{"id":5559,"date":"2010-07-28T21:00:04","date_gmt":"2010-07-29T03:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tancos.net\/wp2\/?p=2665"},"modified":"2010-07-28T21:00:04","modified_gmt":"2010-07-29T03:00:04","slug":"50-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/50-books\/","title":{"rendered":"50 books"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came across yet another list of the “100 science fiction books everyone should read<\/a>.” Like every other one I’ve seen, it’s an arbitrary selection and not at all what I would have chosen (though it does earn a point for mentioning The Fifth Head of Cerberus<\/b><\/i>.) Rather than reprint that list here with the usual “bold what you’ve read,” I instead compiled my own. It’s half the length of the other and perhaps just as arbitrary, but I daresay it’s better reading.<\/p>\n

A lot of writers you might have expected are missing. In some cases it’s because I haven’t read them yet, but usually it’s deliberate. For instance, I have no desire to re-read anything by Isaac Asimov no matter how historically important he may be, so why include The Foundation Trilogy<\/em><\/strong>? (And I think John Sladek is more reliable on the Three Laws of Robish<\/a>, anyway.)<\/p>\n

There are a lot of short story collections mentioned. Partly it’s because I like short stories, but mainly it’s because many writers are better at shorter lengths.<\/p>\n

I could easily have made a valid list using just the works of Wolfe, Wells, Lafferty and Dick, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the obsessive.<\/p>\n

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: the Original Radio Scripts<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

J.G. Ballard, Chronopolis<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Greg Benford, Timescape<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination<\/b><\/i>, Starburst<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Algis Budrys, Rogue Moon<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Samuel Delany, Driftglass<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle<\/b><\/i>, The Preserving Machine<\/b><\/i>, or any other of his better novels or short story collections<\/p>\n

Thomas M. Disch, Fun with Your New Head<\/b><\/i>, Camp Concentration<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

William Gibson, Neuromancer<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Diana Wynne Jones, A Tale of Time City<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

C.M. Kornbluth, The Best of C.M. Kornbluth<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Frederick Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Henry Kuttner, The Best of Henry Kuttner<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

R.A. Lafferty, Nine Hundred Grandmothers<\/b><\/i>, or any other collection of his short stories ((If you need evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with the publishing industry, note that The Collected Stories of R.A. Lafferty<\/b><\/i> still doesn’t exist.))<\/p>\n

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Stanislaw Lem, Solaris<\/b><\/i>, The Cyberiad<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Barry Malzberg, The Best of Barry N. Malzberg<\/b><\/i>, or whatever else you can find ((It is not required to read a lot of Malzberg; a brief glimpse of his universe will suffice for most readers.))<\/p>\n

Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Liebowitz<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

George Orwell, 1984<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Frederick Pohl, The Best of Frederick Pohl<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Rudy Rucker, Master of Space and Time<\/b><\/i>, or any collection with Harry Gerber stories<\/p>\n

Joanna Russ, The Adventures of Alyx<\/b><\/i>, And Chaos Died<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Robert Sheckley, Dimension of Miracles<\/b><\/i>, or any collection of his short stories<\/p>\n

Keiichi Sigsawa, Kino no Tabi<\/b><\/i> ((Good luck finding this one. The contract to publish the Kino<\/em> stories in English fell through shortly after the first volume was printed. You can get a taste of Sigsawa’s work by watching the animated series Kino’s Journey<\/b><\/i>, which heads my short list of anime for people who think they hate anime.))<\/p>\n

John Sladek, Tik-Tok<\/b><\/i>, Mechasm<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Cordwainer Smith, The Rediscovery of Man<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

William Tenn, Immodest Proposals<\/b><\/i>, or any other collection of his short stories<\/p>\n

James Tiptree, Jr., Ten Thousand Light Years from Home<\/b><\/i>, or any other collection of her short stories<\/p>\n

Yasutaka Tsutsui, Salmonella Men on Planet Porno<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Jack Vance, The Dying Earth<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Ian Watson, The Very Slow Time Machine<\/b><\/i>, or any of his early novels<\/p>\n

H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Gene Wolfe, The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories<\/b><\/i>, The Book of the New Sun<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

John C. Wright, The Golden Age trilogy<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across yet another list of the “100 science fiction books everyone should read.” Like every other one I’ve seen, it’s an arbitrary selection and not at all what I would have chosen (though it does earn a point for mentioning The Fifth Head of Cerberus.) Rather than reprint that list here with the … Continue reading “50 books”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[666,500],"class_list":["post-5559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-anti-culture","tag-lists","tag-science-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-1rF","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}