What's your favourite science fiction book?

[Night Train]

Another Arthur C Clarke - Fountains of Paradise. Storyline is a bit disjointed and characterization could be better, but I love it mainly because I so want it to be true. At least, more true than any sort of conventional space story. And the way Clarke develops his grand ideas in the grand manner! (remember that it was he who 'invented' the idea of the geosynchronous satellite). The ending - I mean the very last line of the story - is excellent: probably the best last line I've ever come across.

Same here.

I wish it could be made true too.

Clarke's Childhood's End is another very interesting concept.
I think I have almost everyone of his books apart from a few compilations where I already have the short stories.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

I consider that book as man's interpretation of stories passed down through the generations. Anything that could not be explained with reason, logic or medical knowledge of the day was accounted for by being classified as, as you say, 'devine'.

That is indeed one of the functions of myth.

To me, it's one of the best reads. Much better than modern day SF.

I don't disagree that Gilgamesh is one of the most wonderful and fundamental stories in human history, but it's still not SF!

 

[Flying_Monkey]

It's called The White Plague, was really not very good.

But rather prescient, at least. The development of diseases to target particular sections of the population in warfare is a very real possibility now.

The best ideas are not always in the best-written novels and vice-versa. Nor are the strongest ethics. I have a real problem with 'military SF' (probably the most popular sub-genre in the USA) in general for this reason...

 

[Dave5N]

Well now, it would have to be the early Foundation series.

I remember a fellow student - a Politics student who was very into Althusser going off on one when I tried to explain the books.

"That's it! It's all part of the structure, innit."

Too true.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

It's my biggest SF shame that I have never read a single book in the Foundation series...

 

[jimboalee]

The New Labour book of promises.

It's a fairy story i think.

So what's you favourite Fairy Story?

Mine's Sleeping Beauty.

Everything goes wrong as soon as she gets a prick in her hand.

 

[rh100]

So what's you favourite Fairy Story?

Mine's Sleeping Beauty.

Everything goes wrong as soon as she gets a prick in her hand.

LOL

Raymond E Feist wrote a great one called Faerie Tale, about the fantasy world clashing with the real world.

 

[rh100]

But rather prescient, at least. The development of diseases to target particular sections of the population in warfare is a very real possibility now.

The best ideas are not always in the best-written novels and vice-versa. Nor are the strongest ethics. I have a real problem with 'military SF' (probably the most popular sub-genre in the USA) in general for this reason...

Sad but true I think

Writers have always being the ones to foresee the way things end up going - surely others do but because their thoughts are in print, we have a reference to look back on and say 'they were right!'. The most obvious example to me is 1984, the details aren't correct, but the idea is certainly there.

Do you have a well known example of military SF? And is your problem with it that you think it may influence anything, or just on principle? I'm thinking of something like Amtrack Wars by Patrick Tilley, is that the type you mean?

 

[Melvil]

It's my biggest SF shame that I have never read a single book in the Foundation series...

I tried earlier this year and was bored to tears as well as feeling slightly patronised by it.

 

[hambones]

Pretty much everything by Greg Bear but in particular Eon and Eternity.

For the very HC sci-fi fans I would recommend Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Mine is "The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It was a book about a first contact with an alien species that were extremely inventive but kept suffering civilisation crashes due to a too high birth rate. I read quite a few of Larry Niven's books in my youth. They had some decent science in them, but I often found them a bit too easy reading and rather fanciful. I only read one of Jerry Pournelle's books and I found that rather stodgy, as well as commiting the crime of using SF to write history rather than the future. Together they were a really good team though.

Cheers, I've just bought this on your recommendation

 

[Saluki]

I have only ever read one Sci Fi book. Islands in the Sky, Arthur C Clarke. I read it at school because Mr Newby said that I had to. It was OK I suppose. I prefer a nice Jasper Fforde myself though.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

I love (almost) everything Banks wrote, and trudged my way through the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons and ended up loving it. So time to branch out

 

[Flying_Monkey]

I'm currently reading every novel that won, or was multiply nominated, for any of the major SF awards since 2002 for some research I am doing on science fiction post-9/11... I've read some excellent novels that I somehow missed at the time (Gwyneth Jones' Life, for example) but also had to endure some crap (e.g. Robert Sawyer's WWW trilogy). I can thoroughly recomment the late Banks's best mate Ken Macleod's latest, Intrusion, too.

And Saluki, that was a pretty pointless comment, wasn't it?

 

[Profpointy]

Clear winner has to be 1984 - not just the best SF (and it is SF), but probably the best and most important novel of the 20th century.

.... But keeping to the tradition of "the best" meaning as many good ones as I see fit, just like with the vintage cars, lets add some Ballard - unusually for SF a genuinely great writer - At the very least will want the Drowned World, and perhaps high Rise, and I think the latter just about qualifies as SF.

Aldiss, perhaps not such a "great writer" as Ballard, but pretty good all the same, and what an imagination. Let's have Non-stop, and hothouse for starters.

Keith Roberts' Pavanne has already had a mention

I confess to a soft spot for (some) Heinlein - on his day, he's actually a good writer, albeit in a very simple easy-reading style, though has written some dross as well. i think Glory Road is perhaps my favourite. It's a mistake to label him a fascist; he's more a "right wing libertarian" or even a "right wing anarchist" - rather than authoritarian: a political breed almost unknown this side of the pond - hence we tend to think of him as Fascistic at first glance.

Philip K Dick - i like Man in the high castle - but confess to not having read Androids dream of electric sheep yet.
For someone more or less drug-addled and / or loopy, he's turned out a stagering quanity of pretty good work. nearly every sci film that's actually any good will be based on a Dick story - eg blade runner, total recall, pay-cheque etc etc.

Athough i liked (early) Asimov as a kid, it really doesn't stand up well on re-reading, so he gets bounced out I'm afraid.

And for the booby price, the truly awful ee doc smith. As a kid I was hoodwinked into purchasing a couple by those wonderfull Chris Foss spaceship illustrations on the covers - they were poor even when I was 11, and utter dross now.

Ah well