There are so many attempts out there to pick the "best" science fiction, to classify and identify those books that define the genre (and all its subgenres). This is not one of those lists.
This is a list of ten science fiction books I've re-read, over and over and over again. They're not necessarily the classics, or my pick of the "best", or the ones that have most heavily influenced me, or even my favorites. (All of which may be future list-subjects.) These are the ones where my copies are falling apart, held together at the seams; the ones where I keep having to pick up new copies at the bookstore or the used bookstore because I passed my copy off to someone who needed to read them.
In order of publication, a list of ten sf books I pick up when I need an old familiar friend:
1. Stranger In A Strange Land, Robert Heinlein (1961): I know so many people for whom the statement "this book changed my life" wouldn't be an exaggeration, and I'm no different. I read this every year; every year, it says something different to me about who we are and what we owe each other.
2. Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes (1966): Heartbreaking in its simplicity and in what it has to say about the human mind and how it defines (and doesn't define) the individual. Whether I prefer the novella or the novel depends on whim at any given time, but either one scratches my intellectual love for cognitive science and reaches down into the spot of my subconscious that's perpetually chewing over the problem of whether we define our intellect or our intellect defines us.
3. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein (1966): On the one hand, it's cheating to include two Heinlein; on the other, holding it to just two is agony. If Stranger got me thinking about how to define our obligations to each other individually, this one got me thinking about how to define our obligations to each other collectively and societally. I don't agree with all of Heinlein's politics -- far from it -- but damn does he ever make me think. (Can I also include Starship Troopers as an honorable mention for the same reason?)
4. Don't Bite The Sun, Tanith Lee (1976): It's kind of interesting to see how many of my old friends are about identity and maintaining your sense-of-self in the face of sense-of-society, but this is one of the masterworks on that theme.
5. Mindkiller, Spider Robinson (1982): It brings together two of my favorite questions: how much of who you are is defined and shaped by what you remember? What do you owe yourself, and what do you owe your society? Spider returns to these over and over again, and this one's a beauty. I still remember the gut-punch of reading this for the first time and stumbling upon one of the greatest lines ever written: "God is an iron. If someone who commits felony is a felon, and someone who commits gluttony is a glutton, then God is an iron. Either that, or He's the damn dumbest designer who ever lived."
6. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card (1985): I have a lot of problems with this book, which I may go into someday, but I keep coming back to wrestle with it anyway, for what it says about desensitization and war and learning how to think in a particular fashion: the enemy's gate is down.
7. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson (1992): Oh, come on, it's a book about neurolinguistic hacking, how can you not love it? But seriously, this is a book that could only have been written by someone who grew up loving science fiction intensely and passionately and wholeheartedly. It is a book for geeks and nerds, and as I am both, I love it to the bottom of my geeky nerdy heart. (Sarah and I have adopted "The Mews at Windsor Heights" as a shorthand for all the Burbclaves we keep driving past, of course.)
8. Beggars In Spain, Nancy Kress (1993): And we're back to my themes again, framed and re-framed in a different fashion and a different manifestation. Identity, duty, and responsibility-to-others, all wrapped up in a fascinating premise with stellar sociological worldbuilding. (The novella's cleaner and tighter, both thematically and technically, but I have a soft spot for the novel, too.)
9. Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler (1993): I don't often turn to the dystopias for my comfort reading, but God, this one is stunning, not only for the all-too-plausible world Butler builds us but for the way there might not be any easy answers and there might not be neat solutions, but there is hope. The characters are real and flawed and achingly human, and Butler does an amazing job of showing us things about our society from what she extrapolates for a future.
10. Passage, Connie Willis (2001): I will confess that I find this book disturbing and disquieting in a way I can't exactly put my finger on, but again, I keep coming back to it. Sometimes you just need to be creeped out a bit, you know? It's about death, and belief, and identity (again) and struggling to make connections and honor them.
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10 Comments
I've heard of most of those, but I've only read one.
Oh, yes. Some of my best friends, too. *notes the one or two off the list I haven't read yet* I totally understand Heinlein getting more than one on the list.
2, 6, 7 and 8 -- YES, YES, YES and YES.
I adore Passage, and in particular how (without giving much away), she addresses the question of the expectation of happy endings, and what they mean, and what they're worth. (A friend sent it to me, with a "You must read this.", after I mentioned I hadn't).
A good friend describes Ender's Game as: The book to read if you have ever been the most intelligent person in the room. I think she's right. (It's also about all the other stuff you mention, of course.)
The Spider Robinson that blew me away were the Stardance series - even though, in some ways, they're flawed or overly tangled stories. (Which is not to say I didn't enjoy them, and didn't reread them, just that there are ways they're not satisfying as good stories when they are satisfying in being thought provoking.)
I've read seven of those. Parable was a "right book, right time" and hooked me on Octavia Butler. I am glad I couldn't find all her novels the first time I went looking for them, because it means I still get to read new-to-me Butler.
In contrast, I was going through a dead serious phase the first time I read Snow Crash, which sort of isn't the point of the book. Someday I will get tipsy and read this on a nerd retreat, and all will be giggly and well with the world.
(Trying to post for the third time - I really hope this doesn't show up in triplicate!)
I've been to all the Heinlein worlds - he's often much of my top ten, as is Scott Card. As for Snow Crash - who could resist an author with the guts to name his hero protagonist "Hiro Protagonist"? I laughed until I cried, and the people at the bookstore made me buy it.
The best thing about reading new SciFi is the references to old SciFi; I've taken to reading earleir and earlier works just to keep up with what had influenced the authors I was reading. Two that I'd recommend if you haven't are Alfred Bester's _The Stars My Destination_ (aka Tyger, Tyger!), which can be read as an updated Count of Monte Cristo, and Zelazny's _Lord of Light_, which can be read as an updated Paradise Lost. And grab a Steven Brust as well; he's thankfully still very much alive and writing.
Best of luck with the new venture!
I've read only four of these (and own two), and the rest sound interesting, so I guess I'll have to find them.
Wow. I don't think I've ever read someone else's list like this that was as close to mine as this is.
There's a couple of Robinson that have had similar impact on me - the first Stardance, and oddly, Night of Power. But "God is an iron." is part of my daily language now.
Same with the Heinlein - again, limiting to two is hard. Moon is definitely one of them though, and for the reasons you say.
Snow Crash. Octavia. Tanith. Ender. Old friends indeed. I had the privilege of taking a writing workshop with Nancy Kress at one point - I learned more in that semester than I'd learned in a long time prior.
Thanks for the list. Have to go dig books out of boxes now.
This is exactly the kind of list I've been looking for - thank you!
Ender's Game is like my secret handshake - I remember overhearing someone mention Battle School at a drum major training academy, and there was just this moment of yes, hi, I don't know you at all but I *know you*, and I can't think of many other books (even my favorites) that would have brought exactly that reaction. I can't wait to get to the ones on this list I haven't read. :)
Yeah, both of those Heinlein novels you mentioned are great, great classics. :-) They're some of the first two books that I recommend to everybody who reads Science Fiction, and even some who don't. :-)
Have you ever read the Lensman series by E. E. Doc Smith? That would have been on (or maybe even at the top of) my list.
And and ♥ for Neal Stephenson also. :-) Snow Crash was a lot of fun, and I have to say that I was a big fan of In The Beginning Was The Command Line. :-) I still love and think of his metaphors about Mac users quite often. :-)
-Max