I'm a bit disappointed to only see English books on there.
The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
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Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#22There were a few 'everything by X' comments that got massive upvotes (Philip K Dick comes to mind) that aren't really represented here. The authors appear, but only 1 or 2 of their works. It's worth keeping in mind that this wasn't just a list of books, but of authors as well.
And he wrote lots of good short stories, too.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#23The Foundation series was a great read, I read it when I was young and it influenced a lot of how I viewed the world around me.
Having just reread it, I must say that it shows that Asimov did not really want to write the last parts of the series (i.e. Prelude to the Foundation and Forward the Foundation). Forward the Foundation especially is just trying to tie everything together by whatever means necessary. That being said, the original first four parts are awesome.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#24I really miss Stanislaw Lem from this list.
Or any other non-English writer.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#25I was pleasantly surprised to see two Neal Stephenson books on the list, but why did the second have to be Anathem? I thought Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle were much better books. Anathem's plot seemed like book-nerd wish fulfillment.
Of course I still read all thousand pages of Anathem in, like, four days. :)
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#26A pretty stellar list, except for Altered Carbon which I found cheap and utterly predictable. I'm really not a fan of Revelation Space/Alastair Reynolds, but that's more due to the flaws in the fiction writing, whereas the sci-fi aspect of that book and most of his subsequent books is truly impressive (save for Chasm City).
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#27Dune is great..in fact, the original 6, except maybe God Emperor, are all great. Hyperion is a good book, as is the 2nd in the series The Fall of Hyperion. However, the two last books are really quite bad. Personally, i found Ilium+Olympos to be his best work. I found the Culture novels disappointing. Except for Consider Phlebas and maybe Excession, you quickly realize that they are pretty much gods and that there's…
re Stranger in a Strange land
I think it's a book like Catching in the Rye.
Our (American) culture has changed so much that modern readers think "what's the big deal with this".
The drugs/orgies etc in Stranger in a Strange Land have much less of an impact on a generation that grew up with easy access to hard core drugs and hard core porn.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#28If you've dismissed any of these based on your reading as a kid, try re-reading. I read Tolkien at 12, loved the wizards and orcs, but as an adult remembered it as nonsense. When I re-read it (to be able to discuss with my 11 year old son), I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Likewise the Dune books (all but the first are probably beyond any adolescent). Good fiction is complex, and readings fascinated with wizards and swords and knife-fights will miss a lot of thought-provoking stuff. Nothing wrong with a good wizard, but don't miss the rest.
That said, I'm sorry to say that the Zelazny books, especially the later ones, don't withstand re-reading. And I don't see how "Old Man's War" appeals to any one but a teen or an ideologue. (I share the ideology! but the writing is stale as yesterday's cornflakes, and the characters as unidimensional as Heinlein's laziest pulp, without the Heinlein all-transgressive idiosyncrasy.)
Last note: "Starship Troopers" and "Forever War" ought to be read in sequence. I can recall reading Haldeman at 15 and thinking "Hey! He's going after Rico's Roughnecks!" It was my first moment of literature as Great Conversation. And as I read some political philosophy, I could see Haldeman as a Chomsky / Rousseau "it's all socialization!" response to the Locke / Hobbes rationalism of Heinlein. It was an early experience of fiction as thought, and a suggestion of why philosophy alone won't do.
Now I gotta go read the stuff on the list that I've missed.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#29I'm a bit disappointed to only see English books on there.
If you know of any (translated, given my lack of non-English speaking capability) non-English-origin sci-fi, I'd love pointers. I realize a lot is lost in translation, but I love the viewport into other cultures that fiction can provide.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#30Dune is great..in fact, the original 6, except maybe God Emperor, are all great. Hyperion is a good book, as is the 2nd in the series The Fall of Hyperion. However, the two last books are really quite bad. Personally, i found Ilium+Olympos to be his best work. I found the Culture novels disappointing. Except for Consider Phlebas and maybe Excession, you quickly realize that they are pretty much gods and that there's…
God Emperor is difficult to get into, but worth sticking with. Actually love the opening sequence of that book more than any other, which describes some thieves being chased through a forest by a pack of guard wolves, as Herbert moves expertly from the thoughts of one thief to another as they are gradually caught by the wolves, starting from the slowest runner at the back. Fantastic writing.