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Looking for classic Sci-Fi and Fantasy that has aged well


Alytha

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Hey guys,

I've been thinking about getting into the classics of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, but to be honest I don't know much about what's out there, apart from the über-classics like Lord of the Rings or 2001, or things like that.

I know there's a massive amount of stuff out there, from the 60s, 70s and 80s, but I need a bit of guidance to find my way through to stuff I might like.

(And I don't really want to use Among Others as a guide ;) )

Some things I'm looking for:

Books that have aged well, in terms of tech (as far as Sci-Fi is concerned), and in terms of gender and interracial interaction. I don't consider myself to be an überfeminist, but I can't really like stories set in the far future where women apparently never dared to come out of the kitchen.

I read most of Tolkien, and some Poul Anderson and Robert Silverberg, and GRRM's stuff of course, which I liked. Attempted to read the Foundation Trilogy twice but it bored me to tears. I think that's pretty much it in terms of "classics"

So which are the books that every sci-fi fan worthy of the name should have read? Or secret tips of less-known brilliant stuff hidden in the mass?

Thanks! :)

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These are classic science fiction novels that I really enjoyed:

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (1967).

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974).

The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe (1972).

Dune by Frank Herbert (1965).

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1974).

There might be some genre/race issues in Dune. I also consider Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (1953) a great novel, but I'm not sure if it has aged well.

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I think Clarke has aged pretty well. Not perfectly, but he is not tooth-grinding in terms of race/gender the way, say, Heinlein is.

Off the top of my head, authors I can think of who's books don't seem to have suffered terribly by being from the past...

Ursula K Leguin,

Joanna Russ,

Roger Zelazny,

Arthur C. Clarke

George Orwell,

Kurt Vonnegut,

Anne McCaffery (she's most known for Pern, but she's got some solid (IIRC. It's been a while) - and I think earlier - SF, like The Ship Who Sang.)

Marion Zimmer Bradley (I haven't read her SF, but I know it's out there.)

William Gibson? If we're heading into the 80s?

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William Gibson? If we're heading into the 80s?

The technical details in Gibson's stuff could count as not having aged too well. This is the future, complete with artificial intelligence, artificial body improvements and having a couple megabytes of RAM is really impressive.;)

From this perspective at least, Asimov's Foundation work mostly has aged reasonably well (hey, maybe third time's the charm?), possibly also the robot short stories and the Elijah Bailey stuff (murder mysteries with 3-law-robots! What's not to love?). Boy, it's been ages since I read this.

Can't recall how bad his female characters were. I vaguely remember Hari Seldon's wife being pretty cool, and there's a short story where a bunch of guys design a robot to have what they call the equivalent of "female intuition". Susan Calvin then proceeded to make fun of them and presumably solved whatever crisis this precipitated.

I'm not sure race was ever a subject with Asimov, but then again I might just have simply been too dense to notice at the time.

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Yeah, I guess Gibson didn't do too well technologically in some ways, but I figure the technical details of how many megabytes is impressive are less interesting than the general questions of what the technology is and how it's used. I don't remember how well Gibson did there either, but it's interesting to look at anyway. (Theres one Clarke book, for example, where he kind of fumbles around the idea of the internet...and then misses by a mile, and it's kind of fascinating, for me, to see how he missed.)

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Yeah, I guess Gibson didn't do too well technologically in some ways, but I figure the technical details of how many megabytes is impressive are less interesting than the general questions of what the technology is and how it's used.

Yeah, it's just one of those those things that I find jarring. When I read Neuromancer I had long since abandoned my first PC, and that thing had had 1MB of RAM, so even if I'd read this in elementary school it wouldn't have sounded that impressive (though I'm sure I wouldn't really have known what RAM was good for then, only that more is obviously better).

For the most part, I remember Asimov's technology to be very vague on any details, except for the occasional mention of microfilm or positronic brains which I can forgive.

I don't remember how well Gibson did there either, but it's interesting to look at anyway. (Theres one Clarke book, for example, where he kind of fumbles around the idea of the internet...and then misses by a mile, and it's kind of fascinating, for me, to see how he missed.)

That is true. Though I think Clarke earned himself a lot of slack with his ideas on satellites.

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Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. I've liked every Zelazny book I've read, but I think this is his masterpiece. Even his Science Fiction is low on identifiable technology which helps stop it feeling dated.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. He's written some other good books but I think this is his best. Rendezvous With Rama and The City and the Stars are also worthwhile, although I think they both suffer from weak characterisation.

Pavane by Keith Robert. An alternate history book from the 1960s that deserves to be more widely read.

Time and Again by Jack Finney. I think what this does better than any other time travel book I've read is to convey the wonder of being able to travel back in time.

Gateway by Fred Pohl. Simultaneously an entertaining novel of space exploration and an intelligent character study.

The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester. It could have been written this year.

It's a good book, although I can imagine its treatment of some female characters might put some people off.

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Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (1967).

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1974).

I would highly recommend both of these. In terms of aging well, it's pretty obvious that The Forever War is a Vietnam-era novel, but I think that makes it a bit more powerful in that we're still making the same mistakes in war today that we made back then.

Phillip K. Dick

Seconded.

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I don't know about having aged well, tech-wise, but don't forget the actual classics (you might already have read them):

  • 1984 by George Orwell (1949)
  • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
  • The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (1898)
  • The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne (1874) (actually anything by Jules Verne)

While I'm at it, I'll third PKD, and add AE Van Vogt for his World of Null-A (1948), and also a personal favorite: The Instrumentality of Mankind short stories from Cordwainer Smith, published in the 70.

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Tricky, I probably read most older works back when I was less critical about these issues.

Patricia McKillip: Riddle-Master trilogy has a reasonable chance of still being readable.

Asimiov: The Gods Themselves might still be readable for the alien middle third, but I have a hard time believing the human parts hold up as well.

Fred Hoyle: The Black Cloud perhaps, it is at least interesting for the writer who was a top -if at times controversial- physicist

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Thank you for your answers :)

Somehow, when I wrote this yesterday, I managed to completely forget that I've read a lot of LeGuin, Zelazny, P.K. Dick and Vonnegut, some Clarke, and "The Stars my Destination", "1984", "Fahrenheit 451" and "Brave New World", so it looks as if I've covered a good bit of the "canon"?

I'll check out the other stuff you've mentioned.

How about "The Anubis Gates"?

Has anybody read Lem's "Fiasco"? I kept thinking that if they'd had a woman on board she'd have whacked them all around the head and the whole catastrophe wouldn't have happened...or maybe that's just the repressed feminist in me ;)

Another one that really annoyed me in that regard was the series about a big hospital station in space in the far future. They have alien doctors, amazing tech, the works, but the only women there are nurses...yeah, like a human woman could ever become a proper doctor...

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The older Tim Powers books probably aged reasonably well, I did like The Anubis Gates and The Drawing of the Dark when I read them at least 2 decades after publication.

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Has anybody read Lem's "Fiasco"? I kept thinking that if they'd had a woman on board she'd have whacked them all around the head and the whole catastrophe wouldn't have happened...or maybe that's just the repressed feminist in me ;)

Lem's books are awesome in nearly all aspects and not much dated for the most part, but unfortunately they are really lacking in female characters of any importance (apart from "Solaris").

Anyway, a few recommendations

The Dispossessed

Dying Inside - Silverberg

Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake

Patricia McKillip: Riddle-Master trilogy has a reasonable chance of still being readable.

It's much better than just readable, it's awesome. :cool4:

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