Favorite Stand-Alone Sci-fi list

[Olivia "So many books--so little time.""]

Colony by Ben Bova is a stand-alone that I enjoyed.

[David]

Mary wrote: "David wrote: "Of course, if you go back before Lord of the Rings, Fantasy was mostly stand alone novels too. And even Lord Of the Rings was intended as one long novel, but it was long enough it was..."

Yikes, only trivial amounts of fantasy before Lord of the Rings? I'm not sure what numbers would be considered trivial, but there were 65 books in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series alone and most came before LOTR. There were 25 more lined up to go in the series and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the authors in the series had multiple other novels that could have been included. There's so much of it, I doubt I'll be able to read as much as I'd like to. A lot of it is in the public domain now and you can get it on the Gutenberg Project website for free as eBooks. I think my favorite pre-Tolkien fantasists so far are William Hope Hodgson and Lord Dunsany.

[David]

Ben wrote: "Glad to see someone mentioning the great Karl Copek although RUR is a play his War with the Newts is a classic SF novel that is massively under read."

I just read War With The Newts last year. It was a lot better than I expected it to be. A very interesting read.

[David]

Olivia wrote: "Colony by Ben Bova is a stand-alone that I enjoyed."

I really enjoyed Colony when I read it. I don't know if I'd put it anywhere near the top of my list of favorite stand Aline's, but it got me reading more Ben Bova when it came out.

[Mary]

David wrote: " there were 65 books in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series alone and most came before LOTR"

Over decades. How long does it take for 65 fantasy works to be released today?

[[deleted user]]

David wrote: "only trivial amounts of fantasy before Lord of the Rings? I'm not sure what numbers would be considered trivial, but there were 65 books in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series alone and most came before LOTR. ..."

It's worth noting that the "Ballantine Adult Fantasy" imprint was created by Ballantine after they had phenomenal success selling "The Hobbit" & "Lord of the Rings". They used that imprint to mostly re-print pre-LotR fantasy (novels and shorter works) by Lord Dunsany, William Morris, Lin Carter, Pratt, de Camp, et al. (and even tossed some Shakespeare and Tennyson poems into some anthologies :)

Most of those were written pre-LotR. Most (except the Shakespeare :) were out of print when Ballentine began. It's fair to say the pre-LotR Fantasy section at the bookstore was pretty thin before LotR.


Edit: How did a Stand-Alone SciFi list get on to Fantasy history?

[Jim]

Mary wrote: "Over decades. How long does it take for 65 fantasy works to be released today?"

I'm not sure that's a fair way to look at it if you look at how many books & how stories were published. Many were published as serials in magazines. A lot more books are published every year now due to technology, population, leisure time, & such. Quality is another aspect to look at. I imagine 90% hasn't endured in any age.

[David]

G33z3r wrote: "David wrote: "only trivial amounts of fantasy before Lord of the Rings? I'm not sure what numbers would be considered trivial, but there were 65 books in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series alone a..."

It's also important to note that LOTR was built from some of the tropes set down in some of those books. It is also true that fantasy had been relegated to the category of children's fiction before LOTR despite the number of works that had been written without children in mind. But most adults wouldn't entertain it as appropriate fiction. LOTR made fantasy OK for adults to read the same way Harry Potter later made YA OK for adults to read.

And yeah, this is pretty much a divergence from the main subject here. Sorry to anyone who didn't enjoy the tangent. Now, back to our regularly scheduled program. . .

[Mary]

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Which is the only stand-alone SF books I've read since I last posted on this topic 0:)

[Hillary]

I'm currently enjoying Downbelow Station, which is a stand-alone entry within C.J. Cherryh's larger Alliance-Union universe or series(it comes a bit before Cyteen chronologically and in publication order).

[Hillary]

I also liked Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson -- a future based in Caribbean culture where a planet with nano- and other high tech is able to off-source its criminals somewhere else.

[David]

Hillary wrote: "I'm currently enjoying Downbelow Station, which is a stand-alone entry within C.J. Cherryh's larger Alliance-Union universe or series(it comes a bit before Cyteen chronologically and i..."

I guess this is where we get into people's definition of stand alone. For me it means there are no sequels or prequels, not just that it holds up as a novel on its own. I always saw Merchanter's Luck as a direct sequel to Downbelow Station, so in my mind, it doesn't qualify.

These days, if a book gets enough readers, it's almost a guarantee there will be a sequel or a prequel in a year or two, even if it wasn't planned as a series to begin with. So, there are a lot less stand alones than there used to be.

[Hillary]

I haven't read Merchanter's Luck yet (it's next on my list), so it'll be interesting to see if I have the same reaction. My copy of Downbelow Station is a 20th anniversary paperback with an author's forward, and Cherryh metnions that she conceived of Merchanter's Luck first and wrote Downbelow in large part to be (or as she figured out) the background/context for that work.

I read Heavytime & Hellburner last year; those two definitely need to be read together (or at least Heavytime first) but they don't really feel like prequels that need to be read before Donwnbelow, even though there's at least one character who appears in both Hellburner & Downbelow Station.

[Emily]

My choice would have to be "Mother of Demons" by Erik Flint. Wonderful world and character building with some interesting aliens for a stand alone novel.

[[deleted user]]

And while I'm updating the Fantasy list, I thought of some recent stand-alone scifi...

The Circle,
The Girl with All the Gifts,
Saturn Run,
Aurora,
Dark Orbit,
The Water Knife,
The Heart Goes Last,
Planetfall

Recent stand-alone scifi novels that happen to have sequels (you don't have to read)...

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet,

[Doughlas]

My favourite, which I only just finished reading before Christmas, is Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

It's set in the future when the human race has died out all but a small ship of several hundred thousand. They find a terraformed planet but there are complications due to the animals which have evolved there. I won't say too much more than that, but I really enjoyed and admired the way in which the author developed the alien culture and explained it. Wonderfully imaginative.

[NekroRider]

Think one of my favourite stand-alone sci-fi novels that I don't think's been mentioned is Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Kind of science-fiction and historical fiction combined, but absolutely brilliant novel about a young medieval studies student who is sent back in time to plague period Europe. One of my favourite books of all time. Also just one of the most emotional and depressing books I've ever read.

Actually, just realised there is another book supposedly so I guess not stand-alone... How did I go all these years without realising there was another book? Anyway I'll leave this here anyway cause its a great book haha

[Andrea]

NekroRider wrote: "Think one of my favourite stand-alone sci-fi novels that I don't think's been mentioned is Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Kind of science-fiction and historical fiction combined, but ..."

Oddly I've read To Say Nothing of the Dog but haven't read Doomsday Book, at the time I also didn't know there was a series.

[Hillary]

Just read stand-alone Crosstalk by Connie Willis. It was pretty good, though I wouldn't put it on an all-time favorites list. (I found the focus on phone communications and the protagonist's nosy family, not to mention the prospect of being spied on in one's own mind, gave the mood an annoying/mildly anxious overlay, though it did keep me turning pages.)

[NekroRider]

Andrea wrote: "Oddly I've read To Say Nothing of the Dog but haven't read Doomsday Book, at the time I also didn't know there was a series."

I don't know if it was the same with To Say Nothing of the Dog, but Doomsday Book didn't really leave any loose ends. It wasn't a book that left me hanging or made me think there must be a sequel and the ending was pretty perfect from what I remember (its been a long while since I read it now though). Looked it up though and apparently the other two books don't involve the same characters or story line (other than being about time-traveling historians), so I guess you could still call these stand-alone novels since they aren't dependent on one another. Certainly Doomsday Book can be read on its own.

As much as I loved that book for some reason I never read more of her. Really should apparently!

[[deleted user]]

NekroRider wrote: "Looked it up though and apparently the other two books don't involve the same characters or story line.."

Blackout & All Clear are a duology, one story divided into two books. And it would be a very good idea to have read Fire Watch, Willis's first novella of the Oxford Time Travelers, before starting Blackout. They do have some characters in common (e.g. Mr. Dunworthy, and even Doomsday Book's Kivrin in a minor role.)

[Mary]

Connie Willis's Oxford time travel novels are all stand-alones, if you treat Blackout and All Clear as a two volume novel. They have some repeating characters, not the main ones, but not much in way of necessary knowledge

[Andrea]

Wait...how many books/novellas are there? Thought it was just the two. Well, I guess that proves that I didn't at any time feel like I was missing anything so definitely standalone :)

I did however read Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome in advance of reading Willis' book. How could I not when the author's first and last name was the same :)

[V.W.]

One of my favourite stand alone sf novels is All Judgement Fled.

[Mary]

Andrea wrote: "Wait...how many books/novellas are there? Thought it was just the two. Well, I guess that proves that I didn't at any time feel like I was missing anything so definitely standalone :)

I did howeve..."

https://www.goodreads.com/series/5298...

[Hillary]

Really enjoyed Cassandra Rose Clarke's Our Lady of the Ice. She has a couple of other stand-alones that I want to check out, starting with Star's End

& I just got a copy of The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt, which looks like fun & is, as far as I can tell, a stand alone

[Hillary]

Just read a fun stand alone, The Sol Majestic by Ferrett Steinmetz

Kenna grew up rough, mostly living belowdecks on transport ships, though he's heir to a noble family called to discover & live by their own Inevitable Truth. He finds himself feeling at home for the first time in the kitchen of the Sol Majestic -- but there's a chance the restaurant, critical to the economy of its space station, may go under even as the staff prep for a once-in-a-lifetime feast

In some ways, the sci fi elements of the story--I'll leave you to discover the secrets of the Escargone--are bells & whistles (I could imagine a similar tale set in an ordinary kitchen), but what delightful bells & whistles they are