What Are The Greatest Science Fiction Novels?

[Rakhmetov]

H.G. Wells has been called "the Shakespeare of Science Fiction."

The Island of Dr. Moreau

War of the Worlds

First Men in the Moon

Time Machine

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells



H.G. Wells cleverly employs the figure of the Invisible Man to develop a critique of capitalism, thereby making his novel something subtler and more interesting than the simple mad scientist story critics have typically found it to be.

Indeed, at several points in the novel, the Invisible Man sounds a lot more like a radical revolutionary than a capitalist businessman. He conceives the idea of a Reign of Terror to establish and consolidate his power: "Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, … it is under me — the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch, — the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First." This is hardly the language of the free market. As Griffin's proclamation of a new era indicates, this is in fact the language of revolutionary totalitarianism.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Eynlwn8inRIC&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99&dq=the%20invisible%20man%20and%20the%20invisible%2 0hand%20h%20g%20wells%20critique%20of%20capitalism&source=bl&ots=2BoXvqDLIw&sig=j_KZUbcz4s3xFMmeoZ9_w1hdSbY&hl=en&ei=vQ9bTbHaEcKt8AbOlYXEDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=the%20invisible%20man%20and%20the%20invisible%20 hand%20h%20g%20wells%20critique%20of%20capitalism&f=false


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYgxScMsRCY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3uZpH6kDaY&feature=related

[Per Levy]

i would say, "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Whisperer in Darkness" from H.P. Lovecraft. really good storys.

im honest neve read anything from wells, are these good storys, worth a read?

[Tenka]

i would say, "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Whisperer in Darkness" from H.P. Lovecraft. really good storys.

im honest neve read anything from wells, are these good storys, worth a read?

Those are both very good. Also The Colour Out of Space (maybe not long enough, but good sci-fi). The only thing from Wells I've read is The War of the Worlds, which is excellent (IMO, anyway).

[x359594]

Among the greatest science fiction novels: The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. Report on Probability A by Brian Aldiss. Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. The Iron Heel by Jack London. Solaris by Stanisław Lem. High Rise by J.G. Ballard. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delaney.

Strictly speaking "At the Mountains of Madness," "The Shadow Out of Time" and "The Colour Out of Space" are novelettes/short stories. (I like all three.)

[Rakhmetov]

i would say, "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Whisperer in Darkness" from H.P. Lovecraft. really good storys.

im honest neve read anything from wells, are these good storys, worth a read?


What, are you still reading this thread??? God damn it--- go and read one of the those novels.

Or try A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

You will need a nadsat translator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadsat

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Concordance:A_Clockwork_Orange

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ltwX603Ft4&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI-mDTdeKR8

[bcbm]

the best sci-fi author i've read recently is easily gene wolfe. his 3 part sun series, encompassing the book of the new sun(4 novels) and its coda urth of the new sun, book of the long sun(4 novels) and book of the short sun(3 novels) are probably some of the best novels i've ever read, sci-fi or otherwise. easy to get into but also layered with all kinds of mysteries, allusions and deep questions about identity, authorship and faith among other things. definitely worth checking out. new sun is a little dense, long sun is probably the easiest to get into (and it follows a poor city overthrowing their corrupt government...), really can't recommend these highly enough i really enjoyed them.

it is awhile since i read for more traditional sci-fi the faded sun trilogy by cj cherryh was an entertaining read

phillip k dick has a lot of good sci novels as well

these look interesting:
http://theanvilreview.org/print/outsider_anarchism/

[Astral_Disaster]

I thought Das Kapital was pretty good.

[Dunk]

Dune, His Dark Materials, Foundation series, and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. A bit of fantasy mixed in there, but so, so good.

[Philosopher Jay]

I'm a fan of Kurt Vonnegut. "Cat's Cradle" is number one, followed by "Sirens of titan" and "Piano Player."

[Old Mole]

Anything by Isaac Asimov, like the Foundation series and Caves of Steel (and the books following it).

[OhYesIdid]

Agreed on Foundation. Read it.
The Man in the High Castle is also very good.
The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein, and Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card are war classics.
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, is a tad less serious but still a blast.
Finally I would recommend The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury.

As for more recent works, apart from China Mieville and Ursula K LeGuin (who you should all be reading by now), The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi, is good, as well as How To Live Safely in a Science-fictional Universe, by Charles Yu.

I am, of course, assuming you have all read Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, and are not falsely claiming to know anything about science-fiction.;)

Same goes for Gateway, by Frederick Pohl, and Dune, by Frank Herbert.

[Terminator X]

Ursula K. Leguin's "The Dispossessed" is incredible and pretty much shaped my current politics. Most of her stuff is great, also check out "The Left Hand of Darkness."

Iain Banks' "Culture" series of novels is fantastic.

I'm currently reading China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station" and it's quite a mindfuck.

[RED DAVE]

Wow!

The full text of Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, online and free!

http://libcom.org/library/dispossessed-ursula-le-guin

The link to the pdf file is at the bottom of the page. Don't miss this book. It's amazing!

RED DAVE

[Zeus the Moose]

You might want to check out books by Ken MacLeod. He's a Scottish ex-Trotskyist, and brings a fair amount of left-wing politics (even if only on a spotterly level sometimes) into his books. I've read his "Fall Revolution" series (starting with The Star Fraction) and his "Engines of Light" trilogy. Both very interesting sci-fi series.

[SJBarley]

The Handmaidens Tale by Magaret Atwood is pretty good:)

[Vendetta]

Tunnel in the Sky and Red Planet by Heinlein used to be one of my favorites when I was a kid.

Also, Little Fuzzy, by H. Beam Piper. Definitely.

[JustMovement]

Childhoods End by Arthur C Clarke is awesome, 2001: A space odyssey also is good as is the entire series, in fact, basically anything by Clarke, Dune by Frank Herbert as someone already mentioned, From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne is excellent, Ubik by Philip K Dick is one i recently read and is a trip and a half.

[TelevisionIncarnate]

A less know author; Kim Stanley Robinson, has an excellent bibliography of hard science fiction that weaves through almost every aspect of life. One of my favorites from him is the Mars Trilogy, which contains detailed political rhetoric about creating a society from scratch, as well as many other things, and he tends to take the left side :) He has also written A Memory of Whiteness which completely blew me away. Read this if your feeling philosophical.

Dragons Egg by Robert Forward is a very realistic approach to alien lifeforms. It is a very polished addition to hard science fiction, which is the genre enjoy the most.

The Dispossessed has already been mention but I feel the need to mention it again. :)

As for dystopian books, there are the given: We, Brave New World, 1984, but also Anthem by Ayn Rand. I know Ayn Rand is an objectivist, but it never hurts to read from the other side, to try to understand it. Its also a really fun read.

Anybody read Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia by Alexander Bogdanov? I'm currently trying to get it, sounds amazing.

[W1N5T0N]

Burning chrome - william gibson.

[bcbm]

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, is a tad less serious but still a blast

yeah i thought this one took a little bit to get into but once you did it was a fun read

[Tenka]

Recently read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic
I'd say it's one of the greatest, though admittedly I've not read many science fiction novels.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I enjoyed Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton, a great read confined to a single lengthy book.

Others: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman and Otherland by Tad Williams.

[Kuppo Shakur]

Venus On the Half-Shell
/Thread.

[OhYesIdid]

Greg Bear should be mentioned as well. He recently wrote Hull Three Zero, which I haven't read, but is most famous for Darwin's Radio, an all-time classic that I love.

Bogdanov's Red Star is a rarity that I've also tried to get my hands on, as well as The Iron Dream (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream) by Norman Spinrad. Most of my books come from local used booksellers and the town's sole library, so yeah. Next time I'm in the States, I'm looking for The Quantum Thief, The Diamond Age, and/or Cyteen. A relative living stateside's offered to lend the Mars Trilogy, so I'm covered there.

Anyone else here love Jack Vance?

[RED DAVE]

Anyone else here love Jack Vance?Constantly frustrated by his backward politics but a great story teller.

RED DAVE

[ellipsis]

only read the first red mars book. really liked it.

also the moon is a harsh mistress

[Rocky Rococo]

Among the greatest science fiction novels: The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. Report on Probability A by Brian Aldiss. Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. The Iron Heel by Jack London. Solaris by Stanisław Lem. High Rise by J.G. Ballard. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delaney.

Strictly speaking "At the Mountains of Madness," "The Shadow Out of Time" and "The Colour Out of Space" are novelettes/short stories. (I like all three.)

Your taste is clearly quite close to mine, though of Lem, I much preferred The Investigation to Solaris.

----------------------------------------------------------------

More generally, there were also the Campbell-era classics, a few samples:

Asimov, Foundation trilogy.
Pohl/Kornbluth, The Space Merchants
Sturgeon, Killdozer

[RED DAVE]

The Iron Dream (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream) by Norman Spinrad.This is a very bizarre book and not in a good way. It's basically a creepy projection of naziism into science fiction. It has a covering conceit that it was actually written by hitler, who was a sci fi writer!

The book is touted as alternative history and highly ironic, but I found that it cut too close to the bone for me. Spinrad is an anarchist and a syndicalist (and I think he's Jewish) but this one is a little too real for me. It was actually banned for awhile in Germany and American nazis approve of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I just don't get it.

RED DAVE

[x359594]

...The book is touted as alternative history and highly ironic, but I found that it cut too close to the bone for me...

Me too. In my opinion, Spinrad erred in making the book too deadpan, so that it can be (and has been) read as a straightforward Nazi tract.

[OhYesIdid]

Me too. In my opinion, Spinrad erred in making the book too deadpan, so that it can be (and has been) read as a straightforward Nazi tract.

Well, doesn't that make the book much better? First off, it is misunderstood satire. Secondly, it shows how good of a literary analysis of nazism it is! A good book all around.

[TelevisionIncarnate]

get the next one
now

[RED DAVE]

Well, doesn't that make the book [The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad] much better?No, it makes it too sympathetic to naziism.


First off, it is misunderstood satire.At a certain point, one has to ask whether or not it's actually satire. A friend of mine a sci-fi fan opined that Spinrad (who is some kind of anarcho-syndicalist) wrote the book, realized it was too pro-nazi ("My God, this could have been written by hitler!"), and erected the structure of hitler as the author as an after-thought.


Secondly, it shows how good of a literary analysis of nazism it is! A good book all around.No, it could show that it's too sympathetic. I rest my case with the fact that the book made my skin crawl. Same as Starship Troopers by Heinlein. He later claimed that he constructed the political structure (only military vets are allowed to vote) as a thought experiment. However, it's clear from the book that he sympathized with what he had built.

I'm not saying Spinrad is some kind of nazi. What I'm saying is that there's a bit of a nazi in all of us, and Spinrad let his bit get a little too out of control.

In one of his best strips, Jules Feiffer shows a bunch of kids playing WWII. The Yank is rough and loyal to his buddies; the Brit is loyal to his king; the nazi is brave and has ideals. At the end of the strip, the two kids who played the Yank and the Brit are clamoring to play the nazi! That's what I mean. Feiffer shows that that kind of stuff can be very seductive if you're not careful. How many video games, for example, actually have a fascist subtext?

RED DAVE

[Book O'Dead]

Ursula K. Leguin's "The Dispossessed" is incredible and pretty much shaped my current politics. Most of her stuff is great, also check out "The Left Hand of Darkness."

Iain Banks' "Culture" series of novels is fantastic.

I'm currently reading China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station" and it's quite a mindfuck.


A big "Bravo!" to all who've mentioned LeGuin! For my money, Le Guin is the greatest living Sci-Fi/Fantasy novelist, not just because of her subversive themes, but also for the extraordinary originality of her stories

[Red Commissar]

Some I've read that comes to mind. Much has already been mentioned though.

Classics from guys like Asimov and Clarke I've liked, though I didn't appreciate them until maybe three years ago. Before then I liked more "action-packed" sci-fi and unfortunately found myself bored by those focused on dialogue. From those days I'd probably only read "Gaunt's Ghosts" and the Thrawn Trilogy. The main problem with those is that they are set in franchised universes - Warhammer 40k and Star Wars respectively- and it's something I decided on moving away from a few years back.

Culture novels by Iain M. Banks is pretty good. I like the world it is set in and the writing style is pretty clear. The author borrows some concepts and topics from socialist and anarchist thought.

I'll add another bit of support for Dune as well. Really nice universe and concepts, though I liked the first three of the series (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune) more than the last three- Herbert really got more into philosophy and what not in those, but they are all good.

Red Dave mentioned The Dispossessed earlier which is also great and is from a left perspective. The Left Hand of Darkness is a good read too, which is set in the same "universe" as The Dispossessed.

Ray Bradbury is good- Fahrenheit 451 is a classic and I also liked The Martian Chronicles- the latter has the great short story of There Will Come Soft Rains.

I would also like to add to the recommendation earlier of the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson that Television mentioned. Great series about the colonization and settlement of Mars, and the conflicts that develop from it. Author is influenced by left politics too.

China Mieville's Perdido Street Station is also pretty good, I'd recommend that as well though it's not a "normal" science-fiction if you get that.

I also liked Ender's Game, a book I was assigned to read when I was 15. Unfortunately the politics of the writer are downright terrible- but thankfully it doesn't seep too much into his works.

Kurt Vonnegut's stuff is good too- I really liked Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five. Player Piano seems to be more explicitly "Sci-Fi" though I've never been able to read it.

For a more humorous take, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. For a mindfuck, the short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream".

[RED DAVE]

Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan is explicitly sci-fi and a great satire on everything. Kind of sad, though. But Vonnegut was like that. He was an American witness to the Allied firebombing of Dresden, which killed more people than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

ETA: Slaughterhouse 5 is about the bombing of Dresden. The title refers to a slaughterhouse where Vonnegut and others took refuge during the firestorm that destroyed Dresden and killed over 100,000 people.

RED DAVE

[Red Commissar]

Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan is explicitly sci-fi and a great satire on everything. Kind of sad, though. But Vonnegut was like that. He was an American witness to the Allied firebombing of Dresden, which killed more people than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

RED DAVE

Right, I forgot about that one for some reason :scared:

I had a nice old copy of it that got ruined by rain unfortunately. And it wasn't even me, but a friend who wanted to read the book but as far as I know, never read it. Idiot.

[x359594]

...Same as Starship Troopers by Heinlein. He later claimed that he constructed the political structure (only military vets are allowed to vote) as a thought experiment. However, it's clear from the book that he sympathized with what he had built...

Hienlien moved from left to right during the 1940s. And he kept on moving to the right throughout his career. Starship Troopers and Farnham's Freehold are saturated with right wing ideology, with racism added to the mix in the latter novel.

[Xenophiliac]

Some of my favorites...

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Man In The High Castle, & Valis by Philip K Dick.

Dune by Frank Herbert.

A Clockwork Orange & The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Of the works of H G Wells that I have read I would say that War of the Worlds is my favorite.