Advice re Classic SciFi

Hi
I want to read some of the big classics of SciFi. Any recommendations?
I've already read the left hand of darkness, enders game and fahrenheit 451 and I've got dune and the time machine on my to read pile.
They don't neccesarily have to be old classics - just the "important" works.
Thanks!

Oh you are going to get so many recommendations!

There are so many science fiction books that are important works for one reason or another. I could probably rattle off pages, but I'll just list five and then let others have their say.

1. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, simply because many of the concepts created for it have entered the popular culture.

2. Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner

3. Childhood's End or Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C.Clarke. He's an acknowledged master in the field and these are two of his better books.

4. The Difference Engine by William Gibson

5. A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Thinking about it but not actually checking, I think these are actually all award winning novels. You could do worse than to try to read your way through the lists of Nebula and Hugo winners and nominees.

1,2 > Yep, you're going to wish you hadn't asked.

From what you've already read, I'd say...

A World Out of Time by Larry Niven

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

In the Ocean of Night by Gregory Benford

Gateway by Fred Pohl

Babel-17 by Samuel Delany

...and for a little fun...

Retief in the Ruins by Keith Laumer

The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth

Mindswap by Robert Sheckley

and for those of you who are keeping an eye on me, (heheheh), there's always ->

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

You definitely need some Philip K. Dick (oddly, when I touchstone his name, it comes up "Dick K. Philip" and leads to an empty author page) ... there are a lot of good choices, but I'd particularly suggest:

The man in the high castle
Ubik
The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Valis
A scanner darkly
Do androids dream of electric sheep ("Bladerunner")

If you want to read the classics, then H. Beam Piper is an author you must try.

He tragically took his own life in 1964, penniless and shooting pigeons for food.

http://www.zarthani.net/

http://kuoi.com/~kamikaze/Text/piper.php

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/p/h-beam-piper/

Sadly, far too many people are unaware of the man and his work. I discovered his work as a young man in the late 70s, early 80s when it was re-released in paperback. I have noticed enough people here that own his books though.

There's a collection published by Millenium/Gollancz called the "SF Masterworks" series - that's a really good place to start. You can see some of them in my catalog tagged "sf masterworks" - for some reason I'm having trouble if I try to bring up everyone's books with that tag rather than just my own.

Personally I think Philip K. Dick is overrepresented in that collection - he's important, for sure, but I find him incredibly frustrating. He's the Bob Dylan* of the Sci Fi world, for me. I will be burned at the stake for saying this.

A few personal favourites: The Forever War, I Am Legend, Babel-17, Earth Abides, Lord of Light, Flowers for Algernon.

If you haven't read 2001 I'd recommend it (or just about anything else by Arthur C. Clarke - read it, then double check the first published date and boggle).

I firmly believe that Snow Crash will be looked back on as a classic every bit as important as Neuromancer, if not more so. Neal Stephenson hasn't written anything I don't like.

Oh, you should also check out the TagMash for "Classic, Science Fiction".

Enough from me, you're going to be swamped in submissions. :)

*: He wrote great music - pity he couldn't sing it.

Not yet mentioned -
Snow Crash (memes, genetics, virtual realities)
Cyteen (genetics, politics, ethics)

And maybe not classics but in my mind they are very good -
Pashazade, Effendi, Felaheen (alternate history/crime novel/genetics)

Edited to add: Ouch, the telephone rang and OF COURSE someone else got there first with Snow Crash. But I agree totally with felius on that one.

I strongly second wyrdchso's mention of Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. Almost any Wolfe is pretty wonderful, including the books of the long sun and short sun. A few others:

UKL's The Dispossessed. Her other SF masterwork besides The Left Hand of Darkness
Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man

I agree with the previous comments on Dick: he's occasionally brilliant, consistently frustrating. My favorites of his are The Man in the High Castle and Martian Time Slip.

Cyteen and maybe Downbelow station (when you get hooked on C J Cherryh's works don't blame me)

James Blish's Cities in Flight

#2 on Asimov have you read Century Rain? There are robots with a big A crossed through on them - Non-Asimov compliant, they will harm you. Its a great reference.

Maybe even some of Bank's culture books. I'm not a big fan, but they are fairly classic The player of games is an early one.

For Iain Banks, first is best for me, with Consider Phlebas.

For Robert A. Heinlein, read a short story collection, like Revolt in 2100.

And after you've read all the greats from the Golden Age, try reading Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers by Harry Harrison.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy...

One author that is very hard to find these days - E. E. 'Doc' Smith - he wrote some awesome stuff in the 1920s and 1930s...

I'd also second the poster who mentioned H. G. Wells - I have a collection of his works.
Also, Jules Verne...

I don't think I can add any more than that to the list already here...

Somehow I don't think that Cyteen, the JCG books, and the multicoloured Mars trilogy by Stan Robinson can be considered classics just yet. They are too recent. Although like Snow Crash and some others they will probably be seen as such in the future.

I would also like to put a word in for some of John Brunner's other work. Stand On Zanzibar was mentioned early on, The Sheep Look Up is equally good and The Jagged Orbit a bit less good (but still head and shoulders above most books). His best book (at least for me) was The Shockwave Rider - a book more influential on how we interact and view computers and society than Neuromancer and written a decade earlier. His second tier books are also well worth reading.

I would also add Brian Aldiss, Jack Vance, Robert Silverberg and Clifford Simak to the list of writers you should look for.

I recommend some of James H. Schmitz's The Federation and The Hub stories; they're good yarns, and better still Baen has been re-issuing them. You can also find them in the Baen free library if you'd like them as ebooks.

I'll second OldSarge's recommendation of H. Beam Piper - Four Day Planet and Lone Star Planet and Federation if you want an overview of his work, then Little Fuzzy when you're ready to dig in.

You could try Olaf Stapledon. Definitely out of the SF mainstream stylistically, and some people find him a little pompous, but he had an expansive vision if anybody ever did. I'd probably recommend Last and First Men for starters; other people swear by Star Maker.

I'd also like to agree with what andyl said in #13. Of all the once-popular SF writers who have started to fall off the map, John Brunner is one of those most deserving of rediscovery.

#10, I haven't read Century Rain but I like the idea of a reference to non-Asimov compliant robots.

I should have said in my first post - if you've seen the movie I Robot, don't let that turn you off the book. It bears a nodding acquaintance to the book at best.

Wow - thanks everyone, looks like I have some reading to do!

Since no one else said it I will: The Golden Age of Science Fiction is about 13. Be prepared to be underwhelmed. It should be an adventure though.

My suggestion would be to read some of the anthologies of short fiction from the Fifties and Sixties. In this day and age when the digests are just about dead, it has to be remembered that back then they were the prime delivery system for new fiction. It would also be a good way to get bite-sized tastes of a lot of authors.

>18 Shrike58:

Well said. I just looked at the tagmash for anthology+ science fiction and it's not as illuminating as it might be, but may be a good place to start.

Folks have yet to mention Hugo and Nebula award winners. When I decided I wanted to be able to speak with some authority about science fiction novels I decided that the hugo winners were required reading and the nebulas would be recommended reading.

Hugo winners are chosen by fans (well, the debate rages on... they're actually chosen by Worldcon attendees and paying members) while Nebulas are chosen by the SF writers association.

The page I usually go to to find a list of winners of these awards is broken at the moment. If they manage to fix it, here's a link: Awardweb.

While searching for an alternative, I found this page of joint winners of the hugo and nebula awards. While I don't necessarily agree with this person's ratings, that list is pretty spiffy! Scroll down on the page a bit and there's a list of just the novels.

There are things on that list that I personally don't much care for and there are a few things I think deserve to have made the list and didn't. But overall, I think this intersection of the two most prestigious SF awards is the most objectively representative of the best the genre has to offer.

Guess opinions vary on what "classic sci-fi" means. I would llok at it as authors whose books endure across generations or long after they were originally published. Additionally I would suggest that a sci-fi book becomes a classic when it is widely read outside of fandom. With that in mind...

H.G. Wells - War of the Worlds, Time machine and Invisible Man
Arthur C Clarke - Childhood's End (most read in college classes of his works) although personally I thought Rendezvous with Rama was his best.
Issac Asimov - I, Robot
George Orwell - 1984 (marginally classified as Sci-Fi)
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451, Something wicked this way comes, Illustrated man, and Martian Chronicals
Pat Frank - Alas, Babylon
Philip K. Dick - Do android dream of electric sheep
Larry niven - Ringworld
James Blish - Cities in Flight
Robert Heinlein - Almost any of his (Starnger in a strange land is one of my favorities)
Frank Herbert - Dune
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed
William Gibson - Neuromancer

There is also a whole host of older sci-fi writers who to fans write classic sci-fi but to non-fans aren't as well known- Simiak, Clement, etc

Glory Road and Double Star and The Green Hills of Earth by Heinlein
The world Inside, Downward to Earth and To the Open Sky by Silverberg
Alas Babylon by Pat Frank
and Greybeard by Brain Aldiss

I am using a list of Classics of SF to help plug some holes in my background. You can find it here: http://classics.jameswallaceharris.com/Lists/ByRank.php I am just looking at this main list, but if you go to the main page of the site, there are other lists as well.

- "Last and First Men" and "Star Maker", Olaf Stapledon. Star Maker is the better novel, and far less dated, but Last and First Men is more immediate. Both are extremely ambitious novels, and they are both my favourites.
- "Gateway" and "Man Plus", Frederik Pohl
- "Contest" and "Hover Car Racer", Matthew Reilly. Not exactly thought-provoking and intelligent, like the rest of the books here, but both are extremely exciting and good escapist books.
- "2001: A Space Odyssey", Arthur C. Clarke
- "Fovever War" and "Fovever Peace", by Joe Haldeman.
- "Time out of Joint", "Ubik", and "Man in the High Castle" Phillip K Dick.

Hope this helps.

I'll also have a look at the books that have already been suggested here, because I don't think that my reading list is as large as most people's here.

Who Goes There by John Wood Campbell. Very influential sci-fi/horror novella.

We just did a panel on this at LosCon. We limited ourselves to work published before 1987 (twenty years ago). The one author not mentioned so far is Theodore Sturgeon. He has some novels, but there is no question that his short fiction is his best work. We also chose The Left Hand of Darkness, early Robert A. Heinlein, some Isaac Asimov (Caves of Steel), and Arthur C. Clark short stories. H. G. Wells made the cut, but Jules Verne did not. And don't forget Jack Vance, Robert Silverberg, Hal Clement, and James Blish.

Don't forget Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren.

On the other hand, many would say Yes, forget Dhalgren. It's a novel which attracted favourable and unfavourable comment in equal quantity (and vehemence).

Also, Slaughterhouse-5, Cat's Cradle and Sirens of the Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. You can't go wrong with some Vonnegut.

Let's add:

A.E. van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher, Slan, The World of Null-A (dated, sloppy writing, but still arguably classics)

Clifford Simak's City, Way Station

Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, Needle

Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz

Isaac Asimov's Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation

Bernard Wolfe's Limbo