50 "Must-Read" Science Fiction Books

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I think it was Alexei Panshin (it may have been someone else) who noted that , without Smith's powers being real, the cult or religion formed in Stranger In A Strange Land makes no sense. Even with it, the book is full of elements that I found problematic at best. There's Heinlein's obsession with free love - essentially freedom to have sex with anyone, anytime which I'm not convinced is such a great deal as it's made out to be (Heinlein, like Freud, falls into the error of proceeding from a recognition of the importance of sexual urges in human nature to over-estimating their importance) and the frankly offensive remarks about rape. Heinleinists defend these sorts of things by saying that one must not mix up the writer and the story and ascribe everything a character says to the writer. However, like Chesterton, the post-Starship Troopers Heinlein was a polemicist in everything he wrote. If fans wish to praise Heinlein for the 'scathing attacks on Western culture' or the philosophical content in his works they have to be willing to accept the less laudable aspects of his books as also stemming from his own philosophical vision.

I don't believe Heinlein was a mere hack writer as one of the commentators on Ian Sales' blog says - but that's because I accept that a certain finesse of prose style was never a part of the charm or purpose of SF until much later than Heinlein's best work. It was raw imagination with a smattering of scientific plausibility (which I believe is a purely aesthetic element, although hard SF adherents will argue the point) that counted, and Heinlein with his sprawling Future History had raw imagination in abundance at his best .

As for Christopher Priest, I do feel he has quietly amassed one of the most original and challenging bodies of work in British SF - always bearing in mind that my own SF tastes are rather skewed by the fact that I don't accept that credible extrapolation and some sort of pragmatic respectability as 'thought experiment' in various sciences and their applications is really the defining factor for the genre.

 

[Fried Egg]

It struck me when reading "Stranger" that much of the shock value or radical nature of some of the ideas therein must have been greatly diminished to anyone reading after the late sixties.

 

[J-WO]

Definitely, FE. Some of it is very quaint by today's standards.

My favourite, though, is having Heinlein go on a long monologue about the beauty, nay the necessity, of free love, and then completely clamming up as soon as homosexuality is mentioned. Funny stuff.

 

[GOLLUM]

As for Christopher Priest, I do feel he has quietly amassed one of the most original and challenging bodies of work in British SF - always bearing in mind that my own SF tastes are rather skewed by the fact that I don't accept that credible extrapolation and some sort of pragmatic respectability as 'thought experiment' in various sciences and their applications is really the defining factor for the genre.

HMMM...I don't think I fully understand what you are driving at here J.P. w.r.t. to your skewed SF tastes and whether your comments are being directed specifically towards Priest; could you please further explain for the benefit of this curious soul?...

I'm currently reading a rather fine collection by Priest entitled Dream Archipelago and hope to complete the remaining Priest canon this year, hence my particular interest.

 

[iansales]

knivesout, I don't think Heinlein's prose was all that much better than his contemporaries. It was mostly serviceable - although, many sf writers of that time earlier couldn't even manage that. Where Heinlein excelled was in his deployment of sf tropes. He had a way of streamlining them into his story that made them seem a natural part of the setting. In many of his novels and stories, it's only the attitudes and sensibilities of his characters that seem dated - often the furniture actually feels like a different world. His classic example is, of course, "the door dilated".

 

[Connavar]

knivesout, I don't think Heinlein's prose was all that much better than his contemporaries. It was mostly serviceable - although, many sf writers of that time earlier couldn't even manage that. Where Heinlein excelled was in his deployment of sf tropes. He had a way of streamlining them into his story that made them seem a natural part of the setting. In many of his novels and stories, it's only the attitudes and sensibilities of his characters that seem dated - often the furniture actually feels like a different world. His classic example is, of course, "the door dilated".

His prose is serviceable sure but its good enough to forget the prose and see the story,ideas,characters he wrote about. I rate him very highly for that.

Stranger book might be dated but his ideas social or political in other books are timeless to me that they appealed to no matter the book was written in 40s or 60s.

 

[iansales]

What characters, Conn? He could only manage three - Competent Man, Perky Woman, and himself. And it's not like he wrote high-concept sf. He always claimed there were only three or four basic stories - and that's all he did, tell those same basic stories in a variety of science-fictional settings. He did well, but most of books don't have sensawunda you'd get from Clarke or Reynolds or Baxter...

I also don't see how his social or political ideas can be timeless. He was a product of his times - the 1920s - 1940s - and much of his social/political commentary is deeply-rooted in the attitudes of those times.

OTOH, he did invent the water-bed...

 

[Fried Egg]

And it's not like he wrote high-concept sf. He always claimed there were only three or four basic stories - and that's all he did, tell those same basic stories in a variety of science-fictional settings.

So far I've only read three of his books ("Stranger in a Strange Land", "Glory Road" and "The Day after Tomorrow") and they've each been very different. Not just in setting but in story. His versatility thus far has impressed me. Perhaps that's it though, I'm only ever going to encounter variations of those three stories again and again?

 

[iansales]

Well, the three stories concept is more basic than that - it's "boy meets girl", "the end of the world", that sort of thing...

 

[iansales]

Ah, wait. I've found the quote. It's from Alexei Panshin's Heinlein in Dimension (see here), and references his essay in Of Worlds Beyond, which I have at home. I can pull out RAH's exact words this evening, if necessary. But Panshin writes:

"In his contribution to the symposium Of Worlds Beyond, published in 1947, Heinlein said that he knew of three general patterns for stories that were people centered: 1) boy-meets-girl, 2) The Little Tailor (that is, the man who succeeds against great odds, or its converse, the great man brought low), and 3) the-man-who-learns-better."

 

[Fried Egg]

"Boy meets girl" and "Man who succeeds against all odds" are themes widely prevelent in SF and fantasy generally (and indeed all fiction) so it would hardly surprise me that one or more of those themes are often found in his work. I would say though that his work is hardly confined to those three themes...

 

[iansales]

Well, that's what Heinlein said himself...

 

[Fried Egg]

Well, I've only read three of his books and already see themes that go beyond those you've mentioned. Indeed, I wouldn't say "Stranger" falls into any of those three catageories. Elements of "boy meets girl perhaps" but that is hardly the central crux of the story.

 

[iansales]

These are the patterns of the story at their most basic, don't forget. Glory Road is "girl meets boy", but there's a lot built around that. Stranger in a Strange Land the little tailor, although again there is more than just that in there.

 

[Fried Egg]

These are the patterns of the story at their most basic, don't forget. Glory Road is "girl meets boy", but there's a lot built around that. Stranger in a Strange Land the little tailor, although again there is more than just that in there.

Oh, I agree that "Glory Road" has "boy meets girl". Indeed, It has all three patterns you listed.

But I would say it's a bit of a stretch applying "The Little Tailor" to "Stranger in a Strange Land" which wasn't really the crux of the story in my opinion. For me it was a combination of "Fish our of water" and "See our own culture through an alien's eyes" themes. These were more central for me.

 

[Connavar]

What characters, Conn? He could only manage three - Competent Man, Perky Woman, and himself. And it's not like he wrote high-concept sf. He always claimed there were only three or four basic stories - and that's all he did, tell those same basic stories in a variety of science-fictional settings. He did well, but most of books don't have sensawunda you'd get from Clarke or Reynolds or Baxter...

I also don't see how his social or political ideas can be timeless. He was a product of his times - the 1920s - 1940s - and much of his social/political commentary is deeply-rooted in the attitudes of those times.

OTOH, he did invent the water-bed...

He is strong Hard SF wise but unlike the others you mentioned he has much better storytelling ability to go along with it. I dont care for Hard SF thats cold,science but lack good story. I dont mean Clarke who i havent read enough of.


Of course he was a man of his times i meant his different ideas,stories are timeless because they can appeal to his modern fans in good sf novels many decades later.

Reynolds for example i think had some potential with RS world he created but he was only science and not strong enough story,ideas.

We of course wont agree it. You have others of his era you like more.
I enjoy his stories. He is not the greatest sf writer writing ability wise but storytelling,ideas wise he is unbeatable to me. SF without that is not SF i want to read.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

knivesout, I don't think Heinlein's prose was all that much better than his contemporaries. It was mostly serviceable - although, many sf writers of that time earlier couldn't even manage that. Where Heinlein excelled was in his deployment of sf tropes. He had a way of streamlining them into his story that made them seem a natural part of the setting. In many of his novels and stories, it's only the attitudes and sensibilities of his characters that seem dated - often the furniture actually feels like a different world. His classic example is, of course, "the door dilated".

Absolutely @Heinlein's strengths being his use of genre tropes. I didn't mean to imply that his prose was superior to his peers - as a matter of fact Cyril Kornbluth, at least, was a better stylist and while Poul Anderson started more or less on a level I think he constantly improved as a writer to the point where later novels like The Boat Of A Million Years and Harvest Of Stars are really light years ahead of Brain Wave stylistically.

I agree that Heinlein's plots are limited. Actually I think SF as a genre often limits itself to certain plot-patterns and what makes any writer stand out is how they introduce not variations on the theme but rather different embellishments. Heinlein embellished his themes in many different ways and expanded the ambit of what many people thought SF could legitimately tackle. The fact that I find many of his social and political views incomplete at best and incoherent at worst is another matter altogether.

His gadget ideas on the other hand are always cool and credible, and some of them have since become realities.

Where I find him most limited is in characterisation. His strong women are not strong women at all. They are a male chauvinist's idea of an exciting lay, as opposed to a submissive one. And the romantic angle is usually couched in horrible baby talk and frequently has a very creepy angle, like the romance in The Door Into Summer.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

HMMM...I don't think I fully understand what you are driving at here J.P. w.r.t. to your skewed SF tastes and whether your comments are being directed specifically towards Priest; could you please further explain for the benefit of this curious soul?...

I think moments of epiphany are the real subject of most SF narratives; they use scientific trappings to achieve this because it is a genre conceived in an era when science was/is seen as the primary means to achieve knowledge and insight. Given this view, a writer like Priest who dispenses with the window dressing and gets right to producing an epiphanic effect through the manipulation of perceptions of reality appeals to my expectations of SF more than pages of hard scientific extrapolation. But definitions of SF vary...

 

[GOLLUM]

I think moments of epiphany are the real subject of most SF narratives; they use scientific trappings to achieve this because it is a genre conceived in an era when science was/is seen as the primary means to achieve knowledge and insight. Given this view, a writer like Priest who dispenses with the window dressing and gets right to producing an epiphanic effect through the manipulation of perceptions of reality appeals to my expectations of SF more than pages of hard scientific extrapolation. But definitions of SF vary...

AH...thank you, that makes things much clearer.

The current collection Dream Archipelago so far seems to be all about Priest playing with different forms of reality as an interlinking theme, so I would say he's very much on par for producing another excellent example of his considerable abilities. Have you read it?

Owning most of his books I'm interested in, my intention is to complete the Priest canon this year; so I think I'm in for a literary treat....

 

[ktabic]

I've read 17 of those books, although some of them where so long ago I only vaguely remember what the story was. Might have to pick up some of them again.