Science Fiction Novels

[bhodges]

The Dispossessed--Ursula LeGuin.  An exiled group on a moon with a thin, but survivable atmosphere have built a civilization over several generations.  Then, one of the citizens of this society decides its time for a rapprochement with the mother planet.

Nice to see LeGuin mentioned here and there.  The Dispossessed sounds fascinating.  I would heartily recommend The Left Hand of Darkness, too. 

Recently I re-read Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and liked it quite a bit, too.  The book has a slightly slower build-up than the film versions, which I think is a plus. 

And another huge vote for those below, all classics that transcend the genre:

Frank Herbert: Dune
Robert Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World

--Bruce

[DavidRoss]

Robert Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land

I can grok it. A powerful influence on a sizable segment of our generation...et tu, Bruce?

[Hector]

The Dispossessed--Ursula LeGuin.  An exiled group on a moon with a thin, but survivable atmosphere have built a civilization over several generations.  Then, one of the citizens of this society decides its time for a rapprochement with the mother planet.

Not just that but Le Guin gives a near perfect description of an Anarcho-Syndicalist society. Fascinating.

[bhodges]

I can grok it. A powerful influence on a sizable segment of our generation...et tu, Bruce?

That made me chuckle, David, especially since just recently I got back in touch with a woman from my high school days, who used "grok it" at least twice in our long conversation.    

--Bruce

[Xenophanes]

I'll start with a couple of earlier authors:

Karel Capek The Absolute at Large (1927)--very original, also very funny. Good luck if you can find it.

Olaf Stapledon Last and First Men (1931), Star Maker(1931). Astonishing, vast in scope.

Isaac Asimov The Foundation Trilogy--this is super stuff.

_________, The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn--these are the robot detective novels--some of the best detective novels ever written.  And, Asimov played by the rules and gave all the clues.

Jack Vance Assault on a City--this is a striking and original novella. It's in Universe 4, edited by Terry Carr

Robert A. Heinlein Expanded Universe--this is an anthology of short stories and essays.

What I've read by Theodore Sturgeon has been imaginative and interesting.

Philip K. Dick was also quite original, though I like his short stories best (i.e., "the Wub").

Of course, you know of R. L. Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and H. G. Wells' Invisible Man and Time Machine, and Jules Verne--well, they make good movies.

[lisa needs braces]

The thing that was neat about Asimov's Foundation and Robot novels was how he unified them in his 1980s installments of the two series. 

[val]

There are only two science fiction novels that I really loved.
James Ballard, "The Drought", and Christopher Priest "Inverted World".

[jwinter]

Of classic SF authors, most haven't held up well for me, except for Cliff Simak.

I'm a huge Simak fan as well.  His books have a pastoral, innocent, haunting quality that's hard to describe.  I'd recommend City as a start, originally a series of short stories and later linked into a novel.  A real classic.  Most of Simak's stuff is out of print now, but easily found in used paperback shops or online.

I'll also back the previous recommendations for Dune, particularly if you have a taste for politics or philosophy.  Ditto the original Foundation Trilogy.  And you need to try some Clarke -- Childhood's End is as good a start as any.  He's probably my favorite classic sci-fi author, after Simak. 

If you're in a goofy mood, try some E.E. "Doc" Smith -- the Lensman books are great space opera, lots of giant space fleets shooting weird death rays at each other and whatnot.  Very silly in a deadly serious way, if you know what I mean.

Oh, and try some of Heinlein's short stories, too (The Past Through Tomorrow is a good set), and, and ....

[bwv 1080]

The sad fact is that 99% of Science Fiction sucks both as science and as fiction

real science is always more interesting than made-up science

and most of these guys were simply bad fiction writers

[MN Dave]

The sad fact is that 99% of Science Fiction sucks both as science and as fiction

I know what you're saying, but have you read any lately?

[head-case]

"The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell.  Extraterrestrial beings are discovered at the far reaches of the solar system and the Jesuits launch a mission to make contact with the aliens and convert them to Christianity.  Very interesting.

[bwv 1080]

I know what you're saying, but have you read any lately?

I try occasionally the last attempt was something by Stephen Baxter

[gomro]

"The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell.  Extraterrestrial beings are discovered at the far reaches of the solar system and the Jesuits launch a mission to make contact with the aliens and convert them to Christianity.  Very interesting.

Ray Bradbury got there first with The Fire Balloons, a short story which I believe was included in the legendary collection The Illustrated Man. Which is not to knock Russell's achievement (which I haven't read).

[Xenophanes]

The thing that was neat about Asimov's Foundation and Robot novels was how he unified them in his 1980s installments of the two series. 

Yes, he did integrate them, but that's not all.  To some extent, he also integrated the earlier Galactic Empire period into his great history scheme, though I never noticed any particular connection between the three G. E. novels themselves and the Foundation series (but I could be wrong), and also alludes sometimes to the time travel novel, The End of Eternity.

[bwv 1080]

The basic problem is that few people can still muster the credulity to believe in a future of interstellar space travel and some grand destiny for the human race among the stars.  These authors really seemed to believe the crap they wrote about discovering warp drives in 2010, artificial intelligence, and the USSR and the USA continuing the cold war out across the milky way.  At least fantasy is honest escapism, without the author's pretence of being some sort of visionary.  The best authors were always the ones that recognized the absurdities of the genre - like PK Dick and Lem, or like Frank Herbert did not bother with "science" and just wrote interesting fantasy stories.

[eyeresist]

The basic problem is that few people can still muster the credulity to believe in a future of interstellar space travel and some grand destiny for the human race among the stars.  These authors really seemed to believe the crap they wrote about discovering warp drives in 2010, artificial intelligence, and the USSR and the USA continuing the cold war out across the milky way.  At least fantasy is honest escapism, without the author's pretence of being some sort of visionary.  The best authors were always the ones that recognized the absurdities of the genre - like PK Dick and Lem, or like Frank Herbert did not bother with "science" and just wrote interesting fantasy stories.

Ideally, science fiction extrapolates a future or alternate present from known data, with some sort of intellectual rigor (try early Ballard for a post-space program future). Fantasy is just nonsense from start to finish.

[bwv 1080]

Ideally, science fiction extrapolates a future or alternate present from known data, with some sort of intellectual rigor (try early Ballard for a post-space program future). Fantasy is just nonsense from start to finish.

At least fantasy is honest nonsense

but at least we have the printed record of older Science Fiction to remind us not to take any current attempts at extrapolating the future as anything more than fantasy

[eyeresist]

At least fantasy is honest nonsense

but at least we have the printed record of older Science Fiction to remind us not to take any current attempts at extrapolating the future as anything more than fantasy

My opinion (swiped from The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of): science fiction literature rose as a result of the increasing rate of scientific discovery and social change  of the 19th century. Previously, things had changed so slowly that people tended to assume the past and future were both pretty much like the present. But the industrial revolution and rise of democracy made people aware of change, and new scientific theories in biology, geology, astronomy, combined with increased technological sophistication and pervasiveness, showed how change had occurred in the past. It also provided tools for guessing how things might change in the future. A certain Mr Marx, for instance, attempted to use a synthesis of economics, history and sociology to predict a utopian future.

In fiction, this broadening of awareness meant that new realms of imaginative creation were open to writers. Swift had written Gulliver's Travels as pure fantasy, but now polemicists could present their ideologies as scientifically plausible speculation, e.g. Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backwards". Verne speculated what an advanced submarine might be like; Wells wondered how humanity might evolve over thousands of years. These weren't attempts at predictions - that isn't the purvue of fiction. It was just a new way of using imagination to stimulate thought and create drama.

The rot only really began with the rise of the pulps in the 20th century, when the successors to the penny-dreadfuls of the 19th century realised there was a new market to be exploited. They exploited it the way they exploited every other literary genre, with lashings of violence and sex, and to hell with character and credibility. Britain managed to retain some dignity for a while, with the philosophical epics of Stapledon followed by the mild-mannered speculations of Clarke, but lurid book and magazine covers eventually closed science fiction into a ghetto of unspeakability to which crime, horror and romance were never quite confined. In this ghetto, readers of low-grade pulp grew up to become writers of lower-grade pulp, and a vicious cycle of lowered expectations and abilities brought us to the present low point.

But the genre itself is capable of good things, and I'm sure those with great patience will find worthy successors to Wells in amongst the paperbacked garbage. Some likely specimens have been listed in this thread.

[DavidRoss]

Garbage In, Garbage Out.  Maybe if you'd taken in some of the many quality writers in the genre instead of focusing on the lurid ghetto of unspeakability, you'd have a different point of view on the subject.

Love your example of the folly of intellectualism, however, mistaking the ability to classify for knowledge, conflating ideas with reality, and confusing rationalization for wisdom.

[MN Dave]

Regardless of genre, fiction needs good characters and good writing. One genre is no better than another, and yes, this includes mainstream or "literary" fiction.