A Science Fiction Tasting Menu for the As Yet Uninitiated

Choose one of Vinge’s big two.

I guess it’s time I read Atwood. Looking at the shelves, I see The Management has run through half a dozen, but not Oryx & Crake.

I think that the distinct pleasure of a genre has to include aesthetic qualities, and if we’re assuming a general reader who has a somewhat developed aesthetic sense than recommendations should include qualities particular to the genre — otherwise why read it. (Another way of putting this might be to write that I don’t really think that SF i about ideas.)

So I’d keep _Last and First Men_, maybe _Count Zero_ (it’s a good introduction to a particular aesthetic), and _Use of Weapons_. Others:

_Solaris_, Stanislaw Lem
_Little, Big_, John Crowley
_Martian Time-Slip_, PKD
_Gormenghast_, Mervyn Peake
_The Scar_, China Mieville
_The Left Hand of Darkness_, Ursula K. Le Guin
_Land of the Headless_, Adam Roberts

After I wrote the below, I realized that you’re probably focusing on “could happen in some plausible future”, so “parallel earth” and outright fantasy are of less interest.

Traditionally and correctly, Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness is often recommended in this context; The Dispossessed is also great.

In the category of “science fiction that for some reason is not reviewed that way”, McCarthy’s The Road or Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.

I wouldn’t recommend Robinson’s Mars trilogy, unless I’m misremembering endless dry discussions of politics and “here’s how they’ll have sex in an enlightened culture”.

I liked Mieville’s Embassytown, Iron Council, and The City and the City enough that I’d hope one would be a good taste for the non-SF-reader.

As I was saying… “Pavane” – Keith Roberts.

Rich Puchalsky: As much as I like Little, Big and the Gormenghast trilogy, neither is science fiction; and the Miéville is only by stretching the concept to its Hooke’s Law elastic limit.

What, no Theodore Sturgeon? More than Human makes my list.

Given that the context is introducing SF to people who have never read any before, and they’ve come to it via “science fictional references as a guide to the future”, it might be worth mentioning that much SF isn’t really about technology or the future (although some is), and giving a bit of an indication as to which category each book falls into.

There is definitely a class of SF where the technology is blatantly impossible, and both the writer and the assumed reader know this, but it doesn’t matter because the technology isn’t what the book is really about. Typically, the relationship between the characters is what the book is really about.

e.g. it’s not clear that “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” is really about robots, in any technically plausible way, but the reader might see some aspects of themself in Rachel or Deckhart.

And further to Marc’s point about the lack of canonical classics in the list, I would see that as an asset rather than a problem, given the aim is to introduce people to the genre rather than to its monuments. I can’t think of anything *more* likely to put a lot of people off SF than giving them Dune, or most of the works of PKD…

I’d suggest Phillip K. Dick A Scanner Darkly. I think I’d describe it as a satire both on the government’s attempts to control drug use, and on drug users’ experiences.

We’re in danger of running into the problem that the SF-ness of some works is in doubt. (See, e.g. some of the posts by John Holbo on this). A Wizard of Earthsea is great, but arguably “not science fiction”. The Book of the New Sun is also great, but something of a boundary case in terms of genre.

I wouldn’t try to make a definitive determination of SF/not SF for these, just note to the uninitiated reader that exact boundaries of the genre are somewhat debatable.

If I could put in a word for the great Alasdair Gray: much appreciated in the UK, even outside Scotland, not sure about the US. I’m not sure that his masterpiece “Lanark” is strictly SF, but “A History Maker” certainly is.

I stand by my anthology recs, and always wonder about putting a friend in a position where they have to assess my tastes and judge something particular that I love.

13: I started out like a lot in my generation with Andre Norton and Doc Smith, but moved to PKD by puberty, and went from there to Disch Delaney Effinger Sheckley. Weirdness and challenge were definite selling points to an alienated budding intellectual. SFF is in part the place where stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else. LeGuin wrote and was rejected for a decade before getting placed in a SF magazine. But why was LeGuin committed to writing Orsinian Tales in the first place? (New Yorker interview is good)

After generations of people growing up on Star Trek and Twilight Zone, I think most people understand enough about what SF is about. I would ask why an adult hasn’t read SFF.

No discussion of SF can avoid immediately veering into “what is SF”. But the Gormenghast trilogy is SF: nothing supernaturally magical happens, and there are drones buzzing around in the third book.

I’ll get the other boundary case out of the way and say that if we’re really going for SF as the literature of ideas, then really the best SF I’ve read in the last couple of years was the first SF work, Kepler’s _Somnium_. His inability to write straightforward science (because of censors-putting-people-to-death issues) makes it sort of anticipate postmodernism: there are bits about his mother and short satirical poems and a lot of it is in an appendix and the “main story” is a few pages in the middle somewhere.

We all have our individual suggestions.
And S. F. is so diverse, it seems to me that most people would find some they would enjoy without guilt. Hard to overcome those preconceptions, though.
I hold great disdain for Ender’s Game. Though I did finish it. And I did slog my may through Dune. But I did not get a third of the way through Cyteen before putting it down.
The same with Children of Men. The 25 % or so that I did get through could have been shortened to about ten pages of exposition.
It is hard to go wrong with Pohl.
Heinlein should come with some sort of warning label. He probably should have retired after All You Zombies.

23: CJ Cherryh?

I highly recommend Riddley Walker. I’m the only person I know who has read this book, so I’m glad to see someone considers it to have literary merit. I did not think it had ever received much recognition (I see now that it did receive the Campbell award).
I first became familiar with Russell Hoban through his Frances the badger children’s books, which were some of my favorite books to read to my children, so I’ll recommend those as well, although they have nothing to do with science fiction (although I suppose anthropomorphic badgers are science fiction in a sense).

The society in Gormenghast is a fantasy of old England and it’s sempiternal classess embodied as ritual. Also, the castle itself is about as fantastic as the library of Babel.
Further, most fantasy is dedicated to exhuming old superstitions, old horror movie monsters, old fairy tale characters, old times, old worlds. Most current writing is distinctly in the fantasy vein, especially steampunk. Gormenghast is about old things. I’m not sure that the final volume is as dedicated to that aesthetic but then, most people dislike Titus alone. Titus killed Steerpike for the castle to remain unchanged, what happens outside is…well, I don’t know why I would be interested, so never felt impelled to read on after the story is over.

Female SF writers? I nominate Valerie J. Freireich for an overlooked author with a manageable backlist. Also, Octavia Butler. Most women writing currently are fantasists, but Linda Nagata and Joan Slonczewski are good SF writers. M.J. Locke has promise.

Raven Onthill@28: Cherryh’s work covers such a broad range it’s hard to know what to recommend, but for the SF beginner, I think Merchanter’s Luck is a good pick. A quick read (I finished it in one sitting on a plane flight), and it’s a good example of the kind of “hard” SF that was big in the second half of the 70s.

stevenjohnson there has been some worthwhile sf criticism written after 1960, truly.

(See, for instance, The New York Review of Science Fiction. And lots more, but I’m not familiar with the lots more.

I think Bob McManus’s anthology selections are good, though I don’t know if they’re still in print. I happened to reread The Forever War, which had been on the first cut, while I was draughting this, and took it out as to dated. Bester, yes, too.

I have been meaning to email Andrew and Maria with the suggestion of Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm by Daryl Gregory as a good and online-available gateway for people who have started with comics – it’s a kind of update of The Liberation of Earth with a thinly disguised version of Dr. Doom and various superheroes glimpsed mostly in the distance.

Also Riddley Walker is just great – something we were all in complete agreement on. I think it has its posse, but some people you’d expect to have heard of it haven’t. For example, Anne Washburn whose Mr. Burns is a simply fantastic play that starts from some of the same ideas – post-Holocaust society where the Simpsons morphs through cultural drift into a mixture of Greek tragedy and folklore had never heard of it (if you get the chance to see a good production of the play, I can’t recommend it highly enough).

‘Slow River’ by Nichola Griffith, for science fiction that describes the workings of power within a fictional world in ways that relate to our own. It’s also a wonderful love story.

Mary Gentle’s ‘Rats and Gargoyles’ has been described by the author as ‘Hermetic sf’; her brilliant novel ‘Ash: A Secret History’ is science fiction unless you’re familiar with quantum mechanics, in which case it’s damn good fantasy.

Steven Johnson: The New York Review of Science Fiction has a web site (oh, the humanity) and some of their issues are available as free downloads there. NESFA Press lists the Blish and Knight books on their web site, so they may still be available, and Amis’s New Maps of Hell can be found used, but are these are largely of interest to scholars of the field, though Blish’s and Knight’s remarks remain of value to aspiring writers.

(No links, this post is avoiding moderation purgatory. Mama Google is your friend.)

And though I know that LeGuin is an important part of the sci-fi canon, I’ve always been impressed at her total disinterest in including humour in her books.

Have you read ‘Darkness Box’ or ‘The Rule Of Names’ or ‘The First Contact With The Gorgonids’ or ‘The Ascent Of The North Face’ or ‘The Rock That Changed Things’ or ‘Feeling At Home With The Hennebet’ or ‘The Royals Of Hegn’ or ‘Confusions Of Uni’ or ‘Unchosen Love’ or ‘Mountain Ways’ or ‘Solitude’ or ‘Standing Ground’ or ‘The Poacher’?

J-D — I haven’t. I’ve only read her novels, and (long ago) a collection called The Wind’s 12 Quarters. Is Le Guin’s short fiction that different?

No Le Guin? Sacrilege surely!

Book of the New Sun is amazing, albeit I don’t have a sodding clue what it’s going on about. Have the sequel book on the shelf, but not sure if I want to read it…

Raven Onthill: Thanks for the heads up. Looking back, I see I omitted Brian Aldiss, Trillion Year Spree, which is widely available I think.

As to the readability of Heinlein, Heinlein swiped from Twain, Jack London, H.L. Mencken, G.B. Shaw…of course he’s readable.

I’d have put Russ’ “Female Man” in, and Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”. …and LeGuin? Not laugh-out-loud-snort-your-coffee-through-your-nose hilarious in a Terry Pratchett kinda way, but there’s humor in there, particularly in the later works. Some Ellison has aged better than others; “Ticktock Man” hasn’t aged all that well.

Arthur C. Clarke: Childhood’s End.

Delaney’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand was difficult at first but I stuck with it and the last half of it felt like inhabiting the culture. Babel-17 was good when I was a kid. And Coelestis by Paul Park is a great book about colonialism.

Watson Ladd remarks “Of the Big Three, none are represented…” Presumably he means Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov. Heinlein’s socioeconomics/politics and tech have aged remarkably poorly — Puppet Masters feature flying cars which double as submarines, mind-controlling invaders from the Saturnian moon Titan, and a U.S. military which is competent. Any of these will make a modern reader, gag, choke, and spit coffee out her nose.
Clarke became famous because he co-authored the screenplay for one of the greatest movies of all time, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Clarke’s novels and short stories, however, utterly fail to grip the reader, populated as they are by a suspiciously cardboard group of bland whitebread protagonists. Asimov’s novels remain a mixed bag, like his short stories. Foundation trilogy is very good but the science has not aged well — there is no sign that the social sciences will ever enjoy the predictive statistical quantification Ludwig Boltzmann conferred on chemistry with statistical mechanics. Stories like The Bicentennial Man and The Last Question and The Ugly Little Boy are brilliant and deeply affecting and humane, but all too much of Asimov’s fiction boils down to rote puzzlebox murder mysteries and how-do-we-fix-this-problem? techno SF.

People who deeply dislike the standard spaceship/raygun/killer computer science fiction tropes might find The Difference Engine enticing. Alice Sheldon’s (AKA James Tiptree Jr.’s) complete short stories definitely should also be in there, as they subvert the standard science fiction tropes so effectively.

All Singularity novels should be avoided, IMHO, since they tend to degenerate into deux ex machina endings. If the godlike transhuman/computer is truly godlike, then no matter what the protagonist does, the transhuman/computer has foreseen and accounted for it, so the plots always dead-end in “it was all part of the plan” cliches (almost as bad as the “it was all a dream/a simulation” cliche). The Singularity has served the same effect for science fiction narrative as diarrhea in a punchbowl, and fortunately post-Vinge writers are moving away from it because of the paucity of narrative possibilities.

Some claim that Ellison is dated, but I don’t see it. How can a story like “Croatoan” or “The Beast That Shouted Love At the Heart of the World” or “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” or “One Life, Furnished In Early Poverty” get dated?
If you want an example of really dated sci fi, check out Edgar Pangborn’s A Mirror For Observers or The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress or World of Ptavvs. We’re supposed to believe A) there are intelligent Martians; B) Earth would ship criminals to the moon instead of shooting ’em in the head and dumping ’em into a mass grave: C) we’re going to have fusion-powered spaceships able to travel to Neptune in a short timespan without the crew getting brainfried by galactic cosmic rays.

A.E. Van Vogt’s Voyage of the Space Beagle is also worth a shout-out. Along with some of the more overtly freudian short stories of Damon Knight, like “Stranger Station” and “Masks” and “The Country of the Kind.” Some of these have the impact of Kafka’s short fiction. Also Robert Silverberg’s remarkable post-1970s short stories deserve mention: they’re more like Borgesian parables than science fiction — “Passengers,” “To See the Invisible Man,” “Nightwings,” and “Born With the Dead.”

@JimV at 58: Well, yes, but Ursula LeGuin said (I paraphrase from memory, from somewhere in Languages of the Night, I believe): “That may be so, but 90% of Dostoyevsky isn’t crap . . . the standard for art isn’t the average, but the very best.”

Also, a big Amen! to the Strugatskys. Roadside Picnic, Hard to Be a God, and Far Rainbow are all literature, unless you want to say Conrad and Kawabata and Richard Powers aren’t really literature either.

J-D I think that Nick is trying to say LeGuin should smile more. Like every woman in every street.

I’m intrigued as to why Banks gets recommended for Use of Weapons rather than the first of the post-scarcity stories, Consider Phlebas? In my opinion it’s also the tightest in the series; if you want “spaceships!” then surely Excession should be your gig, though it’s probably the hardest to get into. My preference would be for Against a Dark Background, which I feel is a more coherent and contained story.

I agree China Mieville’s The Scar isn’t sci fi. Maybe the story about the squid worshippers? But like most of his novels it falls apart near the end – the only story he hangs onto right to the end is Perdido Street Station.

Uh, no, I wasn’t saying LeGuin should smile more, and I don’t tell that to women in the street either. I think humour is an important element of fiction, and I’ve always found LeGuin’s to be in a serious register — especially works like The Word for World is Forest.

Whoever mentioned Far Rainbow above, Excelsior! The world needs more notice taken of amazing Soviet sci fi. In my opinion Cloud Atlas is mysticism and not sci fi, though it borrows sci fi genre tropes.

The one book that I cannot abide is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. A real critical reading of this should dispel forever the idea that Heinlein is a serious political thinker. His revolution begins with the incipient organization stage, where the Wise Man who Knows What’s Going On Appears — there is a profoundly embarrassing bit of stuff in the middle where the Revolutionary Chicks do their bit by strutting their stuff in front of the Soldiers of the State and other High Jinks for Boys; and then suddenly he jumps forward to the stage where Everything Is Under Control because the rebels have the Cheat Codes. The only advantage this has over late-stage Heinlein is that the Wise Man who Knows What’s Going On doesn’t bone the Hot Babe Who Is Also His Relative and Loves Him For His Mind (I think, it’s been many years).

Much science fiction suffers from the “how to end the novel?” problem. That is why the genre often does much better in the short story and novella format. So most readers should be aware of that, and evaluate novels by the pleasure of the beginnings, and not the trudging of the final third.

May I propose as yet unmentioned authors:
Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang, and also, Nekropolis
Geoff Ryman’s Air
Ted Chiang’s numerous short stories

Is no one mentioning J.G. Ballard because he is ‘too obvious’ or because he is ‘not really SF’ or for some other reason?

The Drowned World is worth reading if for no other reason than that of all of the 20th century dystopian scenarios the one detailed in that work is the most likely to come true.

For a more off-beat choice: Barry Malzberg: Beyond Apollo (and his ’70s work more generally) now shamefully neglected despite being highly popular at the time.

Star Maker by Stapledon is more, ahem, ‘cosmic’ than Last and First Men and less dated.

A comparison of the original short story version of ‘Ender’s Game’ (available online) with the later novel version is instructive.

@Hidari #70: I’m a massive Ballard fan, but I’ve been commenting here on the assumption that we’re not constructing a list of the SF canon or of the works we think are greatest, but of books/stories that might draw in people who don’t have any prior knowledge of the genre, or who may indeed be actively prejudiced against it. My experience is that Ballard can be off-putting even to some hardcore SF readers; definitely not for everyone.

A bit harsh on Spinrad up there. I thought his parodies in “Keep the Giraffe Flying” were prety good – “Broot Force” by Iclick AsIMove etc. And his story the title of which I forget about the rock group The Four Horsemen and the way they stir up the end of the world seems to still have traction. Ah here it is –

Norman Spinrad’s ‘The Big Flash’ (1969) has a countdown sequence to describe the rise of the new Californian pop group, the Four Horsemen.

Such a lot of showing off. It takes 46 posts before a mention of Asimov and Clarke, who have hooked more people to SF than the rest of the authors combined.
A “List of Science Fiction for People Who Don’t Read SF” surely has to start with stuff that demonstrates the difference between SF and the stuff that people are used to. So, Arthur C. Clarke, who understands and can imagine the potential of his age’s technology – Rendezvous with Rama; anything short by Asimov – Nightfall; and scientists’ arousing power dreams, what those other men and women are fantasizing about – The Black Cloud.
As fine a collection of cardboard and white bread as you could wish for. And grand imagination.

I nervously snuck back stage to meet Asimov after a night lecture he gave at the old Glassboro State College in 1970.

He autographed the last page of my favorite short story of his, “It’s Such A Beautiful Day”. That’s a good place to start reading. (I have since lost that copy of the book.)

I think the “Golden Age” (say, mid-1940’s to mid-1960’s) could be set apart as a certain age in modernism when speculative fiction was not all dystopian.

I devoured the anthology Dangerous Visions when it was published in ’67 and that immediately changed everything for me. It felt like the stories were various apotheoses of al of SF’s inherent possibilities: topically, formally, stylistically. So I loved that book — and almost immediately stopped reading SF.

Never read any SF again, except for Neuromancer (too romantic for me) and the great James Tiptree Jr. (pseudonym for Alice Bradley Sheldon) who was some kind of genius. She combined the deep sensibility of Grace Paley with an astonishing writing style. Polished jewels.

Anything by John Sladek, Thomas Disch.

“Inverted World”, “A Dream Of Wessex” and “The Quiet Woman” by Christopher Priest.

Philosophers may be interested in that short book Quentin Meillasoux wrote that comments on a short story by Asimov.

Anything by Delany, and yes, Russ: Adventures of Alyx, as suggested above. Also, Tom Disch: Camp Concentration or 334.

What about Anne Leckie: Imperial Radch trilogy? Is Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities series SF? Honestly, I don’t care much whether it technically is or isn’t. Speculative Fiction is more than Science Fiction.

Also, too, I’m surprised that the mentions of Gibson are so dated. For me, breathtaking as Neuromancer et al were back in the day, his recent work is far more interesting and feels more prophetic. The Pattern Recognition / Spook Country / Zero History trilogy perfectly captures what seems the likely trajectory and end-game for the financialization of the culture. And The Peripheral should resonate for a lot of people here, given its grounding in the idea that the wealthy largely don’t care about saving the world, because it is the wealthy who are immune to – might in fact thrive on – the consequences of failing to save it.

I’d like to add a mention for Stephen baxters flood. Poorly written but really cool- I based an excellent short rpg campaign in his world and it was very special. But probably special in the way zombie apocalypses are special – a very particular taste is required.

For what it’s worth. “Roadside Picnic” was in the original list and somehow fell off when editing. I think it’s wonderful. I would also second all the recommendations for short stories in 75 — I chose only ones I could easily find for free online, but obviously there are a great many which are tremendously worth reading.

The Peripheral I like and admire a great deal, but it took me at least half the book to figure out what was going on. I may like “Idoru” more than anyone else in the world, but so what? It contains the paragraph of Gibson I read out to persuade strangers what a marvellous writer he is:

“Anything that might be of interest to Slitscan. Which is to say, Laney, anything that might be of interest to Slitscan’s audience. Which is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

The omission of Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov is entirely deliberate. I doubt they would convert anyone over the age of fourteen, even if some of the short stories are better or at least cleverer than that would suggest. And the purpose of this list is conversion.

Bester, Delaney, both perhaps a little strong for the first taste. But why then Riddley Walker?

Thing about science fiction, it has to reel you in. When I was small I loved Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein. Then I grew up and started to read the serious stuff, which I wouldn’t have paid much attention to if it hadn’t been for them. My parents (both old lefties from way back) turned me on to Aldiss, whose Billion Year Spree gave me my science fiction reading list in my teens and early twenties. Eventually I started making my own judgements.

I wonder, too, whether the sheer puerility of so much pop-culture science fiction is a problem; it’s hard for people to realise that there are people like McLeod and Robinson and Mieville and even Gibson and Sterling in the world, when all you’re normally exposed to is the science-fictional equivalent of thin porridge with skim-milk and artificial bananas.

The biggest problem I find with Spinrad is the change in tone from the beginning to the end. I sometimes wonder if he gets depressed as he reaches the end of the book.
Or that the change in tone is intentional.
I can certainly recommend The Iron Dream.
Only a brief mention of Thomas Disch, Camp Concentration should be canon.
Of course, Disch’s immortality is in The Brave Little Toaster.
The Day The Icicle Works Closed is another brilliant Fred Pohl story.

Thanks everybody, I’m taking notes. Just a few comments.

1. You’re all spelling “Ken MacLeod” wrong. Ken McLeod, Amazon tells me, writes about Buddhism and whatnot.
2. Thumbs up on Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles was my favorite book as a teen), Little, Big (although not SF), and Speaker for the Dead.
3. I really liked the first Radch book (Ancillary Justice), but the others were a letdown.
4. I reread the Foundation trilogy a few years ago and found it almost unreadably bad.
5. I understand the gripes about the Mars trilogy but I really liked it. Not for beginners though, certainly, or you won’t put up with its faults.

Andrew Brown @ 91:

The Peripheral I like and admire a great deal, but it took me at least half the book to figure out what was going on.

Is that necessarily a mark against it for a non-SF reader, though? If you’re telling them they should read it to get into SF, they’re presumably going to expect something of a learning curve. I’d also suggest that the comparative success of television programs like Mr. Robot and, to a lesser extent, Lost, shows that people are willing to invest effort into “What the heck is going on?”

I think it’s less “literary” than Gibson’s Blue Ant trilogy, or much of the SF being recommended here, but that’s also probably not a downcheck either. A stylistically easier read as a gateway to the hard stuff, as it were.

I’d also second Against a Dark Background as Banks demonstrating his skills without having to kick against his post-scarcity utopia run by superbeings.

I was assuming that the purpose of this list was to reel in people who read literature but not SF.

In which case, wouldn’t Embassytown or The City and the City** be better Miéville picks than The Scar? The former play more with ideas from the literary fiction wheelhouse, in my opinion. The Scar had a richness of setting, but I started feeling as if I were slogging through it to get to the ending. Your kilometrage may vary, of course.

**I suppose this might not be genuine SF either, but it seems too Borgesian for it to be excluded.

The Scar: female protagonist, no refrigerator. Embassytown too, but that doesn’t succeed as well for boring reasons beyond this thread.

Who first said “The Golden Age of SF is thirteen”?

Slightly out of left field, Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder graphic novels. SFnal in the Vanceian post-disaster magical-technology way, modern enough to appeal to the imaginary person under 30, different stories with very different valences. Open sexuality, less violence.

I’d try the Cherryh’s Chanur books for someone who had at least seen some Star Trek or Star Wars and didn’t mind an adventure novel. I think the biology and anthropology come in very naturally to the adventure, or vice versa. (Also, I think the prose is relatively manageable, though I like almost all of Cherryh so am no judge.)

(Cordwainer Smith’s The Ballad of Lost C’Mell and Norstrilia fill in a Rule of Three, too.)

If we really want to get all serious, I suppose a reading of Cawelti on genre and Fredric Jameson Structural Fabulations is required. Also required I think, because on a technical level, historical fiction and science fiction are the same thing, Lukacs’ The Historical Novel.

In the end the task is hopeless. First, rejection of the fantastic is a visceral thing. Some people just get offended at being asked to invest in what they perceive as silly. Second, prescriptive notions about fiction only legitimately being about “character” instead of what people do (or might do) in a given situation that somehow relates to our lives;l about the “human condition” as if that doesn’t change; about a string of words beautifully made like a pearl necklace instead of words about the world…Well, choosing the wrong alternatives invariably enrages the literati.

One idle note: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is first of all a narrator with different sexual mores, still something of interest. As to the writing? Heinlein ripped off Jack London’s chapter The Chicago Commune, in The Iron Heel. Enough said there I think, for and against.

I have no idea whether the brave new proposed CT comments policy will get me for thread drift, but the critical ideas about SF in this thread seem to be largely ones that I’d recognize from the 1980s. What I think people should recognize is that if people really are supposed to get “science fictional references as a guide to the future”, they don’t have to read anything and probably shouldn’t: they should match movies and TV shows. SF went through a transition to visual arts — read Adam Roberts about this, I’d say — and the written works, while still being produced, are now a kind of cultural appendix. If people are going to be making SF references they are probably going to be to Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who, The Matrix, various anime, Terminator, Aliens, Mad Max, Planet of the Apes, Wall-E, etc.

Look, for instance, at the publication dates of all of these recommended titles. Of the living authors, how many are SF and not New Weird or whatever (Steph Swanston would be who else I’d recommend in that case), and how many of the “SF” stories aren’t really pleasant reworkings of previous genres?

Disch has serious literary chops (he was the Nation’s theater critic at one point too). Banks could fill many of the role’s on the list (especially liked Consider Phlebas and Excision). Lem is a sci-fi continent unto himself.
PKD’s Valis is a truly mind-bending book, is it a novel posing as a psychotic memoir or the other way around? Some wonderful grief-soaked levity amidst the grief.

Note this mail drop in Delaware (where shady organizations incorporate to do bad things): https://valisinternational.com/

An appealing feature of science fiction, that it had much more in the past than today, was that it represented some plausible idea of what the future would be like. The technological changes during the twentieth century up until about the 60’s were spectacular, from horse-and-buggy to jet air travel and rockets to outer space; from gramophones to television; from mechanical devices to Electronic Brains. This gave some sense that a continued trajectory of development might occur, from rockets reaching outer space to rockets reaching the stars; from television to holographic displays; from Electronic Brains to autonomous robots.

Given this trajectory, it would make sense to see the colonization of the moon (which would somehow make economic sense), then Venus (didn’t know how hot it was), then Alpha Centauri (surely we’ll get around to breaking the speed-of-light barrier), then the galaxy. This seemed like a natural extrapolation from existing trends. Along the way, we’d meet aliens who would be similar to us in many ways, and different from us in fascinating ways, and with whom, regardless of those differences, there would be mutual interest in interaction.

Most of this extrapolation didn’t pan out, and with the possible exception of the autonomous robots, probably won’t: there’s hardly any reason to colonize the moon, much less go to Mars, much less go to even to the closest other star. There’s not a hint of aliens in sight, and maybe the time window of common interest is so brief that there never will be. And if we extrapolate the sole remaining trend that is clinging to life, of computer development, we get the Singularity, after which all bets are off, and all is unknown.

So the particularly exciting aspect of SF as it was, a peek into a possible future, is pretty much broken, and we are left with a kind of mythological detritus of our old dreams, in the form of video games, and movie tropes and franchises, and for a few people, books. The SF themes form a nice complement to superheros and vampires, but that’s about it.

Good old William Tenn: “Suck air, suck air!”

And don’t forget the short short gem by Lion Miller, “The Available Data on the Worp Reaction”. Whee!

Pat, again–

How embarrassing, those authors are both men. All I saw was the “Asian”! You can use me as an exemplar of unconscious sexism if you want.

Her world peopled only with women has a full range of human experience, from the savage to the sublime.

Including, presumably (and most refreshingly) no chance of a Donald Trump ever becoming US President.

Part of the challenge in putting together any list of works to introduce the non-SF reader to high-quality SF is that it really depends on what they have been reading, what kind of literature they normally find meaningful. I would, for example, be hesitant to suggest _The Female Man_ or _Always Coming Home_ to someone who was not already familiar with modernist a-narrative writing that rambles along through multiple storylines, not all of which are connected. If someone had a taste for dark humor, start with Vonnegut, Tiptree, and especially Eileen Gunn. The avenue into SF really depends on where they’re coming from.

@PatinIowa – not strictly African, but take a look at the Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (2000).

I am not as familiar with Asian/Asian American writers, but don’t forget indigenous/Native/First Nations. Walking the Clouds
An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction is a good starting place. Longer works – Bareheart, by Vizenor, flight by Sherman Alexie (though it is young adult), and several works by Stephan Graham Jones. (there is more native writing in the fantasy/magic realist areas).

A few years ago I played a world of darkness campaign set in a hellish near future being manipulated by a supernatural force of implacable evil. In that hellscape, McCain was president.

We were young then, and naive.

Ragweed at #120 has an excellent point, in that the books recommended should be fit properly to the literary taste of the victim potential SF reader – though I love books like “Dune” and “Lord of Light” I wouldn’t really foist them on the unsuspecting friend, colleague or father-in-law. So, in this spirit of matching the palette of the reader to the acquired taste of SF, I offer the following no-doubt incomplete list:

For readers of thrillers and action novels: The Forever War or Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

For readers of satire and/or modern comic novels: Cat’s Cradle or anything by Vonnegut actually, and maybe Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner

For readers who have or ever once had a political bent: anything by Ursula K. LeGuin

For readers of Mystery/Noir: The last policeman by Ben Winters, or (just possibly, though it’s totally dated The Caves of Steel by Asimov

For readers of historical romance and/or adventure fiction: Shards of Honour by Lois McMaster Bujold

For readers of James Joyce: Ridley Walker for whom the whole invented language thing will be a breeze

For readers of middle-ages-based historical fiction: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller

For readers of middle-ages-based historical adventure fiction: Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverburg

No doubt I’ve missed a genre or three. There are for example a lot of Dan Brown readers out there, but I’ve never known why they read what they read, so I’m ill-suited to comment.

I want to recommend some of Karl Schroeder’s wonderful books, but I’m not sure how accessiblie his books would be to someone not familiar with the conventions of the genre:

Permanence My favorite. What happens when corporate licensing and copyright get out of control?
Lady of Mazes
Ventus His first novel
Sun of Suns

Here’s Jo Walton’s review of Lady of Mazes http://www.tor.com/2008/08/14/happiness-meaning-and-significance-karl-schroedera8217s-lady-of-mazes/

Are the Gormenghast novels meant to qualify as as science fiction solely because Titus Alone takes place in a vaguely-defined post-apocalyptic world? Even though Peake obviously has zero interest in “science” as such? This seems insanely broad to me. I mean, I don’t really care about these semantics, and the novels are great no matter what you want to call them, but still…

Anyway, I have to put in a word for Angela Carter, whose oeuvre is kind of slippery but amazing no matter what you want to call it. Her possibly-best book, The Passion of New Eve, is also one of her most science-fictional.

My first introduction to science fiction was with Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Naming of Names” (which was retitled to “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed”) in an anthology I read for class in grade school. I was hooked. Some of my favorite, even now, SF short stories are written by Bradbury – “The Last Night in the World,” “The Sound of Thunder,” and “The Exiles.”

Echoing other people before me, I’ve enjoyed reading Liu’s Three Body Problem, Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life,” and Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness.

If I can throw out a few names of titles, I enjoyed reading Yamamoto’s The Stories of Ibis (think Bradbury’s Illustrated Man with an emphasis robots, might not be super new-to-SF friendly though), Okorafor’s Binti, and Butler’s Parable of the Sower. While all of these might not be the best for new SF readers, and perhaps not the author’s best work, there’s something about them that keeps me reading them over and over. Must… not… go… to… bookshelf… and… reread…

RE: Miller’s Canticle for Leibowitz: I read that for a SFF class last year and I was the one of the only people in my class who enjoyed the book. Most thought it was too confusing on the first readthrough. It’s a book that definitely has value after the first readthrough, so while yes, I think it’s a good book, perhaps it’s more of an acquired taste?

Possibly it’s a result of having too many hundreds of SF and hundreds of mystery novels jumbled together in my memory. But the notion that “SF” freshens genres according to the skill of the writer sounds pretty much removed from reality. I mean, do Ben Bova’s The Star Conqueror and Frank Herbert’s Dune really serve to rehabilitate the old “special boy conquers the world” genre? I didn’t even know there was such a thing! How did Asimov re-write the fall of the Roman Empire without barbarians or the Roman Catholic Church, with the fall *offstageI?!?! What genre is Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker or what’s-his-name’s Anathem? Or even, to reach back into the past, Jack London’s Star Rover (aka The Jacket?)

It does seem to perfectly describe SFF, the commercial mash up that increasingly dominates the publishing lists. It’s implied contempt for predicting the future, given that very little SF actually tried to predict (as opposed to warning about or hoping for) the future, seems more like a commitment to the eternal proposition, things will never really change because people never really change.

The original list is somewhat odd, I think. Is the purpose to make a list of works that are simply read by people outside the genre and that people outside the genre find acceptable? Missing Le Guin would then seem to be a major omission, as others have pointed out. Is the purpose of the list to entice readers of a literary bent that the genre offers them a lot that they might be interested in? I am not sure this list does that – I would argue the Mars trilogy is not introductory at all. I think J. M. Burt’s list @76 (with both Le Guin and Bradbury) is a finer iteration.

But that’s the way lists should be – this post is great in that it starts a list-building, iterative process, and brings up authors that I haven’t read yet. So thanks.

In that vein, I will point out that no one has yet mentioned the late Octavia Butler, and surely she belongs here. I think “Bloodchild” in Bloodchild and Other Stories is the short story to start with. For those in the theme of this post who want to start with something longer, I would recommend the Parable series, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.

Plarry @ 142: I’m not going to read back through the whole thread, but at least one person has mentioned Butler as someone who people read even if they don’t think of themselves as science fiction readers. But for someone who hasn’t come across it before ‘Kindred’ would be a book that might get people into science fiction who weren’t otherwise that way inclined.

Ragweed@120 & Christophager@132:

It’s certainly true that “The Female Man” isn’t particularly easy reading– I think I was picturing effette literary snobs that have always turned up their noses at sci-fi, in which case you’d think they ought to be able to handle a little modernist a-narrative type stuff. Reviewing Andrew Brown’s original problem statement, I gather the target audience may be a bit different from that.

Also, I can see the point of recommending things like John Brunner, whose “Shockwave Rider” got to “wikileaks” in fiction several decades ahead of the actuality.

I don’t think “Lord of Light” is quite as difficult as “The Female Man”, but it is true that the initial situation there isn’t explained terribly well for someone not experienced in decoding Science Fiction. I’ve often had the thought that if I were teaching a class in SF, I might try pairing “Lord of Light” with Larry Niven’s “A Gift From Earth”– the Niven is entertaining enough, though not as heavy, and would do a good job of introducing the basic concepts (both books are based on the idea of interstellar colonists sent out on ice– “suspended animation”– with a crew that remains conscious throughout the trip, and chooses to seize political control of the new colony).

I meant to, but completely forgot to include Asimov’s “Caves of Steel”: it may very well be dated, but I doubt that’s such a difficulty. If anything it touches on some urban design issues that are getting more relevant. Myself I think it’s Asimov’s best book: the idea of an entire culture shot-through with a phobia, that’s pretty interesting in itself. This one could be paried with “The Naked Sun”: a vision of a diffuse civilization based on telepresence.

What hooked me, when I was a teenager, was an anthology of Nebula and Hugo award winning/nominated stories that included Clarke’s ‘A Meeting With Medusa’; Russ’s ‘When it Changed’; Ellison’s ‘On the Downhill Side’; Wolfe’s ‘The Fifth Head of Cerberus’; Poul Anderson’s ‘Goat Song’ and maybe some others (possibly some Le Guin?).

Apparently Nebula Award Stories 8, edited by Isaac Asimov, and also including Pohl’s ‘Shaffery Among The Immortals’, Rotsler’s ‘Patron Of The Arts’, Silverberg’s ‘When We Went To See The End Of The World’, and an introductory essay by the editor titled ‘So Why Aren’t We Rich?’ (but nothing by Le Guin).

Andrew Brown@142: then I think my original suggestions, back @24 are good ones. To get people reading sf in middle age, you’re going to have to teach them how. I’d add Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great would also be useful for historical context, and has the additional advantage of mostly being available for free over at tor.com, so people can sample it for free. It occurs to me that Walton’s Among Others is also a good introduction to the field, understanding what makes it so attractive.

And, to people upthread who claim that Ursula leGuin has no sense of humour, I offer the definitive refutation, from The Dispossessed

It seemed to them that lately the world was full of girls. Everywhere they looked, waking or asleep, they saw girls. They had all tried copulating with girls; some of them in despair had also tried not copulating with girls. It made no difference. The girls were there.

This is a great list – given how much I’ve loved the books on here I have read, the rest are going to have to go on my Amazon wishlist. Thanks for doing this in time for Christmas!

Supposed to have been “convincingly answer for people who”

@Joseph Brenner “It’s certainly true that “The Female Man” isn’t particularly easy reading– I think I was picturing effette literary snobs that have always turned up their noses at sci-fi, in which case you’d think they ought to be able to handle a little modernist a-narrative type stuff. Reviewing Andrew Brown’s original problem statement, I gather the target audience may be a bit different from that.”

To be clear, I was thinking of this on a slightly more fine-grained level than Christophager. I understand the genre that is “literary fiction”, but I think that even among readers of literary fiction, there are those that love someone like Joyce or Kobo Abe, and others who find them to be pretentious bores (or hate Joyce but love Abe, etc. etc.). Some literary fiction is more intellectual, some more character-driven, some more about use of language, and so the writers that would appeal as a gateway to SF would also be different.

Obviously if you were an aficionado of another genre style (eg. westerns or mystery novels) than the suggestions would be different.

“I seem to remember that ‘When It Changed’ is online somewhere. Someone might get something out of reading it followed by ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ followed by ‘Ammonite’ to get a sense of how a series of writers develop and elaborate a theme.”

Slightly OT, but that is a really interesting suggestion. (You might also add Tiptree’s “Houston, Houston, Can you Read?”, for another take.)

Another interesting pairing would be _The Two Of Them_ from Russ and _The Terrorist of Irustan_ by Louise Marley, which are both about women in a hyper-patriarchal, Saudi-Arabian style, colonies, and how they resist or escape. The nature of the relationships between characters is particularly striking.

It’s annoying you have a section titled, “short stories available for free or cheap download,” but I can’t find any place to buy or download them. I have been looking for the William Tenn stories for years without success. Jack Vance, too, although I’ve found some of his works. I love his writing for the way he conveys the sense of people speaking a language other than what we’re used to.

Le Guin, Le Guin, Le Guin.

@165 — In particular, ‘Those Who Walk Away From Omelas’. Short and available online. Link: http://engl210-deykute.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/omelas.pdf.

JakeB @ 123: You answered the question I asked–I figure as I find a way into various traditions, I’ll find people for my teaching. The question was for my reading and I’ll follow up on your suggestions. Thanks.

I have enough examples of my own unconscious biases…

Thanks everybody! This is fun.

Perhaps we need one of these threads for fantasy too? In my opinion the political value of fantasy is much more contested (it’s a much more restricted and conservative field). Thsi would make the discussion of lists more interesting.

Mcclaren defends Use of Weapons because it’s Banks’s best but isn’t the idea here to present the most accessible? Also, for all that specific books dig into specific moral issues, the broad underlying moral question that has always stood out for me in Banks’s work is the dubious morality of the Culture’s contact section, and the obvious comparison with liberal interventionism. I think this is clearest in Consider Phlebas, where our hero is on the wrong side of everyone, and the obviously dubious society the Culture is whacking into next week has a kind of sympathetic hearing. Also, in terms of new sci-fi ideas, the big hit in all the Culture novels is the unrestrained post-scarcity, which is a joy to read and contemplate. The short chapter, I think it’s in Consider Phlebas, explaining the weird physics and staggering speed of spaceship travel; the opening scene where the Mind evacs by hyperspacing into a gravity well; the orbital; these are all in my view really powerful and lasting images that add to the underlying fabric of sci-fi. A chair made of bones is just a chair made of bones. I’ve incorporated these ideas into my post-scarcity Traveller campaign, and it has been a joy to run. I think that this aspect of Banks’s work is sometimes underappreciated because he’s not the first to try it, but he is far and away the best and deepest thinker on this in sci-fi that I have read.

One of my players who is a big sci-fi/fantasy reader finds Banks completely inaccessible. For non-sci fi people his Culture novels can be incomprehensible, since they’re so steeped in the basic principles of sf. For these readers I think Against a Dark Background presents a better intro to his unique vision and the richness of his tales.

I don’t begrudge Dylan his lit prize exactly–though I’m unsure of its propriety–but one thing I’m sure of–Stanislaw Lem deserved one.

I don’t understand why you left out Le Guin? Can you explain?

@ 176 Amazing. I’m not sure your reading habits indicate much, but I am surprised. I read a lot. By which I mean a lot by any standard. All but a sliver is research related. I reward myself twice a year with a feast of four-six novels which I devour after marking, etc. I get the sense that you’re (a bit) younger than I, so perhaps it’s generational. “Sailor Who From Grace with the Sea,” “Remains of the Day,” and “Master of Go” are short if you’re looking for a classic. “Speed Tribes” isn’t a novel, but it’s incisive, well-written, a very easy to read. Short essays on pre-Internet modern Japan. Lots of others are good.
“Some Prefer Nettles” is excellent on Taisho.

Kidneystones, I think it’s related to the fact that I spend all day reading and writing, and also I’m kind of tired of the genres I have grown up with. Also I use an ebook reader now (very convenient in small apartment without bookshelf space) but haven’t found a way to browse ebook stores like physical bookstores. Actually I feel really bad about this (I was a regular huge reader till maybe three years ago) and this thread has inspired me to rekindle my reading habits (maybe that should be “re.Kindle”).

So once again, yay Crooked Timber.

I have read “the sailor who fell from grace with the sea.” Mishima is a fascinating character, and (in the translation I read) struck me as a kind of Japanese DH Lawrence. He’s a fascinating study in that weird overlap of homosexuality and fascism, and a classic model of the Japanese suicidal novelist. I really should read more of his work …

One good on-ramp to Science Fiction for those who are used to reading weighty straight fiction might be Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City, which although published in 1969, takes the semi-autobiographical protagonist from the 1950s to a dystopian 1997 in which World War 3 has destroyed the world, etc. Lessing went on to writing several other SF novels of the interstellar sort at a time when SF was not yet literarily cool.

Slightly surprised not to see Timescape mentioned — bit so long ago that I read it that I can’t swear it belongs here. I might actually recommend Years of Rice and Salt above the Mars trilogy — though I suppose there might be doubt as to whether it is science fictional in a way that leads to more science fiction reading.

If Jem (which I have been thinking about re-reading — this will serve as a prod) makes the list not sure why Gateway doesn’t. And though I am pretty sure that James White doesn’t, it was nice to see sector general mentioned; partly because of the age I was when I first read it Conway’s heroism in Star Surgeon kind of defined was one of two things that defined what it is to be a hero for me. (The other is Collier standing up to Delicata in A Taste for Death, in case anyone’s interested)