Cool site: Ultimate scifi reading list
The next cool site I’m tackling is something I ran into awhile ago called “The 100 science fiction books you just have to read.” Since I love science fiction (and even managed to read a lot of sci-fi books before college and related activities started sucking up all of my time), I naturally latched onto this list. Some of the books on there are definitely on my “to get around to reading” list. Here’s the top ten books on the list; do you agree or disagree?
- Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
- Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
- Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
- Valis by Philip K. Dick
- Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- Gateway by Frederick Pohl
- Space Merchants by C.M. Kornbluth & Frederick Pohl
- Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
It’s certainly not a definitive list, and the subject matter is controversial enough it could easily have any given nerd up in arms over “How could book X possibly be on there when book Y isn’t?!” But at least it provides a starting point to anyone who wants to read some good scifi.
February 7th, 2007 at 00:31
I haven’t read Childhood’s End, but the Foundation series books are among my all-time favorites.
February 7th, 2007 at 00:32
Ditto. I’ve never really even heard of Childhood’s End, though I definitely read (and loved) all of the Foundation novels.
February 15th, 2007 at 12:11
You can give Frankenstein a miss, frankly. I understand wanting to read the original to see how it differs from the Boris Karloff movies, but it’s one of those Victorian novels that uses 200 pages to tell a 50-page story, and is filled with horrible 19th century clichés like the hero’s health declining in response to plot points.
The thing that pissed me off, though, was a scene that horribly mangled Geneva’s geography. It was analogous to “I was in Rockville that night, when a thunderstorm arose. A flash of lightning revealed the monster standing on the other side of the street from me. I was blinded and lost track of him, but the next flash showed him climbing the Washington monument.”
February 15th, 2007 at 12:18
Heh, thanks for the local analogy. It wouldn’t have made sense to me being in the original Genevan.
I recall trying to read the original Dracula once (my mom highly recommended it to me; I guess it had a huge influence on her in college). But I just couldn’t get into it at all. I suspect it’d be the same with Frankenstein. Just because something was very influential and started off the genre does not mean that it’s particularly good by today’s standards. It makes sense to read it from a literary analytical perspective (tracing its influences on later literature and such), but just as just-for-fun reading, not so much.
October 19th, 2007 at 19:11
The Big Time ( Fritz Leiber ). On the Storm Planet ( Cordwainer Smith ). The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Citadel of the Autarch and The Urth of the New Sun ( Gene Wolfe ). Chrome ( George Nader ). A Voyage to Arcturus ( David Lindsay ) Radix ( AA Attanasio ) Last Call ( Tim Powers ) . Farewell Horizontal ( K.W. Jeter ). The White Light ( Rudy Rucker ) A Splendid Chaos ( John Shirley ) Lord of Light ( Roger Zelazny ) Involution Ocean ( Bruce Sterling ) The Book of Skulls ( Robert Silverberg ) Agent of Chaos ( Norman Spinrad ) Any short story by Ray Aldridge and The Nag Hammadi Library in English ( Cosmological Science Fiction ). Journey’s Into The Bright World ( Marcia Moore )….