Something inspired me to read a dozen old sci fi novels the past few months, some for the first time, others a second. My favorites follow.
1. The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. A wayfarer from an anarchist society visits a feudal capitalist one. The subtitle is “An Ambiguous Utopia” and the book explores the beauty and perversities of each. Just enough thoughtful political philosophizing to make me think I’m smarter having read the book.
2. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. A beautiful, only sometimes clumsy story about a mentally-retarded man made genius.
3. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. Better considered social science fiction. I’d read the series as a teenager, but had forgotten that the whole premise is that a sufficient knowledge of statistics and psychology and you can predict all of human behavior. (On second thought, we’d better classify this as fantasy.) They start wonderfully then get kind of lousy in the later novels.
4. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Kind of like popcorn. You have a little and you keep stuffing your face. You know it’s not really the best food you could be eating, but there’s a lot worse out there and this tastes so good right now.
Since there’s no other natural place to blog this, I’ll also mention here that one of the most enjoyable (new) books I read all year was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
4 Responses
And yes, “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” is an astonishingly good book. I found myself reading passages of out loud to anyone who would listen, just to share how amazing it is.
Hey Chris, I’m very glad to see Ursula LeGuin at the top of your list. I can unequivocally say that the Earthsea Cycle are my favorite books I’ve ever read. I assume you’ve read the first three, but perhaps you haven’t read the second three? If not, do yourself a favor and check them out. LeGuin actually continues to be quite prolific and her writing remains absolutely superb in every way.
Let’s not forget Ray Bradbury. My two favorites are: Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man.
I find Heinlein not nearly as good as I remember it. Though I love the Starship Troopers movie.
There seems to be a correlation between love of the Foundation series and becoming an economist. Both Krugman and Varian were big fans – it’s still one of my favorite sci-fi series ever (although, given that I’ve spent my entire weekend writing .do files, I think psychohistory sounded a lot cooler when I was a 14 year old).
Asimov’s robot novels/stories are also a great example of taking a very basic model (the 3 laws of robotics) and exploring/picking away at it carefully.
The Ender’s series starts out so wonderfully strong, but really has hit absolute rock bottom with the “Shadow” series (although I’ll keep reading it anyway).
Other recommendations from the classics:
Frank Herbert’s Dune series (also subject to diminishing returns, but the first three work well together – also there’s an excellent miniseries) (a good series for those studying the resource-curse).
Most work by Heinlein, including Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers (don’t think of the film).
Pretty much anything by Philip K. Dick.