and Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks. I could recommend as well some of the other books in Bank's series about The Culture, but these will serve as early and late entries in that ongoing work. Banks is absolutely sterling in his prose craft and his ideas. The Culture is a wonderful invention: a space-based galactic civilization living in artificial habitats. The population of The Culture consists of the descendents of renegades, misfits and free thinkers from planetary civilizations who fled into space for freedom. The Culture is a sort of democratic-socialist-anarchist paradise that is either served or ruled over by AI's (the Minds) with loving grace. The question of "Who's really in charge?" is never really answered, at least so far in the series. Setting that issue aside, simply enjoy Banks' excellent characterization, well-paced story-telling, and his vividly detailed descriptions of life in The Culture that have made more than one commentator express a yearning to live there. ("Hey, let's build The Culture ourselves!" is perhaps the very notion Banks seeks to inculcate.) Suggestion: Google "Iain Banks" and read a little about The Culture before diving into the books, because he does not spend much time giving new readers background to his tales. In particular, look for a website that has Banks' own essay "A Few Notes on The Culture."
- The Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. Space opera from the latter part of the Golden Age of science fiction. Read these books for the stories -- which are several, spanning ages in the fall and rise of galactic civilization -- and for the ideas, especially "psychohistory" which continues to inspire. Can we ever develop a mathematics of prediction so precise that it foretells the fall of civilization? And could such tools of psychohistory be used to predict when and where to intervene so as to help that civilization rise again? You be the judge.
- A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Few writers have ever developed truly alien intelligences so cleverly as Vinge. His tines, which are canine group minds, are extraordinarly well done. Vinge also excells in his technical details and his depiction of conflict among different groups within a galaxy composed of many diverse species and interests. Last but not at all least, Vinge is one who conceived the idea of the technological Singularity, in which the rise of greater-than-human levels of Artificial Intelligence forever alters life for all intelligent species. Vinge is coldly realistic about the possibility of these super AI's being as morally problematic as any lesser intelligence, with both the good, the bad, and -- a majority -- the indifferent lurking always in the background but occassionally making frightingly dangerous interventions into human-level civilizations.
- The Golden Age trilogy by John C. Wright. In these books, Wright presents a far future civilization (circa 500,000 C.E.) of technological wonders and cultural stasis, in which one man stubbornly pursues his goal of building a starship at great personal cost. Wright does a wonderful job of describing life in a world where virtual reality overlays on one's senses provide a constant filter that makes the world seem to fit one's preferred cultural schema. What one obtains in pleasant aesthetic consistency is had only at the cost of never really seeing things as they truly are. Except sometimes....
Regards,
Mike
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"The Ship who sang" by Anne McCaffrey. It contains very little in the way of philosophy or metaphysics, the technological underpinning is, ah, non-existant and it takes about forty minutes to read from cover to cover, but Helva is just so darn nice that I'd really like to meet her, and fall in love with her, and find out if they provided any way she could experience sex!
A book, I think it was by Heinlein, in which an artificial intelligence yearned for a human body (and sex) and finally achieved it even though it meant giving up immortality etc a' la Eowyn in (Jackson's) LotR. If anyone can give me the title I'd be obliged.
I like some of le Guin, too, but would class this as fantasy rather than sci-fi, the difference (to me) being that fantasy accepts the existance of 'magic' while sci-fi restricts itself to the realm of the physically possible, even if highly improbable. Yes, the boundary can be blurry but I'd claim we'd all recognise it - or at least recognise our own definition of it - somewhere. So I'm afraid I would classify 'Star Trek' as fantasy rather than sci-fi. I'll allow you transporters and even holo-decks, but FTL isn't just highly improbable for objects the size of Galaxy-class cruisers. It's impossible.
As the above two books reveal I'm particularly drawn to exploration of the concepts of 'intelligence' and 'consciousness' and whether it can ever be 'artificial'. For this reason I was a fan of Star Trek 'Next Generation' as Data and the Borg were right up my street. I also always regretted that they never developed the Enterprise's AI into something along the lines of Andromeda's Rommy. I was also a fan of Next Generation as there was never any doubt that Deanna Troi had been provided with plenty of ways to experience sex!
Speaking of which, of course, there was also Seven from 'Voyager', Rommy, Trance Gemini AND Bekka from 'Andromeda', Ezri Dax from "Deep Space Nine'... -
Oh and hey, in my, ah, excitement, I almost forgot. For some fairly insipid sci-fi and pure, unadulterated fantasy can I recommend the diary of Pope John XXIII (1958 - 1963)? To whet your interest this is just one of the entries:
"May 19,1962
From the heavens will appear the saviors. They will arrive on June 5,1995 and begin the task of assisting in the cleanup and repair of the environment and the crippled countries. Many will fear those odd- looking beings but they come in peace, and will with God's guidance, transform earth from a charred spinning rock to a lush oasis in space. The survivors will flourish in a world without war, disease; or hatred. My heart is finally at peace with this knowledge that there is hope for humanity."
I kid you not - well, that's the claim, anyway. Check it out at [http://www.euro-tongil.org/swedish/english/epope.htm] -
have any of you read Ender's Game? I read it in middle school and i loved it. I just started Neuromancer, which seems cool.
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I haven't read Ender's Game, but intend to one day. I listened to well over half of Neuromancer (audio tape version) before I couldn't handle it anymore. The description was overly complicated, full of fancy words that didn't need to be there and the narrative, the actual story itself, felt impossible to connect with. Maybe I'll go back and try reading it one day. I expected so much more from possibly the most famous Phil K Dick clone of all time
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Hmmm... Let's see... A few off the top of my head in no order...
Accelerando, by Charles Stross.
the Manifold series, by Stephen Baxter.
the Hyperion series, by Dan Simmons.
Cities In Flight, by James Blish.
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Cyberiad, by Stanislaw Lem.
Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany.
I've Loved everything I've read by P.K. Dick. I enjoy Lem very much, have been more and more impressed by Stross, didn't make it through "Quicksilver" though I loved the idea of it, had a short Heinlein phase, have only read the recent Clarke books that were co-authored with Baxter, and have not managed to pick up "Starmaker / Last and First Men" though it's been sitting in my pile for a long while now, and just recently finished "A Voyage to Arcturis" by Lindsay and "This Immortal" by zelany. I am currently knee deep in "The Darkness That Comes Before" by R. Scott Bakker which I am enjoying...
I am always open to passionate sci-fi recommendations so keep 'em coming. -
Wow, some really amazing input here. Loads of stuff I've never heard of. I intend, one fine day, to get myself stranded on an island / passing asteroid, with copies of all available sci-fi in existence. Time is all that's needed to travel the realities contained within.
Absorb... -
Remember the twilight zone and take a robot optometerist.
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- CommentAuthorkaptinkaiju
- CommentTimeMay 19th 2006
Zanesville : A Novel
by Kris Saknussemm
I don't know if you can call it sci fi, but its good anyways.
Have Spacesuit-Will Travel
by Robert A. Heinlein
Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card
The Einstein Intersection
by Samuel R. Delany
These are all very good sci fi books that I've read. -
Just been perusing Danierus stuff on Pi and am reminded of Carl Sagans 'Contact'..I wont spoil it but it really ends well, of course they left the BEST bits out of the movie..........Another good reason i cant stand matthew maconahey ( i dont want to know how to spell it)
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Greg Bear - Eon
alternative reality
taking off where A.C.Clark left -
Yup, Greg Bear and the super Bs, Baxter and Brin (?).
Just getting into Hyperion by Simmons that was mentioned above...bloody bliss! The older I get the more cantankerous and intolerant of clumsiness, particularly in myself, but Hyperion is so far flawless.
Was it Bear that hit the scene with Blood Music? -
A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller (repeating jmorrison above)
This is the only Science Fiction novel cited as 'good' by James Michener in his novel 'Space'.
To which I ask, why should I pay attention to the opinion of a character in a novel derivative of Tom Wolfe?
But it is a very good book (I say so.) -
- CommentAuthorklause_kilski
- CommentTimeJan 12th 2007
my incomplete list
I greatly enjoyed the Dune books by Frank Herbert,in my opinion arguably the best sci fi series ever written.
The Ringworld books by Lary Niven would make my list, M.Niven has produced many noteworthy novels and coming up with one title was difficult.
The Hyperion series by Dan Simmons is excellent by any standards.
Allthough Phillip jose Farmer's Riverworld series may not be considered sci fi by some, it still deserves honourable mention,this writer broke just about every cultural taboo in existence with his well written stories and concepts.
oh, and also anything by Vernor Vinge
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