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Top Ten Science Fiction Books |
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Dune, Frank Herbert |
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The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers |
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Enders Game, Orson Scott Card |
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Dahlgren, Samuel Delaney |
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Shadow of the torturer, Gene Wolfe |
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Consider Phlebas, Iain M Banks |
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Ringworld, Larry Niven |
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Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson |
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The Zap Gun, Philip K Dick |
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Emphyrio, Jack Vance |
In no particular order, ten of my favourite science fiction books.
OK, so it's an obvious choice - but for very good reasons. And it's much
better than the film. Richly detailed backgrounds, galactic scale politics, giant
sandworms, heroic characters with extraordinary abilities. But to my mind, Frank Herbert's
most unique ability is his gift for describing people with exceptional mental abilities in
a believable way, without them becoming cartoon superheroes. He shamelessly looted ideas
from imperial Rome, and Bedouin Arabs, but the original elements make it bright. It still
reads as fresh despite being rather old now - perhaps because of the novels concentration
on people instead of technology, perhaps because of the threat of a holy war.... His
willingness to kill off major characters often leaves you genuinely in doubt as to if the
good guys will win.
After the first book, things got rapidly worse, (Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are, to
say the least, very disappointing. They get much better again after those two though, with
God Emperor, and Chapter House being excellent. Avoid the ones written by his son as you
would spurn a rapid dog.
A book that is hard to characterise - varied and dazzlingly inventive.
Time Travel, Romantic Poets, Werewolves, Dickensian Beggars Dens, Ancient Egyptian
Magicians are all seamlessly woven into a breathless tale. Tim Powers specialises in
setting his novels in accurately depicted historical settings. And never more effectively
than here.
If you enjoy this, he did several others in a similar style that are worth reading,
notable 'The drawing of the dark' and 'The stress of her regard'.
In this novel, Card takes an old idea, (Earth threatened by invasion, from
insect like bugs), and makes it completely fresh. The central idea is simple - how do you
turn and intelligent, likeable, gifted kid into a ruthless military genius killing
machine? Card tends to be have seriously unpleasant things happen to the central
characters in many of his books, and also often jams his religious views down your throat,
but here everything works well.
An inconsistent author, avoid the follow ups, but keep your eyes out for 'Hot Sleep' or
the collection of short stories 'Unaccompanied Sonata'.
The strangest book in this list. Opinion is divided between it being
almost unreadable garbage, and a work of genius. I'm with the latter side. Set in a
largely abandoned city, were a man who cannot remember his name wanders amongst street
gangs. The science fiction elements are subdued, but people (and in particular the way
they speak), are powerfully realistic. There is zero exposition, which helps the
believability a lot, but can make it heavy going at times. Just to really do your head in,
the last fifth of the book is in very small ungrammatical chunks in an almost random
order.
Approach with caution.
No one has written anything else remotely like this, including the author. Other works of
his I would recommend, (and they would probably be a lot more readable if you are not
familiar with the style), would include 'Fall of the Towers' and the 'Neveryon' books.
A series of four books, that really is one big one. The central character
(hero is not the correct word!) is a torturer by profession, wandering in a world of the
far distant future, where the Sun is dying. It blurs the boundaries between SF and Fantasy
to amazing effect - the author clearly has written a science fiction book, but the
characters see strange and exotic things inseparable from magic.
Severian is a largely unemotional character, but the straightforward nature of his
responses really makes the book all the more special.
There are some stunning set pieces, but they never get in the way of the flow of the
story.
If you are sick to death of the epic series, then try some of his shorter works to start
with - the man has the most elegant writing style of anyone I know, and you can't go wrong
with any of his collections of short stories. (Also be sure to read all the introductions
- he loves stories within stories!).
The established wisdom of the SF world is clear. It is simply not possible
to write a good space opera. Well, perhaps not until Iain Banks came along, with his
'Culture' books. All too often when other people try this stuff they just end up in an
arms race with themselves, looking for something even bigger to blow up. (If anyone
remembers the 'Lensman' books by E. E. 'Doc' Smith, you will know what I mean.
But Banks has so much fun in his galaxy! Spaceships the size of cities, battles that last
a tiny fraction of a second, punch ups under hovercraft, vast artificial intelligences,
big, big toys!
This man really puts the fun back in science fiction.
When I was a teenager, Niven was the undisputed king of hard science
fiction, with great care put into all his space drives, marvellously imaginative, (yet
credible), aliens, and people charging around through the middle of it like there was no
tomorrow. The ringworld is an artificial planet the size of the earth's orbit, in the
shape of a ribbon around it's Sun. The book tells the story of the first exhibition there,
and is just packed with stunning imaginative technology.
The follow-up, Ringworld Engineers is nearly as good, and much of Niven's other early
work, (generally called the 'Known Space' books), is also good.
Neal Stephenson is one of my favourite authors, and this is possibly his best book. Fast paced, and impossible to put down in parts, (But unlike "The Da Vinci Code" it actually makes sense if you pause to think about it!). The core theme in the book is cryptography, and the action switches back and forth between the near future, and World War 2. If you like this, I strongly recommend "The Diamond Age" and "Snow Crash". This is a good book for those who need educating that science fiction is not just rockets and robots.
How to describe Dick to someone who has not read him? Seriously
imaginative, often funny, sometimes very dark, (particularly when writing about drugs,
something he knew about a bit to well). The central characters are often mixed up, and
never remotely heroic. They are often sketched rather lightly, and his books are usually
rather short.
In a book by PKD the central character is very unlikely to use high technology, to save
the human race, or to have his life threatened. He might be dead and not know it. He might
get into an argument with his fridge. He might have a pet sheep that is a robot. He might
be trapped in someone else's drug induced delusion. He might be living on a planet where
everyone is clinically insane.
To pick out one book of his is ridiculous, but I picked 'The Zap Gun' as a personal
favourite, darkly witty. But he wrote many, many excellent books, almost all of which are
still in print. Other favourites include 'Do androids dream of electric sheep', 'The 3
stigmata of Palmer Eldrich', 'Through a scanner darkly', and 'The man in the high castle'.
His short stories are also astonishingly rich, and varied.
Jack Vance is very much an old school author, who has been writing
elegantly witty novels for decades. Even the footnotes are witty and elegant. There is
almost something of the fable or fairytale about his writing style - even in his science
fiction books, technology is very much in a minor role, and the galaxy is there mainly to
provide an exotic background for his wonderful stories. Perhaps his greatest gift is to
depict alien worlds of cultures, at the personal level.
Like many of the best authors, it is hard to pick a single book - I chose this one because
I just love the combination of a fairy tale like style with a science fiction setting. I
can't say much about it without spoiling it, but for gentle stories that operate at the
human level he is VERY hard to beat.
He did not write many short stories, but I consider that 'Moon moth' is a prime candidate
for the best short SF story ever written. It concerns a detective trying to find a
murderer. The fundamental problem he has is that the murderer has chosen to hide on a
world where faces are considered obscene, so everyone wears masks the whole time. And to
add to his trouble, status is determined by musical proficiency, (you accompany all your
words with musical instruments!), and the best he can manage is to rattle castanets, only
suitable for insulting slaves.
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