Okay, this was prompted by the discussion on the thread that started out being about guides to sci fi.

Here are the "rules":

1) Post a list of anywhere from 1 to 20 (arbitrary cutoff) books that you think are worthy of recommending to a new reader of the genre.

2) List a single book or a series as one entry, but please don't list both (e.g., the Foundation series or Second Foundation, not both).

3) After 100 posts or so, assuming that many, I'll tabulate the results to see what gets the most votes and whether we can put together a top 100 list.

Here's my suggestion to get things rolling:

1. Dune by Frank Herbert

Childhoods End by Arthur C. Clarke

In no particular order.

Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Dune by Frank Herbert
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh

Black Man, Richard Morgan
Light, M John Harrison
The Execution Channel, Ken MacLeod
Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
Life, Gwyneth Jones (stupid touchstone doesn't work)
Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland
Voyage, Stephen Baxter
Kéthani, Eric Brown
River of Gods, Ian McDonald
The Difference Engine, Bruce Sterling & William Gibson

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling & William Gibson
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
The People Trap by Robert Sheckley
Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

ETA: typo

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2009, 12:33pm.

The Quiet War by Paul McAuley
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Brasyl by Ian McDonald
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Learning The World by Ken Macleod
Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
The Separation by Christopher Priest
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
Blood Music by Greg Bear

Dune by Frank Herbert (reread 2008)
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (reread 2008)
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (reread 2006)
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (reread 2007)
A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter M. Miller (it's been awhile, but I remember much of it so vividly, that has to count for something)

*edited to add dates last read due to challenge.

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2009, 3:43pm.

This is actually pretty tough to do - I could make up a list of my favorites, but would they be among the ones I would recommend to a new reader of SF? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Also, it is hard to recommend a book that I haven't read in 20+ years even if it remains a shinging star in my memory (for example, The Foundation Trilogy or West of Eden) or Earth Abides - but I have been thinking of what classic to include already.

That said I'll throw out a short list of a few 'classics' and may add more later.

Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson
Dragon's Egg Robert Forward
Dune Frank Herbert
Hyperion Dan Simmons
Blood Music Greg Bear
West of Eden Harry Harrison
The Fuzzy Papers H Beam Piper
and
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury because even tho it isn't all great parts of it are fabulous.

something by Clifford Simak belongs here but I can't pick which one.

I'm also a big fan of great short stories and would pick at least a couple of Gardner Dozois's year's best series. Two that I think are among the best are

The Year's Best Science Fiction Sixth Annual Collection which captures 1988 stories like Kirinyaga by Mike Resnick, The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter by Lucius Shepard

and perhaps better yet
The Year's Best Science Fiction Eight Annual Collection which captures 1990 and includes Terry Bisson's "Bears Discover Fire" and James Patrick Kelly's "Mr Boy" among others.

or maybe The Best of the Best by Dozois which I don't have so can't recommend really but seems to capture a great slice of the stories from the first twenty years of the anthologies.

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2009, 2:16pm.

Dune
Snow Crash
Ringworld
The man who folded himself
The Guns of the South
Starship Troopers

This is proving pointless. Most of you are trotting out the same old tired boring classics. And if you've not read a book for 20 years, how do you know how good it really is? Do you still think you appreciate books now the same as you did then?

Of the books mentioned so far, how many of you have actually read the titles you recommend within the last 5 years? I've had to remove a few from my list because I've not reread them recently - or even read them at all in the case of River of Gods.

Black Man, Richard Morgan (read Mar 2008)
Light, M John Harrison (read Feb 2003)
The Execution Channel, Ken MacLeod (read Apr 2007)
Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson (reread Dec 2006)
Life, Gwyneth Jones (stupid touchstone doesn't work) (read Jun 2005)
Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland (reread Nov 2007)
Kéthani, Eric Brown (read Oct 2008)

Take Back Plenty? Is that about Sparkle Plenty?

Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
Old Man's War (John Scalzi)
Warrior's Apprentice (Lois McMaster Bujold)

I reserve the right to add more later if I think of them! But these are certainly books I've hooked people with before. A part of me wants to also make this list very YA heavy - I supposed it depends on who you're introducing to the genre, doesn't it? But it's such an easy sell to teens these days, if you do it right.

>10

It's not so much whether we'd have the same reaction to a book we read twenty years ago when we've presumably read more/better sci fi since then, but what books do we think a new reader would like?

It's also possible, with respect, that some people still like the books you dismiss. I've re-read the Foundation trilogy within the past five years, and, while not putting Asimov up for stylist of the century, I still enjoyed it. Maybe it's just nostalgia?

And, of course, though there will be varying opinions about the books here proposed, there will also be varying tastes among potential readers. That's pretty much what keeps me coming back to LT threads! (Well, one thing.)

#10

The only one of my recommendations I haven't read in the past 5 years is Red Mars. All the others have been recent reads (or re-reads).

Also because these are recommendations for a potential new reader I tried for a bit of variety. I'm a bit disappointed that I cannot come up with a decent space opera to list but at least The Quiet War does involve conflict in space.

#10
I am sorry that you hold older science fiction in such poor regard. How did you ever manage to keep reading it?

With the exception of West of Eden I have read or reread all the books I listed in recent years. I purposely left out ones I had not. And I had already been considering older works for introductory purposes.

And these are books for new readers although I have some hesitation about recommending Dune to a new reader - it isn't where I would start but if we have a hundred it would be in there.

I certainly can't include monster tomes like Anathem that even I couldn't bear to slog through even tho it earns praises. I shouldn't have to read a couple hundred pages before it "clicks".

I've also tried to omit anything that I consider Fantasy even if I consider it very good. Thus I left out some interesting stuff by Lois Mcmaster Bujold for instance.

Ian, you presume to speak for all again, and that is not good etiquette. Several have pointed out here and in the preceeding thread that at different ages in ones life one appreciates things differently.

If one is an 19 year old member of LT they will have a different appreciation then you, and if one is an 80 year old they too will likely have a different appreciate. I expect that even if one were the same age as you, had read the same list as you, but lived in New York as opposed to England, the list would be different.

I get that you do not think that the old items do not hold water for you. But they do so for me and I am middle aged, have 1600 or so Science Fiction books in my library and think I am well read in the field.

My top rated science Fiction list is thus:

Honor Among Enemies by David Weber
Captain Empirical by Sam Nicholson
Hospital Station by James White
The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl
CRESCENT IN THE SKY by Donald Moffitt
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Elephant Song by Barry Longyear
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Oath of Fealty By Larry Niven
Requiem for a Ruler of Worldsby Brian Daley
Infinity Holdby Barry Longyear
Balance of Trade by Sharon lee
A Company of Stars by Christopher Stasheff
The Short Victorious War by David Weber
A Civil Campaignby Lois McMaster Bujold
We Open on Venus by Christopher Stasheff
Flag in Exile by David Weber
Red Planet Run by Dana Stabenow
The Honor of the Queen by David Weber
Ambulance Ship by James White
Callahan's Crosstime Saloonby Spider Robinson
Callahan's Secretby Spider Robinson
Conflict of Honorsby Sharon Lee
Empireby H Beam Piper
Enemy Mine By Barry Longyear
First Cycle
Star Healer
Star Surgeon
Time Travelers Strictly Cash
The Worlds of H. Beam Piper
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Circus World
Four-Day Planet
Fuzzies and Other People
Fuzzy Bones
The Fuzzy Papers: Little Fuzzy & Fuzzy Sapiens
House of the Wolf (The Phoenix Legacy)
Shadow of the Swan: Book Two of the Phoenix Legacy
Sword of the Lamb: Book One of the Phoenix Legacy
Trekmaster
A World Called Camelot
The Rolling Stones
Citizen of the Galaxy
The Cross-Time Engineer (Adventures of Conrad Stargard, Book 1)
Farmer in the Sky
Starship Troopers
Downbelow Station (20th Anniversary) (Daw Book Collectors)
Star Driver
Callahan and Company: The Compleat Chronicles of the Crosstime Saloon
Great Kings War
Exiles to Glory
Manifest Destiny
Uller Uprising
The Cosmic Computer
Lucifer's Hammer
Camelot in Orbit
Space Viking
The Mercenary
West of Honor
Long Shot for Rosinante
Wizenbeak
The Rebel Of Rhada
Great Kings' War
Planet in Arms
Police Your Planet
Phule's Company
A SPACESHIP FOR THE KING
Major Operation
The Magick of Camelot (Science Fiction Ser.)
Exiles to Glory
Infinity Hold
Janissaries
A Company of Stars (Starship Troupers, Book 1)
Ender's Game
Lest Darkness Fall
Complete Fuzzy
Sector General
Hoka!

Are these the best? No, but they are meaningful to me. Would I recommend them all, no. BUt the last nine, which is what the screen shows as I type this line, yes. So I am touchstoning those as an example

Exiles to Glory
Infinity Hold
Janissaries
A Company of Stars (Starship Troupers, Book 1)
Ender's Game
Lest Darkness Fall
Complete Fuzzy
Sector General
Hoka!

These are all good fun reads. Do I need to read The Time Machine everytime I want to read a good science fiction? Does it always have to have literary merit? But if it is something I want to give to a person who enquires of me what are the 100 best science fiction pieces so that they too can start appreciating the pasttime, then these books on the short list all work towards that.

Message edited by its author, Apr 12, 2009, 1:56am.

Off the top of my apical appendage:

Neuromancer
Solaris
Blood Music
Snowcrash
Look to Windward
Dune
Altered Carbon
Ringworld
Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy
Hothouse
Crash
Fahrenheit 451
Tiger! Tiger! (aka The Stars My Destination)
Serpent's Reach
Old Man's War
The Forever War
The Man in the High Castle
Stand on Zanzibar
Lord of Light

oh and then there was that one... what was it called?

#16 I'm not presuming to "speak for all again". I simply asked some questions because I was afraid people were naming books for reasons of nostalgia rather than because they had recent knowledge that they were suitable for the proposed role - i.e., to introduce a new reader to the genre.

It certainly seems that many of you have an uncritical idea of "fun". A book for me can't be "fun" if I find its attitudes offensive, its writing poor, its characters wafer-thin, its ideas hokey, and its world-building nothing but whitewash. And yes, I find the jingoism in a lot of military sf too offensive for me to find the books "fun". And I've read quite a few military sf series. One day I may even work out why.

#15 You might be surprised to learn that a lot of people hold science fiction in poor regard. And you know what? They have good reason to. A lot of sf is shite. But I like sf a great deal, and there is good sf available. That's what I prefer to read. But as fans of the genre we're not doing ourselves any favours by privileging old badly-written so-called "classics" over sf novels that are on a par with well-regarded mainstream and literary novels.

As I think I mentioned in another thread, I find it all but impossible to recommend so-called "Golden Age" SF to new readers. And crummy science fiction has been around forever. Crummy everything has been around forever. I'm not going to ever suggest someone read an old "Gor" story because it is historical. And yet I am sure there are Gor fans out there.

But this isn't the scifi as literature thread. With luck we can find a mix of good books to recommend new and old (although unlikely ancient). A number of the books already mentioned I would find it very hard to recommend but I am not going to automatically shoot them down - I'll let the wisdom of a larger number of fans do the sifting process. I for one would love to see lists of more recent accessible science fiction. Some is showing up, hopefully more will.

Oh yes...

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
The Black Cloud
We
A Plague of Demons
Rite of Passage
The Reefs of Space
Green Eyes
Nostrilia
The Iron Dream
Accelerando
More than Human
Slaughterhouse-5

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2009, 4:40pm.

#19 That's what I'm afraid of, that the popular classics will once again prove to be... popular. Even though they are unsuitable.

And sf does not get a free pass on good writing. Just because it privileges ideas, that doesn't mean it's allowed to have piss-poor prose, cardboard characters, bad research or idiot plotting. A good book is a good book is a good book. Some of them happen to be science fiction as well.

I have begun to wonder why iansales bothers with the SF genre, since he holds so much of it in low regard.

Anyway, a few I will put on the list in no particular order. And yes, I've read them within the last few years as part of my project to read (and review) every book nominated for the major awards in the genre.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl
The Book of the New Sun (all four books, and probably The Urth of the New Sun too) by Gene Wolfe
The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
Startide Rising by David Brin
Ring by Stephen Baxter
The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
Nova by Samuel R. Delany
City by Clifford D. Simak
Neuromancer by William Gibson

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2009, 4:52pm.

Enders Game
Dune
The Sparrow
Childhoods End
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Fahrenheit 451
Hyperion

Ian,
you say you don't like badly written SF yet you pick Kim Stanley Robinson. While his ideas may be good his writing is execrable, the worst of word-count, pot-boiling, airport book, Michael Crichton crap. I tried reading his 40 signs of rain and got bogged down, literally, in an extended passage about changing diapers, talk about padding. It's writing like that, that ruins SF. Newness doesn't outweigh books that have that spark of humanity to them that makes a book worth reading.

19: Why would you be surprised that the books that people enjoy for years remain the books they enjoy? You may not like them, but they endure for a reason.

>22 "I have begun to wonder why iansales bothers with the SF genre, since he holds so much of it in low regard."

We only get emotional about things we care about. Ian loves SF and wants it to be more than a popular genre. Haven't you ever been frustrated at the quality of something you love and wish were better?

Why should SF be most closely associated with the classics - classics that wouldn't have been published outside the genre? Why can't SF aspire to the quality of Shakespeare or George Eliot or William Faulkner? Wouldn't you like to see SF themes explored by authors of that ilk? Compare Ladislaw Lem with Isaac Asimov. How much would Lem's skill have enhanced Asimov's stories?

I'm currently reading Horus Rising and loving it a whole lot more than The Book of the New Sun and find the writing far superior. So far it is more enjoyable than most of the SF I've read. It is certainly a more enjoyable read than say Dan Brown's Angels & Demons. My main memory of the Foundation series was a feeling of ... WTF! Now there are people here who would say I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier (of course they and I disagree on that), but still, if a book can't make its story plain to me, I don't think it is very good.

My guess is, the more literary works one reads, the more one's reading ear becomes attuned to good language, the less one is willing to put up with poor writing regardless of the niftiness of the ideas. One can become frustrated at not finding SF ideas presented in well crafted language, expressed through real, three dimensional characters, with plots that drive home the points like a laser without having to lay it all out step-by-step as if leading a third grader to a thought.

To understand Ian, and I am not he and I suspect he can defend himself in this quite well, but nonetheless, to understand Ian, imagine one or more SF classics as if it had been written by Lawrence Durrell. I think that's one he could get behind.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Light by M. John Harrison
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
1984 by George Orwell

Here is another perspective. When a camp counsellor saw I, a twelve year old, had a penchant for Science Fiction, reading some Larry Niven at summer camp, he turned me around and said Kid, well he called me by my name but I was thinking of Arlo Guthrie and Alices Restaurant...

I am dated, so I have a dated view, but this older person said to me, Kid, you like Science Fiction, then here is one for you. Foundation

Now we talk about it and there are those who say it is bad. But it is as controversial as heinlein and the Heinlein threads. Asimov was considered a master of the genre, he broke out and was sold across many genres and he wrote many genres.

I would recommend Asmiov and Foundation as one of the 100, and a great place to start. It has great elements. Star spanning civilization, falling into decay, rebirth, a new type of science.

Just by a look at those who would vote for recommending it and those against however we will see a divide and make a list of 100 a divisive issue.

Now I can see a group of people sitting around a room trying to come up with a list, but how many have we got so far, about 90. So we have a few more to go before we were to start cutting and then we would probably have a weighting of the list so the very obscure choices that only one or two people support are gone in favor of the ones that are overwhelmingly chosen.

#22 See my response at #18.

#24 We'll have to differ there because I consider KSR a very good writer and, more so, a very important writer. His writing is nothing like Crichton and I'm surprised you'd even suggest as much.

#25 And I think that particular "reason" needs dragging out into the light. Perhaps the sf classics endure because sf readers just aren't very sophisticated readers. Which is fine when you're 13 years old. But we're not 13 any more.

#26 Ah, you mean like Tunc and Nunquam? :-)

#25 I am not surprised. I have a fondness for EC Tubb's Dumarest series but I wouldn't recommend it to new readers. They are not for the most part "well written" stories, but I nevertheless have enjoyed them for many years.

And I like what you are doing, recommending older SF you have read recently. Most of the classics that I might put on a list I have not re-read so I'm not going to list them.

#24 I really really liked Red Mars by KSR but I too bogged down with 40 signs of rain and have yet to go back to it.

#28 So a popularity contest is won by... the popular books. Big surprise. And really, Foundation? Great if you're a 12-year-old. But come on, Asimov's prose has all the grace and charm of a pregnant guppy, every universe he used in his books was 1950s America with extra gizmos, he didn't do characters at all, and his plots show their fix-up origins far too plainly. All the book needs to be a true children's classic is talking animals and mildly amusing illustrations.

I've not read those two, but if they are SF, then probably so.

#30 I too like the Dumarest books a great deal. Tubb knocked them out to order, but they were never less than competent. And Forty Signs of Rain is worth persevering - in fact, the entire Science in the Capitol trilogy is.

#32 Yes, they're sf. In Tunc, the protagonist invents a supercomputer, almost an AI. And in Nunquam, he invents an android woman. But they're not the sort of sf you'd find on a Hugo shortlist... But then neither is John Fowles' A Maggot...

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2009, 5:35pm.

I'll add The Light Ages by Ian R MacLeod to my list although it is probably only classifiable as Fantasy - but so too is some of the classic M. John Harrison. Are we allowed a little steampunk? Can I slip in the young adult Airborn and Skybreaker, two recent reads that are much more fantasy adventure than anything else.

I only got to page 22 in Red Mars. I found the relationships between the characters contrived, the drama synthetic. They all seemed to talk in exclamation points and I could not relate to them as 'real people' in any way. Does is get any better?

#31 "All the book needs to be a true children's classic is talking animals and mildly amusing illustrations."

Well.....he did have the Mule.....just kidding, just kidding.

Science Fiction is what it is. You can't erase its origins just because you personally consider them too humble to acknowledge. You can't redefine SF to be only those books that meet one reader's criteria.

Perhaps, there needs to be another list of best "Literary Science Fiction", though I'm sure even that kind of list would generate an argument or two. Personally, I'd find such a list interesting. I can read and enjoy decently written SF with good ideas, but I enjoy exceptionally well written SF with good ideas even more.

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2009, 5:50pm.

I'm not seeking to erase its origins, or to boot out of the genre anything that doesn't match my "exacting" standards. All I'm trying to do is get people to think about the so-called classics, about the sf books they automatically recommend to people. The genre has changed, but you wouldn't know from the way people are forever harping on about 60-year-old novels....

Some of the classics still work as YA novels (which is when we first read them after all). Many YAs are so goddam 'worthy' that I'd rather beat the kid with a stick than have them read them but they are never the less set by the school. My son read the Asimov 'Luck Starr' books when he was 11 and loved them and the Ender books are so much better than the moralizing alternatives. For a well read adult I wouldn't recommend Asimov at all but he still serves a purpose and it will be several years before my son has read enough SF and mainstream novels to be comfortable with the tropes in Charles Stross or Cory Doctorow.

Recommendations for new readers:

Psion by Joan Vinge
The Android's Dream by John Scalzi
Wrapt in Crystal by Sharon Shinn
Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
Chanur's Venture by C. J. Cherryh
Hunting Party by Elizabeth Moon
The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz
Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
Agent of Change by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Storyteller by Amy Thomson
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Startide Rising by David Brin

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2009, 6:39pm.

#36 it's been 2-3 years since I read the first two Mars books by KSR so can't comment specifically altho I do recall some mild character annoyance (and as well with his Antarctica book I read about the same time). But to paraphrase the expression, I didn't let it get in the way of a good story.

I'm planning to re-read them before too long and get Blue Mars done as well this time.

29 and 31: Perhaps not everyone wants the same out of their prose that you do? You call Asimov's prose graceless, I would call it direct (and in other places I have noted that his style is better suited to the nonfiction works he authored, but that's beside the point).

It is more than people simply offering Foundation to new readers that results in the book popping up on these lists over and over again. If it was truly awful and didn't resonate with readers even today, then new readers would figure that out right away, and it would drop in the popular estimation. Perhaps rather than railing against the fact that Foundation and Starship Troopers and Rendezvous with Rama (and the other similar vintage works) keep showing up, maybe we should look into why they do despite their admitted flaws.

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2009, 6:56pm.

Oh, what a great thread idea.

The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester
The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
Babel-17 - Samuel R Delany
The Man Who Folded Himself - David Gerrold
Jumper - Stephen Gould
Forever War - Joe Haldeman
Dune - Frank Herbert
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller
Gateway - Frederik Pohl
Hover Car Racer - Matthew Reilly
Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon

I'm sure I will have forgotten at least one book.

Ian is right in one regard; some of my old favourites have become quite a dissapointment when I have reread them. And in regards to the books I have posted, I have read them all within the last year, no old fond memories here, only new ones instead.

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2009, 8:03pm.

What I think we see though is more people are giving the older work credit than denying it.

And even should one want to criticize Asimov to death, and say he is awful because he is popular, Storm has it correct when he cites that Asimov is popular for more than the fact that people followed the herd and bought his books. It would be different if it was Dan Brown, and only bought Da Vinci Code, decided it was horrible and then didn't buy anything else, but Asimov sold and sold again, and again and again and in those 300 to 400 books he not only had best sellers within the genre of science fiction but elsewhere.

It wasn't just 12 year old children buying his books either. I read these threads and I think that often we have a lot of curmudgeonness coming out, with a group that would wear the button, proud to be one. If all we give to those who want to delve into Sci-Fi is the new items and the highest of the literary standards, I would have walked away. Even today If that was the list of what one should read, I wouldn't be a fanboy of Sci-Fi. I have to have my little Fuzzy along with my Dune, my Janissaries along with my Canticle for Leibowitz

For argumentative purposes, nominated at least twice:

(8) Dune by Frank Herbert
(5) Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
(5) Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson
(4) Hyperion Dan Simmons
(4) Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
(3) A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller
(3) Blood Music by Greg Bear
(3) Childhoods End by Arthur C. Clarke
(3) Light by M. John Harrison
(3) Ringworld by Larry Niven
(3) Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
(3) The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
(2) Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
(2) Black Man, Richard Morgan
(2) Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
(2) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
(2) Gateway by Frederik Pohl
(2) Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
(2) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
(2) Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
(2) Neuromancer by William Gibson
(2) Old Man's War by John Scalzi
(2) Startide Rising by David Brin
(2) Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland
(2) The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
(2) The Execution Channel, Ken MacLeod
(2) The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
(2) The Man Who Folded Himself - David Gerrold
(2) The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Everything else:

1984 by George Orwell
A Company of Stars by Christopher Stasheff
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
A Plague of Demons by Keith Laumer
Accelerando by Charles Stross
Agent of Change by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Airborn by Kenneth Opel
Babel-17 - Samuel R Delany
Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
Brasyl by Ian McDonald
Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
Chanur's Venture by C. J. Cherryh
City by Clifford D. Simak
Complete Fuzzy by H Beam Piper
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Crash by J. G. Ballard
Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
Exiles to Glory by Jerry Pournelle
Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Green Eyes ????
Hoka! By Gordon Dickinson
Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
Hover Car Racer - Matthew Reilly
Hunting Party by Elizabeth Moon
Infinity Hold by Barry B Longyear
Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle
Jumper by Stephen Gould
Kéthani by Eric Brown
Learning The World by Ken Macleod
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp
Life by Gwyneth Jones
Look to Windward by Iain M Banks
More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
Nostrilia by Cordwainer Smith
Nova by Samuel R. Delany
Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Psion by Joan Vinge
Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke
Ring by Stephen Baxter
Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin
Sector General by James White
Serpent's Reach by C. J. Cherryh
Skybreaker by Kenneth Opel
Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlen
Storyteller by Amy Thomson
The Android's Dream by John Scalzi
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz
The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling & William Gibson
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Fuzzy Papers H Beam Piper
The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
The Light Ages by Ian R MacLeod
The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley
The People Trap by Robert Sheckley
The Quiet War by Paul McAuley
The Reefs of Space
The Separation by Christopher Priest
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
Warrior's Apprentice (Lois McMaster Bujold)
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
West of Eden by Harry Harrison
Wrapt in Crystal by Sharon Shinn

#43

I can't believe I forgot The Dispossessed and Old Man's War.

Ian,
I'm curious what you think of Larry Niven's work. Some of the Known Space stories are almost 50 years old, but he has also published several new Known Space novels in the last five years.

#42 in other places I have noted that his style is better suited to the nonfiction works he authored.

I'd certainly agree with that. But even then I think calling his prose "direct" is being overly nice. Baxter's prose is direct; Baxter is a much better writer than Asimov.

#44 And even should one want to criticize Asimov to death, and say he is awful because he is popular

I'm not saying he's awful because he's popular, I'm saying he's just awful. But the reason I think he has remained popular is because a handful of his novels have core ideas which resonate - the Second Foundation (not psychohistory - that's well, bunk), and the Three Laws of Robotics. He also built up a huge fanbase through his ubiquity in the magazines. I also think he's forgiven much for his stature in the genre. But there have been some who have pointed out that his writing is dreadful for decades, and others just say they're being mean-spirited. It's not about "mean spirits", it's about the quality of the prose. Or lack thereof.

#48 I liked his books a great deal when I was a teenager. I recently reread Ringworld and was less impressed (see here). The most recent book of his I've read was Destiny's Road several years ago, and I found it disappointing.

Old Man's War - John Scalzi
Balance of Trade - Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Doorways in the Sand - Roger Zelazny
Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
Undertow - Elizabeth Bear
Carnival - Elizabeth Bear
The Atrocity Archives - Charles Stross
The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Algebraist - Iain M. Banks
Welcome Chaos - Kate Wilhelm
The Fresco - Sheri S. Tepper
Thirteen - Richard K. Morgan
Gridlinked - Neal Asher
Cowl - Neal Asher
The Morcai Battalion - Diana Palmer
The Stars Down Under - Sandra McDonald
Warchild - Karin Lowachee
The Falling Woman - Pat Murphy
House of Reeds - Thomas Harlan
Wasteland of Flint - Thomas Harlan
Nova - Samuel R. Delany
Sassinak - Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Moon
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

Foundation series - Isaac Asimov
Robot series - Isaac Asimov
League of Peoples series - James Alan Gardner
Hyperion Cantos - Dan Simmons
Heris Serrano series - Elizabeth Moon
Vatta's War - Elizabeth Moon
Jani Kilian series - Kristine Smith
Takeshi Kovacs series - Richard K. Morgan
Retrieval Artist series - Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Miles Vorkosigan series - Lois McMaster Bujold
Sector General series - James White
Wess'har series - Karen Traviss

Message edited by its author, Apr 8, 2009, 3:33am.

#49

About Asimov's quality on rereads. Didn't Brian Aldiss say something similar about enjoying it on first read but less so on a subsequent re-read in Trillion Year Spree?

Just for some of the traditionalists.

1) No-one is saying that Asimov (or Heinlein) weren't fundamental to the development of SF and are not important from an historical POV.
2) Although Ian has said that Asimov is a poor writer he doesn't mention talk much about his qualities as a story-teller. His statements here and elsewhere indicate that for him a good story cannot overcome poor writing. Others are more forgiving but we all have a line at which poor writing will kill the book.
3) Even if most golden age novels are still worth reading there are other factors which mean that there shouldn't be lots of them on a list of recommendations for a newbie.

One must also consider who the recommendations are for. I think that if asked for recommendations for a teenager I would give completely different books to if I was asked for recommendations for a middle-aged adult (umm sort of like me or Ian) - which may be close to the point that justifiedsinner was trying to make in post #39. To some extent Foundation, as story, is likely to speak out to the nerds at school far more than to us adults. Youngsters are also far more forgiving of clunky writing.

Message edited by its author, Apr 8, 2009, 4:05am.

What he said.

I'd also add that I don't think we're doing the genre any favours by holding up the likes of Asimov or Heinlein or the Golden Age authors as exemplars, as the best the genre has to offer. Sf's poor image is as much a consequence of the fans as it is of the books.

I will add another recommendation of the Wess'har series (starts with City of Pearl) by Karen Traviss (again recent reads).

I'm going to have to try one of her books as I've heard so many people recommend them. Admittedly, I'm somewhat loath to do so, given her oft-stated opinions on writing...

Well they aren't great writing but they fill a gap in my recommendations for those who want a straight forward military tinged adventure. I see it as a great book to give to those who know Star Trek/Wars (either on screen or as a reader of tie-in fiction) and want to branch out and try a non-tie-in book.

I think that as the series went on it got quite a bit weaker but the first book is worth reading. You should also read River Of Gods btw it does a great job at conveying the vividness and energy of a future India.

I have River of Gods but haven't read it yet. I've always liked McDonald's books, although I stopped reading them for a while for some reason.

Have you tried Liz Williams? I've heard she's quite good.

Yes, I've read a few of Liz Williams's books. I haven't read any of her Inspector Chen stuff but the ones I have read have a very interesting style. Very much influenced by Vance in the amount of time she spends describing the planet and society (for example Mars in Banner Of Souls or Winterstrike) but sometimes I have found the novels a little lacking in warmth and the pacing a little off.

1. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
2. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
3. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
4. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
5. Ringworld by Larry Niven
6. Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
7. Have Space Suit - Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein
8. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
9. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
10. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
11. Dune by Frank Herbert
12. Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
13. Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
14. Flatland by Edwin Abbott
15. 1984 by George Orwell
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Time and Again by Jack Finney
18. We by Eugene Zamiatin
19. The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
20. The Skylark of Space by E.E. "Doc" Smith

#59 Don't you read books published in the last 30 years?

And have you been following the argument? Would you seriously expect a new reader to wade through Olaf Stapledon or EE Doc Smith? Are you trying to put them off sf?

The problem I have is with the initial question. There is no definintive list applicable to all new potential readers. Recomendations should only be made with some knowledge of the person we are giving the recomendations to.

I read both David Weber and Ian Mcdonald, there are people I would recommend each to, but very few to whom I would recommend both.

Imagine that you're trying to give the recommendee a good idea of what the genre is like. Not what the genre was like. Is. What sf is.

Not in any order and I hope a wide range of taste;
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Dune by Frank Herbert
Past Through Tommorrow by Robert Heinlein
"City" by Clifford Simack
Old Man's War by Scalzi
Into the Storm: Destroyermen, Book I by Taylor Anderson
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
The Ice People by René Barjavel
Infinite jests;: The lighter side of science fiction and The World Insideby Robert Silverberg
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
King David's Spaceship by Jerry Pornelle
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven

# 60. I make no apologies. The question was, which books would I recommend -- not what are the best literary quality or the best in the last 30 years -- and as such there is no right or wrong answer to the question. These are books that I personally enjoyed and have recommended. Life is too short and I try not to take my reading too seriously. I love Shakespeare and "serious literature," but sometimes I find books enjoyable just because I enjoyed them.

I would add that a newbie to any genre usually starts with the classics. Someone taking American Lit 101 reads James Fenimore Cooper before Faulkner or postmodernist lit. To best appreciate a genre I believe you need to understand its roots, first.

We sound like the VIP who is expecting dinner guests, and who is embarrassed that his goofy but lovable Uncle Al who lives in the basement wants to join the party. I say set him at the dinner table with pride. He is part of who you are.

>64 Good for you! *applauds*

Don't be daft. If someone wants to read a mainstream novel, you don't give them Dickens. If they're learning about literature, and the history of literature, then you give them James Fenimore Cooper. No one hearing suggesting a list for Science Fiction History 101.

Having said that, why would you recommend books that aren't the best? Why would you recommend a shit book? Don't you want your new reader to continue reading sf? Or are you going to recommend those books with caveats - "look, they're not very good but I think you'll like them..."? Which strikes me as completely pointless.

I wrote a post on my blog 9 months ago saying that sf fans needed to grow up and stop privileging old rubbish "classics". They have little or no relevance any more. We're not eternal thirteen year olds, and neither should we expect others to behave as thirteen year olds. No one is ever going to change their mind about sf if they keep on getting Foundation and The Skylark of Space shoved in their face.

It's disheartening to see that my complaints of last August are still true.

66... On my list of 25 (at post # 59) there are several Hugo Award Winners, several included in Easton Press / Franklin Library's "100 Greatest Books" categories, etcetera, and almost all are still in print. Clearly many of them resonate with enough people to be worthy of recommendation, and clearly some of them are considered classics of literature. Some, like Stapledon, Orwell Huxley, and Zamiatin are still well regarded for philosophical insight. Others (like Skylark and Have Spacesuit) are meant for pure escapism and adventure, and I enjoy them despite the clunky wooden characters and terrible dialogue. (I did not include Foundation in my list.) It seems to me that your objection is less about literary merit and more an objection to anything that is old. Oh -- I forgot one: I'd add The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum.

#66

Ian, don't waste all your ranting in print before Eastercon we want to hear some for real. For those that don't know Ian is one of the panel participants for "Classics That Aren't" - What classic books should we stop recommending?

However I can answer some of your questions. I removed some books from my list because they are essentially partly a dialogue with what has gone before. If you don't know what has gone before then that book is weakened as you have no dialogue.

Of your list I haven't read Life and I wouldn't recommend Light. Not because it isn't any good, it is, but because it doesn't seem a book that is immediately accessible for the newbie.

Not necessarily old, although I think on the whole that good old works are not as good as good new works. And while I have nothing against Wells or Orwell or Zamyatin, I see little point in giving someone the impression that science fiction is stuck in the first half of the 20th century.

"Hugo winner" means nothing to me. A lot of bad books have won Hugos because the award is, after all, a popularity contest. Worse than that, it's a popularity contest among a small group of sf fans, constrained by level of engagement with the genre, geography and affluence.

#68 Unfortunately, I'm the moderator of that panel, which means I'm not really allowed to rant. If anything, I have to prevent the pannelists from ranting.

I think someone who read a lot of literary fiction would be able to handle Light.

Much as it pains me to agree with Ian you shouldn't start people on Dickens if you want them to continue reading and not go off and play video games. But neither would I give them Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow. However, I would give them Animal Farm, Erewhon, Gulliver's Travels all of which are 'old'.
I don't see what the problem is with newbies reading Solaris, Fahrenheit 451, Man in the High Castle, We or Slaughterhouse-5 which are all at least 30 years old or more. I would find that better than some of Ian's choices such as Baxter whose prose style (but not story telling) is like lumps of raw clay before being thrown, fired and glazed. One would be better off reading Wells, who though also often clunky, is a better prose writer and who Baxter seems to want to emulate.

A couple of good old ones in among the new stuff, I wouldn't find objectionable. But not Fahrenheit 451 - I read that recently and thought it was awful.

Baxter's prose has improved a great deal. Some of his early novels were hard-going, but he's got better.

I think this thread is much better than our last three threads on good bad science fiction. And with everyone chipping in big lists we are actually getting a working list of what is our top Science Fiction.

We will never have consensus of all 100 books, but I should imagine we will get twenty to thirty clear winners from those who post here.

Rojse gets kudos for keeping track yesterday.

The point of a 100 books and 1 book are two different things. What one book would you give to get someone hooked on Science Fiction, versus you are interested in the entirety of what Science Fiction is, so here is a list of my 100 favorites. But in order for you to see what Science Fiction is I give you the breadth of it, and if you are young, then I certainly will hand you a Heinlein Juvenile such as Citizen of the Galazy, and if you are sixty, I probably won't.

And if you are a young man, and like action films, then perhaps more military sci-fi like Starship Troopers, (but none of John Ringo and his Posleen stories) and if you are a young woman and want more romance, then Asimov and Bicentennial Man and if you are a middle aged women and want to see strong female leads, then Elizabeth Moon and the Heris Serrano stories, or Vatta stories.

One book right now, that is easy, 1984. What you say, it is 25 years after 1984 and 1984 certainly wasn't like that. That is the mystique of Science Fiction. When the story was written, Orwell cast his mind to the future, the bigger part of Science Fiction, though some of the genre casts their minds to the past.

You as a reader get to sit back and contemplate the story, the writing (my concession to Ian) and the spirit how Science Fiction differs from fiction that is not scientifical.

In a 100 book survey, i would throw in modern writing, The Light Ages for instance, but it would not be 90 books from 2000 on, and 10 books from before. It would be 10 books from 2000 on (if that) it would have military fiction, and first contact, and first debarkation from earth and alternate reality.

Asimov for romance? Ha. Have you tried reading any chicklit? Your young woman who wants romance is not going to accept Bicentennial Man. Something by Catherine Asaro, perhaps; or Sharon Miller & Steve Lee. But I suspect they'd go straight for the fang-bangers.

My penny's worth:

1. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
2. Foreigner by C. J. Cherryh
3. Vatta's War by Elizabeth Moon
4. Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld
1984 by Geroge Orwell
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley--Which brought my high school self heavily into the genre a few years back

Ender's Game is getting a lot of nods all of a sudden. I reread that just a few years back, especially Card seems to write more and more in the Enderverse.

I think it is going to be a top 10.

My 16 year old son has read all of the Ender books. I (wrongly) assumed they were YA science fiction. I'll have to add them to my TBR list....

Ah! - the Ender books were the first SF that my son recommended to me!

Yes, the Ender series is probably one of my favorite series of all time :)

#73

I do it so I have some idea of what I might be reading in the next, say, six months. I can't believe I haven't even looked at Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, which has five recommendations, or Light by M John Harrison, which has three.

#59

If you wanted to introduce someone to Stapledon, why would you pick Last and First Men over Star Maker? Stapledon is one of my favourite authors, and both are among my favourite books, but I must admit that Star Maker is the far better-written book of the two.

Updated - books with more than one recommendation:

(10) Dune by Frank Herbert
(8) Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
(6) Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson
(5) Hyperion Dan Simmons
(5) Old Man's War by John Scalzi
(5) Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
(4) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
(4) Childhoods End by Arthur C. Clarke
(4) Ringworld by Larry Niven
(3) Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
(3) 1984 by George Orwell
(3) Blood Music by Greg Bear
(3) Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
(3) Light by M. John Harrison
(3) Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
(3) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
(3) The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
(3) The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
(3) The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
(3) The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
(2) Black Man, Richard Morgan
(2) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
(2) City by Clifford D. Simak
(2) Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
(2) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
(2) Gateway by Frederik Pohl
(2) Hunting Party by Elizabeth Moon
(2) I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
(2) Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
(2) Neuromancer by William Gibson
(2) Nova by Samuel R. Delany
(2) Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke
(2) Startide Rising by David Brin
(2) Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland
(2) The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
(2) The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
(2) The Execution Channel, Ken MacLeod
(2) The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
(2) The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven
(2) Vatta's War by Elizabeth Moon
(2) Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
(2) We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
(2) City of Pearl by Karen Traviss

A Company of Stars by Christopher Stasheff
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
A Plague of Demons by Keith Laumer
Accelerando by Charles Stross
Agent of Change by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Airborn by Kenneth Opel
Babel-17 by Samuel R Delany
Balance of Trade by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
Brasyl by Ian McDonald
Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
Cowl by Neal Asher
Carnival by Elizabeth Bear
Chanur's Venture by C. J. Cherryh
Complete Fuzzy by H Beam Piper
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Crash by J. G. Ballard
Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
Ethan of Athos by Luis McMaster Bujold
Exiles to Glory by Jerry Pournelle
Expendable by James Alan Gardner
Flatland by Edwin Abbott
Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Foreigner by C. J. Cherryh
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Green Eyes ????
Gridlinked by Neal Asher
Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein
Hoka! By Gordon Dickinson
Hospital Station by James White
Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
House of Reeds by Thomas Harlan
Hover Car Racer by Matthew Reilly
Infinite Jests; The Lighter Side of Science Fiction
Infinity Hold by Barry B Longyear
Into the Storm by Taylor Anderson
Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle
Jumper by Stephen Gould
Kéthani by Eric Brown
King David's Spaceship by Jerry Pornelle
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
Learning The World by Ken Macleod
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp
Life by Gwyneth Jones
Look to Windward by Iain M Banks
More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
Nostrilia by Cordwainer Smith
Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Past Through Tommorrow by Robert Heinlein
Psion by Joan Vinge
Ring by Stephen Baxter
Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin
Rules of Survival by Kristine Smith
Sector General by James White
Serpent's Reach by C. J. Cherryh
Skybreaker by Kenneth Opel
Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Sassinak by Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Moon
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlen
Storyteller by Amy Thomson
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
The Android's Dream by John Scalzi
The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle
The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum by Stanley G Weinbaum
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz
The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling & William Gibson
The Dissapeared by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy
The Fuzzy Papers H Beam Piper
The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper
The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
The Ice People by René Barjavel
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
The Light Ages by Ian R MacLeod
The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
The Morcai Battalion by Diana Palmer
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley
The People Trap by Robert Sheckley
The Quiet War by Paul McAuley
The Reefs of Space by Frederik Pohl
The Separation by Christopher Priest
The Skylark of Space by E.E. "Doc" Smith
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
The Stars Down Under by Sandra McDonald
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The World Inside by Robert Silverberg
Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Undertow by Elizabeth Bear
Warchild by Karin Lowachee
Wasteland of Flint by Thomas Harlan
Welcome Chaos by Kate Wilhelm
West of Eden by Harry Harrison
Wrapt in Crystal by Sharon Shinn

I have presumed to make any recommendation for a series to be a recommendation for the first published book in that series, otherwise the list becomes quite a mess, and if anyone really enjoys the first book they would go and find the rest of the series, anyway.

If someone insists on recommending an entire series, I can make that a separate entry, but I really do not see the need to do so.

Message edited by its author, Apr 8, 2009, 8:45pm.

# 82, I enjoyed Star Maker very much as well. Originally I had both in my list, but I had to reduce my titles to fit the number of books allowed. Both books are profound and I'd be happy with either in my top 20 recommendations.

>84 Rojse, thanks for doing the compiling. I'm pretty sure the author for Green Eyes is Lucius Shepard.

I'll second some of the Cherryh selections on the list because of my inordinate love for her; I'm not sure any author should have three or more selections on the list, but I expect others might cast a vote for one or two of them, so we'll see what happens. It does strike me that Foreigner, Cyteen, and Downbelow Station are fairly different from each other.

Rosje, Green Eyes is by Lucius Shepard as #86 notes. A great story but I have not read it in some time. Might have been my first taste of Shepard. Shepard's writing and stories are a cut above and I think he should be in the top 100 suggestions, but I'll leave it to others to pick his best.

Also I think my The Light Ages recommendation was seconded at #73 for two votes. As DWW noted, it should or could be included in the top 100. I don't think it would be one of the first I'd recommend tho, more for a little ways down the line when you want to add some richness and flavor. Sort of like the advanced beginner.

Just as a note, I've noticed at least 5 different recommendations for one of Bujold's Vorkosigan series, although starting in different places - one for A Civil Campaign, one for Barrayar, two for Warrior's Apprentice, and one for 'The Vorkosigan Series'.

Listed this way, the series only shows up once in rojse's lovely list - might some of us consider adjusting our recommendations or coming to some agreement as to how to list this, if we mean (as I do, anyway) that the series in general is a nice introduction?

I was one of the Warrior's Apprentice people, as it's the first Miles book, but I'd have no problem also voting Barrayar or 'The Vorkosigan Series'! (Probably not A Civil Campaign, though - although a wonderful book, it's much later in the series, and I hate to think of people missing out on books that come before, like Memory.)

Thoughts?

ETA: I'm wondering, Rojse, if the Ethan of Athos listing in your second list comes from that 'Vorkosigan Series' rec? I don't find it anywhere else - but if so, might you consider changing it? The book is set in the same universe, but is a fairly stand-alone book. The proper beginning of the 'series' is a bit debatable, but Shards of Honor, Barrayar, or the second published book, Warrior's Apprentice, are all more relevant choices.

Perhaps okeres can chime in and say which is preferred!

Message edited by its author, Apr 9, 2009, 9:04am.

Aerrin, I'm the Barrayar vote, and I'm amenable to your suggestions. I started with Warrior's Apprentice myself, and would probably recommend that first to teen boys, but to girls and women would probably go with Barrayar. (Being a mature woman when reading WA certainly didn't mute its appeal to me, but the back story from Barrayar would certainly have enriched it.) I agree that I wouldn't start with A Civil Campaign. I think the series is a great starting point for science fiction, although there are those on the list who would certainly disagree.

Was it me who had the civil campaign? My list was all my 5 Star rating (a 10 on a 1 to 10 scale) of books in the Science Fiction Genre... So I would put Warrior's Apprentice as the first book to read.

I think we might have some of the same with Piper's work on Fuzzies, as there are several different ways at looking at the titles.

If we look at the balance, i think we are getting more older work as oppossed to newer work. There is a comfort level.

It also seems to be that reading science fiction might be like learning science.

You are not expected to understand E=MC2 at your first exposure.

You are going to learn about Hypothesis, and math, and algebra, building up to more complex themes.

Hi! This is my first post on this group and on LT in general, so please be gentle. :D

Keeping in mind that to me SF = "speculative fiction", not strictly "science fiction", I would recommend the following books to a new reader of SF, in no particular order:

The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
Dune by Frank Herbert
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
War with the Newts by Karel Capek
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
The Postman by David Brin
Glimmering by Elizabeth Hand
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

ETA: *smacks self on forehead*

How could I have forgotten Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness?

Message edited by its author, Apr 9, 2009, 3:56pm.

OK..
1. the drowned world jg ballard
2. Blood Music greg bear
3. Dawn Octavia Butler
4.Stories of your life and others Ted Chiang
5.the calcutta chromosome Ghosh
6. the difference engine gibson
7. Snow crash Stephenson
8. dune and ONLY #1.
9. years of rice and salt KSR
10. the golden nineties lisa mason
11. Fairyland Paul McAuley
12. of tangible ghosts Modesitt
13. left hand of darkness
14. Night sky mine Scott (teens)
15. There and back again pat murphy
16. 13 Richard Morgan

Message edited by its author, Apr 9, 2009, 6:35pm.

I'm intrigued by the pro/con ancient classic argument. Among the books that got me hooked on SF were some real antiques, particularly The Time Machine and First Men in the Moon. Asimov played his part, but Foundation didn't grab me, compared to The Naked Sun and the Nightfall collections of stories.

Some books I have really enjoyed and rate highly would perhaps be indigestible to a new SF reader, such as Excession by Iain M. Banks.

Warrior's Apprentice works for me in place of Vorkosigan series. I read it first as well, and was propelled at light speed toward the rest of the series. :o)

94> MyopicBookworm,

I feel the same way. Without knowing the person(s) to whom we are recommending these books, and with the idea that we would want to bring the people into the fold as a possible converts (and share our love of the genre), it is better to stick with the basics. 'Recommend' the books that led us into the world of Science Fiction in the first place.
And in most cases it's going to be what is referred to the ' old classics', like them or not every generation rediscovers them.
True some of these books that I read and reread through the years have lost their luster in recent years. And I would hope that this is due to a maturing of taste rather than that they were bad books.

93: bobmcconnaughey.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person that only likes the original Dune. I never could get into any of the sequels (although I wanted to having enjoyed the first one so much)

Message edited by its author, Apr 10, 2009, 10:23am.

Once a list of 100 or so recommendations of the Best Sci-Fi is generated. Then that reference resource can be used by the knowledgeable mentor to pick and choose from it.

It would be like the AFI list of 100 best movies of all time. Not all of those appeal to me, and there are some I don't ever want to watch. But if I were to recommend from it to someone else, it would be a resource to start from.

Once a good list is settled on anyone for turning it into a wiki?

> 97

Yes, that's exactly how I'm viewing this list. I agree that it's much better to suggest books by knowing someone's reading taste, but I also see that we have a number of books coming to something of a consensus, so that's definitely a starting point! There are a lot here that are going on my TBR list because of the strength and number of their recommendations!

I think to some extent, some 'older' stuff shows up because that's what's trickled down to a lot of people through other recommendations, and what's stood the test of time, and what got us hooked. If I think back to what got me hooked... that's a book that's at least 15, if not 20 or 25, years old already. To be honest, because I rely heavily on recommendations for the sci fi /I/ read, I haven't actually read that much published in the last 5 years.

I'm mostly trying to think of books that feel 'accessible' - they have something that might appeal to someone outside the genre. Excellent plot that moves well, interesting characters, a world that's not tough to get into, prose that carries you along... those sorts of things. I wonder if our list would look different if we broke it into something like 'Top 10 intro Sci Fi books for Teens' or 'Top 10 intro Sci Fi books for Action Readers', 'Romance Readers,' 'Fantasy Readers,' 'Mystery Readers,' etc. That'd be an interesting exercise!

I am sure that in any argument about older stuff we have several views, but for my taste, even on rereads, that older stuff will always be a part of the 100 best.

I may not like it as much as I did when I first read it. But then there are cycles that I reread every other year, such as the Lord Kalvan cycle.

I've read the Lensmen series three or four times now, and I am not sure that I will revisit that, but I believe it deserves its place in the 100 Best. The reason is that the concepts, the fun, the development at the time make it work. But look 30/40 years later and you have Hubbard and his opus Mission Earth try to be similar and no way is that anywhere near my idea of the top 100 (I read 2 or 3 of them and gave up.)

Heinlein and Starship Troopers, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, always on my top 100, but The Door Into Summer, Time Enough for Love not so much... And yet I will reread all of those a couple more time should I have the years available to do so.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame edited by Robert Silverberg
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol 2 edited by Ben Bova
Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster
Major Ingredients by Eric Frank Russell
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
The Rest of the Robots by Isaac Asimov, because I think his short stories are superior to his novels.
Crashcourse series by Wilhelmina Baird
The Hitckhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams
Wildcards series under George R. R. Martin
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

That's all for the moment.

RGurskey, what is Major Ingredients about, It sounds like it should be science fiction on cooking.

And why don't we see more Sci-Fi with a food theme? We have the Doctor theme covered and very well by James White and Sector General but I can't thing of any food books.

One note: my list was mostly a list of books I had not yet seen (although I may have missed some), so I didn't duplicate a bunch of works I had seen mentioned already by others. Many works mentioned by others are ones which I would include in a top 100 list: Dune, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, The Forever War, and so on and so forth.

>102 DW, White combines both VERY nicely in The Galactic Gourmet. But I can't think of any others offhand.

Well, there is the Science Fiction Cookbook, but that's only available in electronic format. http://www.geocities.com/RheLynn/SFC/

The Puppeteer with walnuts isn't bad when you're stuck on a long ARM mission....

102: Isaac Asimov did a food based short story that was titled (I believe) Bad Taste. Of course, since Asimov was a such a terrible writer, the memory of that tale, no matter how entertaining, should be expunged from my brain forthwith.

We are past the 100 post limit suggested in #1 but people are still posting. (E.g. 101). Rather than letting this thread wane and die a natural death can I suggest that a point in time be set (e.g. Apr 14 - one week after the original post) to start assembling proposed inclusions and moving ahead as suggested by 97 and 98?

I own a Doctor Who cookbook; does that count?

I'm perfectly happy to let people continue to post their lists; the more the merrier (and the more there are, the more statistically interesting).

I have the ambition of compiling the votes along with title, author, and date of first publication if I can find that information easily. Would like to sort by most votes and also by date of publication. Perfectly happy to make it a wiki if I can.

I'll do this in about a week from now depending on a natural break in my work.

I think the date based idea is good now, several our posts were not to the subject of a favorite book to recommend but to argue the philosophy of what part of science fiction would you include.

A few late entries;
Have Spacesuit Will Travel
Princess of Mars
Childhoods End
Space Vulture
When The Sleeper Wakes
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Way Station by Simak
Cosmonaut Keep by MacLeod
Old Man's War by Scalzi
Desolation Road by McDonald
In The Garden of Iden by Baker
Darker Than You Think by Williamson
More Than Human by Sturgeon
Wasp by Russell
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Grossman

You could do worse than that list. Better, too I suppose.

I think the best thing about this thread for me is the reminder of some older books that many hold in high regard. As a result I went digging this morning to pull out Snow Crash, the Book of the New Sun , Star Maker and a few others. They have been added to my already too big TBR books stacks. I am really hesitant to recommend these to new readers since it has been perhaps ten years or better since I have read any of them. The New Sun series for example would almost certainly, from memory, make my list of 100 favorites, but I am not sure I would use it as an introduction 100, and not without a re-read.

I am also sympathizing more with the argument by Ian and a few others that the literary merits of the book need some consideration, probably more than most of us would naturally do.

So I've gotten myself stuck going oh yeah seeing titles like Mission of Gravity and Icerigger and the titles by Simak and Sturgeon and wondering just how they would come across to me on a re-read.

I have been reading SciFi since 1965. Generally I would say the titles that impacted my imagination the most were in the 'defining what is human' tradition. In that category I nominate:

Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin
Babel-17 by Samuel R Delany
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
Sector General by James White
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
Enemy Mine by not_Kay Hooper_/ Barry Longyear
The People: No Different Flesh by Zenna Henderson
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
Captain Empirical by Sam Nicholson
Ensign Flannery Shortstories by Poul Anderson

For entertainment I love Bujold, Cheeryh, Brin, Moon, Card and many more who straddle the Science/Fantasy divide.

Message edited by its author, Apr 12, 2009, 2:05am.

Aelith, do you mean the Barry Longyear Enemy Mine?

Yes! I put in the title without thinking. Book much better than the movie.

Thank you DW.

PS. I'm for Foundation being on the list.

Message edited by its author, Apr 12, 2009, 2:02am.

I am not sure how many votes are for Foundation the way it is being tabulated. I reedited my first big posting and recategorized Second Foundation as just Foundation. I think others have voted for it also, but am not sure.

> 102

Major Ingredients contains 35 short stories by Eric Frank Russell, which is quite a few. One of the stories is entitled Minor Ingredient. None of the stories is about cooking.

As for cooking, have you read the short story "To Serve Man?"

DWWilkin,

This wasn't supposed to be a list of the best SF. It was supposed to be a list of recommendations for a new reader of the genre. That isn't exactly the same thing. For example an Egan would be in my top-50 books but I wouldn't recommend it for a newbie. The scope was quite clear in the first post of this thread.

Suggesting what got us hooked isn't a very useful set of data either, unless you are a recent convert to the genre. For a lot of us we were reading SF 30+ years and starting as teenagers (or younger). The world has changed, SF has moved into maturity after its rebellious new-wave days and anyway the newbie may not be a teenager.

That is not to say that all old SF is immediately worthless - even to a newbie. Just that one must try and apply some critical standards to the choices we list. Of the older books which I have recently reread I think that More Than Human still kind of works. It feels a little out-of-time but then that seems partly a stylistic affectation and not a textual one. I enjoyed Williamson's Darker Than You Think but is it really SF?

posting without reading (much)

1) Starship Troopers by RAH
2) Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
3) The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson
4) Puppet Masters by RAH again

my 10 year old son has read all of these and loved them. He is now an ardent SFF fan.

Andy

I might go look at my list, which was that science fiction I have read that I consider most enjoyable, true not what I would necessarily recommend, as I commented before depending on who is doing the asking, depends on what i would recommend. Foundation however, and works by Piper, and Ender's War and Lest Darkness Fall are all on the list of what i would recommend.

What I have noticed is that the list has many more books from before the turn of the century then after and that has seem to be a digression from the camp that science fiction is only good and should be recommended if it is current.

>120 And I think what that shows is that not everyone belongs in that camp. It's not only that I enjoy some of the older stuff, but also that I think many new readers of the genre would enjoy it, too.

But this is an equal opportunity forum; those who want to recommend mostly or entirely recent choices rather than older works are quite welcome to do so. I'm hoping to read many such recommendations, myself (not just the lists, the actual books!).

Multiple Votes:

(12) Dune by Frank Herbert
(9) Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
(6) Hyperion Dan Simmons
(6) Old Man's War by John Scalzi
(6) Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson
(6) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
(6) Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
(5) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
(5) Childhoods End by Arthur C. Clarke
(5) Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
(5) Ringworld by Larry Niven
(4) Blood Music by Greg Bear
(4) The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
(3) Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
(3) 1984 by George Orwell
(3) Light by M. John Harrison
(3) Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
(3) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
(3) Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke
(3) The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
(3) The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
(3) The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
(3) The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
(3) Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
(2) Babel-17 by Samuel R Delany
(2) Black Man, Richard Morgan
(2) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
(2) City by Clifford D. Simak
(2) Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
(2) Gateway by Frederik Pohl
(2) Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein
(2) Hunting Party by Elizabeth Moon
(2) I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
(2) Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
(2) More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
(2) Neuromancer by William Gibson
(2) Nova by Samuel R. Delany
(2) Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlen
(2) Startide Rising by David Brin
(2) Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland
(2) The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
(2) The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling & William Gibson
(2) The Execution Channel, Ken MacLeod
(2) The Light Ages by Ian R MacLeod
(2) The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
(2) The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven
(2) Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan
(2) The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
(2) Vatta's War by Elizabeth Moon
(2) We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
(2) City of Pearl by Karen Traviss

A Company of Stars by Christopher Stasheff
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
A Plague of Demons by Keith Laumer
Accelerando by Charles Stross
Agent of Change by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Airborn by Kenneth Opel
Balance of Trade by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
Brasyl by Ian McDonald
Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
Cowl by Neal Asher
Carnival by Elizabeth Bear
Chanur's Venture by C. J. Cherryh
Complete Fuzzy by H Beam Piper
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Crash by J. G. Ballard
Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
Exiles to Glory by Jerry Pournelle
Expendable by James Alan Gardner
Flatland by Edwin Abbott
Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Foreigner by C. J. Cherryh
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Green Eyes by Lucius Shepard
Gridlinked by Neal Asher
Hoka! By Gordon Dickinson
Hospital Station by James White
Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
House of Reeds by Thomas Harlan
Hover Car Racer by Matthew Reilly
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
Captain Empirical by Sam Nicholson
Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod
Crashcourse by Wilhelmina Baird
Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
Dawn Octavia Butler
Desolation Road by Ian McDonald
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Enemy Mine by Barry Longyear
Ensign Flannery Shortstories by Poul Anderson
Fairyland Paul McAuley
Glimmering by Elizabeth Hand
Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster
In The Garden of Iden by Kage Baker
Infinite Jests; The Lighter Side of Science Fiction
Infinity Hold by Barry B Longyear
Into the Storm by Taylor Anderson
Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle
Jumper by Stephen Gould
Kéthani by Eric Brown
King David's Spaceship by Jerry Pornelle
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
Learning The World by Ken Macleod
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp
Life by Gwyneth Jones
Look to Windward by Iain M Banks
Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
Nostrilia by Cordwainer Smith
Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Past Through Tommorrow by Robert Heinlein
Psion by Joan Vinge
Ring by Stephen Baxter
Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin
Rules of Survival by Kristine Smith
Sector General by James White
Serpent's Reach by C. J. Cherryh
Skybreaker by Kenneth Opel
Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Sassinak by Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Moon
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Storyteller by Amy Thomson
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
The Android's Dream by John Scalzi
The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle
The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum by Stanley G Weinbaum
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz
The Dissapeared by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Drowned World by J G Ballard
Major Ingredients by Eric Frank Russell
Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Night Sky Mine by Melissa Scott
Of Tangible Ghosts by L E Modesitt
Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlen
Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin
Sector General by James White
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
Space Vulture by Gary K Wolf
Stories of your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh
The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy
The Fuzzy Papers H Beam Piper
The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper
The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
The Ice People by René Barjavel
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
The Morcai Battalion by Diana Palmer
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley
The People Trap by Robert Sheckley
The Quiet War by Paul McAuley
The Reefs of Space by Frederik Pohl
The Separation by Christopher Priest
The Skylark of Space by E.E. "Doc" Smith
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
The Stars Down Under by Sandra McDonald
The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The World Inside by Robert Silverberg
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Undertow by Elizabeth Bear
War with the Newts by Karel Capek
The Golden Nineties by Lisa Mason
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson
The People: No Different Flesh by Zenna Henderson
The Postman by David Brin
The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith
The Rest of the Robots by Isaac Asimov
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Edited by Robert Silverberg
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 2 Edited by Ben Bova
There and Back Again by Pat Murphy
Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
Warchild by Karin Lowachee
Wasteland of Flint by Thomas Harlan
Welcome Chaos by Kate Wilhelm
West of Eden by Harry Harrison
Wrapt in Crystal by Sharon Shinn
Wasp by Eric Frank Russell
Way Station by Clifford Simak
When The Sleeper Wakes by H G Wells
Wildcards by George R. R. Martin
Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

Could anyone making a vote please give the name of the full name of the author as well? It makes doing this a lot easier, and you wouldn't recommend a book without the proper author's name.

I can't believe that I didn't put up "I am Legend" by Richard Matheson or "Flatland" by Edwin A Abbott. A vote for each of them, then.

A word in for the scandalously ignored Russians:

Roadside Picnic by Arkadi & Boris Strugatsky
Hard To Be A God by Arkadi & Boris Strugatsky

and I didn't see

The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe.

Plus a vote for The Instrumentality of Mankind cycle by Cordwainer Smith, collected in The Rediscovery of Man.

Already listed:

The Time Machine
The Mote in God's Eye
Darwin's Radio
Enemy Mine
The Sparrow

Others:

Contact by Carl Sagan
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
Alien Earth by Megan Lindholm
Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

We have 50 with more than 1 vote each, so unless we get a few more of the ones that already have a vote a piece to get a second vote before the cut off, it is those that will be getting the first cut, if we do this in a traditional manner.

Anything that has only one vote has to get a second vote to go on and be included in the preliminary list... Then when we have determined that, we see if that list has grown to more than 100 or is still under 100.

Some of the book listed with one vote that I think should have two:

Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Hospital Station by James White
Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Ensign Flandry by Poul Anderson
The Past Through Tommorrow by Robert Heinlein
Sector General by James White
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlen
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Edited by Robert Silverberg
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 2 Edited by Ben Bova
Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
Way Station by Clifford Simak
When The Sleeper Wakes by H G Wells

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2009, 12:37am.

>127 then you all need to go through the list more carefully. note: Callahan's Crosstime etc. is listed twice on >123 for example.

Actually, I noted problems also, but Rojse has done a great job on a completly volunteer basis. So I figured we could make corrections during the time when we hash out th elist into its final shape...

I will cast another vote for Flatland. If the list is for new readers, at least one out of every hundred new readers must have a real interest in math.

Also another vote for Man in the High Castle, assuming we're not excluding alternate history. That book was one of the first alternate histories that I recall reading and it lead me to read hundreds more in that genre (sub-genre?) It would be a good start for a new reader.

What about The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman. It wasn't his best book by far, but it would be a good intro to time travel, especially for someone who wanted a more modern or recent version of the story.

How about recommending books by living authors? Or is that too much to ask? At this rate, any reader new to the genre is going to think it was swallowed by Star Wars and other media-tie in novels some time in the late 1980s. Perhaps it was. Perhaps I'm just being foolish in thinking science fiction continued as a literary genre into the 21st century, perhaps no one actually gives a shit about sf as a 21st century literary genre.

132 That's one reason I suggested Accidental Time Machine.

On the other hand, I was introduced to science fiction in the early 1970s through Asimov's Foundation (first published in the 1940s) and Heinlein's juveniles (first published 1940s-1950s). At the time I thought those books were great storeis and didn't think about the fact that they were written in an earlier era.

Most of the books on the list are from the last 40 years. There are a few exceptions, but those are classics that may appeal to someone new to science fiction who is not limited to the mass market book shelf. Flatland is a great example. If I knew someone who didn't read science fiction but had an interest in math, I'd recommend that as a first book despite its age.

Darker than You Think is not strictly SF, I guess. It is my favorite book by a big SF writer, though.

132: You mean like Kress, Cherryh, Aldiss, Wolfe, Baxter, Niven, Pournelle, Varley, Atwood, Silverberg, and Bova?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

They're not the ones being named the most often, though, are they?

Asking for 21st century authors to be included is one thing--asking for a preponderance of them is another.

Maybe I'm missing the point, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but the point of this was to compile a list of books which we would recommend to new readers uninitiated into the wonders of SF. If, indeed that is the concept then it really is no surprise to me that a number of the recommendations are by older writers (and yes, dead ones). After all a fair number of us have been reading for decades and have covered the entire gamut of good, bad, indifferent and totally wacked SF novels and short stories. Personally I find that my favourite stories ebb and flow with the years and what I would recommend this year is not necessarily the same list as what I would have recommended 5 years ago. It really feels like that old saying - "I may not know art but I know what I like". Having said that, here are my little morsels of bait with which I might lure in the unsuspecting reader.

Foundation series - Isaac Asimov
Vorkosigan series (the earlier novels) - Lois McMaster Bujold
Odyssey - Dan Simmons
Ilium - Dan Simmons
Pandora's Star - Peter Hamilton
Surfin Samurai Robots - Mel Gilden
Vatta series - Elizabeth Moon
Coming of the Quantum Cats - Frederick Pohl
Blood Music - Greg Bear

Just a few as my memory fades and I am nowhere near my library at the moment. These are novels I enjoy, whether they are considered good, bad, and quite frankly I don't care if the author is dead or alive (except for the lack of more novels to come).

I look forward to seeing the final compilation.

Ian, I think you have pointed out that there is great science fiction that should be in ones reading list for new to the genre people, by contemporary authors, but the list that has been generated so overwhelmingly a fondness for indoctrination with the oldies.

Whereas often you lead the discussion in a direction and people agree with your opinion, it seems this time out, the classics of science fiction, are classics for a reason counter to your own.

I do note that Dune leads the list of recommendations and I have thought that you previously championed this book. Perhaps not as something to give to new science fiction readers, but if you were giving them a library of 100 books to start to sample the genre and get them hooked, would not that be in your gift of books?

#137 Why?

#138 I care that they're good. I don't want someone to think the genre is crap, so I refuse to recommend crap novels. Seems straightforward to me.

And as for picking the books that were our own introduction to the genre. That's a facile argument: the aim is not to generate a list to give to a 13-year-old living in the 1970s. Science fiction is supposed to be progressive. It's a shame it's readers are not.

Hard to believe nobody has mentioned The Fifth Head of Cerberus. It's a wonderful introduction to much of what's good about literary SF, including authorial uncertainty, and the easiest entree to the work of the author I think is the finest writer in the genre. Wolfe makes the reader work a bit more than many other writers do, which I welcome as a reader.

I might give such a new reader some info with my selections, in order to enable her to choose:

The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed: trust and betrayal, gender issues; introduction of social science into SF.

The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man: early classics with unexpected twists

Old Man's War: new ways of looking at aging, war

Fool's War: artificial intelligence grows up

Beggars in Spain: would it be an advantage not to need sleep?

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang: early look at cloning

gotta run... left some out I'm sure

140: Oddly, people don't always agree with what you consider to be a crap book. Or with what you consider to be good recommendations of books to read.

People are funny that way.

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2009, 12:38pm.

When enough others readers recommend a book for the list, they may not believe it to be a crap book, but actually one with merit. That so many actually do think Foundation for instance as worthy, seems to me to suggest that others find what you consider crap to be the height of science fiction. Your tastes may run counter to a much wider sampling of the rest of this forum.

#142 Oddly, liking a book is subjective, but determining whether a book is good or bad is mostly objective. Graceless prose, cardboard characterisation and idiot plotting are not matters of opinion. If you like a book despite its fault, I still maintain it's wrong to recommend it to a reader new to the genre. They may not be so forgiving. They certainly won't be reading it through rose-tinted glasses.

#143 When enough others readers recommend a book for the list, they may not believe it to be a crap book, but actually one with merit.

Popularity equals quality? Er no, it doesn't. Or McDonald's would be classified as haute cuisine, Dan Brown would win the Booker and the Pulitzer, and the film of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight would win the Oscar...

Besides, you should not be choosing books you like, or the books which introduced you to the genre. You should be picking books which are likely to make a new reader a fan of the genre, books which they will actually finish and which will encourage them to read more.

>145

I agree with you on this point, as I think I did when this was discussed in the Literary Fiction vs. Sci Fi thread. Popularity is not only no guarantee of quality, it's frequently a big signpost that quality will not be found (oh, my, am I an . . . elitist? Yes, probably.).

But, sadly, quality is, paradoxically, not always the best selling point, either. Choosing books you like is a fairly usual way to choose books to recommend, unless one believes one's tastes are unique or highly unusual. But the reasoning of "I liked this and I think you would, too," is a common way to introduce others to books. And I think it's legitimate even if one admits that one likes books for all kinds of reasons, not just because they are the best, most literary representations of the genre.

#144 - Funny, I would have thought that the determination of prose, cardboard characterisation and idiot plotting are indeed subjective determinations. In all of my reading I have never seen a set of objectives that can be placed against a novel and used like a checklist to determine whether it is good or bad. People who review the books are influenced by other reviewers and their own intellectual / educational background - a subjective background at that. Of course, this is my own subjective opinion. Of course I am not endorsing the concept of quality=quantity but neither am I going to recommend a book I could not finish, nor enjoyed, simply because it is considered by some to be superior literature.

144: Fundamentally, we disagree on what is subjective and what is objective in this context. You are certainly applying subjective criteria. It is a criteria that a fair number of people accept, but that doesn't make it anything but subjective.

Further, if people still like particular books despite what you believe to be their faults, perhaps there is a reason for that. I doubt that The Da Vinci Code will be around in 50 years. Foundation is. There's a reason for that, and it isn't simply because of the nostalgia sixty year old fans have for it.

It will be interesting to compare our 100 books for new readers to the 100 top science fiction books listed here
http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/...

At first glance, our list appears to have a slightly higher percentage of newer books, although I don't know when the 100 top book list was created/revised.

It will be interesting to compare our 100 books for new readers to the 100 top science fiction books listed here
http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/...

At first glance, our list appears to have a slightly higher percentage of newer books, although I don't know when the 100 top book list was created/revised.

#147 That would sort of make a mockery of the whole field of literature, wouldn't it? There is much that is subjective about appreciating literature, but there is much that is objective. Or are you going to insist that The Da Vinci Code is actually a good book and we're all too dumb to see it?

#148 Bad argument. First, you've no idea if The Da Vinci Code will still be around in 50 years. Second, readers of airport best-sellers do not treat books the same way that sf fans do - they are not a homogeneous group with a tradition of keeping and treasuring books. Third, sf fandom is dominated by its older members, ones who read Foundation at a young(-ish) age. Fourth, sf fandom holds the originators and popular writers of the genre in high esteem, an esteem out of all proportion to their actual talent.

151: Just because an argument contradicts yours doesn't make it a bad argument, which seems to be your typical reaction.

What you seem to think is objective simply isn't. It is a subjective set of standards that have become respectable in the literary world (and to a great extent, the entire field of literary anlysis is a mockery). But that doesn't make those standards anything other than an entirely subjective set.

Ardent science fiction fans are a tiny segment of those who read science fiction. Surprisingly enough, most people who read science fiction have never been to a convention, aren't and never have been members of science fiction fan clubs, and have no idea what the "older members" think about the books in the genre. You ascibe too much influence to a tiny subset of people who read the genre.

The "classic" books don't endure because old readers liked them. The books endure because something about them has spoken to generation after generation of people who have picked up the books. Foundation, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Rendezvous with Rama, Fahrenheit 451 and so on don't stay on bookstore shelves and get reprinted a couple dozen times over because a handful of older fans keep buying them over and over again. They get that treatment because time and again, new readers find them, read them, and love them. Even though you disapprove of them.

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2009, 2:06pm.

Silly me. For imagining that you might not be right, for not realising that you clearly have some sort of time machine to know that The da Vinci Code has vanished into obscurity 50 years from now.

I might be missing something, but the first 'rule' in the first post asked that we must list the books "you think" are worthy to recommend. I.e. subjective: What do I or other LT'ers personally think?

Taste differs. Some like oldies, some like newbies. In the end everyone should be free to recommend what they subjectively/personally think is best to recommend, irrespective of whether others disagree. And then let the votes count.

You hit the nail squarely on the head there Emily1

128: Agree. There's a few on that list that I would certainly have included on my list if I'd remembered. So, I'll add to my recommendation list some more favorites: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A Heinlein, and Ophiuchi Hotline, John Varley

And just finished rereading some Cherryh, so I'll also add Downbelow Station (even though I had trouble initially getting through book one again, due more to my dislike of crowded spaces than issues with the book - lol). Haven't finished rereading Cyteen yet, but would certainly recommend it even on fuzzy memory. Same goes for Simak's Way Station. And although that's two from me already on Cherryh, I want to add Forty Thousand in Gehenna as well.

I think something by Andre Norton and Edgar Rice Burroughs should go on the list - because those are the first two I read when I started reading science fiction about 40 years ago ;-) - both are fun introductions to sci fi, particularly for younger readers. My first Andre Norton books were Daybreak 2250 A.D. and the Solar Queen series, the first book there being Sargasso of Space. With Burroughs it was the Mars books, so I'd happily add my vote to those already listed: Gods of Mars and Princess of Mars.

Oh, and I second Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm. I listed Welcome Chaos earlier, and would recommend quite a few of her SF books.

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2009, 4:07pm.

I don't normally post in this forum (I happen to like fantasy, and I *don't* enjoy being insulted for that, particularly by fans of another very similar oft-prejudiced against genre.), but I thought I'd throw a couple of titles out.

To Say Nothing of the Dog--Connie Willis (particularly if the reader likes romance)
Dune--Frank Herbert
Barrayar or The Warrior's Apprentice--Lois McMaster Bujold (whichever one everyone decides on)
Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy--Douglas Adams
1984--George Orwell
Little Brother--Cory Doctorow (for teens who've read/know about 1984)
The Illustrated Man--Ray Bradbury
Left Hand of Darkness--Ursula LeGuin
Ender's Game--Orson Scott Card (again for teens)
Book of the New Sun--Gene Wolfe
Farenheit 451--Ray Bradbury
Y:The Last Man--Brian K. Vaughn (It's, horror of horrors, a comic book. I know, kick me right off the forum this instant.)

ETA: fix typo

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2009, 4:02pm.

153: No one has a time machine here, unless you name happens to be Wells. But the fact remains that many of the books you deride have lasted for decades as highly thought of works. And it isn't because washed up 1950s nerds have been keeping them there.

You can rail and whine till you are blue in the face about what you consider the undeserving position these books hold, but it won't change the fact that generation after generation of readers have found them to be their favorites. Like I have said before, it would probably be a better use of your time to figure out why these books continue to hold the position they do, and an explanation that doesn't require a nerd-conspiracy run by the teeny fraction of readers who are in "fandom" would probably be more persuasive than your current theory.

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2009, 4:00pm.

#157

I don't think anyone here will insult you for mainly being a fantasy reader. In fact your opinion is probably worth more than the SF fans as you are less familiar with the genre. I think your suggestions are fine. You do have some oldies but you have shown some thought on which books might be worth recommending and why, and also told us why. I am sure that some of us may disagree with some of your suggestions, I think I would drop 1984 and the two Bradbury books, but we can't say that you haven't approached the original question in the right spirit.

BTW there is a Hugo for comics (sorry I mean graphic novels) this year and I think it is highly likely it will become a regular Hugo if it goes well as the number of nominations were fairly healthy at over 200.

>157

No insults from me; not only do I read a lot of fantasy but--here comes the heresy--the tag I use in my library is "sci fi/fantasy" so I don't have to sit and think about each title as I enter it, and because the two are similar in some ways though wildly different in others. I suppose I could just change it to "speculative fiction"? though as someone noted somewhere, isn't all fiction speculative?!

Sorry to digress . . . carry on.

#158 I know why books such as Foundation continue to be held up as classics: most sf fans wouldn't know a good book if it jumped up and smacked them in the face. This thread only proves my point.

I think Bradbury does much better in a shorter format, and F451 is really more of a novella. He's one of the most requested authors on Name That Book, and The Illustrated Man contains two of his most requested stories ("The Veldt" and "The Long Rain"). His ideas tend to stick with you, and short stories are a good way to introduce people to new genres because they require very little commitment to sample a lot of different styles.

1984 is one of those books that after you read it you suddenly "get" so many of the cultural references to it, that I think a newbie would enjoy being able to flip though and say "Oh, hey, so that's where that comes from!"

Actually, the one on my list I'd be most hesitant about pimping to others is Wolfe. He's definitely not an "easy" read, even if he is completely fascinating, and you really need at least some classic sci-fi/fantasy knowledge to pick up on his allusions. Plus usually a whole heaping of other reading as well. Someone should make a list of "Stuff You Ought to Read Before You Can Really Understand Gene Wolfe."

160: When I am in doubt, I will tag a book as both science fiction and fantasy.

161: Or, perhaps, they have criteria for what they consider to be good that is different than yours. Oh no! You are not the arbiter of good taste! Heaven forfend!

161 - bit of an exaggeration, don't you think? My understanding was that this thread was for books one thinks worthy of recommending to a new reader of the genre. I included books here in that light - which includes books that got me reading science fiction in the first place, as well as current favorites.

A list of books that I think are the best in science fiction would look somewhat different.

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2009, 5:07pm.

Ian I know will never agree that Foundation is not a classic, but to me it will always be one. I can't think of a book or series before Asimov appeared to put the decline of the Roman Empire into Science Fiction terms. Then it became the grand history of man, and it was so vast it could not fit into one book.

It broke new ground and I read it in my teens, my twenties and thirties, and enjoyed it each time. Now in my forties it is probably for a reread. it may not be as fresh to me as before. We have had grand empires fall book since. But that does not mean it is no longer a classic.

We certainly have had many tales of life since Chaucer, yet the Canterbury tales holds up as a classic. I value my Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. Where I see some writers as phenomenal, and historical, and this contribute to their genres and should be part of their respective 100 lists, I can not just throw them out with the bath water and say old, for get about them. Nor can I fault the phenomena of Da Vinci Code. I don't like it and I too wrote a book. But if it was to bring someone to read and turn the light on, if they came to me and said they don't read much and would like to read something that was popular and everyone was talking about and they had heard about... I would tell them of a few other books, perhaps by Iain Pears, or Aaron Elkins dealing with art and mystey, or if they wished for books on the church in fiction, Andrew Greeley, but I would not dismiss Da Vinci Code as it got a lot of one a year readers to read that year.

#164 Good taste? I never claimed that. Good books? An entirely different matter. However, I only claimed to recognise bad books.

#165 True enough that the quality of books on the list this thread is putting together is not a priority, but it's certainly a factor. As is age. Of the books, that is.

I'm off to tell all those people who have never read a crime novel to go and read books by Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. That should give them excellent preparation for the works of Ian Rankin, Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Henning Mankel, Harlan Corben, Michael Connelly, etc., etc.

I could completely see recommending Christie and Sayers to new mystery readers. They both stand up as good reads, Christie is short and can be read quickly, and I feel pretty confident that they will be read and enjoyed by people not yet born, 50 or 100 years from now. They were both "dated" by the time I first read them and that didn't bother me one teeny bit.

I would say Christie and Sayers belong on the Mystery list also. Just because they are old does not make them horrid... Just because they are modern does not make them excellent.

Would you want to expose someone to mystery and never have them read about Sam Spade? Would we want to deprive them of Sherlock Holmes?

#161 - I gotta admit, I'm impressed - with just two lines you have managed to lump the majority of SF fans into a group of country bumpkins who have no idea of what a good book entails. Amazing! And you even managed to start on the mystery fans as well. Once again the subject of subjectivity (your opinions) vs objectivity (what you think your opinions are) raises its head.

However, I think it is obvious that this thread has raised many a question over the quality of books and personally I feel that nobody should be slighted for the enjoyment they get out of certain titles, whether they are considered to be either schlock or great literature. And if I am to be considered one of the many who "wouldn't know a good book if it hit me in the face" then so be it.

#129, 130

The A to Z sort function for word didn't work properly. That shouldn't have happened.

#128: , StormRaven

To keep in the spirit of the post, haven't you recommended your twenty previously, and isn't that more than twenty listed?

Latest Update

Multiple Votes:

13 - Dune by Frank Herbert
10 - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
8 - The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
7 - Old Man's War by John Scalzi
6 - Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
6 - Hyperion Dan Simmons
6 - Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson
6 - Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
5 - A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
5 - Blood Music by Greg Bear
5 - Childhoods End by Arthur C. Clarke
5 - Ringworld by Larry Niven
5 - Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
4 - 1984 by George Orwell
4 - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
4 - The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
4 - The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
3 - Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
3 - Flatland by Edwin Abbott
3 - Light by M. John Harrison
3 - Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke
3 - Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
3 - The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
3 - The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
3 - The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven
3 - The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
3 - The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
3 - Vatta's War by Elizabeth Moon
2 - Babel-17 by Samuel R Delany
2 - Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
2 - Black Man, Richard Morgan
2 - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
2 - Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
2 - City by Clifford D. Simak
2 - City of Pearl by Karen Traviss
2 - Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
2 - Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
2 - Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
2 - Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
2 - Enemy Mine by Barry Longyear
2 - Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
2 - Foundation by Isaac Asimov
2 - Gateway by Frederik Pohl
2 - Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein
2 - Hunting Party by Elizabeth Moon
2 - I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
2 - I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
2 - Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
2 - More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
2 - Neuromancer by William Gibson
2 - Nova by Samuel R. Delany
2 - Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
2 - Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlen
2 - Startide Rising by David Brin
2 - Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland
2 - The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
2 - The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
2 - The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling & William Gibson
2 - The Execution Channel, Ken MacLeod
2 - The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
2 - The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
2 - The Light Ages by Ian R MacLeod
2 - The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
2 - The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
2 - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
2 - The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
2 - Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan
2 - Way Station by Clifford Simak
2 - We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
2 - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2009, 9:25pm.

Single Vote:

A Company of Stars by Christopher Stasheff
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
A Plague of Demons by Keith Laumer
Accelerando by Charles Stross
Agent of Change by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Airborn by Kenneth Opel
Alien Earth by Megan Lindholm
Balance of Trade by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
Brasyl by Ian McDonald
Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
Captain Empirical by Sam Nicholson
Carnival by Elizabeth Bear
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
Chanur's Venture by C. J. Cherryh
Coming of the Quantum Cats by Frederick Pohl
Complete Fuzzy by H Beam Piper
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Contact by Carl Sagan
Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod
Cowl by Neal Asher
Crash by J. G. Ballard
Crashcourse by Wilhelmina Baird
Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
Dawn Octavia Butler
Daybreak 2250 A.D by Andre Norton
Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
Desolation Road by Ian McDonald
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Ensign Flannery Shortstories by Poul Anderson
Exiles to Glory by Jerry Pournelle
Expendable by James Alan Gardner
Fairyland Paul McAuley
Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton
Fool’s War by Sarah Zettel
Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Foreigner by C. J. Cherryh
Forty Thousand in Gehenna by C. J Cherryh
Glimmering by Elizabeth Hand
Green Eyes by Lucius Shepard
Gridlinked by Neal Asher
Hard To Be A God by Arkadi & Boris Strugatsky
Hoka! By Gordon Dickinson
Hospital Station by James White
Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
House of Reeds by Thomas Harlan
Hover Car Racer by Matthew Reilly
Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster
Ilium by Dan Simmons
In The Garden of Iden by Kage Baker
Infinite Jests; The Lighter Side of Science Fiction
Infinity Hold by Barry B Longyear
Into the Storm by Taylor Anderson
Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle
Jumper by Stephen Gould
Kéthani by Eric Brown
King David's Spaceship by Jerry Pornelle
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
Learning The World by Ken Macleod
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp
Life by Gwyneth Jones
Little Brother--Cory Doctorow
Look to Windward by Iain M Banks
Major Ingredients by Eric Frank Russell
Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Night Sky Mine by Melissa Scott
Nostrilia by Cordwainer Smith
Odyssey by Dan Simmons
Of Tangible Ghosts by L E Modesitt
Ophiuchi Hotline, by John Varley
Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton
Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Past Through Tommorrow by Robert Heinlein
Psion by Joan Vinge
Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlen
Ring by Stephen Baxter
Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin
Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin
Roadside Picnic by Arkadi & Boris Strugatsky
Rules of Survival by Kristine Smith
Sargasso of Space by Andre Norton
Sassinak by Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Moon
Sector General by James White
Sector General by James White
Serpent's Reach by C. J. Cherryh
Skybreaker by Kenneth Opel
Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
Space Vulture by Gary K Wolf
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Stories of your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Storyteller by Amy Thomson
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
Surfin Samurai Robots by Mel Gilden
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
The Android's Dream by John Scalzi
The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum by Stanley G Weinbaum
The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle
The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz
The Dissapeared by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
The Drowned World by J G Ballard
The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy
The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper
The Fuzzy Papers H Beam Piper
The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
The Golden Nineties by Lisa Mason
The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Ice People by René Barjavel
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson
The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
The Morcai Battalion by Diana Palmer
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley
The People Trap by Robert Sheckley
The People: No Different Flesh by Zenna Henderson
The Postman by David Brin
The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith
The Quiet War by Paul McAuley
The Reefs of Space by Frederik Pohl
The Rest of the Robots by Isaac Asimov
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Edited by Robert Silverberg
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 2 - Edited by Ben Bova
The Separation by Christopher Priest
The Skylark of Space by E.E. "Doc" Smith
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
The Stars Down Under by Sandra McDonald
The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The World Inside by Robert Silverberg
There and Back Again by Pat Murphy
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
To Say Nothing of the Dog--Connie Willis
Undertow by Elizabeth Bear
War with the Newts by Karel Capek
Warchild by Karin Lowachee
Wasp by Eric Frank Russell
Wasteland of Flint by Thomas Harlan
Welcome Chaos by Kate Wilhelm
West of Eden by Harry Harrison
When The Sleeper Wakes by H G Wells
Wildcards by George R. R. Martin
Wrapt in Crystal by Sharon Shinn
Y: The Last Man--Brian K. Vaughn
Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

I wonder if there is any confusion at all between a list of "books that I would recommend to a new SF reader" and "my favourite SF books". I have some favourites that I wouldn't recommend to a new reader, and I have books that I would recommend to a new reader that, although they are good in their own way, aren't my favourites.

I would think that anything that has had 3 or more votes is a definite shoe in at this time (Is that the right version of shoe?)

I suspect that the line is quite blurred on this, but we're only human, so recommending what we like is natural.

There are some duplicates in the single hit list--Rite of Passage and Sector General are two. Not a criticism--just FYI.

I suggested a list of 20 max in the original post but it was arbitrary--I especially think those who have listed their suggestions should feel free to chime in with "seconding" items they may not have thought of when listing their suggestions.

>177
Really?
Wouldn't it be better to develop a candidate list, call that closed, and then vote - everyone gets (say) 20 votes?

That way we get the biggest possible candidate list, and drive some sort of consensus.

172: I'm seconding votes other have made. I haven't counted how many are in either post. I didn't know we were being held to a strict numerical standard.

167: Ah, so now you are the arbiter of what books are good and bad. And people don't agree with you! How will the world go on with this injustice perpetuated?

I note that in a recent episode of Doctor Who, they maintain that Agatha Christie is the most popular author in all history, with her books reprinted in the year 5 billion.

If I get this, we have the list and at this point it doesn't matter if it is Dune with lots of people recommending it, or Foundation with 2, but then we take that long list and those who wish chose 20 from it by a certain date for inclusion.

I agreed to count people's votes and would be happy to do so, but I'm not planning to turn this into a job or major project! Vote for books. Vote for as many as you like. In fairness, don't vote for the same book more than once. Pick your books on whatever basis you'd like.

I'd compile the list exactly as Rojse has been doing, though I might count slightly differently (there's some interpretation possible when people list titles in a paragraph and talk about them), and I'd planned to try to include date of original publication if this information could be easily found. I'd do it in an Excel file so it could be sorted by title, author, date of pub, and, the default, number of votes.

If someone else would like to massage the data in other ways, post it elsewhere, conduct further surveys, argue over the merits of any given title's inclusion, etc., I hope he, she, or they will do so.

A list of recommendations for a newcomer to SF, assuming that the newcomer was looking for light entertainment rather than education and enlightenment:

psion - joan d vinge
foreigner - cj cherryh
barrayar - lois mcmaster bujold
to hold infinity - john meaney
the cassini division - Ken MacLeod
the outback stars - sandra Mc Donald
a matter of oaths - helen s. wright
to say nothing of the dog - connie willis
jumper - steven gould
code of conduct - kristine smith
the myriad: tour of the merrimack - r.m. meluch
hellspark - janet kagan
the steerswoman's road - rosemary kirstein

edited to correct author of 'To hold infinity'. Whoops.

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 6:43am.

#183

To Hold Infinity (absolutely nothing relevant on the touchstones) was by John Meaney and not Stephen Baxter.

Perhaps it's me, perhaps I'm not explaining myself very well, perhaps it's my communication skills which are failing. But please bear in mind, I am not an American. I am British. I may speak the same language as Americans, but I don't use it the same and I certainly don't think the same way. The book market in the UK is also somewhat different to that in the US. British readers appreciate different things to US readers; authors popular in the US are not necessarily popular in the UK.

Other points worth bearing in mind: I have been reading sf for over 30 years. I have read most of the classics. I read them back in the late 1970s when I was in my early teens. The fact that I liked them at that time does not mean I still like them. In fact, I have in the last few years reread some of those "classics", and discovered quite how poor they actually are. I am not the same person I was 30 years ago. I have grown, my tastes have changed, and I am a more critical reader. I imagine the same is true of most people. I also see no reason to pander to my inner 13-year-old, or to anyone else's.

Perhaps that's the problem: perhaps I'm too critical a reader. I can't switch off my brain when I read a book (which is, I suppose, useful as I review books for Interzone). A book set thousands of years in the future in which everyone smokes cigars, or in which a spaceship pilot uses a slide-rule to calculate a course change... I consider those to be failures of imagination. I consider how well written, how well put together, how internally consistent and rigorous are novels when I read them. I believe it is important that the genre seeks to improve itself, that it is not simply seen as the written form of escapist films and television programmes. As a fan of science fiction, I believe I should be helping improve the general perception of the genre. I want sf to be taken seriously, so I take it seriously myself. If that puts me in a minority, then so be it. But I will continue to argue my position.

Message edited by its author, Apr 15, 2009, 7:08am.

# 177, I posted my 20 earlier, but if we're allowed to second nominations that we haven't already listed, mine are:

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Edited by Robert Silverberg
Gateway by Frederik Pohl
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley

And I might add, since I don't see it anywhere:

An Alien Heat by Michael Moorcock

Thank you!

I think part of the issue is that some of the older books have found a soft spot in a lot of our hearts is why people defend them so vigorously.

Some of the other suggestions are oddball. Are we meant to take Captain Empirical by Sam Nicholson as a serious suggestion? It has only 17 owners on LT. Where would a newbie find that? Let alone the question of quality - I don't own and haven't read the book (or even any of the original short stories) but it has languished in obscurity since Ace published it in '79.

So what is a good set of criteria for recommendations

1) Is in print.
Some people don't like buying second-hand. Also recommending out of print books makes it seem as if they are no longer relevant to the genre even if they are great works of literature.
2) Is accessible.
3) Is likely to lead the newbie onto reading other SF
Which means good. Novels which are mainly entertainments are OK but the list shouldn't be swamped by them (see below).
4) Shows the range that SF has.
It is no good recommending 20 mil-SF books (even if you really love mil-SF) to a newbie and telling them that is what SF has to offer. Conversely I think that in a long list of recommendations there should be one mil-SF book.

One should also consider the newbie. Many have been recommending what hooked them when there were 12/13. The newbie may not be 12/13 it may be an adult who has read widely in other genre. What works for a kid might not work for an adult and vice-versa. Also when we read these books first there were no computers and no mobile phones - life was different. A kid who has grown up in the modern world is going to have a completely different reaction to early works when what is presented as the future already seems old-fashioned or even totally alien - how many 12 year olds know what a slide rule is let alone handled one? Even fairly modern books are prone to this - some have to have the meaning of the opening line of Neuromancer explained to them.

well, having only done 16 so far -
for a highschooler i'd add:
17. little brother Cory Doctorow.
and
18. The ear the eye and the arm - nancy farmer.
19. for an older grade school child - dangerous spaces Margaret Mahy
20. Jr High interstellar pig William Sleator

"A book set thousands of years in the future in which everyone smokes cigars...."

You're ignoring the 2035 cure for cancer, development of cleaner tobacco in 2037, nano scrubbers in 2040 and the discovery in 2050 that tobacco is a prophylactic against alzheimers. (The last one explains George Burns)

"or in which a spaceship pilot uses a slide-rule to calculate a course change"

But ever since the Butlerian Jihad, every pilot uses a slide rule as a double check on the nav systems (or was that after Judgement Day, I can't keep them straight.....)

#187

Exactly what I think, Andyl. I won't debate the merits of the more obscure books on the list, but surely a recommendation to a new reader should at least be a book that is readily available for purchase, or would reasonably be expected to be in a local or state library system.

Dear Ian, re. #185,

I am from Australia and also have Half a generation on you.

For the first time I feel like standing up and applauding re. the CRAP that was written in the "golden days".
I still love a story, set in the 1990's. which still uses FORTRAN and punched cards.

My SF/fantasy exposure started in the mid '50s.
Half Yank, half British. OK we can debate the ratios.

But just thought I would just say hello.

Guido.

187/190. I agree as well. Although we should be careful not to overweigh item 4. I can think of recent popular books that include science fiction elements but aren't classified as science fiction and might not lead a reader towards reading more science fiction (the original rule 1 for this thread).

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a good example. If I recommended that to someone, it would more likely result in them reading more by McCarthy than reading more post apocalyptic science fiction. Same thing with Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union
That's more likely to lead the reader to more by Chabon or to modern Jewish fiction than it is to alternate history.

#191

FORTRAN and punch-card computers aren't the height of computing prowess? Next you will be telling me that we won't be using typewriters, tape recorders, and LP records as all of my pulp-SF reading has assured me.

#187 Sorry andyl, I did not consider its availability when I nominated Captain Empirical. I just remembered it's delightful scientific inventiveness and how hard I laughed at the quirky solutions. I wonder if any of them made it into an Analog Omnibus or Best of. Sorry you missed it.

if you think about the mechanical intricacy of the IBM card reader, it WAS a pretty awesome piece of equipment. It could flip through a 2' box of cards in seconds (transmitting the code to the 360/370 across campus). The biggest hassle was dropping a box of punch cards that weren't encased in rubber bands. When the printer or card reader would screw up, i'd feel a bit badly for the IBM repair dudes who'd have to come out and mess around w/ in the guts of those monsters in their suits and ties.

If judging a book is objective what units are we using to measure it? Is this unit fundamental or derived? For example: if the unit of fictional worth is 1 nabokov is this coulombs per hertz per metre squared or perhaps Fieldings per Tolstoy?

185: I don't think your nationality is any secret. On the other hand, your nationality isn't going to change what I recommend, nor is it going to make me think your objections to what I think are worthwhile recommendations make much sense, or that your judging criteria for books are not completely subjective.

I, too, have read science fiction for thirty years, and have read many of the classics. I have also recently reread many of them, and my reaction differs from yours - I found that they were quite enjoyable, even though they were written decades ago. On the other hand, I find many of the highly touted more recent "literary" works in the genre to be nigh-unreadable crap. That isn't to say that all recent science fiction is bad, just that several of the ones that have been extolled as great art have been.

I also don't have a problem with people thousands of years in the future smoking cigars. Why wouldn't they? People have been engaged in activities that are bad for them for thousands of years, many of which they know are unhealthy, but do them anyway because they are enjoyable. Why, exactly, will this necessarily change? Books with slide rules, card readers, and other outdated technology also don't bother me - a writer works with what he has at the time. A writer today who doesn't account for the internet in his future deserves criticism on that score, a writer writing in 1962 who doesn't just got things wrong.

But getting things wrong is okay. The problem you seem to have is the idea that science fiction should somehow predict the future. You probably think that David Brin's checklist of all the correct "hits" in his novel Earth is somehow a big deal. But science fiction isn't a prediction of the future, nor should it be. It is a way to tell stories nothing more. Others aren't saying "science fiction should be crap" because they aren't applying different standards than yours. They are merely applying different standards, and ones that (in my opinion) make for finding much more enjoyable books than your "how internally consistent and rigorous" standard does.

#196

Well I think for some books they can be objectively bad. Poor spelling, grammar, and sentence construction are all objective measures. Being internally inconsistent is also an objective measure. However that wouldn't wipe many books out.

Most people who are consciously trying to consider quality would consider stuff like the Mission Earth series by Hubbard and The Da Vinci Code to be of poor quality*. It may be a subjective thing but I don't think you will find anyone to stand up and defend those books although they have their supporters.

Personally I think Foundation is a level above that, but it would have to be an outstanding book (in terms of storytelling and writing) from that era for me to recommend it to a newbie. I have no problems if people want to include an anthology of short stories - many of those do hold up over the years and I am of the opinion that short fiction typified where SF was at during the golden age.

* Actually I've known people claim that Battlefield Earth is one of the best SF novels of all time - but they are distinctly a minority.

>196

justifiedsinner, I love that. Is it all right if I quote you elsewhere?

197: StormRaven
I couldn't agree more.It's nice to see a reasonable comment.
Thank you!

There are two lists within the discussion of this list. One is the original idea, what would you recommend, and we have talked about who you recommend to as being important. However I do think that the primary target market is that young teenager. They are the ones venturing out into adult fiction and are hungry for recommendations moreso than adults who have established there tastes.

Ian i do see your point, but I think that it is not the majority in this case. Often I think you are spot on, but here I think that your opinion differs, a lot of what one thinks of as Golden Age Crap may not be thought of by all as Crap. And Popular Science Fiction may be considered quite good. RAH gets a lot of banter the same way. But I think a significant number more think he is worthy rather than think he is crap.

I too think Captain Empirical is pretty darn good. It had me convinced that looking into the merchant marine as a career choice was an idea, which I did and was all hot for awhile. Is it the greatest, no. But as a book I could recommend, it covers the idea of going from a non-space based society to one that is just getting out there where private enterprise is involved. It is a series of short stories that take you along the journey.

The idea of a list that is the best of science fiction, is different to me then the one that is worth recommending and getting a new person involved.

If the list was entirely made by me, (And I am glad as I sure others are too that it isn't) then the list would have my bias and my bias of who I was recommending too.

Here we are recommending to the generic 'person.' In either case, whether my list with bias or not, for this genre or any genre, a 100 book list is different than a 10 book list, or the best 1 book. In a 100 book list I expect to give and if I ask for a list, be given an overview of the genre. I think the list we have going does that.

#197 I don't expect my nationality to change your opinions. I'm beginning to wonder if that's even possible. I do however expect it to change the way you read my comments.

My example of the cigars was an example of lazy world-building. Good sf is not lazy. A book set in 1950s American in space with aircars and robots to me is not a good book, because the author did not take the trouble to build a proper world for his or her story.

I've never said sf should be predictive. In fact, I believe it shouldn't be. It's not about getting things "right", it's about thinking things through.

Incidentally, you seem to like basing your replies to my comments on assumptions you've made about me. You'll not win any arguments that way.

Message edited by its author, Apr 15, 2009, 12:50pm.

#201 I accept that Heinlein is held in higher esteem in the US than he is in the UK. I suspect the same is also true of Asimov. And while I consider Heinlein a writer very much of his time, I still think Asimov never wrote a graceful sentence in his life. As someone here wrote, his style was better suited to his non-fiction.

202: In a thread like this, why does it matter where you are from? You recommend the books you think would be worthwhile. I recommend the books I think worthwhile. You decided to call everyone else idiots because they recommended books different than the ones you think worthy, and then resort to asserting that this is because you are British. It seems that if anyone is not taking the backgrounds of others into consideration here, it is you.

The author may not have cared about world building. Most books, even if they are ostensibly set in the future or in the past are about the time they are written in - and science fiction is no exception. Why is world building of paramount concern here rather than the story the author was trying to tell? The question is did the author think through the elements necessary to tell the story he wanted to tell, not whether he thought them through enough to match some sort of made up "world building meter".

That is not to say that a book is only useful to those who have lived in the era when it was written. Just because The Puppet Masters is ostensibly about McCarthyism, and The Forever War is a tale relatable to the Vietnam War doesn't mean that only those who are intimately familiar with those time periods can enjoy (and gain from) reading them. Most books that last have a wider applicability than just the narrow incidents that may have inspired them (and I would argue that most of the golden age science fiction that has endured does have such wider applicability). Just as an obvious case in point, those reading The Forever War today would probably relate it to the Iraq conflict, and as such it would have significant meaning for them.

As to changing my opinions, you have a tough row to hoe. First off, I've been reading and thinking about genre fiction for decades now. A few posts on a message board will have to be quite insightful for me to turn my thinking about these sorts of things upside down. Second, your method of basically saying those who don't agree with you are too dim to know when a book is good or not isn't very convincing to begin with.

>204 Your third paragraph is particularly nicely put.

203: That person would be me. I still think Asimov works for the type of science fiction he mostly tried to write. When he tried to do things like romance he stumbled, but so long as he was writing hard science fiction, his prose style worked. One does not get 500+ books published if one's style is entirely nonfunctional.

Message edited by its author, Apr 15, 2009, 1:25pm.

I should imagine whereever we sit on the issue of what is good or bad, the generation of our 100 recommendations for Science Fiction should at least have a good dozen that anyone could recommend.

It won't exist and it won't be written in stone that this is the be-all, end-all of lists. Who knows, later this year I might get published and you all will want to put me at the top of list... Bumping someone else off...

#204 Let me see if I've got this right: when I say old sf is not very good*, I'm wrong; but when you say new "literary" sf is crap, you're right. And this is what you've determined after thirty years of thinking about sf. Whereas my thirty years of reading sf (and, one would hope, thinking about it too) are of no consequence. Despite the fact that I review books - and I have the lead review in the current issue of Interzone (the UK's premier sf fiction magazine). But perhaps critical reading is of no relevance when determining the quality of a science fiction novel. Perhaps "thinking about" it is all that's necessary.

In which case I should probably consider myself to stand corrected.

(*and, as I originally argued, an inappropriate introduction to the genre)

208: No one has said that you are an idiot for not liking the same books I like. You, on the other hand, have stated "most sf fans wouldn't know a good book if it jumped up and smacked them in the face". In other words, the rest of us are stupid or simply dimwitted because we don't agree with what you consider to be a "good book". And you wonder why few posters end up agreeing with you.

Apparently, we, as current science fiction fans, must also be brain damaged because the books that got us into science fiction are "inappropriate" as an introduction to the genre. Many people here got into science fiction much more recently than you, within the last ten years for some, and somehow, their gateway was the books you state shouldn't be used for that purpose. Yet somehow those books did work. That must gall you.

The problem is, I suspect, you are speaking as someone with thirty years of reading in the genre, and as a result, the older books seem to have lost their appeal to you. I suspect that this is because you are jaded, unwilling to accept that perhaps those books that seem too simple for your tastes are exactly the kind of introduction a newer reader needs before they plunge into the deep end of things like slipstream or post-singularity fiction.

I found several more modern books touted as literary science fiction to be crap. Others I found to be good. Thus, I conclude that the definition of "literary" science fiction is highly subjective. On the other hand, we have a collection of classic works that people for years have found to be good, enjoyable and worth reading. Those books have endured for decades, but you ride in on your white horse, and tell us that we shouldn't like those books, because they are somehow objectively bad. And we shouldn't recommend them to others because you have the list of acceptable books that we should be choosing from. because they don't meet your subjective criteria of what makes a book good or bad. Sorry, I'm still not persuaded.

Being a critic for Interzone doesn't give your arguments any extra weight. They have to stand on their own merits, and thus far your argument basically consists of saying "everyone but those who agree with iansales are too dumb to understand what makes books good". That's not very persuasive. As I have pointed out before, there is a reason why the books you don't like stay in print, and keep getting read and enjoyed by new readers. It isn't because some nerd-conspiracy is keeping them there, or because others are too stupid to realize the books they enjoy are crap. It is because there is something that you are missing that makes them better than you think they are. Perhaps if you tried to figure out what that was, rather than whining and calling everyone else idiots, your arguments would actually persuade people, rather than simply offending them.

Message edited by its author, Apr 15, 2009, 2:54pm.

I think you're getting it back to front. I admit I wrote ""most sf fans wouldn't know a good book if it jumped up and smacked them in the face", but only after I'd said I thought most old sf books weren't very good and had been roundly attacked for doing so. The fact that I also said such a determination was not entirely subjective - and it isn't - also did not go down well.

I fail to understand how "the definition of "literary" science fiction is highly subjective". Something is either "literary" or it is not; it either shares characteristics with other works which have been deemed "literary", or it does not. As to whether literary sf is good or bad, or whether you or I like a particular literary sf work... those are two entirely different matters. I just recently finished Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004, so it's clearly a literary novel. It also includes a number of sf tropes - a post-apocalypse world, and a corporate near-future. I thought the prose was very good, but I didn't like the novel as a whole. I thought the sf was clumsy, I couldn't see the point of the interleaved narratives, and there was no great insight to the story.

Being a critic for Interzone doesn't give your arguments any extra weight. Of course it doesn't. They let any old fucking idiot review books for them...

210: I don't recall you being attacked. I recall people disagreeing with you. If you want to interpret people's disagreement with your premise that old SF is crap, and pointing out why that might not be so, as "attacking you", then there's a larger issue here. No one said your suggestions could only be the product of a hive mind, or the product of stupidity, or anything other than something that should be added to the list. You were the one to start attacking other people's suggestions, something no one else on this thread has done.

I suppose I misspoke with respect to "literary", although I think the question of what is and is not literary is highly debateable. I suppose I should have said "high quality", as in the definition of what literary science fiction is of high quality seems to be entirely subjective. I have noted elsewhere that when literary writers "slum" in the science fiction or fantasy genre, they often seem to produce work that is subpar compared to those who write in those genres on a regular basis. Perhaps writing science fiction is more difficult than those outside the genre think.

You (and many in academia) can fool yourselves about the subjective standards applied to literature all you want, but that doesn't make them actually objective. (I haven't read Cloud Atlas, but it is in my giant TBR pile).

And finally, being a critic for Interzone or any other outlet doesn't give your arguments more weight. Your arguments have to stand on their own merits. Thus far, your arguments consist of calling others idiots. That's not persuasive in the least.

I have read a few of Ian's review and they are thoughtful, critical reviews. Are you posting them here on LT also? We need to have the LT reviews build up. I expect one day we will even have a review by someone in the community of F- F- F--... etc..

But reviews often are opposing viewpoints. My review of Da Vinci Code for instance was not kind, I gave it 1.5 stars, and my review discusses it that way. However 650 LTers have reviewed it, many favorably. I find it hard to believe that some of those are not well adjusted people who think big thoughts and are quite intelligent. Just they think differently then I do.

The previous thread about Literary Science Fiction led us over 500 posts (?) to conclude that there was difference of opinion on defining literary there. Just as we have different reviews, we have different definitions. I think though that this list, with the recoding of all the recommendations, gives us a chance to build consensus, and provide a list, from which one may take 5 books or 50 fifty books or all to give as recommendations to new readers.

What I would recommend to a new reader of the genre includes sf that is twenty years old, and sf that is quite recent, some that have won awards and some relatively unknown. My criteria would be if my brain ended up in a different universe after reading it, so idiom-ridden military space opera, however popular, however much I enjoy it, would not be on the list.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Butterfly and Hellflower by Eluki Bes Shahar
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
The Uplift War by David Brin
The Chanur Saga by C. J. Cherryh
Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress
City of Pearl by Karen Traviss
The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald
Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick
Old Man's War by John Scalzi

Message edited by its author, Apr 15, 2009, 3:44pm.

I still come back to the use of the term objective. If there is an objective way of determining whether a piece of writing is good or bad, literary or pulp I have yet to see it. Most literary critics can't even agree on what constitutes a text. The 'New Criticism' has been out of fashion for 50 years, 'Aesthetics' for even longer. Grammar, sentence construction etc are irrelevant as any quick glance through Finnegan's Wake, Trainspotting or even Feersum Endjinn will tell you.
Objective to me means a set of rules or procedures that can be applied to any text, at any time, that will give an unchangeable rating.
So, Ian, what are these rules? Inquiring minds wish to know. (That's enquiring minds for anyone outside the US).

Message edited by its author, Apr 15, 2009, 4:37pm.

Although I can't seem to locate my own copy of this, I think I have to recommend Samuel Delaney's Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories

Besides the title story others such as The Star Pit were near brilliant. Although "old SF" I do think they are of pretty high quality.

Latest update - multiple nominations

13 - Dune by Frank Herbert
12 - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
9 - The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
8 - Old Man's War by John Scalzi
6 - Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
6 - Hyperion Dan Simmons
6 - Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson
6 - Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
5 - A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
5 - Blood Music by Greg Bear
5 - Childhoods End by Arthur C. Clarke
5 - Ringworld by Larry Niven
5 - The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven
5 - Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
4 - 1984 by George Orwell
4 - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
4 - Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
4 - Sector General by James White
4 - The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
4 - The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
3 - Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
4 - Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
3 - City of Pearl by Karen Traviss
3 - Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
3 - Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
3 - Flatland by Edwin Abbott
3 - Foundation by Isaac Asimov
3 - Gateway by Frederik Pohl
3 - I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
3 - Light by M. John Harrison
3 - Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
3 - Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke
3 - Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
3 - The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
3 - The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
3 - The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
3 - The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
3 - The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
3 - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
3 - The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley
3 - The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Edited by Robert Silverberg
3 - The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
3 - The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
3 - Vatta's War by Elizabeth Moon
3 - Way Station by Clifford Simak
2 - Babel-17 by Samuel R Delany
2 - Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
2 - Black Man, Richard Morgan
2 - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
2 - Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
2 - City by Clifford D. Simak
2 - Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
2 - Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny
2 - Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
2 - Enemy Mine by Barry Longyear
2 - Ensign Flannery Shortstories by Poul Anderson
2 - Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
2 - Foreigner by C J Cherryh
2 - Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein
2 - Hospital Station by James White
2 - Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
2 - Hunting Party by Elizabeth Moon
2 - I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
2 - Jumper by Stephen Gould
2 - Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.
2 - Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
2 - More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
2 - Neuromancer by William Gibson
2 - Nova by Samuel R. Delany
2 - Psion by Joan Vinge
2 - Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin
2 - Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
2 - Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
2 - Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlen
2 - Startide Rising by David Brin
2 - Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
2 - Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland
2 - Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
2 - The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
2 - The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling & William Gibson
2 - The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
2 - The Execution Channel, Ken MacLeod
2 - The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
2 - The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
2 - The Light Ages by Ian R MacLeod
2 - The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
2 - The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
2 - The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald
2 - The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 2 - Edited by Ben Bova
2 - The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
2 - The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
2 - The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
2 - Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan
2 - Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
2 - To Say Nothing of the Dog--Connie Willis
2 - We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
2 - When The Sleeper Wakes by H G Wells
2 - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm

Latest Update - mentioned once

A Company of Stars by Christopher Stasheff
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
A Matter of Oaths by Helen S. Wright
A Plague of Demons by Keith Laumer
Accelerando by Charles Stross
Agent of Change by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Airborn by Kenneth Opel
Alien Earth by Megan Lindholm
An Alien Heat by Michael Moorcock
Aye, and Gommorah and Other Stories by Samuel Delaney
Balance of Trade by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Brasyl by Ian McDonald
Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
Butterfly and Hellflower by Eluki Bes Shahar
Captain Empirical by Sam Nicholson
Carnival by Elizabeth Bear
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
Chanur's Venture by C. J. Cherryh
Code of Conduct by Kristine Smith
Coming of the Quantum Cats by Frederick Pohl
Complete Fuzzy by H Beam Piper
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Contact by Carl Sagan
Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod
Cowl by Neal Asher
Crash by J. G. Ballard
Crashcourse by Wilhelmina Baird
Dangerous Spaces by Margaret Mahy
Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
Dawn Octavia Butler
Daybreak 2250 A.D by Andre Norton
Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
Desolation Road by Ian McDonald
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Exiles to Glory by Jerry Pournelle
Expendable by James Alan Gardner
Fairyland Paul McAuley
Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton
Fool’s War by Sarah Zettel
Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Forty Thousand in Gehenna by C. J Cherryh
Glimmering by Elizabeth Hand
Green Eyes by Lucius Shepard
Gridlinked by Neal Asher
Hard To Be A God by Arkadi & Boris Strugatsky
Hellspark by Janet Kagan
Hoka! By Gordon Dickinson
House of Reeds by Thomas Harlan
Hover Car Racer by Matthew Reilly
Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster
Ilium by Dan Simmons
In The Garden of Iden by Kage Baker
Infinite Jests; The Lighter Side of Science Fiction
Infinity Hold by Barry B Longyear
Into the Storm by Taylor Anderson
Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle
Jr High Interstellar Pig by William Sleator
Kéthani by Eric Brown
King David's Spaceship by Jerry Pornelle
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
Learning The World by Ken Macleod
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp
Life by Gwyneth Jones
Look to Windward by Iain M Banks
Major Ingredients by Eric Frank Russell
Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Night Sky Mine by Melissa Scott
Nostrilia by Cordwainer Smith
Odyssey by Dan Simmons
Of Tangible Ghosts by L E Modesitt
Ophiuchi Hotline, by John Varley
Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton
Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Past Through Tommorrow by Robert Heinlein
Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlen
Ring by Stephen Baxter
Roadside Picnic by Arkadi & Boris Strugatsky
Rules of Survival by Kristine Smith
Sargasso of Space by Andre Norton
Sassinak by Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Moon
Serpent's Reach by C. J. Cherryh
Skybreaker by Kenneth Opel
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
Space Vulture by Gary K Wolf
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick
Stories of your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Storyteller by Amy Thomson
Surfin Samurai Robots by Mel Gilden
The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
The Android's Dream by John Scalzi
The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum by Stanley G Weinbaum
The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle
The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh
The Cassini Division by Ken MacLeod
The Chanur Saga by C. J. Cherryh
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz
The Dissapeared by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
The Drowned World by J G Ballard
The Ear the Eye and the Arm by Nancy Farmer.
The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy
The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper
The Fuzzy Papers H Beam Piper
The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
The Golden Nineties by Lisa Mason
The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
The Ice People by René Barjavel
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson
The Morcai Battalion by Diana Palmer
The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack by R. M. Meluch
The Past Through Tommorrow by Robert Heinlein
The People Trap by Robert Sheckley
The People: No Different Flesh by Zenna Henderson
The Postman by David Brin
The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith
The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlen
The Quiet War by Paul McAuley
The Reefs of Space by Frederik Pohl
The Rest of the Robots by Isaac Asimov
The Separation by Christopher Priest
The Skylark of Space by E.E. "Doc" Smith
The Stars Down Under by Sandra McDonald
The Steerswoman's Road by Rosemary Kirstein
The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld
The Uplift War by David Brin
The World Inside by Robert Silverberg
There and Back Again by Pat Murphy
Time and Again by Jack Finney
To Hold Infinity by John Meaney
Undertow by Elizabeth Bear
War with the Newts by Karel Capek
Warchild by Karin Lowachee
Wasp by Eric Frank Russell
Wasteland of Flint by Thomas Harlan
Welcome Chaos by Kate Wilhelm
West of Eden by Harry Harrison
Wildcards by George R. R. Martin
Wrapt in Crystal by Sharon Shinn
Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughn
Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

Oh, yes, if anyone is interested, 98 books have been nominated at least twice.

>185 I'm sure there are cultural differences between Americans and Brits, and I know there are linguistic differences, but there's an awful lot of overlap, too. Most of my literary reading is of British authors; I prefer them to Americans. I'll admit I don't always know (or much care) whether a specific sci fi author is British or American, though.

>194 Captain Empirical may be relatively obscure, but there are still 28 used copies available on Amazon, starting at a penny.

I would not hesitate to recommend an older book for fear that some people don't like to buy used books or don't like to get books from the library. That's their choice and their loss, in my opinion.

>196 You made me laugh. More than once.

Seconding
Stations of the Tide and Neverwhere

With the idea that these are recommendations for new readers, some secondsthirdsetc

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Babel-17 by Samuel R Delany
Jumper by Stephen Gould
Neuromancer by William Gibson

and one new one

Marooned in Real Time by Vernor Vinge

I'm going to second The Steerswoman's Road by Rosemary Kirstein. This was an excellent read and at the risk of a sexist comment think it might have strong appeal to younger women.

I'll second The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald. I originally listed The Stars Down Under but neglected to include the first book.

And I'll second the Merrimack books by R M Meluch as well - so another vote for The Myriad.

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 12:26am.

With 98 books with 2 or more nominations, and a great many with one, perhaps it is time to put the cutoff into effect. Then start whittling down.

This is still just a guideline and individual can take the list, lop of the bottom or top fifty and add back there own when it is all finished.

#211 And finally, being a critic for Interzone or any other outlet doesn't give your arguments more weight. Your arguments have to stand on their own merits. Thus far, your arguments consist of calling others idiots. That's not persuasive in the least.

I mentioned that I review books for a magazine to show I at least have proof that I think about the books I read. And much as you would like it to be true, you can't recast my entire argument as "calling others idiots". Here's a quick summary of what I've actually written:

#10 if you've not read a book for 20 years, how do you know how good it really is? Do you still think you appreciate books now the same as you did then?

#18 A book for me can't be "fun" if I find its attitudes offensive, its writing poor, its characters wafer-thin, its ideas hokey, and its world-building nothing but whitewash. And yes, I find the jingoism in a lot of military sf too offensive for me to find the books "fun".

#21 ... sf does not get a free pass on good writing. Just because it privileges ideas, that doesn't mean it's allowed to have piss-poor prose, cardboard characters, bad research or idiot plotting. A good book is a good book is a good book. Some of them happen to be science fiction as well.

#29 Perhaps the sf classics endure because sf readers just aren't very sophisticated readers*. Which is fine when you're 13 years old. But we're not 13 any more.

#31 Asimov's prose has all the grace and charm of a pregnant guppy, every universe he used in his books was 1950s America with extra gizmos, he didn't do characters at all, and his plots show their fix-up origins far too plainly.

#38 All I'm trying to do is get people to think about the so-called classics, about the sf books they automatically recommend to people. The genre has changed, but you wouldn't know from the way people are forever harping on about 60-year-old novels....

#49 ... the reason I think Asimov has remained popular is because a handful of his novels have core ideas which resonate - the Second Foundation (not psychohistory - that's well, bunk), and the Three Laws of Robotics ... I also think he's forgiven much for his stature in the genre.

#53 I don't think we're doing the genre any favours by holding up the likes of Asimov or Heinlein or the Golden Age authors as exemplars, as the best the genre has to offer.

#62 Imagine that you're trying to give the recommendee a good idea of what the genre is like. Not what the genre was like. Is. What sf is.

#66 If someone wants to read a mainstream novel, you don't give them Dickens. If they're learning about literature, and the history of literature, then you give them James Fenimore Cooper.

#69 ... on the whole that good old works are not as good as good new works. And while I have nothing against Wells or Orwell or Zamyatin, I see little point in giving someone the impression that science fiction is stuck in the first half of the 20th century.

... So, while I have a low opinion of many old sf works - some of the reasons for which are mentioned above - the core of my argument has been that I don't want to give new readers the impression that the genre vanished around the time Star Wars was released, or has not progressed since the 1950s. I was also worried that people were suggesting titles out of nostalgia - that the books they named were the ones which formed their own introduction to the genre, decades ago and when they were much much younger... and yet our mythical new reader is neither 13 years old nor living in the 1970s.

(* by "unsophisticated", I mean that sf readers focus on a text's central idea, often to the exclusion of other elements - some of which would be considered poorly deployed by readers who don't privilege the idea)

225: And I point out that (1) your statement that a book is a good book or a bad book isn't the end of the matter, others have differing opinions on what constitutues a good book, and it doesn't make them unsophisticated, or idiots, or wrong, and (2) many people have pointed out to you that they have read the books in quetion quite recently and still found that they were good, and yet you persist in insisting that people are merely looking back in nostalgia at them, or that they are too dim to know what a good book is.

Try this one for size, just for giggles: the new books aren't as good as the old ones. They are fat, overly long, and slow. They have stale ideas, and reused plots. The authors mistake verbosity for content. A new reader picking one up will inevitably get the idea that science fiction does nothing but ape non-genre literature in a desperate attempt to be like it, and wonder why he bothered.

I don't necessarily think those statements are true of all modern science fiction, but that's as valid as your constant harping on the older works. You have said you wonder why no one listens to you when you try to "advance" the genre into the modern era, and it is because your arguments really do amount to little more than "you are idiots". You think they aren't, but when you say "that book you read last month that you really thought was good, it wasn't, only a nostalgic fool would think it was", that's basically saying "you shouldn't recommend that you idiot."

And you consistently fail to grasp why science fiction works that were written forty, fifty, or sixty years ago (or more) still grasp people's imagination, and remain the books they remember, while other "better" books of more recent vintage don't. One thing to remember is that the books that have endured are a tiny subset of science fiction that was written. Their contemporaries in the genre have mostly been forgotten, and these have stayed around. That means there is something that wave after wave of science fiction readers have found worthwhile in these books. Simply dismissing them out of hand doesn't make your argument appear to be thought out, it makes it look shallow and unreflective.

The trouble with many newer works, for newer readers to the genre, is that they have gotten so fat, and so self-referential, and to a certain extent overly complex, that a newer reader will simply get lost or simply have no good reference point to fix upon. The virtue of recommending many of the older works of science fiction to a new reader is that they are quite accessible, even with the sometimes outdated technology. You assert that Asimov's books reflect a 1950s U.S. with gadgets added (I think that is to a certain extent true, but not entirely so). Where you see this as a weakness, I see it as a strength when a new reader confronts the story. It is familiar to them - it is something they can settle into, and will be familiar. The stories and themes of older science fiction have been incorporated into mass media science fiction, which also makes it more accessible - what is, for example, Star Trek (of any iteration) other than a collection of Asimov stories?

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 9:39am.

your arguments really do amount to little more than "you are idiots"

Read my comments a little more carefully. I say no such thing. You need to try a new tactic.

Yes, I did ask if people had recently reread the books they were suggesting. Many said they had. I moved on to another point. You seem incapable of getting past the "oh noes! he called me an idiot!!1!!".

It is familiar to them - it is something they can settle into

1950s America is something a person born in the 1980s can settle into? Pfft.

You have yet to explain to me the great attraction of old sf works. You seem to think that because they're still in print then they must be good. That doesn't necessarily hold true: most of Philip K Dick's books are in print in the UK because of one man. Malcolm Edwards is a big fan of PKD. He also happens to be an editorial director of Gollancz, and has sufficient clout to ensure the books remain in print.

Aside from the we are idiots argument, only new is good arguments, one of the things I think we have seen in this list from a cross section of readers, is that more are willing to recommend the old works, written by old masters or hacks depending on the adjective you wish to use. A great deal more have listed these old works from the Golden Age, and that is an accepted term in the community whether someone takes umbrage with it or not.

That bias shows that those who think that the old dated stuff has no place in a list of recommendations is that they are the minority. A very small minority this time around.

The Golden Age stories and writers seem to, and I have not done a count, in my mind comprise easily over 20% of the list.

So So much depends on the person who's recieving the nominations though - not evenjust age, but what else they've read, what sort of things they generally like. However ni a list of 100 it should be possible to reach a few different areas,: This is where SF started, this is what it passed through and this is where it it's currently at.

A few I'd include:

Foundation by Asimov
Dune by Herbert
city by Simak
Cyteen by Cherryh
Foreigner cherryh
chanur saga by cherryh
revelation space by Reynolds
sam gunn by Bova
red dwarf Grant
hammers slammers drake
snow crash stephenson
diamond age stephenson
only forward by smith
earth by brin
riddley walker by hoban
1984 orwell
journey to the centre verne
babel 17 by delany
2001 Clarke
Sandkings by Martin
Ringworld by niven

Gah. there's loads more, these are just famous authors, there are loads that are less well known. Some near future some distant, some old some new, some funny some straight, some social commentry, some pure story, some characters, some aliens some humans, some films, some impossible to film, some long some short.

I'd tell the recipiant. Read all of these. You won't like them all, and might not finish them all. But when you've read them you'll know what SF is and has been about, and which areas you like and which you don't. When you know that, come back and we'll find you another list of a 100 books just in that area.

Oh and I'd never ever recommend anything by Heinlein, Banks or Gibson or Left hand of darkness because I really disliked them, and Ender's game and baxter isn't any better than meh.

But that's just me. Another brit, who disagrees with Ian.

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 10:32am.

I have a friend who in the eighties loved Heinlein, but this writer who was in his sixties or older at the time had written a scene where he describes a rape. She told me, and I still haven't forgotten, that she threw the book across the room and hadn't picked up a Heinlein since. She didn't feel RAH knew what he was talking of.

On the other hand I have a friend who is also friends with the first, who is a godchild of RAH, and we sat and watched Starship Troopers together and she had a lot of extra commentary to add, fortunately waiting to the film ended.

For me I don't like all of RAH. I like most of the juveniles, but not all, I like some of the later work but not all. So even if Stranger in a Strange Land makes it on the list, I might not recommend it, because I don't have fond memories of it. (Grok) But if The Moon is a Harsh Mistress fails to make the cut, then I would actually recommend it despite the list, because I do think it is a good story and book, which I have said here and elsewhere.

Thus to each his own. So far all the contributions I think underscores that we all care about Science Fiction enough that we would recommend books from the genre to others, and that no matter what we recommend, we would be able to hook new people and get them as addicted as we. (My Dad's a Pharmacist, so the using analogy is always fun to, er, use.)

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 12:25pm.

BTW, once this list is generated, does one create a free LT membership persona and post the list as a Library there? Is that how that works?

That's a good idea, one I hadn't thought about. Someone suggested adding this to the Wiki. I'd try to do both if not stymied in the attempt.

227: Functionally, for most people, the 1950s America reflected in the science fiction works of that era is little different than 1990s America (or even 2000s America), especially as reflected in television and movies. Yes, there are changes, but culturally, it is quite accessible for most Americans, even those born thirty or forty years later.

It takes more than one man to keep a book both in print and on bookstore shelves, at least in the U.S. One person might be able to keep it in print, but he won't be able to get Borders and Barnes & Noble and so on to stock and restock it for years. Someone is buying these books, and I seriously doubt that a bunch of sixty-something year olds are stocking up on copies.

And I have pointed out why the golden age books remain popular - they affect readers even now. People read them, find them good, and recommend them to others. Even many of those who have read them recently. Just because a book is old, and doesn't meet your idiosyncratic standards of "good" doesn't make them without merit. They are simpler than more recent fiction, but unlike you, I find this to be a selling point for a new reader, for reasons I've outlined before.

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 2:53pm.

Perhaps we can let this thread run a while longer to allow more readers to post their suggestions. We keep getting new suggestions (hurrah for sandkings) coming in as well as consensus on earlier ones. The more the better I think. I really wish I had the time to read or re-read more of these great recommendations. I have my own long mental list of classics I'd like to recommend like several by Simak or James Blish's Cities in Flight or one of ERB's Mars books perhaps, but without having read them in any recent time I hesitate to make a formal recommend. I don't see any Anne Mcaffrey listed at a glance which surprises me. My daughter (now 18) really enjoyed some of the early Dragonflight books in her mid teens. Now she has been captured by the Twilight chicklit (aaaargh) and all is lost ....

So much has been said already. I loved the Foundation trilogy in my teens, as I loved Arthur Clarke and Andre Norton and RAH and Clifford Simak. I reread the Foundation trilogy (my original 60s era SFBC hardback) a few years ago and was shocked, SHOCKED, to find out how slim a tale it actually was! I read Way Station every few years, and I think it still holds up well as a story of alien contact and of a person. That said, I would still be likely to recommend Foundation to a 13 year-old because I think it would open up their thinking the same way it did mine at that age.

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 2:58pm.

#234 Nice review of Delany's Nova. Not at all influenced by this discussion i imagine. ;)

RBeffa requests that we run a little longer, but I think it is really time to make a cut. We will still have a great deal of posts trying to make the list into something close to a finished product, but I am not sure if my focus can keep to the task at hand, the recommendation list, or if it will be pulled further into the discussion of old versus new, of Golden vs (Dross?/Brass?) Age.

If we have 98 books with 2 or more (and that was several posts ago) we must have well over 200 recommendations in total. And again, the list is a starting point for all of us to use as we best deem fit. Some will no doubt discard 90 of those choices, others will discard 10, and some may find the list read all 100 books and love everyone of them. (I should think that not any of us will look at the list when in its final form and say, that we do love each and every book on the list, but it could happen.)

231: I'd recommend Heinlein to someone, but I would be selective. I wouldn't, sor example, recommend Farnham's Freehold, Sixth Column, or The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to a new Heinlein reader, or For Us, the Living to anyone, but I'd happily recommend a number of other titles to someone (exactly which titles depends on exactly who I was recommending the books to).

>235

I loved the Pern series by McCaffrey, also, and will probably reread some of it again. But wouldn't it be considered fantasy more than sci fi? I don't know; I do know that I recently gave the Dragonriders trilogy to my 9-year-old niece, though I don't think she's read it.

I'm happy to let this run a while longer but will do some compiling when I have a block of time for it.

I would also second the Dragonriders to a fantasy list. I expect many, but not all of the members of this thread crossover into fantasy. Should we tackle that if we make a success of this?

OK, here's my thoughts before the cut is made...

SF is not a genre I focus on, and for many years I had given up on it altogether after having read (and failed to be moved by) most of the 'classics' as a teenager. So perhaps these suggestions, as well as appealing to the new reader, would be applicable to someone like me as well. So, let me list just three authors that got me excited again...

Richard K. Morgan - Takeshi Kovacs series
- Altered Carbon
- Broken Angels
- Woken Furies

Jeff VanderMeer - Veniss Underground
Rereading that one again now

Alistair Reynolds - numerous short stories
Will commence his Revelation Space series soon

Edit: Touchstones! Agghhh!

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 7:16pm.

re: Fantasy.

I don't think that I'd classify the Pern series (at least the first several anyways) as primarily Fantasy. My wife loves them so we have many from the series that I have not read, but I did read the first six or seven of them. There are telepathic dragons but they fight a threat from space do they not? Anyway, they sort of tread the science fiction / fantasy line as they share elements of both. A number of Bujold's works are clearly Fantasy by my view, like Beguilement and Chalion, but I don't think the ones recommended in this thread have been her Fantasy ones.

Folks have pondered the Pern issue as you can read here, among other places http://www.treitel.org/Richard/sf/pern.h...

I am not a big reader of Fantasy, so your mileage may vary, as the saying goes.

241: The Pern books are science fiction that appear to be fantasy. I think a fan of either genre would probably find them appealing to a certain extent.

>241 Please check out the library 1001Fantasy*. It was created by nomination and voting by the Green Dragon folk and has a wiki sorted by votes cast and year.

* 1001 Fantasy Books to Read Before You are Turned into a Newt.

Morphidae, I've written you two reviews over at 1001 Fantasy...

My rememberance of Pern was that it was a world that was really very fantasy like, Nobility/Peasantry, Dragons of course. The only Science Fiction was the Threads falling from Space that the Dragons had to incinerate/eat?

Ladies/Lords, but no spaceships or electronics, or chemistry or sciences really.

Later Pern books showed the inhabitants finding the relics of the spacefaring folks who had settled Pern and eventually discovering a ship or station in space (don't remember exactly). Also, it was revealed that the first settlers had genetically engineered the dragons from a much smaller native species.

>246 Right, heh. Color me embarrassed.

ETA: I didn't pay attention to the poster name!

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 10:04pm.

> 235

We don't have very many Y/A books, period, on the list - I think this is where our 'who is our general person we're recommending to' kind of hurts us a little. If I were recommending to a teen (as many new sci fi readers are), my list would look a little different - and yes, it would include Anne McCaffrey, even though I would never rec her to most adults getting into the genre (unless perhaps I were trying to hook romance readers).

Maybe we should try to scare up some Y/A recs? When I was young, I loved her Rowan and Crystal Singer books - recently I've also liked Uglies and The Hunger Games, both of which I think are pretty hot with the Y/A crowd right now. There are also things like The Giver.

ETA: I agree that Pern is sci fi that looks and feels like fantasy - the origins are clearly sci fi (space ships, genetic engineering, colonization, and all!), and the later books are clearly sci fi (space ships, time travel, AI, and all!). The middle books have the same past (origin) and future, but /feel/ very much like fantasy, what with the telepathic drags and no space ships or even basic tech to speak of.

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 10:33pm.

re 217, the secondary list

Please consolidate my recommendation for the Fuzzy Papers (novel 1 and 2 of the Fuzzies) with the vote for Complete Fuzzy (novels 1 2 and 3 of the Fuzzies)

I think any votes for these should be consolidated as a series like Foundation was.

ETA: perhaps it could be shown as Complete Fuzzy (Little Fuzzy, Fuzzy Sapiens, Fuzzies and Other People) by H. Beam Piper

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2009, 11:34pm.

While debating the rights and wrongs of dragons did no-one notice post #242? Isn't that the kind of reader that this thread is aimed to produce a list for? Someone who hadn't gotten into SF before. What did they choose? Big modern novels, the classics DIDN'T work for them so perhaps Ian does have a valid point.

What would you recommend as a literary novel? George Eliot, and tell the reader to work forward? Isn't it more likely that you pick a good contemporary novel and then, if they are interested, get them to work backwards?

#238

Why? It just punishes those who don't use talk as often as some of us, or who have taken time to think more about what they are going to recommend. If I knew it was going to be a race I would have mentioned a lot of books early on (up to my limit of 20) - HHOS.

#247

So it was fantasy and then the SF was retconned on at a later date.

May I suggest that someone run the list by author and then combine the nominations. For example There are several nominations for different books by Sharon Lee (and Steve Miller) all from their early publications of which Carpe Diem was my favorite.

Then at some point there needs to be a statement of why this title or author was selected for this list.
Example; Entertaining space opera with a strong thread of romance running through the stories.

Aelith, I not sure I understand running the list by the author. Do you mean OP? Or is you mean the author of the book, in some cases, they are dead.

As for a statement as to why, that could make compiling the list very time consuming, much more than we might wish to devote. And with competing thoughts. I might have suggested something for a Golden Age Classic, and another might have as an example of Space Opera, but the same book. It would make the compilers job very laborious I believe.

Andyl Not trying to take away your voice, but the list has been going on for some little while. I started with but one suggestion, not thinking that we would have so much contention, and that I would then add others. I also think a lot more will be discussed once we decided to hash out the suggestions that we have already had.

But to argue your point, when do we say, all entries must be in? There must be some timeframe in mind so we can finalize a list that is only a guideline.

#256

Not that very long. Today is the tenth day. Some of us have had four days off for Easter - either religion, Eastercon, or just a short holiday.

Certainly when I started posting to this thread I understood it was going to be just a normal thread like others in this group that made recommendations. We have had regular tabulations (thanks rojse). Putting a more formal process around things and closing off the conversation doesn't seem right to me - but that could just be me.

In another week or so I'll compile what we have, with the knowledge that it won't make everyone happy and not everyone with an opinion will have posted it.

And, as a reminder, the 20-book limit was an arbitrary cutoff, not meant to keep anyone from posting a longer list or a second or third list if they wish. Please have at it.

Does 'Good Egg' translate culturally to the many people who post to the thread? EJJ, you're a good egg!

If we are looking at the YA market for science fiction, the ones I am hearing about (and waiting for paperback editions) besides the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, are The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson, and Unwind by Neal Shusterman. I have heard excellent reviews of all of them, and am looking forward to reading them.

More YA stuff

The Knife Of Never Letting Go / Patrick Ness
The H-Bomb Girl / Stephen Baxter (the book title that has never been toushstonable)
Siberia by Ann Halam (Gwyneth Jones) (I know Farah Mendlesohn and some others really rave about this one)

>259

Thank you!!

Although I didn't vote for it, the very first suggestion for this thread, Dune by Frank Herbert is really a must read for a science fiction fan. I gave away a number of copies over the years to folks thinking this book would hook them for life, but I don't recall that it ever did. It is almost too big of a book - in creation, concepts, construction, characters, OK that's enough c words, to start someone off on. One must begin a bit more gently I think. But I have long thought it the best science fiction novel I ever read. It has been a few years since I last read them, but two of Herbert's other works really clicked with me and I think would be good suggestions: The Santaroga Barrier and The Green Brain.

I was also just re-reading the original Green Mars short story/novella by Kim Stanley Robinson and got blown away all over again. It appears among other places in Gardner Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction Third Annual Collection which was a look at 1985 (I can hardly believe it was that long ago).

ETA: Speaking of Dozois, he has a rather interesting list (lists actually) of his own recommendations here: http://www.sfwa.org/reading/rec_dozois.h...
warning: older material intentionally listed. One might notice the similarity and dissimilarity to our own construction in this thread.

Message edited by its author, Apr 17, 2009, 6:45pm.

Some late entries:

the garden of iden - kage baker's Company series.

beholder's eye - julie e czerneda

@217 -- Doomsday Book by Connie Willis and The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis are the same book, so this should go on the list as having two votes. FYI. :D

> 260 Oh, yes! I have also heard great things about The Adoration of Jenna Fox (not a rec, don't count it yet!) and have it on my tbr list - perhaps I can get it done in time to rec it for this list if I think it's good.

Come to think of it, the same goes for City of Ember (also not a rec for counting!), which has been a-buzz in the YA world for a bit. I have it in my bag and will try to zip through it before the deadline to see whether I'd give it a rec, too!

It's good to see some sci-fi stuff that teens or pre-teens might be into!

*bump* Wondering if there are more suggestions!

I want to bump two books that only got one vote:
Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Some that haven't been mentioned:
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

Also, Ender's Game, Dune, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

EJJ, I wondered also. We had been very proactive in this thread, then it was three days of silence through the weekend. Wow...

Having finished it this evening, I will officially add City of Ember (Jeanne DuPrau) to my rec list. Also, in case it hasn't been clear in previous posts (more discussiony than list-y):

Uglies by Scott Westerfield
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Wake by Lisa McMann

I will also add a vote for Starship Troopers, which I have read for the first time and quite enjoyed, age notwithstanding! I think there is definitely a certain type of reader for whom that sort of book is very appealing.

Some of these are quite young, and none of them are what I'd call 'the best sci fi ever', but they /are/ all intensely engaging and very, very good at dragging a certain age of reader into the genre. I know this because I see it happening with the teens I know! I waffled for a long time over whether Wake counted as fantasy or sci fi, but I adored it to itty bitty pieces and it has plenty in common with pop-culture sci fi like X-Men, so here it is!

As an aside, at the risk of making this further complicated, a suggestion. I would personally really love to see something made of this list, beyond something we hash back and forth among ourselves and then stow away on the wiki. Might we consider, once we have a list settled by /our/ votes, opening it up to those outside the group to comment on, add to, vote for, and read? We're far more likely, after all, to reach new readers to the genre - both to get recs that draw them in and to give recs - in BookTalk or some such. I'd really love to see site-wide what people think about the books on the list, and whether we're missing anything that's really good at what we're talking about because so many of us are so immersed in the genre.

And then I'd love to do something more with it! I wonder, for example, if we have a really solid list if a site like i09.com might be interested in making a post including it, or something like that. Anyone else have suggestions?

Message edited by its author, Apr 20, 2009, 10:54pm.

Another vote for Cherryh's Serpent's Reach. Just finished rereading it this morning, and liked it even better this time around.

Also, Julie E. Czerneda's In the Company of Others, and A Thousand Words for Stranger.

I echo recommendations such as Ray Bradbury with Fahrenheit 451, Foundation series by Asimov, and also Robert A. Heinlein, esp Stranger in a Strange Land. A personal favorite of mine is Connie Willis The Doomsday Book. Orson Scott Card, Ender Series is on my tbr pile, my sons have enjoyed them. Dune series by Frank Herbert, 1984, by Orwell. No one has mentioned The Giver by Lois Lowry, maybe it is supposed to be targeted to a YA audience, but that book still haunts me today. Le Guin EarthSea series might qualify as fantasy instead of SF but our family members have enjoyed these books as well.

From another thread here is my edited list of essential SF books in order of author surname. As I stopped reading new authors (and new books) twenty years ago and only started again last year, there is only one book published since then. The list strong reflects my favorite authors, but I tried to be fair and not to exclude other authors at their expense.

The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
A Princess of Mars- Edgar Rice Burroughs
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
Childhood’s End - Arthur C. Clarke
The Best of Lester del Rey - Lester del Rey
The Best of Edmond Hamilton - Edmond Hamilton
Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein
The Puppet Masters - Robert A. Heinlein
The Entire and the Rose series - Kay Kenyon
The Best of C. M. Kornbluth – C. M. Kornbluth
First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster - Murray Leinster
Space Viking - H. Beam Piper
Federation - H. Beam Piper
Lensman series - Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
When The Sleeper Wakes - H. G. Wells
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
The Kraken Wakes - John Wyndham
Nine Princes in Amber - Roger Zelazny

I'd like to toss a view votes in there, mostly for previously mentioned ones:

- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card is brilliant, and one of the few books I could get both my father and younger brother to read
- Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin, which has one of the most imaginative worlds I've seen in SF and a fascinating take on gender
- Hitchhiker's Guide, obviously
- I, Robot by Isaac Asimov -- I actually prefer his short stories, and they give you a good sense of whether or not Asimov is for you
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, because parts of it are stunning, and it does so many different things
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, great cyberpunk
- Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

I tend more towards fantasy (or to Star Trek novels...) in my speculative fiction reading, so this is a somewhat limited list, but all good starting places, I think.

This evolving list is great. Thank you ejj1955 and rosje.

Some for newbies that I'd include that seem undervoted:

Nostrilia by Cordwainer Smith
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Maybe there should be a separate YA list? I agree with the comments about books like The Hunger Games and The Giver. Adults read and enjoy them, too, and they would appeal to a lot of new readers.

Can one come up with 100 great science fiction YA books? I beleive you could come up with the 100 best of YA, but then so many of those would never make it to a 100 best of Sci-fi, while a few of the YA books would be on the 100 best.

Another way to look at this, is that if some young person asks for recommendations, and posting this list is like our giving them the list, would that person go out and get all the books and start reading them right away. Some of the books are out of print, and then tackling 100 books while consumed with Chemistry homework, piano lessons, blogging, and hormones might be something that is stretched over those developmental years.

A further thought is just because it is on a list, doesn't mean they won't read the jacket to see if they really want to read the recommended book.

While I think a separate list would be fine, I think it would be hard to get 100 books, but perhaps using asteriks to denote acceptable for younger readers on this list might work well.

We could also start a thread aiming to find even 25 YA sci fi books, or something of that nature - although I do maintain that we ought to have an eye to having /some/ good number of them available on this thread, since the list is meant to introduce readers to the genre, and many readers are teens!

ETA: I've gone ahead and started a YA thread over here!

Message edited by its author, Apr 30, 2009, 12:18pm.

Some votes for books I would recommend to someone interested in literature, but new to science fiction:

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Roadside Picnic by Arkadi & Boris Strugatsky
The Invincible by Stanislav Lem
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

some more votes for the list
the child garden by geoff ryman
a deepness in the sky by vernor vinge
the snow by adam roberts
eon by greg bear
where late the sweet birds sang kate wilhelm
enders game orson scott card

Message edited by its author, May 2, 2009, 9:58pm.

Just wanted to say I've started tabulating the results, but it's going to take a while, so this will serve to bump the thread and perhaps encourage a few more folks to vote/suggest titles.

Still, wanted y'all to know I haven't forgotten ;-)

We did go through a quiet spell. At 280+ posts, we may want to have a second thread for the finalization of this project, as we argue, er I mean rationally discuss what should be on the final list and what has to be relegated to the appendices of recommendations.

i don;t knw wether this is still taking suggestions but i would say The Giver by Louis Lowry as that is the first Sc-Fi I ever read and The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester.

Message edited by its author, May 5, 2009, 7:52pm.

Definitely still taking suggestions, yes.

I figured on starting a new thread to post the results, from where we can, er, discuss the list and whether anyone anywhere should ever pay any attention to it!

So did that new post get started? (I am new here.)

Welcome! No, not yet, I'm trying to tabulate the results and include the title, author (which not all posters did, so I have to look those up), and, ideally, the publication date, so we can sort the results chronologically. This is going to take some time to do.

*Edited to add, I'll post a link here when I do get to that point.

Message edited by its author, May 5, 2009, 3:24pm.

Okay.
and I just remembered this but The Eye, the ear, and the arm is a good book. Perhaps not for new readers of the genre but others can decide that.

Message edited by its author, May 5, 2009, 7:51pm.

Well, The eye, the ear, and the arm was a Newbery Honor book, so evidently SOME people think it's a great book for the general kid public. Nancy Farmer won another Newbery Honor Book award for another of her science fiction books as well, The House of the Scorpion. Definitely a quality author.

What happened to the touchstones? Maybe this will activate them.

Message edited by its author, May 5, 2009, 6:08pm.

For new to SF, the following would be some of my choices:

Stardoc by S. L. Viehl, and then the rest of the series
The Fresco by Sherri Tepper
Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold for starters, the rest of the Vorkosigans thereafter
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon
The Galactic Gourmet by James White, and then backwards to the others in the series
Phule's Company by Robert Aspirin
The McGill Feighan series by Kevin O'Donnell Jr.
Rissa Kerguelen by FM Busby
Dancer of the Sixth by Michelle Crean
Time Safari by David Drake
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Taylor's Ark by Jody Lynn Nye

I've started several people out with The Fresco and they've come back for more.

#287: I forgot to put the around the title. sorry. i am new here and still learning the ropes.

Message edited by its author, May 5, 2009, 7:50pm.

>289 No problem, Miranda; as you will soon see, sometimes the touchstones work, and sometimes they don't. It can be frustrating! But they are useful when they do work correctly.

I would think a reasonable suggestion would be one of The Best Science Fiction of the Year collections edited by Gardner Dozois. I'm not sure if any one is markedly better than the others, but they would seem to give a newcomer a broad overview of the genre in one book.

Message edited by its author, May 5, 2009, 8:54pm.

Storm, I couldn't support that at all. Gardner has his tastes as an editor, while we have all this collective think going in. (And I stopped subscribing to was it IASFM shortly after he took over so long ago... Dim memory now it must be decades...)

#291

Maybe the Best Of The Best: 20 years of the year's best science fiction? Some good stuff in there.

As for Dozois's anthologies I don't think that there is any doubt that it is the best one to choose for a reasonably wide sampling of modern short SF. No, it isn't perfect but as far as I am concerned it is better than the Hartwell/Cramer and Horton anthologies.

My suggestions are two books that I greatly enjoyed. The first one is not for readers who cannot handle books that look at religion in a less then mainstream fashion. The second one is probably the most interesting view on nonhuman lifeforms I have ever read. Please remember these books are old and will contain cultural perspectives from the time they were written. :)

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
This Alien Shore by CS Friedman

I went back and added Friedman because it is an excellent book.

Message edited by its author, May 15, 2009, 5:19pm.

OK, so here's a short list I would recommend to newcomers to the genre (in no particular order):

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
On Basilisk Station - David Weber
Ringworld - Larry Niven
Macroscope - Piers Anthony
Dune - Frank Herbert
2001 - Arthur C. Clark
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Forty years ago when I read Macroscope I really enjoyed it. I wonder, in light of other discussions about rereading early SF, if this would be a good reread?

Macroscope, Cities in Flight and Stand on Zanzibar were my three favorite SF from the late sixties.

Hi, at the risk of speaking out of turn I notice Black Man by Richard Morgan is listed twice so far and Thirteen by the same author once, I believe they are the same title, the Us edition coming out as Thirteen - I read the proof of the former but bought the latter (I liked the cover better...)

#296

The novels that comprise Cities In Flight were published in 1955-62 so is a product of a slightly earlier age than the two books you mention (Stand On Zanzibar was 1968, Macroscope was a year later).

>297 Not out of turn at all; this is something I almost certainly would have missed. Thanks!

#296: Geneg

Yes. You should shatter all nostalgic memories of your favourite childhood novels, movies, television, and anything else that once entertained and enthralled you.

Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Accelerando by Charles Stross
Appleseed by John Clute
The Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick
Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks
Bugs by John Sladek
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
Gateway by Frederik Pohl
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Ring Around The Sun by Clifford Simak
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller
and many other revelations. embarrassing riches.

This whole discussion has gotten me in the mood to draw up a shortlist of "classics" and semis that I plan to re-read over the next year, a little at a time.

My shortlist for the moment is:

Dune and Dune Messiah
The Book of the New Sun
Hyperion
Snow Crash

I want to read books that I have not read since the initial read at least 15 years ago or so, but which I have enshrined in my memory as really good books. There are a lot of possibles to pick from the suggestions in this thread. I may go for Simak's City as well. Certainly at least one classic Simak. I was never a big fan of Arthur C Clarke, so I don't think it would be fair to go for Childhood's End since my memory of it was a confused one rather than an enlightened one. For Asimov, maybe The Gods Themselves cause that is the one my memory says was his best.

#302: I was doing the same thing this year, but just reading through the SF Masterworks series. I am sure everyone has different ideas about what "classics" are, but I have found there is very little on the list (so far) that makes me think reading it would be a waste of time.

In no particular order:

Lord of Light
Foreigner
Starship Troopers
Forever War
Dune
Neuromancer
Excession
Rendezvous with Rama
Man in the High Castle
Startide Rising

I might have different opinions tomorrow.

Message edited by its author, May 18, 2009, 12:55pm.

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick
Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Last Defenders of Camelot by Roger Zelazny
Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Reality Dysfunction by Peter F Hamilton
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Spares by Michael Marshall Smith
Vurt by Jeff Noon

Message edited by its author, May 18, 2009, 6:10pm.

I don't think I'd pick the same books for everyone. It would depend on what they liked to read already, maybe age and so forth.

For someone that likes historical fiction, or has a background in "literature" but doesn't mind poking some fun I'd suggest Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis in part to show that one author can do two very different things with one basic idea.

For a kid I'm tempted to say Have Spacesuit, Will Travel but Heinlein is getting pretty dated and sexist. So how about Dogsbody instead. And I think some of the Elizabeth Moon series like Vatta's War might be a good introduction.

I definitely agree with Snow Crash for just about anybody that enjoys a humorous adventure.

If someone came from Life of Pi or the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time I might recommend Feersum Endjinn.

And if they like detective stories Thirteen or Kiln People.

There are a lot of "classics" to pick from as well, obviously, but in many cases it seems like something a bit more contemporary might be an easier step. The style and setting wont seem as labored or outright silly. Computers big enough to fill a flatbed truck? Just to calculate a ballistic trajectory? In 2075? Seriously!?

Message edited by its author, May 24, 2009, 3:47pm.

I started reading SF as a teenager (40+ yrs ago), having enjoyed the Kelmo (Kemlo?) series as a kid. My local library had a lot of short story collections. Nebula, Hugo winners and I looked for books by the writers of the short stories I'd liked most. I became a fan of Lloyd Biggle jnr and I reread his books to this day, my copy of The Still Small Voice of Trumpets is falling apart but it's out of print so I wouldn't 'recommend' him. I'd go for

1632 by Eric Flint is better than its full-length sequels but there are a lot of short story volumes set in the same world.

Shards of Honour and Barrayar also published together as Cordelia's Honour by Lois McMaster Bujold and all the Vorkosigan series

Restoree by Anne McCaffrey

The Vatta's War series by Elizabeth Moon and the Serrano series

Hugo Winners if they still publish the anthologies.

I'm a little late joining this discussion so I'll ignore the obvious classics such as Dune, Neuromancer, Hitchhiker's and Consider Phlebas and suggest these instead....

Helliconia Spring / Summer / Winter (Aldiss)
Feersum Endjinn (Banks)
Altered Carbon (Morgan)
Cryptonomicon (Stephenson)
The Golden Age / Phoenix Exultant / Golden Transcendence (Wright)
Blindsight (Watts)
Accelerando (Stross)
The Star Fraction (MacLeod)
Eon (Bear)
Mortal Remains (Evans)

Message edited by its author, Jul 11, 2009, 1:05pm.

Thanks, Incandescent, for reviving this thread. It reminds me that I need to compile the list . . . sorry to all who have contributed that I got distracted.

Forgiven, I should note that you have done great work previously in our posting into this thread, and any one of us of course could have stepped up and helped by compiling the list also. We of course are all too laz... distracted also... :-)

(The other side of this is that once we come to the last part of compiling, we open another can of worms and discussion of 'how can you possibly thing that book is a top 100 book, why it is the lowest form of drek ever to have been written... Oh no it's not, this is better then even the bible, in fact whole cults worship this great work... Circular discussion, and that, well I dread, I mean look forward to what all this will bring about...

Too late to suggest a book that would appeal to those just being introduced to science fiction/young adult that I didn't see listed?

Idlewild by Nick Sagan

Not too late--I'm being tardy in getting the list tabulated. But haven't forgotten!

Way too late I'm afraid, but still wanted to weigh in.....

Working List of my favorite Science Fiction books:
(skipping the classics which are well covered above...no order)

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
The Drowned World by J G Ballard
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Possibility of an Island, Michel Houellebecq

Message edited by its author, Jul 21, 2009, 7:34pm.

Not too late at all, I wanted to mention, partly as a way of bumping this up for any latecomers or newbies.

I am working on tabulating this list and am not quite half-way through. Will make a new thread with the results and link it here when I finish.

Hey all, a newbie here... I stumbled across your list and just had to add my 2c worth:

Foreigner et al - CJ Cherryh
Rimrunners - CJ Cherryh (yes, this is a trend :) )
The Company stories, various - Kage Baker
The Vorkosigan books (I couldn't choose) - Lois McMaster Bujold (great fun)
Rynosseros - Terry Dowling
Moon of Three Rings- Andre Norton (a childhood favourite)
Uncharted Territory - Connie Willis
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

Wow, this is far harder than I thought it would be. I've tried to not repeat authors - there could be other Cherryh works on this list! and keep hitting that blurry the line between SF & fantasy.

Anyway, I will leave my list the above for now, else I'll never Submit this post.

Cheers, Irene

Someone else in the forum asked what Science Fiction books they should read and the same old same old responses started. Read these classics, don't read anything before 1980 unless i tell you to. Some classics do stand up, some classics are called classic because they are classic...

I thought how useful if this list was finished, we could just cut and paste the whole thing as the second response and stop all the belly aching.

It will be finished, it will!

DWW, I've come to the conclusion that this is an impossible task. I was just reading on another thread someone bashing one of my favorite authors, someone who I would always recommend. There is a lot of good science fiction out there across the ages. Very few books are timeless, even classics. They are of their time.

It's like bashing a model-T car saying it can't do zero to sixty in 5. What a piece of crud it is. Maybe it isn't the best thing on four wheels, maybe the development of its genre has advanced so much that it is quite dated. But it still was a remarkable achievement for its time. And to some still a thing of beauty.

So I don't think there are 100 must read science fiction books. Or 100 to recommend to new readers. If there was going to be 100 to recommend to new readers I think you'd have to restrict it to books written in the last ten years. Something of this time.

One argument advanced elsewhere in this thread is that some readers new to the genre will not necessarily be young or inexperienced readers; they may be quite sophisticated in other genres. So they will be able to place older books in context. Also, if we give them a wide choice in the hundred suggested, they can choose for themselves if they want something more recent or of a particular subgenre--the titles and authors are only a starting point, as they can find reviews on LT and elsewhere to give an idea of the subject, setting, pub date, etc.

Also, some of the conventions are familiar to people who haven't read the genre just because of the influence of sci fi/fantasy in film and TV. If you've seen the Harry Potter movies, reading about witches and wizards in another author's series might not seem such a leap.

At any rate, I doubt anyone thinks this list will be definitive and another one could certainly be generated by asking another hundred readers or doing it all again in five or ten years . . .

Rbeffa I am aghast that you can think there are 100 great science fiction recommendations written in the last 10 years. I know that I would be hard pressed to find 20 that would fit in as well as some of the books if we go back the more than 100 years to Wells and Verne and before.

Certainly we all have our interpretations, but by your own standard the way you end of just the last 10 years, the Model-T is a piece of crud (The international Model T club is just down the street from me here where I live)

I think the narrow view that only current material is good material is wrong and I have argued it before. Yes, I have voted for Foundation and Moon is a Harsh Mistress as books that help round out the 100 list. If all you read was the new material, a lot of what you would be reading would be Potter and Vampires is my perusal of the shelves these days are accurate.

No I'm not suggesting there are 100 "great" science fiction stories of the last ten years. There might be, but I wouldn't know. I do know that some good stuff has been written in the last ten years. But I mostly read short fiction. I could probably come up with a list of 100 greats in the last ten if we included short stories.

I am much more a fan of older science fiction. On another thread I recently commented on my discovery of Cordwainer Smith. Not that I never heard of him, but my discovery of what interesting, unusual, strange, and remarkable SF he had written 50 years ago. This is the kind of stuff I like hearing about and reading.

By the way, there are no Harry Potter books in my library. Nor Twilight types. My grandfather had a Model T that he restored. I always thought it a piece of crud, impossible to start with the crank etc. To him it was a thing of beauty.

I think the car analogy is apt here. In a way, many science fiction fans are like classic car buffs. For most people in the world, a car is primarily defined by its utilitarian aspects, and for those (in most cases) the most recent cars are clearly superior in almost any way you care to mention.

But to a car buff, there is something in a 1958 Impala (for example) or a 1969 Dodge Charger that makes them better than more recent vehicles. The typical person just sees an old car that gets worse gas mileage, has fewer safety features, and may not even perform as well. But the car buff sees something else, something undefinable.

Hard core science fiction fans are often like the car buff. Yes, newer stuff may be "better" written and have better production values and so on. But there is something about the old stuff that still captures the imagination, even though it is "worse" by most objective standards (or as objective as standards can get when talking about written works).

I think the car analogy might be good also. From a different way (I kind of knew RBEffa that you really didn't want to advocate just the last ten years)

If you had a garage for a 100 cars, would you just have the 100 most recent cars? Money being know object, would you have a Stutz and a Dusenberg? A gull wing, a bug from the sixties? A Model T and a Model A? A mustang from the sixties, a Celica... A 240z. Not only great american cars from history, but from all over the world, from all times...

Your garage would have the history of cars.