"Classic" Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels that have aged well

[Papirolle]

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. Holds up very well.

[maarsen]

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Phil Farmer

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague DeCamp

Babel-17 by Samuel Delaney

Kingdoms Of The Wall by Robert Silverberg

The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle

The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

[mgambino]

Demon Princes series - Jack Vance - Spatterlight books publishes an ebook omnibus of all 5 novels.

Really, you can't go wrong with any of Vance's Sci-fi, but this is my favorite of his. Planets of Adventure is pretty fun too.

Science Fiction:

The Hub series - James Schmitz.

Agent of Vega- James Schmitz

The Technic History series- Poul Anderson.

The John Grimes Saga- A. Bernard Chandler

Galactic Patrol I and II - Christopher Anvil

Almost anything by Andre Norton holds up too.

Fantasy:

Conan Series - Robert E. Howard

Jirel of Joiry- C.L. Moore

[peterbound]

Dune, hell ha

Also, the PERN books seems to be treating me right at the moment.

[Darth Richard II]

I love Conan. I LOVE IT. But it has not aged well. I think some of you are confusing aged well with I liked it and its old so I'l recommend it.

[Heidrun]

I love Conan. I LOVE IT. But it has not aged well. I think some of you are confusing aged well with I liked it and its old so I'l recommend it.

x2

I think a lot of women readers would get frustrated by lack of action girls and overflow of damsels in distress who "reward" Conan for their rescue in non PG rated ways.

That being said, I still like the series. I just have to remember that it was written in the 1930s by a not very progressive man.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Ah, but the non-PG rewards always happen off-screen. ;)

I think Howard's racism is worse than his sexism. One story has a village populated by black cannibals with sharp teeth who wander the streets after dark, and eat any stragglers.

[Seiche]

I know I'm stretching the timeline a bit with a book from 1992, but from the perspective of aging well I was very impressed with Snow Crash when I read it last year. It is amazing that this book and the movie Lawnmower Man were both put out in the same year. Lawnmower Man was laughable and outdated the moment it opened in theaters. 20 years in, Snow Crash still reads as hip, stylish and technically relevant. I view Stephenson as an interesting thinker and a very uneven author, but this book was loads of fun.

There's a great scene during the (abruptly short) climax of the story where YT puts out a general call for help to her Courier brethren. Looked at today, this is pretty clearly crowdsourcing via a request through social media. I wonder if this is the first appearance of crowdsourcing in a novel, a full 14 years before the term came into common usage.

[Wicked Woodpecker of West]

Stanisław Lem Solaris & Niezwyciężony (Invincible).

[sologdin]

I love Conan. I LOVE IT. But it has not aged well. I think some of you are confusing aged well with I liked it and its old so I'l recommend it.

Yeah, am struggling to think of something SF clsssic about the future/space travel/&c. that isn't dicked up by lack of internet.

[Heidrun]

Ah, but the non-PG rewards always happen off-screen. ;)

I think Howard's racism is worse than his sexism. One story has a village populated by black cannibals with sharp teeth who wander the streets after dark, and eat any stragglers.

Yeah, and the people in the Middle Eastern lands (Stygia, Zamora, etc) were either greedy duplicitous merchants or morally bankrupt sorcerers.

[Heidrun]

Speaking of Conan (one that continued his stories)

Author Karl Edward Wagner (Bloodstone, Death Angel's Shadow, and more) had some great books. Kane was a great Anti-hero and it's a pity that Wagner died young so as not to continue the story. And Bloodstone has at least 3 strong female characters (one scene wonder winged goddess, a typical warrior princess, and a politic obstructing priestess who proves pretty useful).

Bloodstone is probably my favorite novel.

[SeanF]

There's an awful lot of stuff that I enjoyed, but haven't read for 10/20 years, and would need to check.

One Le Guin story that I've never seen recommended, but which I think is first class, is City of Illusions, published in 1967.

[Datepalm]

Yeah, am struggling to think of something SF clsssic about the future/space travel/&c. that isn't dicked up by lack of internet.

One Clarke book (Imperial Earth, maybe? One of the really traveloguey ones) has a hysterical bit where he meticulously describes how there will be computers in every home, all connected to an instantly available compendium of all human knowledge...which will be updated three times a year by teams of experts. So close, so far.

Dunno that it ruins it, necessarily - the internet still plays a surprisingly small role in some Space Opera and in a lot of SF that isn't specifically about the internet. Say, what i've read of the Expanse or Alistair Reynolds or Banks. Nothing in Reynold's vision of space travel is particularly different from Herbert's or Heinleins, that i've noticed, re internet.

Thirding or whatever LeGuin, Clarke and Zelazny, and also Phillip K. Dick I found surprisingly sophisticated and readable recently. Also maybe Vonnegut - I read him back in highschool, but I think he was ok too. Anne McCaffery as well, and not just PERN - try the Ship Who Sang.

[Wilbur]

...

Dunno that it ruins it, necessarily - the internet still plays a surprisingly small role in some Space Opera and in a lot of SF that isn't specifically about the internet. Say, what i've read of the Expanse or Alistair Reynolds or Banks. Nothing in Reynold's vision of space travel is particularly different from Herbert's or Heinleins, that i've noticed, re internet.

....

I can read and fully accept a future wherein "the internet" plays no role at all for space travel that is interstellar. After all, information transmission and exchange at FTL speeds acros stars would, in my mind, resemble very little "the internet" as we know and foresee it here on Earth.

It is the use of slide rules to calculate trajectories that kills it for me, which is why a gracious hand-wave at "the computer calculated the entry burn" and move along in the story in something like The Cingulum allows me to enjoy it more, even though the science is barely considered at all in the story.

Similarly, the Gaean Reach books by Jack Vance or more recently Peter F. Hamilton's Temporal Void or Confederation books have some planets with advanced technology and internet-like information access, while other worlds are more primitive with pioneering cultures and limited technology. Here again, I can swallow these worlds pretty easily, as our own single world has areas of technological superiority (central Japan, S. Korea, the Bay Area, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, London, Mainz-Frankfurt, Singapore, etc.) as well as contemporaneous areas of information poverty (Kalimantan, the Central Asian republics, central Africa, Bolivia, Paraguay, etc.).

[sologdin]

DP--

it's strange. would expect a society with space travel to have figured out the computer crap that we can do.

also: any SF spacey stuff where there is ship-to-ship combat, either napoleonic-era broadsides from capital ships or WW2-era dogfighting. both are silly, when we don't have that stuff any longer in the 21st century.

[Larry of the Lawn]

In Clarke's Dolphin Island I'm pretty sure the most advanced form of communication was getting towed on a surfboard by a dolphin and skitchin' a ride to the next island... although thinking back that may have been in the wake of a hurricane or tsunami that took out all the hoverships...

[David Selig]

Stanisław Lem Solaris & Niezwyciężony (Invincible).

I'd say most Lem, really, it doesn't seem dated at all. True, there are very few female characters, but his books aren't really about the characters anyway.

Only one I recall as noticeably dated is Return from the Stars, IIRC there was some pretty sexist moments and other problematic stuff.

[Darth Richard II]

Er, did someone rec foundation? My, uh, feelings about the quality of said series side, I would pick thyat as an example of SciFi that DOESN'T hold up well. I mean, space wikipedia.

[Alia Atreides]

Huxley's "A Brave New World".

Just read it about 5 yrs. ago and I found his dystopic views of the future somewhat in line with what's been going on in the world in recent years.

Ah yes that and how far we have gotten into DNA/Cloning etc

Orwell's 1984

Phillip K. Dick - Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep