The real science fiction classics

[ShadesFox]

So, after a bit of an opening in my free time and many used book stores in the area, I figured it was time I started into some of the classics I've been missing out on.

Suggestions?  So far I've been picking up everything with the name Heinlen in it but I need some good areas to look into.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Anything with the name Asimov :p

[ShadesFox]

Yes, I was once compelled to read 'I, Robot' for a class in high school, so naturally I didn't read a damn thing.  I've always meant to actually go back and correct this mistake of my youth.

[bradypodidae]

I've used this list with pleasant results: Sci-Fi Lists.

Anything with the name Asimov :p

I absolutely agree. It was Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series that hooked me on 'adult' sci-fi when I was a youngster.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

I do protest! The Robot novels (Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn) were far better IMO.

But for me, it was always the short stories that really grabbed my interest. Try looking over some of the Multivac ones, like The Last Question, and The Machine that Won the War. (They're both available online, IIRC)

[ShadesFox]

Well, part of the appeal here is that I'm in an area with a long history of people who read science fiction combined with a bunch of used book stores, so I was going to rummage those for books.  Though Proeliator's list looks handy.

[Succubus_1982]

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Sci-Fi and humour all rolled into one!

[ShadesFox]

Now that was a series I actually did read during high school.  Unlike the others, it wasn't required reading.

[bill]

dune, and only the first book (this is important)

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Oh, and Hyperion by Dan Simmons and its sequel, Fall of Hyperion, are very good reads. (The sequel duology, Endymion and rise of Endymion are readable,  but not as good in my opinion)

Also well worth reading are the Orson Scott card works, most famously Ender's game and it's long succession of sequels.


If you're nerdy enough that being caught dead with a Star Wars book won't cause you to die of shame, the Thrawn trilogy, (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command) are very good.

[Azlan]

I recommend the works of Niven and Vinge to start...

Vinge:

A Fire Upon the Deep
A Deepness in the Sky
Rainbows End

Niven:

Ringworld
The Ringworld Engineers
The Ringworld Throne
Ringworld's Children


Once done there, you can delve into their other works.


Also pick up, Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon... it is old though.  Also try, Heaven's Reach by David Brin and perhaps even... The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter.

I could have more but... I am tired...

[Baal Hadad]

What about Arthur C. Clarke?  2001: A Space Odyssey?

[Janus Whitefurr]

Ooh! Ooh! Philip K Dick! Especially his "Human Is?" reader. Lots of lovely short stories in there. Still need to steal Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep off my brother. I also have Dr. Bloodmoney by the same author, and it was... er... creepy.

I'm going to run out of this thread screaming SM Stirling's name because while there's not exactly classics there, there was a brilliant trio of post-Terminator 2 novels that came out before - and upstage grandly - anything the post-Terminator 2 movies did.

AAAAAAAAAAAAA... no, wait. *ahem*

William Gibson. NEUROMANCER.

...AAAAAAAAAAA! *flees thread*

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Burning Chrome, by Gibson.

Other than that... a lot of stuff that's already been mentioned; further suggestions include some oddball stuff - one of the authors I'll buy a book unread is Parke Godwin, but he's not really what you'd call science fiction.

The Big Three is a good starting place (Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov) but on from there... if you're into space opera and don't mind seriously dated tech, E E "Doc" Smith is a good one, with the Skylark series and the Lensmen series.

As Azlan says, I could go on...

[Tapewolf]

I haven't read the entire Ringworld cycle, but where Niven is concerned, I'd put a strong word in for 'A Gift From Earth', and of the short stories, 'The Soft Weapon', 'Not Long Before The End' and its sequel, 'What Good Is A Glass Dagger?', though the latter two are more along the lines of SF/Fantasy than hard SF.

I second the Vernor Vinge recommendations as well, though I'd also add 'True Names' to the list.  It's a short story, but well worth digging up.  I believe the most recent impression is the collection "True Names And Other Dangers".  A bit like Neuromancer, but a couple of years earlier.

Now, on to more obscure things.

Iain M Banks:
'Against a Dark Background' and also 'Feersum Endjinn'.  The former is about a quest to find the last Lazy Gun, with a protagonist eerily similar to Keaton.  The latter is about Earth thousands of years in the future, set in a gigantic castle which most of the USA has been rebuilt into, apparently 'because it was cool'.  The capital city is built into a lantern suspended from the ceiling of the castle chapel.

Clifford Simak:
'Ring Around The Sun' - Numerous impossible inventions suddenly appear out of nowhere, bankrupting existing industries.
'All Flesh Is Grass' - Purple flowers and dialless telephones appear out of nowhere, panicking the world.  They are actually part of an alien information-processing system.
'Catface' ('Mastodonia' in the US) - someone discovers a portal back to the Cretaceous period and attempts to commercialise it.  Later they discover the alien who created it.
'Enchanted Pilgrimage' - a bizarre novel where the inhabitants of three alternate universes meet on some weird mission.  Choice quotes include "I did not know dragons came with wheels" (one of the characters on seeing a trailbike)

Eric Frank Russell:
'Wasp' - Described by Terry Pratchett as 'I can't imagine a funnier terrorist handbook'.
'With A Strange Device' - this is a bit more of a cold war thriller, but has strong SF connections (What if the Enemy invented...)
'Next of Kin' is also worth reading, if only for the entertainingly bizarre alien language, which contains such phrases as "Mayor Snorkum shall lay the cake."

Murray Leinster: 'The Wailing Asteroid' - a signal is sent from the asteroid belt, and a plastics entrepreneur builds his own ship to investigate it.  It would make a pretty good film.
Also, 'The Greks Bring Gifts', in which an alien race attempts the economic conquest of Earth.

Bob Shaw: 'Night Watch' - a spy is sent to the planet M.Luther to steal hyperspace coordinates to a new colony.  The secret police 'accidentally' ruin his eyes and he invents a device which allows him to see through the eyes of other people nearby.
'Orbitsville' is also interesting, but IMHO the sequels don't live up to it.

Alfred Bester:
'The Stars My Destination', or 'Tiger, Tiger' (different title).  This is an absolute classic, and hasn't aged.  I re-read this while returning from AC08 and had quite forgotten how good it is.  The premise is that everyone can teleport psychically (known as 'Jaunting', which has resulted in a weird society where vehicles are considered a status symbol.

Harry Harrison:
'The Stainless Steel Rat' - Anyone who has played 'Thief' should love this.
'Captive Universe' - An Aztec tribe lives in a small valley.  The priests carry out rituals to ensure the sun rises each day (and when this is interrupted on one occasion, the sun doesn't rise.  Yes, you do find out why.)

Brian Aldiss:
'Non-Stop' aka 'Starship' - this is about a generation ship where things have gone horribly wrong.
'Barefoot in the head' - I haven't read this, but it comes highly acclaimed.  A middle-east conflict has turned nasty and Europe has been bombarded with a long-lived LSD derivative, causing the whole continent and the UK to freak out.

James P Hogan:
'Inherit the Stars' - a dead man is found on the moon, millions of years before humanity set foot on it.  This is the first part of a quadrilogy, which continues with 'The Gentle Giants of Ganymede' and its more action-oriented but still interesting sequels, 'The Giant's Star' and 'Entoverse'.
'The Genesis Machine' - Two scientists devise a means of creating gravity fields and all hell is let loose.

Keith Laumer:
'A Trace of Memory' - about an alien technology which allows memories to be saved and reloaded.
'The Great Time Machine Hoax' - Has some slight silliness, but rather interesting.  The protagonist inherits an ancient experimental supercomputer which appears to be able to warp reality.

Edward Mackin:
'The Key to Chaos' - This is a short story in 'New Writings In SF #1'.  It is part of a longer series about Hek Belov, a computer engineer who struggles to make a living in a world where computers are self-repairing.  In this story, he teams up with a conman who has created what appears to be a dream recorder.  
Highlights include: "Whatever was inside those spheres just went down some kind of cross-dimensional drain." and "I wish I could have shown you his [dream].  Part of it involved him smashing up the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer while it rained gold pieces.  He made me erase it."

Jack Vance:
'The Blue World' - about an ocean world and its inhabitants.  Turns out they're descended from a penal colony.
'The Gift of Gab' - a short story about researchers investigating alien fish.  I enjoyed it immensely.
'Planet of Adventure' - Shit title, but an entertaining series.  He had problems naming things, which is why the race in the second book is called 'The Wankh'.    Comprises the following books: 'City of the Chasch', 'Servants of the Wankh', 'The Dirdir' and 'The Pnume'.


Kenneth Bulmer:
'To Outrun Doomsday' - Someone crashlands on a world where a god named Pe'Ichen will create anything you desire that does not contain animal matter.  Unfortunately the inhabitants have recently lost the ability to conceive children.

C.M. Kornbluth (short stories):
'Two Dooms' - about an alternate history where the Nazis won WW2, but handled really well.  Gripping and not for the faint-hearted.
'The Cosmic Charge Account' - an amusing story about the prickly author of a self-improvement book and his publisher.  One of their readers has taken the book to heart and is creating a 'plague zone' where everyone is content and happy, despite their world inside the zone falling apart.
'The Mindworm' - this actually is about a soul-devouring, mind-reading monster.
'The Marching Morons' - Filmed as 'Idiocracy', without credit AFAIK.  The brighter people haven't had enough children and have been outbred by the stupid, resulting in a total mess centuries down the line.
'Advent on Channel 12' - Ben Graffis' iconic cartoon character, Poopy Panda (stolen from the Winnie-The-Pooh illustrations) is accidentally deified.
...these stories can be found in 'His Share of Glory' the collected short stories of C. M. Kornbluth.

A.E. Van Vogt:
'Slan' - About the persecution of a hidden super-race, not unlike 'Cubi in DMFA, really.
'Voyage of the Space Beagle' - a linked-together collection of shorts, 'The Black Destroyer' is probably one of the best.
'Away and Beyond' - a collection of awesome stories, including one about someone who is able to 'save and reload the game', as it were.  'Film Library' is also kind of cool, though rather dated now.

Piers Anthony:
'Macroscope' - a bizarre and trippy novel about a technology which allows the users to tune into any race in the galaxy, and therefore steal their technology.  Unfortunately the signal is also jammed with a video which destroys the minds of anyone who is insufficiently mature as a race.


That will have to do for now.  I'm sure I can come up with more...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

...

What's scary is just how many of those names and books I've read...

[Janus Whitefurr]

*leans back in*

HG Wells, War Of The Worlds!

*scamper*

[thegayhare]

Enders game
Orson scot card

I can't say weither onr not the rest of the series is worth since I only read the first novel

[superluser]

Let's see here.

- I second the recommendation of Vernor Vinge.
- As to Arthur C. Clarke, you'll either like 2001 and the Rama series or you won't, but Childhood's End is definitely worth reading.
- Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four are sometimes not considered in the SF genre, but they are.  I highly recommend BNW, but 1984 is in some ways a lesser book
- The best Philip K. Dick I've read is Ubik.  I highly recommend it.
- R.U.R. and War with the Newts by Karel Čapek are very good.
- Franz Kafka is good, and plays with many of the same themes, though he may not be SF.  Likewise Lovecraft.

And a list of the best SF short shorts:
- http://www.shrovetuesdayobserved.com/flight.html
- http://www.rdrop.com/~wyvern/data/houseplants.html
- http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html (and the video)

[TheJimTimMan]

Peter F Hamilton
Night's Dawn trilogy, probably not not hard SF (stretching "probably" to it's physical limits), but very good fun nonetheless.

Arthur C Clarke
Baal Hadad beat me to the punch with 2001, but I'm reading the sequel 2010 at the moment, quite good so far.

AAAAAAAAAAAAA... no, wait. *ahem*

William Gibson. NEUROMANCER.

...AAAAAAAAAAA! *flees thread*

I did start to read that, but to my shame I couldn't get into it. I have read Burning Chrome and The Difference Engine, however, both of them very interesting looks at how our world might have ended up/have been different.

[Tapewolf]

Peter F Hamilton
Night's Dawn trilogy, probably not not hard SF (stretching "probably" to it's physical limits), but very good fun nonetheless.

True, but on the other hand he seems to have a better grasp of spaceflight than I do.  But yes, a very good series.

I did start to read that, but to my shame I couldn't get into it. I have read Burning Chrome and The Difference Engine, however, both of them very interesting looks at how our world might have ended up/have been different.

Oh.  Not exactly a classic or particularly hard SF, but 'Perdido Street Station' by China Mieville is an interesting and occasionally amusing read.  They also have the mechanical computing engines a'la Difference Engine so they are good to read back-to-back.

[hapless]

I'll allow myself to recommend Stanislaw Lem's works... he wrote in many different styles, so you probably should review the list and choose. Me, being a person who prefers a bit "lighter" works, would recommend The Star Diaries and The Cyberiad for start..

//h
PS. Also, (with a bit of nostalgia on my part), check out Lewis Padgett's (Henry Kuttner's) Gallegher short stories, if you'd stumble upon them by accident. Collected in any of "Robots Have No Tails" or "The Proud Robot".

[Tapewolf]

I'll allow myself to recommend Stanislaw Lem's works... he wrote in many different styles, so you probably should review the list and choose. Me, being a person who prefers a bit "lighter" works, would recommend The Star Diaries and The Cyberiad for start..

Those who know 'Paranoia' should probably read "Memoirs found in a bathtub".

[LionHeart]

David Weber's Honor Harrington series is very good, if you like military SF.

The Baen Free Library

A good place to look at various authors, some of whom have been mentioned here. You can download a selection of their works at no cost, and decide if it's something you like.

[Tezkat]

If you're looking for SF classics and all around great science fiction, a good place to start is the list of Hugo Award winners. The award recognizes both SF and fantasy literature, but the winners tend to be disproportionately skewed towards SF (and hard SF at that). Ditto for the Nebulas, with which there's a fair bit of crossover.


A couple of writers not yet mentioned here...

Neal Stephenson penned some of the seminal works of postcyberpunk literature with Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, both of which are fantastic reads.

Robert J. Sawyer may be a bit recent to be considered "classic" SF, but his works stand among the best of the current trend towards near-future hard SF. I like the deeper philosophical edge he adds to his novels. The Neanderthal Parallax (Hominids and its sequels) is excellent. My favourite among his standalones is probably Mindscan. (He's really nice, too. I met him at Worldcon last month.)

Enders game
Orson scot card

I can't say weither onr not the rest of the series is worth since I only read the first novel

Speaker for the Dead is arguably better than Ender's Game. The series goes downhill from there, though.

[Brunhidden]

I recommend the works of Niven and Vinge to start...

Niven:

Ringworld
The Ringworld Engineers
The Ringworld Throne
Ringworld's Children


Once done there, you can delve into their other works.

dont forget nivens short stories!

also - a gift from earth, the patchwork girl, and especially lucifers hammer are all very worth the read too

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Speaker for the Dead is arguably better than Ender's Game. The series goes downhill from there, though.

For what it's worth, I felt the Hive & The Hegemon series to be going back to the original roots, with some success. Perhaps not as good as Speaker for the Dead, but closer to it than Children of the Mind...

[bill]

I still want the hours of my life Xenocide took up back.

[Tezkat]

Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead were brilliant. However, the first "trilogy" sank into unreadability in Xenocide, made all the worse because he tried to save it and failed with Children of the Mind. I found Ender's Shadow an interesting retelling of the first novel, but parts of Shadow of the Hegemon bordered on inane. I gave up on the series after that. Damnit, Card... learn to quit while you're ahead!

[Ryudo Lee]

I don't know if you'd be interested in a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, but Piers Anthony wrote a series called The Apprentice Adept.  It begins with the book "Split Infinity" and spans 7 books.  An excellent series, if I do say so myself.

One that I am currently sticking my nose in is the first book in the Demontech series, "Onslaught" by David Sherman.  It too is a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, plus a little real-world stuff tossed in too.

And if you can still find it, the novelization of Doom is a pretty awesome set of books.