25 of the greatest science fiction books ever written

[Dr. Strange]

Well, according to ibnlive anyway.

They do get the first one correct, so kudos to them.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/25-of-the-greatest-science-fiction-books-ever-written/463422-40-100.html

[packman]

1. Thanks for the list

going to catch up on my reading - surprised to see that The Martian Chronicles wasn't on the list. Perhaps too pedestrian.

[SheilaT]

2. Interesting list, but I have not been able to

read most of them. Possibly because I have a somewhat narrow range of s-f interests.

Plus, 2001 is basically a novelization of the movie, if I recall correctly. The original story "The Sentinel" that the movie was based on is excellent and should be more widely read.

A surprising (to me) number of the books are actually part of a three or four part series, rather than stand-alone novels. It's also interesting that most of the "classics" are left out.

One book that belongs on that list is Alas, Babyon by Pat Frank. Also From Time to Time by Jack Finney. And in my opinion almost everything written by Robert Charles Wilson should be on the list. The one they put, which is excellent, is again the first of a trilogy. His stand-alone earlier works are especially good. Everyone here should take a look at A Bridge of Years or Harvest by him. He's been writing for about forty years now and for too long his earlier works were all out of print, but that's changed recently. I'm glad. I constantly recommend him to others.

.

[sweetloukillbot]

11. I'd go with "Childhood's End" over 2001

And there is no Le Guin on the list - "Left Hand of Darkness" or "Lathe of Heaven" at least should be on there. Nice to see "The Book of the New Sun" mentioned - I've been wrestling with that book for a few years...

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

3. Starship Troopers number 3?

Johnny Rico, the hero -- Heinlein does not have protagonists, he has heroes -- is the sort of cardboard character who gives cardboard characters a bad name. Any novel that has verbatim lectures from courses in "History and Moral Philosophy" makes me think that the author has other motives than just telling a story. He glorifies war, and his philosophical ramblings are libertarian idiocy at its worst.

I first came across Starship Troopers when I took an undergraduate course in SF from the English department. The professor knew I had been in the army in Vietnam, and asked me my opinion of the book on that basis. I said that Heinlein clearly knew the military well, but had no experience of combat, since no one who had been in combat could have written that book. I looked him up, and I was right: Heinlein was a graduate of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis in the late 1920s, but had been invalided out of the navy for tuberculosis in the 1930s. He spent WWII in an engineering job at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were Isaac Asimov and A E van Vogt).

George Bernard Shaw said that H G Wells was "a born story-teller who sold his birthright for a pot of message". The same can be said for Heinlein, the difference being that Wells was a Fabian socialist, and Heinlein was a libertarian.

[sweetloukillbot]

12. I have a love/hate thing going with Heinlein

I love his books and they sicken me at the same time. My dad gave me a stack of ancient paperbacks of his YA stuff when I was about 10 and I devoured stuff like "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" and "Farmer in the Sky". Then I graduated to his more mature work and started running into problems. Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is probably my favorite, and the least objectionable, but the politics of Starship Troopers, the pedophilia of "The Door Into Summer", the racism of "Farnham's Freehold" the incest in "Time Enough For Love"... Yet I loved each of those books as I read them. I was offended, shocked and pissed off, but I enjoyed the actual reading process.
That's either a high compliment to Heinlein, or a major flaw of mine, I'm not sure which...

[SheilaT]

13. Something that has been making me crazy about Heinlein for at least forty years

is that he puts up a great show about venerating women, and seeming to think women are great, at least as good as men. However, it's clear that in his version of the universe women are desperately eager to have babies, and will defer almost everything else to that end.

Mind you, I'm a woman who very much wanted to have babies, and did eventually have two, but even with that almost Heinleinian perspective, I'm greatly offended by RAH's women want to have babies above all else perspective.

He cloaks a genuine misogynistic view in what appears to be an equality thing. It's not that at all. It relegates women to their childbearing function and almost nothing else.

Besides which, there's a very uncomfortable pedophilia in his later works that is beyond creepy.

Despite that, his earlier works are very good, and I still wish someone would make a good movie out of such early novels as "Tunnel in the Sky" or "Time For the Stars" or "Double Star". He wrote a lot of things that are worth reading and could make excellent movies.

As an aside, one of my disappointments about the sci-fi channel was that they have not gotten around to doing independent movies based on various early s-f novels. Sigh.

[sweetloukillbot]

14. They are doing Childhood's End next year.

Charles Dance is starring (Tywin Lannister). Someone is doing Foundation as well, don't remember who, though.
They've also got shows coming based on James S.A. Corey's "Expanse" series and a John Scalzi project (don't remember if it's Red Shirts, Lock In or Old Man's War - they're all in production for various stations). In the fantasy realm they have Lev Grossman's "Magicians" coming next year too.

Game of Thrones and Walking Dead have opened the floodgates - there is a ton coming and hopefully it will last for a little while (and be done well).

[SheilaT]

16. Childhood's End is by Arthur C. Clarke.

Not Heinlein.

I would love to see The End of Eternity, by Isaac Asimov made into a movie.

[sweetloukillbot]

18. Yeah, I just meant they are actually tackling classic SF on TV nt

[sweetloukillbot]

15. Yeah, he only venerates YOUNG women

Once they're past 40 they're cast aside as worthless and pathetic. It really bugged me in Door Into Summer because it was unnecessary for the story - it was just him preaching about how he hated old women.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

17. In Time Enough For Love

Heinlein spends hundreds of pages on love as eros and exactly two paragraphs on love as agape (selfless love -- "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." John 15:13), which he dismisses as essentially irrelevant. Remember that Heinlein was a libertarian, and the high priestess of libertarianism, Ayn Rand, wrote "The Virtue of Selfishness", which rejects altruism as "weak".

Every female character wants to have sex with Lazarus Long, including his mother, and all but one of them do so. I once described Heinlein's philosophy as "by Hugh Hefner out of Ayn Rand".

[getting old in mke]

4. Not a bad list

As long as we take the title seriously: "25 of the greatest..." and not "the 25 greatest..." I think the mouse-over text on the "Vorkosigan Saga" indicates that--the writer chose it not because it was important, but because it was fun.

Plus, I didn't read anything into the ordering of the books, except for maybe the names everyone knows, SF fan or not, first and all the rest next.

But, it wouldn't be my list

There are nine books on it I haven't read, so I can't judge them. I would have chosen _Stranger in a Strange Land_ instead of _Starship Troopers_ for Heinlein. I love _Anathem_, but I would have replaced it with another future monasticism, _A Canticle for Liebowitz_. Besides, _Snow Crash_ is already there and is well representative of Stephenson's lovely mish-mash of oh-just-everything.

I'm currently revisiting the "Book of the New Sun". I read them when they first came out in the 80s and it's really nice to come at them from a point of view thirty years older, too.

2001 has a special place for me: going to the movie with a bunch of my friends for my thirteenth birthday (and afterwards having a cake with a big chocolate monolith on it!) and then consuming the book at the same time moved me into reading adult science fiction, a bad habit that continues to this very day I wouldn't have chosen the book, though, as a Clarke representation on the list I'd probably choose _Childhood's End_.

Having the fun-to-read factor considered was nice. I liked seeing Miles Vorkosigen there, along with the Hee-Chee.

[FSogol]

5. Here's what is missing in no particular order:

Roger Zelazny: "The Amber Series", "Lord of Light", and "Creatures and Light and Darkness."
Michael Moorcock: "Dancers at the End of Time."
Philip Jose Farmer: "The Riverworld Series"
Larry Niven: "Ringworld", "The Ringworld Engineers", and "The World Out of Time."
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: "Inferno" and "A Mote in God's Eye"
Jack Vance: "Demon Princes" series, "Planet of Adventure" series, "The Cadwal Chronicles", and the "Alastor" series
Jack Chalker: "The Saga of the Well World Series"
Piers Antony: "Split Infinity"
Philip Wylie: "Gladiator" (The inspiration behind Superman, kind of launched the superhero genre)
E.E. "Doc" Smith: "Lensman Series"



IMO: The single best Sci fi Short Story is "The Moon Moth" by Jack Vance.

[SheilaT]

6. The fact that I don't happen to think

most of those you've listed belong on a greatest list is the best proof that science fiction is a vast and varied field. Maybe if we (any of us, individually or collectively) work up a list that is at least 100 of the greatest, then we've made a start.

Myself. I already know that I have very idiosyncratic tastes. I am happy to suggest to others books I think they'd like, but I suspect that if I were to take the time to come up with my Best Of list, it wouldn't be universally acclaimed.

[FSogol]

8. The whole point of lists like that are to spur discission of what should and shouldn't be there.

A list that was universally acclaimed would be pretty milquetoast, imo.

[getting old in mke]

7. Your list

Most I'd put on my "highly entertaining list" and even "favorites" ("Gladiator" is the only one I haven't read), but probably the only one I'd stick on a greatest SF list would be to consider "Lord of Light".

You really nailed a chunk of my reading from the 70/80s

[Cartoonist]

9. Yes to Jack Vance

The list must have been composed by young people who have no understanding of the entire history of SF. For starters, any list of all-time greats should automatically exclude books written in the last decade. They should have to stand the test of time before being considered.

[SheilaT]

10. Excellent point, about needing to stand the test of time.

In a similar way the old chestnuts need to be revisited. All too often The Man in the High Castle makes various best lists. I don't think anyone who compiles those lists has read it within the past 40 years. About ten years ago my s-f group in Kansas City read it, and we were collectively horrified at how bad it is.

I think it got its reputation because it was one of the earlier alternate histories, and is reasonably clever and original. But as the one member who is Japanese American pointed out, he just didn't have a clue about real Japanese culture. He seemed to think Japanese, Chinese, what's the difference? because as the friend pointed out, a lot of what he presents as supposedly Japanese is really Chinese.

Plus, as I recall, the plot simply sucked. But it got high praise when it first came out, and no one has bothered to re-evaluate it since. Other than my s-f group.

Among the reasons I like to reread books, or rewatch movies is to see if my earlier impressions hold up. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

[PATRICK]

19. Times takes away

that certain cutting edge of "futurism" romance wedded to the contemporary(at the time of the first impression). Like watching those relevant and popular seventies movies. For that particular era when pulp gave way to better science and modern style it is quite an acid test for "greatness".
H.G. Wells and even Verne continue to be fun or good reads. My own favorites of the sixties and seventies have really shrunk. Asimov and even Bradbury seem to have that survival thing going for them where as others actually look deflated in the text. Some sort of illusion I suppose.

Also, hearing the books on audio tapes forces all flaws to the fore, no matter who you are.

[SheilaT]

20. It is truly impossible to predict the future.

I just re-watched the movie "Wargames", and that holds up because it is firmly grounded in the early 1980's, when it was made and takes place, even though the absence of personal computers and cell phones stand out all these years later.

That's also why H.G. Wells and Verne hold up. Their books generally take place when they were written, although include what was then speculative elements: an invasion from Mars, a time machine, a submarine.

Personally, I love time travel, alternate history, or something set in the now but with some sort of science-fictional element. I don't care for fantasy of any kind, really don't like high fantasy, or novels set in the distant future for the most part.

[Chathamization]

21. I've seen Vance missing on a number of lists like these (The Dying Earth would be a good addition)

Though the lists are always more of a popularity contest than anything; they might as well say "here are 25 popular SciFi books." It'd be interesting seeing a well read an individuals list, since you might learn about some of the more interesting and lesser known works (some of which are much better than some of the books that ended up there).