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I was ambivalent about choosing The Hobbit over LOTR. I suppose my decision was based on the fact that The Hobbit defined the entire fantasy genre, whereas the Trilogy popularized it.

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OUT OF THIS WORLD

Science Fiction at Its Best: 16 Reasons to Read

By Keith Ferrell

There is more to science fiction than what shows up on our TV and movie screens.

In translating science fiction from the written page to the big screen, filmmakers have skimmed the flash and bang and ignored the rest of the genre’s many other virtues. Which is a shame, because within those covers you can find worlds of wonder. Science fiction literature is rich in bold speculation, sharp social commentary, realism and surrealism, heartbreaking tragedy, broad and subtle comedy, acid satire, infinite perspectives, and tight-focus psychological exploration.

In other words, the genre of science fiction has it all. Real SF—true aficionados never refer to it as “sci-fi,” despite the visual media’s marketing of the phrase—is a literature of astonishing variety. One of SF’s boldest and most distinguished writers, Barry Malzberg, made this analogy: “It’s as great as jazz, as profligate, as wonderful.”

If you haven’t read real SF before, any of the following novels or anthologies offers a good starting place.

1 The Time Machine
H.G. Wells, 1895

This is the book that gave birth to modern science fiction, from the author who first explored many of its most enduring themes. Addressing the nature of change—political and cultural within societies, and evolutionary change over enormous expanses of time—Wells both anticipated and created one of SF’s central concerns: Where are we going, and what will happen to us along the way? His vision of humanity’s latter days remains poignant and profound—and as politically charged today as it was a century ago.

2 The Foundation Trilogy
Isaac Asimov, 1951-53

Originally published in magazines in the 1940s, this series redefined what would become the backdrop for countless SF novels, stories, and films: the vast galactic empire composed of thousands of star systems and their inhabited planets, and the nature of conflict and commerce among them. The series is as concerned with the nature of history as with the nature of the future, and that is part of its ongoing appeal. Asimov’s great contribution was the level of intellect he brought to SF, as well as his sense of history and of immense powers attempting to steer history’s currents.

3 Childhood’s End
Arthur C. Clarke, 1953

Clarke’s understanding of evolution and the place of life in the universe, as well as his vision of humanity’s transcendence of our origins, produced this visionary masterpiece. The final pages can make even jaded readers weep. What would happen if humans encountered another intelligent species, and how would we be changed? Clarke visited these themes repeatedly, and not just in print. His 1968 collaboration with Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, is one of the most transcendent SF films ever made.

4 The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester, 1956

Arguably the greatest science fiction adventure novel ever written, Bester’s novel remains compulsively readable. The story of abandoned spaceman Gully Foyle’s escape and quest for revenge is played out against as relentlessly imagined and decadent an interplanetary future as you’ll find in any fiction, with a pyrotechnic ending unlike any other in SF or beyond. Science fiction does not get more colorful or exciting than this.

5 Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert A. Heinlein, 1961

Heinlein, widely regarded as the most influential SF writer since H.G. Wells, combined an engineer’s eye for detail with a moralist’s nose for hypocrisy in this satirical novel. The book’s theme is that of a new religion engulfing a human raised on Mars. Adopted by the hippie movement of the late 1960s (for a while it became the campus book), Stranger has held up well. Its satire remains sharp, and many of the book’s political and religious barbs still sting.

6 The Man in the High Castle
Philip K. Dick, 1962

“What if?” is science fiction’s most central question. But by asking “How do we know?” Dick produced a body of work dealing with the nature of reality and our perception of it. This novel’s world, in which the Allies lost World War II, is vividly depicted, and characters are well developed. High Castle is one of the key novels of alternate history, a subgenre of SF that is among the most popular. Dick is the most frequently filmed SF writer, whose work you’ve likely seen in Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report. Yet he is infinitely superior in print.

7 Dune
Frank Herbert, 1965

The bestselling of all science fiction novels, Herbert’s masterpiece (also made into a widely panned movie by David Lynch in 1984) is a model of closely considered world-building, and continues to capture new readers. The Dune world Arrakis and its inhabitants (human and otherwise) are so thoroughly and completely imagined in detail that it becomes as real as or more real than our own. Dune’s concerns—environmental degradation, control of limited resources, and fanaticism—will hit home with any contemporary reader.

8 Dangerous Visions
Edited by Harlan Ellison, 1967

The centerpiece of science fiction’s mid-1960s reinvention of itself—often referred to as the New Wave—Ellison’s anthology challenged many of the genre’s most prominent writers to break through the taboos and constraints that had come to dominate SF, and to produce adult stories for adult readers. They did, and their work still stands—as does that of Ellison himself; his own stories are well worth seeking out.

9 The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969

Gethen, the world known as Winter, is the setting for Le Guin’s tale of an anthropological investigation into the nature of an odd and unsettling society in which gender is changeable. The narrator carefully probes ever more deeply beneath the surfaces of Gethenian society and in doing so examines the nature of the self, and the relationship of gender to society and to self. A beautifully written novel as well.

10 Dying Inside
Robert Silverberg, 1972

David Selig was born a telepath. But his ability to read minds is beginning to fade. Silverberg’s novel spans normal 1940s–70s society and culture, with telepathy the only speculative element. Dying Inside employs a classic SF theme to explore the nature of talent, the burdens of responsibility, and the price of failure and surrender. Silverberg applied the literary techniques of contemporary fiction to SF—and produced a novel that ranks with the best of late 20th-century fiction.

11 Helliconia Spring
Brian W. Aldiss, 1982

Set on a planet whose seasons last for centuries, this epic from one of England’s most distinguished writers reminds us of the centrality of nature to individual life. The life of culture and the dire effects of displacing nature form the central theme. The Helliconia series is exciting, filled with enormous battles and desperate personal struggles. It is also wise, informed by Aldiss’s gifts for addressing large philosophical questions and small human details.

12 The Book of the New Sun
Gene Wolfe, 1980-83

Being SF’s most literary, and in some ways most religious, masterpiece, the multi-part novel by Wolfe feels more like fantasy, with strange and shadowy landscapes, aging and immense buildings, arcane and poetic language. Yet it is science fiction of the highest order, a tale of a young man’s progress through an astonishingly evolved landscape, populated by strange beasts and intricate cultures. Set so far in the future that the sun itself is dim, Wolfe’s book requires careful reading, but rewards you on every page. It is currently available in two volumes: Shadow and Claw and Sword and Citadel.

13 Neuromancer
William Gibson, 1984

Published a decade before most of us were using the Web, Neuromancer brought SF into the computer age with a vengeance. Anticipating hackers and silicon warfare, and above all the then-nascent computer culture, Gibson and his book played a large part in actually defining that domain. Cyberpunk, the movement sparked by Neuromancer, became for a time the dominant form of SF. Its visual influence can be seen in movies such as The Matrix, but Gibson’s work, filled with ideas and with images, supersedes them.

14 Hyperion
Dan Simmons, 1989

With enough bang to sink a dozen Hollywood “sci-fi” flicks, Simmons’s novel and its sequels returned SF to those roots so superficially tapped by Hollywood: worlds in conflict, universes threatened by unknown powers, fleets of starships, rogue artificial intelligence, time flowing backwards, physics and metaphysics, cosmic and personal mysteries inextricably intertwined, and more.

15 The Science Fiction Century
Edited by David Hartwell, 1997
16 The Year’s Best Science Fiction
Edited by Gardner Dozois, 2005

Two massive volumes that provide historical perspective and contemporary insight into where SF came from—and where it is heading. Hartwell offers close to four dozen stories, from Wells to millennium’s turn, while Dozois’s annual collection (now in its 22nd year) collects hundreds of thousands of words of brand-new stories.

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Originally posted by PRG:
I really don't read a lot of Sci-Fi/Fantasy, but I have read a lot of the "classics." One title that seems to be conspicuously absent is The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. What do you all think?

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Given your list, Illiniq, are you a fan of Delany? He would seem a logical favorite for you, especially the short story "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones."

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Originally posted by Illiniq:
Of course, in looking at my list, I realize there are several other books I want to champion...Recognized Classics like Book of the New Sun and Fifth Head of Cerebus (took a class with Gene Wolfe once, without question the smartest human being I have ever met, unfortunately sometimes you have to match his intellect to correctly interpret his stories...no easy task)