As I have mentioned before, I started reading dystopias at eight. This naturally led to my reading science fiction or SF (never scifi) and the third book was, as I have said, Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, in the Wellsian tradition.
But it wasn't all literary. Dreck. I craved dreck! As someone once said, it's time to get SF out of the universities, and back in the gutter where it belongs. So I was intrigued by this list of best SF of the last 50 years, at tikistitch, via Pharyngula. The titles I have read are in bold.
The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
But where is No enemy but time? by Michael Bishop? Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward? And why include the ones I marked in italic as SF? Fantasy ain't SF, dude.
Late change: I read the Wikipedia entry for Children of the Atom, and I recall the story line, so I added it.
- Log in to post comments
What amazes me is that I've read almost all the SF books you have and I'm not a fan. The other interesting thing: very few of these books were published in the last decade or two. Where are the recent SF books that are worth reading?
Good question. I think the role of SF as a way of exciting minds has waned as our technologies begin to resemble those of SF.
"Where are the recent SF books that are worth reading?"
It's not guaranteed, but following the major awards sometimes suggests books worth investigating.
These include:
* Nebula Awards (peer review, voted on by Active Members of Science Fiction Writers of America)
* Hugo Awards (people's choice, by paid members of the World Science Fiction Convention, mostly fans)
* John W. Campbell awards
* Theodore Sturgeon awards
* Philip K. Dick awards
* James Tiptree, Jr. awards
* Locus Poll and Awards (readers of Locus, the magazine of the science fiction industry)
See, for example:
The Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards
http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/
I'm not sure about the criteria for classification, but I guess that both of Neal Stephenson's trilogies will make it into the list in the future.
A lot on that list are what I would call fantasy.
Well, it does say "SF and Fantasy" in the original list...
Anyway... Neal Stephenson and Greg Egan are the current writers who I feel have best explored our techonological future. If we ever do colonise the solar system, Ben Bova and Stephen Baxter may well be cited as influential.
Of the list above, I've read 36 of them.
You don't think the ones in italics could be part of the fantasy side of "The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years" do you?
Oh, and I guess the reason there are so few recent books is because it takes time for a book to become influential.
Bob
The last time fantasy was worth reading was Fritz Leiber. Donaldson is crap. Even the Raymond Feist stuff stopped being interesting after about five books.
I agree with Stephenson and Egan. But Greg Bear ought to be remaindered before he;s even published.
I would suggest reading Alaistair Reynolds. Hard SF with some really good story lines
Thanks. I'll check him out.
Reynolds got me reading hard SF again after a couple of years of burn-out (for which I blame Egan's 'Diaspora', I'm afraid). He's good, and I find that his style is slightly better than Baxter's. John Meaney's 'To Hold Infinity' is also worth it.
Paul (J) McAuley is also worth it; he's one of those rare sf authors who's trained as a biologist and it shows. The same goes for Brian Stapleford -- his 'Architects of Emortality' sequence is quite neat.
Adam Roberts is good at wrongfooting the reader. Bit of an acquired taste, though.
I'm tempted to recommend Hal Duncan's 'Vellum' and 'Ink', though strictly they're Sam Delaney-style soft sf/fantasy (very, very modernist) with Sumerian overtones, as they're the best things I read in the last year or so, but they might not be to everyone's taste. (Duncan has a deep dislike of sub-genre distinctions, so it follows that everything gets a bit wierd. But good though. Very, very good.)
Some in the more recent-and-brillliant category
1.Peter Watts (a marine biologist, and it shows)
2.Alastair Reynolds (an astrophysicist; ditto)
3.Iain Banks (ummm...an English major with deep respect of and good knowledge of, science?;)
4.Greg Egan (a physicist/computer scientist, and it shows).
5.Ken McLeod (a foul-mouthed Scottish anarchist, and it shows;))
Enough already!
The aforementioned ones can also write well(-ish); something not every one of the scientist-SF writers has been capable of (e.g. Clement or Clarke--I love both of them, but their style is...atrocious?)
"Greg Bear ought to be remaindered before he's even published."
John Wilkins: are you saying that you don't like the speculative genetics in "Darwin's Radio"? Or the bio-nanotechnology of Blood Music? Or don't like what he did in his posthumous Foundation novel in Asimov's universe? Or don't like his style?
Enquiring minds want to know...
There are about 5 that haven't read. Most I read before I was 15.
I think I stopped caring about that when I was 19 or so.
I suggest you read some good old-fashioned sword-and-planet, like Leigh Brackett's The Ginger Star , The Hounds of Skaith , The Reavers of Skaith , so you can see how pointless it is to look for distinctions a significant portion of readers will agree on.
C.J. Cherryh's "Foreigner" series is brilliant. Real SF. Aliens! Space Travel! Plot!
Two points, the most important first:
Go find a copy of Crowley's Little, Big. It's fantasy, not science fiction at all, but it's rich and beautiful and sad and sweet and one of the best damn things I've ever read.
Second recommendation for Peter Watts. Three of his books are available as downloads at rifters.com (http://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm). Warning: Don't look for happy talk. Reviewer James Nicoll says, "Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts." On the other hand, his slide show "Vampire Domestication" at http://rifters.com/real/progress.htm is hilarious.
There's another version of this list with various types of markup, including "Times font: Author is douchebag". The only book marked up this way is Ender's Game.
D'oh! I should learn to read all of the words in the original post before shooting my fool mouth off.