Books for an aspiring SF-fan?

Hello!

Can't really say that I've read much SF at all, but have definitely been thinking of diving into it. Wouldn't want to start off by reading a "bad" book, so for you hardcore SF-readers out there, what book would you recommend I start with? If you're wondering what I already read, check out my catalog.

Appreciate all feedback, thanks!

You might like Timeline by Michael Crichton for some fantasy like swordplay if you have not already seen the movie & read the book.

You seem to enjoy fantasy with a martial feel so you might want to check out some military sf.

I enjoy John Ringo and David Weber for that sort of thing. Their collaboration on the March Upcountry series might fit the bill.

John Ringo also has a series that starts with There will be Dragons that is sci-fi, but has a definite fantasy vibe.

I would avoid the fantasy tinged SF and jump in with a bit more gusto.

You have already read and enjoyed Little Brother so you have already started off well.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. A slightly future South Africa where people with a guilt have animal familiars.

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. Ex-UN Envoy Takeshi Kovacs is re-sleeved in a body in San Francisco and investigates a conspiracy in a grim and gritty society.

Kil'n People by David Brin. Another detective thriller style story.

Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear. An endogenous retro-virus emerges and pushes human evolution into speciation.

I think we have discussed best books, and best books for beginners before - so look for those old threads as well.

Glory Road by Robert Heinlein. Not only is it by one of the past masters but it reads like fantasy only to reveal itself to be science fiction. It was Heinlein's answer to Clarke's statement that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Loved Dune, and it was among my first major SciFi reads.

It probably leans just a bit on the "Sword & Planet" side too, so a Fantasy fan shouldn't be in too alien territory.

Hmmm.
I'm with the "jump in school"

Rendezvous with Rama
1984
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Left Hand of Darkness

Dune

Ender's Game

Slaughter-House Five

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy This is a great book. The other books in this series are not as good as this one.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy This was a fun book.

Contact

Excellent, getting a lot of nice suggestions here, thank you!

Virtually anything by David Drake, if you like military themes.

Weber's Honor Harrington series is pure space-opera, but is fun.

Stand on Zanzibar by Brunner

The Dispossed by le Guin

Anything by the late Tiptree.

I suggest that you try two ebooks - Scavenger Lord & Artefact War, they are two in a trilogy and if you enjoy post-apocolyptic fantasy with a military (roman) theme, you'll enjoy these

12: CathH

Never heard of those. CathH your not related to the author by any chance?
Or maybe an author sock puppet?

Looks like promotion for a self publish title, the account only has those two titles on, and nothing else listed in the listed since set up a year ago.

If that's the case you might want to check out the 'meet the author' group to promote through rather than this group.

I'd recommend The Planet-Strappers by Raymond Z. Gallun (which is available as a free e-book through project Gutenberg)

I'd agree with tjm568 in that the David Weber and John Ringo 'Prince Roger' series that starts with March Upcountry is a good military romp. And if you like space navy stuff, Honor Harrington, or the David Drake RCN series.

I like Cold as Ice by Charles Sheffield which has some interesting characters.

For something a little more dense and character focused Wreck of the River of Stars by Michael Flynn.

Space Viking by H. Beam Piper is a good read.

I'm with the 'jump in to the deep end' folks. If you like sci-fi, you can always read that fantasy tinged stuff later. But if you're gonna try sci-fi, go for broke first.

I'll third Dune and second Rendezvous with Rama. Also by Clarke, 2001 served as a nice intro to hard sci-fi for me years and years back (and the book is much more comprehensible than the movie).

If you like military scifi check out the Baen library. Lots of first in series to try and decide for yourself.
Any of the Culture books by Iain M Banks
Altered Carbon has already been mentioned
For sheer fun check out the Polity books of Neal Asher
For hard scifi will an ecological tone try Timescape by Gregory Benford

Yes, am related. No, they're not self-published. thanks for the heads-up, appreciated. BTW, doesn't mean the works not good, it is.

Ah but a recommendation from someones wife or other relative is worthless, as they likely would say that the book was good anyway.

Perhaps the publisher/author should give away some review copies of his e-books via the Librarything early reviewer program, that way people would get to read the book and some objective reviews might appear. Heres the link:

http://www.librarything.com/forpublishers/er.php

After all if people see a review from a member they trust they might take it more seriously.

A few I've been very fond of that might be good first reads:

The Artificial Kid by Bruce Sterling
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
Dune by Frank Herbert
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Gateway by Frederik Pohl
The Gladiator by Philip Wylie
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Startide Rising by David Brin
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

#19: Ahh. Yes. Neuromancer and Gateway slipped my mind. Neuromancer was one of my first SF reads.

For something published in the last few years, I'd go with Old Man's Warby John Scalzi. I'd also suggest Player of Games by Iain Banks (although published in 1990). For something a little less serious, try To say nothing of the dog by Connie Willis, a great time travel book.

But, there are any number of great science fiction books out there, and they come in different categories. What are you looking for? Hard Science Fiction (Technology related) or are you looking for something character driven? Do you want something easy to read or do you want to start with the difficult stuff?

I read some science fiction, some urban fantasy, some weird fiction, but I'd suggest going through

There are some Sci-Fi books that I find a bit tedious do to the technology, but are rated high.

Thank you all very much again for all the feedback, I've certainly got a pretty long list of SF-books to read now. :)

#21 - I'm not looking for anything in particular, so everything from easy to difficult might do the trick. However, I'm concerned that a difficult book right at first might scare me a bit off the genre. The tedious books you had in mind, which are they?

I suggest you try something published within the last five years, unless your normal reading is books from the first half of last century. Andy has some good suggestions at #4

#19 I like the Alfred Bester recommendations, The Stars My Destination and Demolished Man, and would add those, along with Neuromancer. The whole list is a good one.

Every time I complain that sf fans only recommend 50 and 60 year old books to new readers, I'm told it's not true. Except this thread has proven that it very much is (bar one or two exceptions). When people ask for recommendations for crime novels, they're not told to read Christie and Sayers. When someone asks for mainstream recommendations, they're not pointed in the direction of Austen or Dickens. There are sf novels being published now than any time in the past. So, please, pick one of them. Something that was written within your lifetime, something that actually is relevant in the 21st century, something that is readily available new in any book shop or online retailer. Support authors currently writing, not ones who died before you were born.

Er, rant over. Sorry.

There is also the chance by picking a relatively recent book you can have a conversation with your mates (real or online) about it - as it is current, in vogue if you will.

I am not as strident as Ian in saying 5 years (after all a 10 year old book was nominated for the Clarkes) but it does get progressively more difficult to find a book that is good, and relevant to people today the further you go back in the past. This is due to the march of progress - both technological (computers, comms, etc), social (equality - gender, sexuality, race), and of entertainment (well modern TV forms, modern books).

Sometimes there might be perfectly good reason to read an old book. For example The Man In The High Castle which is being made into a TV movie for the BBC. So you are pretty much guaranteed that there will be others reading and discussing it.

But generally if one is to try out the genre it is much better to go for a newer title. Once an interest has been established it is pretty easy to go back and fill in the good stuff from earlier years.

I think the dispute over new versus old books has two main factors to consider.

First, is the weight of sample size. If we consider that there are (symbolically speaking here) 1000 old SF books and 10 (symbolically again) new SF books of which only 10% are good and only 1% exceptionally good it soon becomes evident that there are simply more exceptionally good old SF books.

Second, is a cultural bias with regard to art and literature; that the old is to be treated with reverence and the new with scepticism.

#27 Thanks, andy, for that: "strident" :-)

#28 Asimov was extremely prolific. By your argument, he should have written at least one good book. He didn't. (I know: old argument - but I hope you see my point :-))

#29 if it's old, it's less relevant. Many old sf novels embody attitudes and sensibilities that are either no longer relevant or sometimes even downright offensive.

#30 Hehe. I didn't mean to imply a Gaussian distribution.

I'm active in the mystery group, and I can tell you that Christie and Sayers are recommended all the time for newbies. I'm active in the literature group, and Austen, not so much Dickens, is recommended all the time. Why? They're great reading.

So are these recommendations.

So I don't buy the relevance argument.

In those other groups, more contemporary authors also are recommended all the time. Why not here? That's the interesting question.

#29 - LordValentine, in making that statement you seem to have conveniently ignored andyl's last paragraph.

The argument is not that the classics are all irrelevant. Rather, it is easier for a new reader to get into sf via contemporary books and then go in search of the classics, rather than having to read books that may be culturally/technologically outdated and will appeal less to the uninitiated.

To that end, here are some books written in the last decade (although I cheated a little with the McHugh as that was published in 1999 but it's an excellent book so I couldn't resist).

River Of Gods by Ian McDonald for a near-future look at India, complete with AIs, genetically engineered Brahmin babies and more besides.
Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton for your big-bang space opera.
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh for another near-future look but this time at a Chinese-dominated world
Spirit: The Princess of Bois Dormant by Gwyneth Jones, a sf re-imagining of The Count Of Monte Cristo
Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick, Jurassic Park + time travel = amazing romp.

#32

Maybe. But if someone asked "I want to read a crime/mystery book and I don't know what I want" - would you expect to see authors of the vintage of Christie, Sayers dominate? Are there many recommendations for Simenon, Alan Hunter (who was virtually forgotten until the BBC made some of his books into a series), John Creasey, S.S. van Dine or Earl Derr Biggers?

Detective fiction is different to SF. There is little world-building involved. When a reader reads a book set in inter-war Britain - they do not expect to see a modern society with all the equalities that have been previously mentioned. Readers often have a sentimentality, almost a romanticised nostalgia, for a time long gone (as noted by Ross MacDonald).

I think that Christie gets mentioned a lot because of TV.

So I would expect to see some recommendations for them. I would also expect to see recommendations for Lindsey Davis, Susanna Gregory, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, CJ Sansom, and many more modern crime writers too.

I think your point about why the preponderance of the SF recommendations are for older books is valid. I would suspect that the balance point for crime recommendations is a bit more contemporary than here. There is in this thread nominations for minor works (one is very minor) as well as major works from years gone by.

There may be a couple of factors in play.
1) Age of respondents. I think you might get a different set of results if you asked people who were under 25 to come up with recommendations.
2) Maybe which side of the Atlantic one sits on. There is a well acknowledged difference in tastes between the US and the UK for modern SF. It may be that the US side skews a little more conservatively on recommendations as well.
3) Lack of a recent re-read.

Finally I just want to remind people that this isn't anything to do with tastes. For example I would argue that the David Weber suggestions are good ones (although I don't like his books) as they typify a strand of modern SF.

#33

The good thing about Spirit, Or The Princess Of Bois Dormant is that you can pair it with The Demolished Man (also based on the Count Of Monte Cristo) and read both.

Thanks for getting my point exactly right. When people read SF which contain computers the size of walls and lack ubiquitous mobile phones, where people use slide-rules to pilot a space-ship then they may reject it. They experience the opposite of sensawunda, a disappointment, that the future society of that book is technologically less capable than the current one.

I would have to second Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed and would also recommend We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (which was the inspiration for both 1984 and Brave New World, while you're at it you should definitely read both of these as well!). Finally, if you're looking for something a little newer I would recommend Mindscan by Robert Sawyer.

What I notice when I'm re-reading old SF classics is that the story can still be enjoyed if the accidental anachronisms are ignored - case in point are all the 60's era novels that employ computers that spit out bits of paper as answers to questions or a reference to information being stored on tape. Except in the case where the plot actually revolves around some innovation that didn't happen the way it was then projected to happen, I've found that most fiction from bygone eras still have a story that can be enjoyed in situ. The issue in this particular thread is one of enticing a new SF reader into potentially enjoying the fiction in more of an immersive way - when there are too many distractions due to time-relevant technical faux pas, it's more difficult to enjoy the story interactions.

Even in contemporary SF there's a sense of the technology out-pacing the projection = one of the reasons given by William Gibson and other cyberpunk authors who gave up on the genre. I like the story Snow Crash, for instance, but some of the technology Stephenson references in the book are way dated (cell phones, networks, virtual reality, etc) now and the distraction could deter a new SF reader from getting into the book, even though the story is rather entertaining (to me, anyway).

I tried to provide a list of books that were more story-centered rather than relying on techical innovation. I recently re-read The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester and it still held up very well as an interesting story - why I included it in my list with The Demolished Man. I included The Gladiator even though it's a period book (WW1 Era) as the story is very character-centric. It's not great fiction but still very entertaining IMHO and is probably the first Super Hero book (actually first Mutant book as well) - I thought that might be interesting to a new SF reader.

I think the discussion of whether to read older scifi revolves around what the whole genre is about. I think it's two levels 1) the actual story you're reading and the universe it's set in and 2) the vision of someone writing about the future at whatever date they're writing. I enjoy old scifi (well, old good scifi) even with all the anachronisms in it. It's like someone picking up an old Dickens novel or Moby-Dick and enjoying it rather than saying, "People don't act that way!" Well, they did back then. Or maybe they didn't, even then. There's also plenty of detective and crime-solving novels that have little relation to how being a detective actually works or fairly presenting how crime-solving actually works.

I'm not saying everyone is this way. For plenty of readers, those older novels might not work. Just like for me, older literature just usually doesn't work. I just can't manage to make my brain sync up with those settings. Old scifi for me is just another universe that's created. I can usually get into that universe even with those anachronisms.

> 34 andyl Here's a link to one (recommending mystery authors comes up on a pretty regular basis), and you can decide on your own:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/101152

you are totally right on this Ian. I'm rather surprised at how much the older stuff is "pushed". And i have a fondness for much of it myself. I can see some reasons for it - one almost needs a primer to learn the tropes, or at least some of them. I recommend both to friends - i don't start them off on hard or complex SF as a general rule.

#39

Ta. The balance was quite a bit more to contemporary than the usual SF recommendation threads, even though some of the old favourites got a look-in.

All I ask is that the old ones not be the defaults. That first people think of recent books, and when they do recommend older books, they add caveats. For example, "this is a good sf novel but it was written in the 1950s and it's really sexist". I don't want people to think all sf fans are sexist pigs, after all :-)

Of course, it could be worse - they could point them to Peter Hamilton. That might turn them off sf forever. ;)

*Not that I think Hamilton is terrible. He just needs a ruthless editor. Preferably one with power of attorney.

Halting State is i think a good novel to approach modern sf from.

Bit tricky that last suggestion, surely? It's written in the second person.

#34 andyl- Your point about a recent re-read is a good one. Books that I loved when I was young I have had very different oppinions on twenty years later. It makes me wary of re-reading books that I loved in my teens. I would rather remember them fondly.

I wonder if people recommend older books sometimes because they are going back to the books that introduced them to sf, figuring if it was a good introduction for them it will be good for others. I don't know, just a thought.

I think when you're attempting to introduce something you enjoy to another person its natural to "put your best foot forward". It seems to me that the few truly remarkable sf books I've encountered are fairly randomly distributed in time, and so, the quality of the work outweighs its newness as the principle consideration. Certain books are timeless, or nearly, so simply because they are so well-crafted. Any anachronisms found in an old and excellent sf book will be reconciled by any marginally intelligent individual.

Oh. About Peter F Hamilton: He's good but I wouldn't suggest the Commonwealth books as an intro to SF 101 ;-)

I agree with your point about Peter F. Hamilton. That also points to another reason why I would tend to recommend older books over newer works: size. An awful lot of modern books are doorstops, and I'd prefer to recommend slimmer volumes, such as those of James White.

48> That's a pretty good point, and to extend it beyond just size you have sequel-itis. Older writers seemed to have a much greater ability to write short standalone books.

tjm568 has got it right. The books that sucked me into the genre are the ones I recommend to a beginner. And those titles may have already been dated in decades by the time I discovered them.

Going from that start point, I highly recommend reading the novella Ender's Game before reading the novel. It has an emotional impact that the novel lacks. It used to be difficult to find, having been published in a magazine first. It is now on bookstore shelves everywhere inside First Meetings.

I agree with both the timeless point - what matters is whether they're outstanding, well-crafted, engaging books, not when they were written, and the door-stop point. As an example of the second, I tried Connie Willis's Doomsday Book for my now 21 year old son, and he liked it but sheepishly didn't finish; it was too long for him with everything he has going on at school. Ender's Game, on the other hand, was an undaunting length and he loved it.

I like Gene Wolfe's New Sun (Shadow of the Torturer etc. etc.) a great deal, and I've even scheduled it for a reread. But I wouldn't recommend it as a starter because of the doorstop factor.

To go the other direction entirely, what about short stories? One root of the genre is in the pulps, and it has a well-developed short story tradition that continues in magazines and anthologies today. I recently read a good collection of Jack Dann's work called Visitations. Picking up some current magazines might be a good way to get exposure to contemporary authors without committing to a novel. And public libraries often have the Universe and Orbit anthology series that showcase quality SF going back decades.

For some 20th-century SF that has dated pretty well, and also synthesizes the short story and novel forms, I'd recommend Silverberg's The World Inside.

ETA series links

The books that sucked me into the genre did so when I was twelve years old. I've tried rereading them now, and don't know whether to be mebarrassed for the genre for admiriring such rubbish, or with myself for enjoying them so uncritically when I was young. But I certainly wouldn't recommend them now except as historical documents. A 21st century twelve-year-old wouldn't get the cultural references or understand the sensibilities ("why doesn't the female character kick ass?"). And anyone older simply likely won't be able to muster that uncritical appreciation that pulls you into the genre on such thin fare.

Which is not to say there were no good sf novels written last century. I still rate The Stars My Destination, for example. But most of those so-called "classics"? I find them embarrassingly bad now.

ian, have you asked 21st century twelve-year-old's, as well as older children? Or are you just stating your peronsal opinions?

Well, I named Dune because it was one of those that sucked me in around age 12 too, and I've reread it regularly and still enjoy it.

The women *do* kick ass in there, and the fact that it depicts a civilization that has mostly dumped any kind of advanced computing millenia ago saves on the "oooooh, so quaint" factor that comes with most SF that made a big deal of extrapolated advances in that field that have now been left in the dust, or failed to materialize (yet ?) in any practical shape.

Seconding or thirding anything in the Ekumen by Ursula K. Le Guin too by the way. Oh well, actually make "anything in the Ekumen" nearly anything by her, period.

The thing is, when I was 12 I was reading stuff that was already 20 or 30 years old. It was all about the stories, not just the rayguns and robots. I still find that the bulk of them hold up quite well. Then again, I like far more things NOW than you do, Ian. Considering what percentage of the genre you dislike now, I'm completely unsurprised that the vast majority of older scifi fails to live up to your standards. ;)

#54 Why is everybody smoking? What's a tape-recorder? What's a mainframe? Why don't they have mobile phones? Why don't they just google it? Why are there no women in the story? ... These are the sorts of question you might have to answer if you hand a 12-year-old a 60-yr-old sf novel. The world has changed. Why pretend it hasn't? Twelve-year-olds have changed too.

#55 Dune is one of the few sf novels which carries its own time around with it. It'd certainly be one of the few old sf novels I'd consider recommending, though some of the prose in it embarrasses me a bit now.

#56 Same here. I was reading EE Doc Smith and Asimov when I was kid in the 1970s. It embarrasses me now that I didn't know any better. If only someone had pointed me in the direction of some good sf back then...

57> If only someone had pointed me in the direction of some good sf back then...

I think maybe that's part of the difference in our point of views on old sf. I think I tended to read more good sf back then. I definitely never bothered with Smith. I read a few Asimov but he was never my favorite.

These are the sorts of question you might have to answer if you hand a 12-year-old a 60-yr-old sf novel.
Dune is one of the few sf novels which carries its own time around with it.

Of course, Dune has plenty of stuff that doesn't really make sense no matter how old you are - being able to mind control someone if you use the right tone of voice (though my Mom could sometimes approximate this), space travel through mental prowess, skyscraper sized worms that live in an ecology that wouldn't actually provide the amount of nutrition they need, clones of people made from one cell of the original, yet could regain all the memories up to the death of that person - the list goes on and on. But that doesn't make it a bad novel, it just means you have to just go with it. The reward is very much worth it. I think the same applies to a lot of "anachronistic" scifi.

@iansales

I wonder whether you believe others will judge or have judged you for what books you've read or are reading.

Why be embarrassed about what you've read? Does it matter? I guess I'm just mystified at why anyone cares what someone else thinks of their reading material. If you enjoyed reading a book, it was worth it. If you didn't, then it just wasn't for you. Move on to other books. I understand the desire to make converts, as it were. Introducing someone to a genre can be tricky, as you want to put its best foot forward. But I think you (falsely) believe the stakes are too high. It's just entertainment.

I do see your point about current technological and social developments presenting issues with younger readers, but if they can't place themselves in the mindset of a person at the time it was being written then I think they lack appropriate intelligence and imagination. The problem with time is that it is linear. We shouldn't discard an entertaining story because the author got something wrong about the future (or present or past).

#58 All the sf conceits, like FTL, AIs, mind control... I don't have a problem with them. They're what the genre is about. It's the implicit assumptions and sensibilities I often object to. And the fact that so many of those old books were just badly written.

#59 I'm not embarrassed about what I've read, but if I want to make a convert to sf I don't do that by giving them the rubbish books. If you want someone to like Italian food, you don't do it by feeding them a lasagne frozen TV dinner. The same is true of books. You pick the ones that will impress them in the hope that it turns them into a fan. I often think many sf readers still have high uncritical opinions of books they read uncritically when they were kids. They've never seen fit to change those opinions - either by being blinded by nostalgia, never revisiting the books, or refusing the moving on in their reading. But that's just a personal theory. Chiefly, I want non-sf readers to realise the genre is a living, breathing genre. It exists now. Not just 70 years ago. It has grown and evolved and changed and improved. It's not all "QX! Light the jet-pipes, let's go kill some alien fuzzy-wuzzies!"

60> There's a rather large difference between FTL in a book that allows ships to travel faster than light by creating a warp bubble versus one that allows space to be folded because a really brainy person was on a drug trip. That is a big difference between the genre back then and now - the readers require much more sophisticated explanations that at least seem plausible.

#60

I understand your point of view and generally agree on principle (though I very rarely follow it in practice (what can I say? I like junk food))- I just don't place it on the same level of importance, I suppose.

I read lots of what can loosely be called science fiction that no doubt is poo-pooed here, but I simply no longer apologize for my reading material. I'm a man with conflicting tastes.

For the record, my current favorite science fiction novel is Solaris.

I do read old sf, but I read it knowing that it's old. I just don't understand why old sf is the default setting for recommendations.

I still have a soft spot for AE van Vogt, though many of his novels are almost incoherent. At the moment, I'm reading lots of old sf from forgotten British sf writers of the 1950s and 1960s (they were also arguably better than most of the authors of the period that have been remembered). As well as sf, I read lots of literary fiction, and I don't see why I have to look for different things in different genres. Why can't I get everything I want from sf? Of course, I can do in some books...

> 61 There's a rather large difference between FTL in a book that allows ships to travel faster than light by creating a warp bubble versus one that allows space to be folded because a really brainy person was on a drug trip.

Wait--which of those explanations is supposed to be more "sophisticated"?

And if the latter is referring to the FTL mechanism in Dune, I was under the impression that the Steersmen's psychotropically-augmented perspective was necessary but not sufficient for the process. But it's been decades since I read those books.

64> Wait--which of those explanations is supposed to be more "sophisticated"?

C'mon, don't be obtuse. It's like the difference between an alternate history that asks the questions "What if the Germans had won WWII?" and one that says "What if Chile had won WWII?"

63> I do read old sf, but I read it knowing that it's old. I just don't understand why old sf is the default setting for recommendations.

But really, is that what's happened here? I look at the list of touchstones and I see a pretty damn good sample. Are you going to make me look up the original publication dates on all these and produce a graph? :D

Go for it :-)

I don't see your distinction Brightcopy.

there are two sorts of space travel, the sort where it is just a stage setting, as in most space opera.
The explanations might be detailed or they might be sketchy, but psionics or physics or even magic. they are no more than stage dressing.
the stage dressing chosen is not about sophistication it is just street fashion.

Spindizzy fields, drug addiction, linked Singularities, Hyper drive, or subspace engines, all just fashion.
to add verisimilitude to an otherwise dry and uninteresting narrative.
None of them really work, but they are fine for visiting paper moons.

de Camp of course refused to use such devices because they had no theoretical base.

The other sort? Tales where the space drive is the story. Usually there a bit more explanation of it, but even here it is the drives consequences that are the real story. oh it might sound likely, but so does the Spindizzy field. and it need not ever be described in any depth as In The Quy effect back in the day, It can on occasion be plain ridiculous. Yes, magic.There has always been a tendency for models to appear based on the latest theories,but it was ever so. the old standbies continue to be used
and those with the shiniest new physics, still owe as much to the old tropes as their new coat of modern physics.

67> I don't see your distinction Brightcopy.

Well, it'd be a strange world where we all agreed on everything. Suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one, cause I do see the distinction.

66> It's not a graph, but it'll do:

1930s: 1
1940s: 1
1950s: 4
1960s: 9
1970s: 6
1980s: 9
1990s: 7
2000s: 17
2010s: 2

Note that I based this solely on the touchstones, so if there's an untouchstoned one I didn't get it. And I left out Sayers and Dickens as they weren't suggestions. Also I substituted the original Stranger in a Strange Land's pub date for the uncut version. Finally, I left out First Meetings, since it was effectively a duplicate of Ender's Game. Where a title might have had multiple OPD values (e.g. Lem's Solaris had a polish one and a US one), I used the earliest.

Oh, and here's the full set of books.

#69

Thanks for that, a few corrections.

You have Blackout listed. I can't see a recommendation for it despite it being in the touchstones.

You have chosen The Gladiator by Turtledove and not Philip Wylie's The Gladiator. This was a problem with the original recommender using the wrong touchstone. But it moves a book from 2007 to 1930.

I didn't recommend Little Brother. I mentioned that the OP had already read it.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy was recommended but isn't SF.

More from the 2000s than I thought. But the peak around 1960 is not unexpected.

Great help on this, brightcopy, and a very interesting list!

70> Thanks for going through and checking them. I made the corrections (Blackout showed up because someone title-touchstoned her name rather than author-touchstoned it).

Here's the new summary:

1930s: 2
1940s: 1
1950s: 3
1960s: 10
1970s: 5
1980s: 10
1990s: 7
2000s: 14
2010s: 1

And here's the list, by date:

1930 Gladiator
1932 Brave new world
1949 Nineteen eighty-four
1953 The demolished man
1956 The stars my destination
1959 Starship Troopers
1961 Solaris
1961 Stranger in a strange land
1961 The Planet Strappers
1962 The man in the high castle
1963 Glory road
1963 Space viking
1965 Dune
1968 2001 : A SPACE ODYSSEY
1968 Stand on Zanzibar
1969 The Left Hand of Darkness
1970 The world inside
1973 Rendezvous with Rama
1974 The dispossessed
1977 GATEWAY
1979 Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
1980 The artificial kid
1980 The shadow of the torturer
1980 Timescape
1981 The deceivers
1982 Startide rising
1984 Neuromancer
1985 Contact
1985 Ender's game
1987 Consider Phlebas
1988 The player of games
1992 China Mountain Zhang
1992 Cold as ice
1992 Doomsday book
1992 Snow crash
1998 To say nothing of the dog
1999 Timeline
1999 Darwin's radio
2001 March upcountry
2002 Altered carbon
2002 Bones of the earth
2002 Kiln People
2003 The wreck of the River of Stars
2003 Visitations
2003 There will be dragons
2004 Pandora's star
2004 River of Gods
2004 Old man's war
2005 Judas unchained
2005 Mindscan
2007 Halting state
2008 Spirit
2010 Zoo city

I gotta say, I think those older books are more likely to stand up to the test of time than many of the new ones. No matter how good Pandora's Star, Halting State, Bones of the Earth, etc. are, do you think they really rank up there with Brave New World, Nineteen Eight-Four, The Demolished Man, Stand on Zanzibar, Dune and Ender's Game? How about in ten year's time? Not surprising, since the old ones that are up there have already had to hold up for many decades.

Yeah, but Glory Road? Space Viking? Starship Troopers? There's a few good books on the list, but whether they're good entry-level books is another matter. Brave New World and 1984 are not considered sf by non-sf readers, so I don't see the point in suggesting them. But I take your point about some of the recent titles.

Incidentally, Zoo City won the 2011 Clarke Award this evening.

74> I never said all of the books listed in any decade are good "entry-level" books. I can't speak for the first two as I haven't read them, but I'd say Starship Troopers is GREAT entry-level scifi. But I think the same argument could be made for a lot of these. Are Pandora's Star, Snow Crash or There Will Be Dragons all good "entry-level" books? I honestly don't know, as I haven't read them. But I think the whole question of "entry-level" is a bit odd. Scifi as a genre is a bit less coddling than something like romance or even mystery. You have to have a certain mindset to enjoy the genre rather than just nibble at the fringes.

And whether books are considered sf by non-sf readers? I couldn't care less, actually. Just because a book is so good people who don't normally read sf like it is meaningless to me.

And I'm sure there are some stinkers in that list that I haven't read, from any decade. ;)

we were not asked to select books that would last, or things we would consider classics, we were asked to suggest introductory books. to the genre.

these are not i think the same.
March upcountry is never going to appear on a list of classics. for example but its representative of a large chunk of the genre.

and some "classics" status has little to do with their appeal to some encountering sf for the first time

http://www.librarything.com/series/The+Hugo+Winners

and its more modern equivalents are as good an introduction as you can get.
the occasional masterpiece (the first volume has Flowers for Algernon), and as good a survey of the genre craftsmens as you can pick up

>76 SimonW11:

You make a good point about getting back to the original question, and perhaps putting the cream of the crop up as examples is only setting the new reader up for a fall. Maybe the aim should be to cover the range of subgenres initially. That way the quality stuff (which is always subjective) will stand out even more when the reader gets around to them.

On the other hand, rather than all this discussion why not just point to the SF Masterworks publishers series. Let other people have a stab at saying which are the classics.

76> we were not asked to select books that would last, or things we would consider classics, we were asked to suggest introductory books. to the genre.

Errr, no. We were asked to recommend good scifi books (or more precisely, books that aren't "bad"). We were not asked for a Whitman sampler of scifi, however bland it might be. It was clarified much later that though a difficult book might scare them off the genre, "everything from easy to difficult might do the trick".

> 76

Hugo winners do not fit the LT definition for a series. They are more properly indexed through awards in Common Knowledge, and they are also available so. Loath as I am to delete any one else's entries in series, I wish that one would go away.

It looks like Nebulas need populating in LT, but they are listed at Wikipedia.

79> Click on the series. Those are actual published books called "The Hugo Winners" that collect several years worth of winners in one volume.

78 > One again I fail to get your point brightcopy, are you saying that the hugo winners series does not match the criteria? personally I would say hugo einners are at the least consistently "not bad". and occasionally bloody good.

Would i recommend a whitman style sampler? Umm presumably you mean
something like Palgraves golden treasury? shrug i would if I liked it contents. I don't remember being told anthologies were off limits. In a genre were short fiction takes such an important role I would regard it as ridiculous. The Hugo winners, The Nebula Winners, The years Best SF, and their single author equivalents say Ted Sturgeon or James Tiptree, Jr. anthologies, have a place in any sf readers library, its a damn sight more practical than saying get F&FS from march 67, or even last years April issue of interzone.

How can anyone call Flowers for Algernon bland?

81> My point was that the original poster didn't ask for something "representative" of scifi, but something "good". As such, it doesn't matter if it's very representative of scifi or not. That was what my whitman's sampler comment was about. Don't worry about being representative (i.e. picking a scifi "sampler" that will touch all the genre bases), just pick good books on that criterion alone.

I was only responding to the part I quoted in my response. I wasn't making any point about the Hugo winners being good or not. I'll let Ian handle that one as I think he might relish it. ;)

> 80

Ah. Got it. Less interesting to browse than the actual awards page, though.

I regularily say the hugo for all its faults better at picking good works than any other award in the feild though the Clarke award is getting there. Ian has never convinced me otherwise.

i love these discussions.

some months back I unboxed some old van vogt and keep threatening myself with a re-read to see if I will destroy my fond memories. i have no effing idea ...

with asimov, i really understand why people recommend him. OK, I loved the Foundation series as a teen, but even then I recognized some defects with it - but I took away the ideas. re-reading and reading some asimov in later years I began to rather destroy my memories of "good asimov". still, after all these years, I hold The Bicentennial Man and The Gods Themselves in very high regard. More for the ideas and story then the prose I guess. I recognize the nostalgia bias. I accept that something doesn't have to be perfect.

I'm currently weaning an old friend off of mysteries and Koontz et al and back into science fiction. I'm giving her a mix of excellent classics as well as new. She's been getting hyped. I started soft with World Made By Hand and Into The Forest and some old Heinlein and Wyndham and one of the old anthologies (I specifically wanted her to get a taste of Bob Shaw's slow glass.) I just gave her Iain Banks and told her it is time for some serious gritty stuff. The one I gave her i haven't even read yet, lol. Matter . She's already hooked.

Firstly: I think the ability to "suspend disbelieve" is a prerequisite for enjoying SF. Therefore, FTL via wormhole tech or altered consciousness are both interesting solutions to the problem. Wormhole tech is grounded in modern physics and drug induced alterations in consciousness that are physically manifested is grounded in shamanism eons old

I wonder if, in broad sweeping generalizations, that the zeitgeist of the times has more to do with the quantity of high-quality sf out there... looking at the list in >73 brightcopy:, it seems to me that the 60's -- the age of the space race -- and the 80s -- the age of the Cold War -- and the 2000s -- the age of genome/biotech/internet maturation each have their impetus.

I haven't read much sf in the last decade and a half - and Ender's Game is the most recent book I've read from the list. But for what it's worth I remember having similar conversations to this one in the mid 1990s.

By the way, for Asimov, I enjoyed Nemesis in addition to the Foundation series. And I liked Flowers for Algernon too. Edited to add that I would recommend Nightfall for newbies.

My two cents.

Simon, I'll not deny the Hugo has picked some good books, but it's far from representative of the best that's available. Just look at this year's shortlist: Connie Willis, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ian McDonald, Mira Grant and NK Jemisin. McDonald is a good writer and The Dervish House has already won the BSFA Award (but lost out on the Clarke to Zoo City). I've heard good things about both the Grant and the Jemisisn. But Willis and Bujold? Even fans of Bujold say Cryoburn is weak. And I've not seen a single good review of the Willis monster.

The Hugo represents the tastes of a small portion of the sf readership, and it's still mired somewhere in the 1980s.

The Clarke hasn't always picked good books either, but it's had consistently more interesting shortlists. It tends to the literary end of the field, but since I prefer that sort of sf I don't see that as a problem.

The Nebulas are a joke. Why don't they just give the novel award to Jack McDevitt every year and have done with it? It often has good short fiction shortlists, however.

The BSFA Award is the popular vote award which most aligns with my own tastes, so I generally like the shortlists and winners it produces.

As a person who hasn't really been much into science fiction, I can't say for sure how much the aspect of events being "current" counts. I mean, stories written a long time ago might as well hit right home as a newly published book. However, I have to admit, when reading Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, reading about technology similar and more futuristic to what we already have, increased my interest a bit. But hey, a good book is a good book, and I'll gladly embrace both old and new books on equal terms. :)

88>No none of them are perfect and neither is the selection we have jointly choosen.

if I were to order them The nebula would come lowest It has picked some cracking short stories over the years but at novel level in particular it seems all about personalities and wrangling and how hard your publisher is pushing.

The Hugo for all that is linked to only one conventions opinion is the Populist award, you can guarantee that the author has sold and will sell.

The best?maybe not but good enough for people to spend money on.

The BSFA award Well I have not been a member for years but I dont think it has changed much. less populism and more pretensions to literacy than the Hugo voting base. but with a bad habit of wanting to vote for the nice guy who is always propping up the bar at Eastercon or putting out that monthly writing guide, because hell he put a lot of work into it and he is a nice guy.

The Clarkes always seem to draw from a good short list But I never understand why they drew that particular one. This Is a problem I think with all awards by committee.

A lot of this is going to hinge on the individual you are choosing the books for. Having been given "The Eagle" comic as a young child and watching Gerry Anderson series on tv (which was hardly good sf!) I started reading sf books at the age of 10 one holiday in 1967, when on a rainy day I found a cover-less copy of Chester Anderson & Michael Kurland's Ten years to Doomsday in the holiday caravan and devoured it. I then went out to the campsite shop and bought the only other sf I could find - Alan E. Nourse's Raiders from the Rings. I then took a two-year break from reading sf: but one day, my father bought home from the library Brian Aldiss's Report on probability A in the mistaken belief (based on the cover picture)that it was a Mills & Boon romance suitable for my mother. Remember, I was 12/13 years old at this stage: I hardly understood a word of this, but I was bowled over by the fact that someone was writing stuff like this, and I resolved to find more. Perhaps I didn't expect to understand it immediately; certainly I must have had a longer attention span than is fashionable nowadays. I then read James Blish's 'Cities in Flight' series - backwards - and I've carried on from there ever since.

My point is that none of these books are things that you'd necessarily recommend to anyone as an entry to the genre; but it worked for me. Hopefully, when we find ourselves recommending entry works, we'll know our friends enough to make a wise choice - or to know that they're the sort of people who are prepared to make a wild leap of literary faith from time to time.

#91

Oh agree you have to consider the individual. What works for a 12 year old might not work for a 32 year old and vice-versa and that is before you get to their various likes and dislikes, reading outside the genre etc.

This was in the Guardian at the weekend - SF Authors Choice.

#93

Except of course that the headline lies. The subhead is correct as the editor of the reviews section makes clear in her comment.

So they are not "the best SF" nor even "recommended SF" just the favourite SF novels / writers of a bunch of people.

Let me just say thank you again for all your suggestions. :) I'm actually reading Timeline right now, and am finding it really good! Hoping to move on to The Demolished Man once done with Timeline. :)

> 93, 94

Fair point . . . the subhead fits better than the headline . . . and though the works on the list might not be where I'd start an "aspiring SF fan," they're good stuff. If said fan showed me one of those titles and said: "This looks kinda cool . . . is it worth reading?" there wouldn't (for me; YMMV) be a "Nah . . . " in the lot.

There are also some interesting surprises:

John Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Clute, who's probably forgotten more SF novels than most people have read, picks City by Clifford Simak, which is probably enough, all by itself, to make me pull it off its dusty shelf this summer and actually give it a read.

Arthur C. Clarke makes the list not for Childhood's End or 2001 or Rendezvous with Rama (which show up on classic-SF lists with understandable but boring regularity), but for The City and the Stars.

Andrew Crumney left me wanting to read The Brick Moon, which I've known about for ages but never been intrigued by, not as a historical curiosity but for its own weird sake . . .

Fun stuff . . . and that's without even getting into William Gibson's elegant little paragraph on The Stars My Destination, which reminded me just how well Gibson can put a sentence together, when he wants to.