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SF/F Book Recommendations
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I've read 8 of them, and there's only two I'm not familiar with, everything else I'm at least aware of and plan to get around to some day.No Fahrenheit 451? I found that one more compelling than Brave New World, but that could be because I read 451 and also 1984 in school so got to go into more depth in them. Only got around to Brave just before the TV series came out.
I wonder when I'll manage to spell Fahrenheit correctly on the first try and not need the auto-correct to help out. Celsius is so much easier :o)
One of these days I need to read 2001: Space Odyssey just to find out if its a weird as the movie :-D
There are a number that I would not have included on that list, and others that I think should be there, like Fahrenheit 451. I would have had War of the Worlds in place of The Time Machine for the H.G. Wells book, and I would have found a place for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
IIRC, 2001 was a novelization of the movie. Clarke wrote a short story that sparked the idea.Agreed, Fahrenheit 451 should be on the list, if not at the top of it.
Tony wrote: "There are a number that I would not have included on that list, and others that I think should be there, like Fahrenheit 451. I would have had War of the Worlds in place of The Time Machine for the..."I absolutely agree, War of the Worlds really drew me in, I felt the suspense. But the Time Machine mostly bored me, it felt kind of pointless (until I read the sequel by Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships, then he got into consequences of time travel which was so much more interesting than a bunch of Lovecraftian white apes)
I can only definitely say I have read six... There are three more I think I read, but it is so long ago I can't absolutely say for sure. There are four I have never heard of. Time Machine vs War of the Worlds... Not sure, both more or less the origins of their species eh? There is a profound melancholy about the Time Machine that stayed with me a long time after reading it. War of the Worlds, bigger, bolder, more adventurous yeah. I am going to call it a draw.� Could I suggest Arthur C Clarke 's Childhoods And should be there?
End, Childhood's End... End.... Damn you autocorrect...�
I've read 18/21, with Ringworld, Startide rising and Pandora's star on my TBR list.I think it's a pretty good list, with many worthwhile classics. I'd say the odd one out is Project hail Mary, which is way too recent, but still a pretty good book.
I've read a couple of them. I think there are way too many lists out there anyway. "10 must reads [enter genre/ before 30/40/100]. More usuful perhaps are recommendations that help people find books that they'll actually enjoy classic or modern.
Annis wrote: "...an overrated poseur like Heinlein. We should have got over his dated sexual politics by now.""Overrated" possibly (I detest most of his books from 1970 on.) but he certainly wasn't a poseur. He was extremely influential for both the public & the SF authors that followed him. He, along with Clarke & Asimov, pulled SF out of the magical Doc Smith days into more realistic SF in their pulp short stories. He was also the first Grand Master of SF, not a title given to poseurs.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'dated sexual politics'. His politics are often called Libertarian. He definitely pushed themes of self-reliance & equality which were well done in his juveniles where it is tempered by societal responsibility. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", his book in this list, is basically an updated version of the US revolution against England. It's not a subject to sneer at.
As far as sex went, he was on the bleeding edge of his time in pushing female & other-than-WASP characters into major roles in spite of his editors like John Campbell. His stories may not read like it now, but that's simply because things have changed so much & younger folks don't realize how much has changed. It doesn't help that his characterization was extremely limited. "Stranger in a Strange Land" is dated today, but it was written in the early 60s before the sexual revolution & was an icon at the time.
No, RAH wasn't perfect, but denigrating his work the way you did is way out of line. It simply demonstrates an ignorance of the times & the evolution of the genre.
Kaladin wrote: "I've read a couple of them. I think there are way too many lists out there anyway. "10 must reads [enter genre/ before 30/40/100]. More usuful perhaps are recommendations that help people find book..."Agreed. Trying to trim down such a broad, diverse genre into a list of 20 is fairly silly. 10 times that is tough. I've read something by all the authors listed & 18 of the 21 books. I think they did a pretty good job overall.
Jim wrote: "No, RAH wasn't perfect, but denigrating his work the way you did is way out of line. It simply demonstrates an ignorance of the times & the evolution of the genre."I didn't want to reply to Annis' post because anything I wrote would have looked like bickering, but you answered better than I could have. People need to be able to put books (or movies or whatever) in the context of when they were written if they want their opinions of them to be taken seriously.
And I'm not even a fan of Heinlein, I've only read his big 3 and The moon is a harsh mistress is the only one I really loved.
Jim wrote: "Kaladin wrote: "I've read a couple of them. I think there are way too many lists out there anyway. "10 must reads [enter genre/ before 30/40/100]. More usuful perhaps are recommendations that help ..."True. They have selected good books for this list.
There's no use bashing Heinlein for his works now. That was a completely different era. Might as well bash Borroughs, Zelazny, Asimov and many other authors. I tend to like the older works as compared to the new, myself.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I read somewhere that some publishers consider editing classics which contain passage now viewed as, for want of a better word, inappropriate. I find that concerning. Annotations would be the better way to go. Help people understand how time and values have changed over time.
Editing books for 'inappropriate' passages is stupid & dangerous; it's just plain blasphemous. People are already too ignorant of history & whitewashing it helps no one. Annotations would help, but entire books could be written for many. I was born at the tail end of the 50s & the differences between attitudes on sex, religion, race, ethnicity, & gender are so different that it's mind boggling. There's still quite a lot floating around though that needs to be stamped out. Mostly the big things have been addressed, if not fixed, but there's little holdovers that are irritating. Like my son-in-law being told by Kentucky state officials that it was illegal for him to change his last name to my daughter's. It isn't & he had the Federal paperwork to prove it, but folks really can't wrap their heads around it.
In 2000, I had to threaten to buy a different car because they said they couldn't give my wife credit without me. They did, but it's a reminder that women often couldn't get credit not terribly long ago. It's amazing how prevalent such things still are.
Or even for the wife to be put on the deed to the house! That's more common now, but it wasn't the norm.
True. Some of the rights we take for granted haven't been around all that long. Parts of Switzerland for instance , didn't give women the right to vote till 1990. That's insane.
I remember when my father or my husband would have had to give permission and be a guarantor if I wanted to take out a loan or buy on credit. There are all sorts of examples of how much things have changed. Re writing books so that such things didn’t happen would create a totally wrong history of recent decades and there is enough ignorance among young people of how much change there’s been. Rewriting books from even further back simply distorts reality. Lack of information is the enemy of progress and ignorance of what went before endangers the freedoms we’ve so painfully gained.
I do get why younger people have trouble understanding why things were as they were. We are all products of our time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, eh? It all looks so clear cut with distance. Seeing the forest though, is quite difficult when you are surrounded by trees. The famous quote, "the past is another country, they do things differently there," is very true. What is also true, is that when you live in a country, you tend to abide by its rules and customs, even the ones you don't agree with.Things have changed hugely since I was a kid. Just a few examples... A hugely popular light entertainment show, prime time, millions of viewers, "The Black and White Minstrel Show." Yep, that is exactly what it sounds like Mr Interlocutor, black face minstrelsy. The Benny Hill Show, one of the biggest things on TV. The gags mostly consisted of taking the mickey out of racial stereotypes and women unexpectedly ending up in their underwear. Big sitcom, "Mind Your Language," racial stereotypes again , it was set in a night school class for people wanting to learn English as a second language. Then there was the "cultural norm" that our red top tabloid newspapers should always feature a topless women ( preferably under twenty) on page three. Everybody loved the Miss World beauty pageant of course, even when protesters disrupted that they were dismissed in the press as "nutters."
A lot of the school books and library books we worked with had been written when the map was mostly coloured pink (The British Empire to be clear).
Even comics like the Beano and the Dandy we had to read as kids were full of racial and sexual stereotypes that would get questions asked in parliament now.�
If this stuff is all around you and treated as completely normal by all the people you are told to trust and respect, it is not easy to see other perspectives.
Even people like writers, playwrights etc who are paid to think aren't immune to these largely unconscious biases. It is unfair to judge them by today's standards and as Jim pointed out, actually quite dangerous. There is another famous quote that says, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it." If we retcon the past , if we sugar coat and sanitise it, well.... What we get is exactly what has been happening. The rise of popularism, crazy conspiracy theories, flat earth nonsense, neo Nazi abhorrent rhetoric, fake news, and so on, and so on...
Editing books written in a different age in case they offend a modern audience is one step away from taking them out, piling them up and striking a match.
So yeah, I do understand how it looks to younger people, but if you didn't live it, you don't really get it. Thankfully most of us old geezers and gals were able to change with the times and understand why the times needed to change. Despite what some would have you believe, most of us are right behind the way the world is now. We aren't racist and sexist and we don't want to stop people from being who they are comfortable being. That is quite a feat when you think about it, when you think about the world we grew up in. In many ways though it is precisely because we lived it, that we are for it...�
Well said, Robin. I don’t hanker after the ‘good� old days, a lot of it was pretty bad, as in your examples. I do worry that some people are willing to condemn those who aren’t entirely convinced by their arguments. There can sometimes be good reason to disagree, especially when some of those of us ‘richer in years� 😉 have memories and experience of what used to be considered normal and right. Old ideas aren’t automatically bad any more than they are automatically good. Knowledge is power.
Robin wrote: "I do get why younger people have trouble understanding why things were as they were. "Just wait till the next generation looks back on what we're doing today and think "how could they have not noticed that....living your life on a cell phone and ignoring the real world around you is dumb".
Just picked a random example about how you can't always recognize how ridiculous your ideas of how the world should be are, because that was how you were taught it should be, and EVERYONE around you is doing it too, so you thinks its ok.
So before pointing fingers at the past, try to sit down and image 50, 100 years from now what are we doing that will probably seem injust to them :) And the truth is, you'll probably get it wrong too, since you're stuck with modern day blinders...we all are.
And there's also the risk of alienating your audience. If you jump too far ahead, unless you're really doing something speculative, people might not read/watch your work. I recently rewatched Star Trek and it had very cringeworthy moments, but it also had a woman on the bridge. Steps in the right direction without maybe having the freedom to go all the way.
There are networks, and publishers to get past too, and they just want to sell your stuff and make profits, not make social statements, if they feel it won't sell they won't put it out there.
Yeah, Andrea exactly. Those pointing fingers today will have fingers pointed at them tomorrow. We are all of our time. And yes, as you pointed out, even if someone wants to change something, often it isn't up to them and becomes impossible for them.Good point Isabella about the "all or nothing, with me or against me" attitude that seems so prevalent now. Agree with me completely or get cancelled... Debate is where the kinks get ironed out of things, different points of view are a good thing. There is always something to learn, something perhaps you hadn't considered, even if you still disagree.
I do get a little tired of people taking a quick look at older people (like me�) and deciding before you have even opened your mouth that you will be a reactionary old boomer set in their ways and therefore automatically wrong about everything. LOL
Just as a P.S.... Last it be thought that I consider I grew up in terrible times, no, I didn't. Whilst there was a lot wrong with the 60s and 70s it was also a period of huge social change, fantastic technological advancement and totally amazing artistic and creative innovation. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times to steal a phrase from Dickens. So, though it was not the good old days (really there has never been such a thing) it had a lot going for it. As a family we were not well off, there was a lot of political strife, domestic terrorism, power cuts and some pretty terrible winters... Still I remember it fondly and for all of that, they were strangely hopefully times...
Autocorrect... Lest it be thought... Lest☺☺
And... Strangely hopeful times... Not hopefully times...autocorrect will be the death of me, it will give me a ruddy aneurysm or something...�
PPS... "The good old days" were largely responsible for ruddy Brexit and I didn't want that either. In this case we are talking a mythic England that never was, where beer was penny a pint, everyone played cricket on the village green and no one locked their doors. Oh boy... Will we ever learn?
Robin wrote: "Thankfully most of us old geezers and gals were able to change with the times and understand why the times needed to change. Despite what some would have you believe, most of us are right behind the way the world is now. We aren't racist and sexist and we don't want to stop people from being who they are comfortable being...."I think a lot of that is because we read, and even more because we read SFF, which generally posits a more inclusive society for all of its members. Andrea's comment about Star Trek (original series) featuring a woman on the bridge is very correct - it was ground-breaking for the time. Roddenberry was decades ahead in his vision of an inclusive society - and I believe it had a huge impact on myself (as a pre-teen) in getting me and my peers to accept the equality it portrayed as a normal thing.
I listen to people who proudly proclaim that they haven't read a book since they finished school, and I wonder how they could possibly believe that is a good thing.
Yeah, Roddenberry was not without his faults but his optimistic inclusive vision was well meant. A woman and a black woman at that in a position of authority working alongside a Russian and an Asian in days not far removed from "The yellow peril" and still in "The red menace" phase. You can pick holes in it but the intent was there. I think you are right about our reading choices too Tony. There are very few places S F& F hasn't boldly gone one way or another.�
Robin wrote: "Yeah, Roddenberry was not without his faults but his optimistic inclusive vision was well meant. A woman and a black woman at that in a position of authority working alongside a Russian and an Asia..."And I remember the HUGE fuss when a woman was appointed to present the weather forecast on the BBC. (1974) It seems incredible, now but it was headline news as I recall. When I look around at some of the current attempts to curtail women’s rights, I wonder how much has really changed, though. Makes me both sad and mad.
Well put, Robin - everything you wrote. I want to emphasize that the gains in equality we have today didn't happen because our generation opposed it as so many young SJWs seem to assume. I don't know how they can logically conclude that, but I run into it with my son-in-law all the time. All it takes is an old phrase to set him off on a lecture.
I just finished reading The Poe Estate which has a lot of references to supernatural stories written by Poe, Hawthorne, Lovecraft etc. The author put together a list of them at the end of the book, but added this caveat:"If you read them, you'll find many beautiful descriptions, heart-pounding adventures, and chilling visions. You'll also encounter attitudes that may jar today's sensibilities. Supernatural fiction from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often reflected the writer's anxieties, especially about women and people from other cultures, in ways that can seem ugly and shocking today.
I hope that won't scare you off. There's a lot to be learned - about the past, the present, and ourselves - from reading books we don't agree with. Take them with a spoonful of salt, and remember that our own great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandnieces and -grandnephews will probably need a dose of salt when they read our stories."
What was the chance that I would read those words just hours after I basically wrote exactly the same thing. Apparently me and this author think alike...you know, great minds and all that ;)
Having read a lot of Lovecraft lately, umm, yeah...you know those evil immigrants, being all sneaky and speaking funny languages you don't understand. At least he avoids coming off as sexist (he didn't deal well with women) by simply leaving them out entirely for the most part :o) He loved cats though, so he earned a couple brownie points from me, most supernatural writers make cats evil, but here they were often the hero, rescuing dreamers from danger.
I was just thinking of immigrants, how in Lovecraft's time it was the Italians, Irish, etc that people had issue with. But now that they are established, they "built the country" and its those new immigrants, the Mexicans, the Muslims, that are the criminals and stealing jobs from us the ex-Italians/Irish/etc. Just loops around, like we always need to find some bad guy to blame things on, so long as its not us...
But while Lovecraft was racist beyond the average person, you get others, like Twain, that tried hard to present the opposite. Sure he used the occasional "bad word" we feel the need to scrub now, but that's just people fixating on one word, and not what he actually wrote, the points he tried to get across. I read a few Twain books, stories, and was kind of weirded out by how very very modern (from our POV) he was.
Love your list. I grew up on the classics of sci-fi. This list speaks to me, but of course I want to add newer authors like Iain Banks and Alastair Reynolds. I like the short stories in Capital Disrupt as well.
Andrea wrote: "I just finished reading The Poe Estate which has a lot of references to supernatural stories written by Poe, Hawthorne, Lovecraft etc. The author put together a list of them at the ..."On your point of reading what we disagree with, may I draw attention to a quote from John Stuart Mill? ‘He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.� I first read it many years ago and it has stayed with me ever since. It continues, pointing out how we need to understand the root of other points of view, even if we aren’t persuaded by them. The whole passage is on my profile, if you’re interested. He was a great man, although I don’t agree with everything he wrote. He could be called a feminist before it was labelled such.
That's a great quote, love it (please picture a thumbs up emoji at this point.)
I've read 17 of the 21I don’t disagree with any of the one’s I’ve read.
Let’s see about the other four.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
I don’t know why I haven’t read this. The movie Bladerunner is based on it. Better get it on my TBR shelf.
The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
I know I have wanted to read this one, but never have.
Pandora's Star - Peter F. Hamilton
Don’t know this one. I’ll have to check it out.
The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu
The new Netflix series based on this novel makes me want to read it.
I’m gonna put these four on my To Be Read shelf.
10. Several I didn't like at all; a few I loved.
I love The Timekeeper's Secret by iLana Markarov! I can not atop reocmmending it and its the best sci fi book ever
I recommend Neverness by David Zindell and the Requiem for Homosapiens trilogy by him also!
I've read 7 of them - Time Machine, Brave New World, 1984, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Forever War, Ender's Game, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. There are another 3-4 that I plan to read, but many of the others aren't on my immediate to-read list.
These lists are fun, but I think the concept of "x books everyone must read" always rub me a little the wrong way. I know they aren't meant seriously, but there are just so many books out there that will have different value to different people.
But! If I were to "recommend" a couple things to all SFF readers it would be:
1. Get an idea of the history of the genres you like and consider what they brought to the genre or literature as a whole. Getting a sense of the history can help all readers also appreciate more recent books in a different way too.
2. Try at least a few "older" SFF works and not just those that always make the "best of" and "books you should read" lists. Imo one of the differences between the current landscape and pre-00 SFF - and especially SFF from the early 20th century to the 70s is the wild and creative ideas. Today many popular books have fallen into certain patterns. There are many great books today, but comparing with some of the books and stories from the 30s-70s in particular there is less risk taking on unconventional stories. Part of that of course has to do with the publishing landscape today.
Anyway that's my random little ramble lol
Comparisons with current endeavours and material from the 30s to the 70s is a really good point Nekrorider and I would extend that personally to include creativity generally. I think it definitely applies to music, also, films and TV and to some extent art. Things now and I realise it is a sweeping generality with many notable exceptions, tend to the safe and formulaic... often, if I may say so, to the bland... :-)
I fear, with the arrival of AI and the greed of the money men... Bravery will no longer be rewarded and the unconventional... well it will be a rare thing...
Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy
Books mentioned in this topic
The Poe Estate (other topics)Capital Disrupt (other topics)
The Poe Estate (other topics)
Fahrenheit 451 (other topics)
I've read 14 of the 21
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
1984 - George Orwell
Foundation - Isaac Asimov
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr
Dune - Frank Herbert
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein
Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
Ringworld - Larry Niven
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
Startide Rising - David Brin
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Pandora's Star - Peter F. Hamilton
The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu
Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir