Essential Sci-fi

Everything I need to know about life I learned from David Gerrold's The War Against The Chtorr.

For the cerebral, there's always le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, or The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (available on DVD in just eight more sleeps).

'The Ascent of Wonder' is the best compilation of short stories I've ever read. Bring a snack, it's big.

This isn't meant to be my final list of "essential" sci-fi, but it should give some ideas to get the discussion going. I do consider all these books to be important ones, though.

Douglas Adams

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Brian Aldis

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Helliconia Trilogy

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Isaac Asimov

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Caves of Steel
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Naked Sun
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Robots of Dawn
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Foundation series

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Pierre Boulle

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Planet of the Apes

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Ray Bradbury

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Martian Chronicles
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Farenheit 451

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">David Brin

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Startide Rising

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Anthony Burgess

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">A Clockwork Orange

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Edgar Rice Burroughs

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The John Carter of Mars series

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Orson Scott Card

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Ender's Game

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Michael Chriton

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Andromeda Strain

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Arthur C. Clarke

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Childhood's End
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Rendezvous With Rama

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Gordon R. Dickson

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Dorsai!

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Philip Jose Farmer

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Riverworld Series

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">William Gibson

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Neuromancer

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Joe Haldeman

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Forever War

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Harry Harrison

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Stainless Steel Rat Series
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Eden Trilogy

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Robert Heinlein

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Stranger In a Strange Land
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Puppet Masters
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Starship Troopers

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Frank Herbert

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Dune

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Ursula K. LeGuin

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Lathe of Heaven
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Left Hand of Darkness

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Anne McCaffrey

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Decision at Doona

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Walter M. Miller, Jr.

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">A Canticle for Leibowitz

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Larry Niven

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Ringworld

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Lucifer's Hammer
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Footfall
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Mote In God's Eye

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Frederik Pohl

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Gateway

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Mary Shelley

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Frankenstein

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Dan Simmons

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Hyperion

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">E.E. "Doc" Smith

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Chronicles of the Lensmen

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Neal Stephenson

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Snow Crash

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Jules Verne

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Journey to the Center of the Earth

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Kurt Vonnegut

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Slaughterhouse Five

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">H.G. Wells

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The War of the Worlds
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The Time Machine
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">First Men In the Moon

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">In doing this list, I found <a href="http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk" target="_blank">Fantastic Fiction</a> to be a great resource.

Nice list, indeed, but a lack of Phillip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison was noted.

I'd say Ellison's Deathbird Stories (or maybe just the entire Essential Ellison collection) should be on there, as well as Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and maybe Gameplayers of Titan or UBIK.

I like Ellison and am not that familiar with Dick (no comments from the peanut gallery). I recognize the importance some attach to them, but going with my personal feelings, I felt the other books had a little more resonance with me.

If I may, I'd like to add the following...

Greg Bear
Eon series
Forge of God series
Blood Music

John Christopher
Tripod Trology

Roald Dahl
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Philip Jose Farmer
Dark is the Sun

James Patrick Hogan
Giants series

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World

Madeleine L'Engle
Murry Family series (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet)

C S Lewis
Cosmic series (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra aka Voyage to Venus, That Hideous Strength aka The Tortured Planet)

Michael Moorcock
Jerry Cornelius series

Now, there are several listed that are for a 'younger' audience. However, I think that in order to properly appreciate Sci-Fi literature you really should be exposed to it at an early age.

Just my two cents.

I would add Philip Jose Farmer's "A Feast Unknown" to the list. That book is something amazing. He takes sex and superheroes and turns it all inside out and backwards. Also Farmer's "The Number of the Beast." Hey, you got to love a book that has Forrest J. Ackerman as one of its heroes.

I forgot to mention Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South. Great book that actually is taught in a lot of American history classes.

No Norman Spinrad on anyone's list? I throw Bug Jack Barron into the mix.

Most stuff I'd have mentioned is already up there, but I have to give a shoutout to:

Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars/Blue Mars/Green Mars trilogy; nabbed a Hugo and 2 Nebulas between the 3; brilliant near-future 'hard' sf (anything by KSR is pretty damn good, IMO)

CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station is a personal fave (hence my old name Mazian)

And I have yet to read any bad Harry Harrison; Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers is some wry, b-movie fun, West of Eden is an acknowledged classic, and The Hammer and The Cross trilogy is just fucking brilliant.

No mention of Mr. Bachman's The Running Man?

I can't believe I forgot this...

Julian May
Galactic Milieu series
Intervention series
Pliocene Exiles series

'The Stars My Destination' by Alfred Bester. Such a great book. Has anyone read it? Poxy, I thought for sure I'd see it listed in your big bunch o' reading.

Speaking of Essential Sci-Fi, I just got Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion in the mail.

If the books are even 1/10th as good to me as you guys say they are, then they will be awesome!

Think I read it after you or someone else brought it up here, actually. Enjoyed it lots.

I too have read, "The Stars My Destination." Excellent story. Sometimes I swear like Gully Foyle. "I kill you filthy." I am a nerd.

I thought I knew what horror was....I thought I had a pretty good idea.....

....but then I read the Priest's Tale in Hyperion.

Jesus.

7 YEARS?!?!?!?!?!

I can't even think about it....what a book!!!! eek!

Bump.

I want someone to comment on the Priest's tale, but also, what the fuck is up with that sex scene in The Soldier's Story?

Christ.

It's good, though...

The Priest's Tale is, indeed, extremely effecting ... just wait til you see how that spins out in the Endymion books.

The Soldier's Tale ... how to explain that to you ... Um ... when pressed to a place where death has been entirely possible, the desire to affirm life can lead to extremely ... um ... intense emotions.

Yeah, that's sorta what I took from it. For a minute I thought it was out of place and all, but yeah, I guess the emotions got the best of them both and they just proceeded to make love on a corpse.