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NPR's 100 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy
That interactive flowchart proved to be that my tastes line up to not many others. It recommend I, Robot, Matter, and Bujold's series. I found none of those books interesting when I tried reading them. It is a cool set up though
My first thought was, "They did another one?" But I see this is from September 2011.
Well, that took me to three books I hadn't read and an awful lot I had. Which must mean that it's pretty good! But it would be nice to have an updated version.
Too confusing. But I like the original list. I agree with most of it, which is unusual.
It might look better if I had a giant computer screen :_)
Nice! I hadn't seen the flow chart version
Okay that was interesting sort of. i played around with it and at one point ended up with Animal Farm. Read that in school (grade 11 I think). Not sure I would consider it SF or Fantasy.
John wrote: "Okay that was interesting sort of. i played around with it and at one point ended up with Animal Farm. Read that in school (grade 11 I think). Not sure I would consider it SF or Fantasy."*shrug* It was speculative fiction of some sort, that's for sure. But often trying to figure out which category a certain story should be fit into is a waste of energy, I find; the time is better spent thinking about the story itself.
We read 1984 and Brave New World that year so I guess there was a sort o theme for that part the year. Also read The Old Man and the Sea and not sure where that fits in. Come to think of it that must be the year we read Macbeth as well. Don't recall what else we read.
Those four books would make for an interesting mash-up. The Old Man Takes Soma in Response to a Prophecy that He Will Become King of the Sea and Farm in 1984.
Now that I think about it I am sure I read Heinlein's martian novel (name completely escapes me at this moment) for grade 13 English B.
John wrote: "Now that I think about it I am sure I read Heinlein's martian novel (name completely escapes me at this moment) for grade 13 English B."The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? It has a HAL kind of computer except (view spoiler), which really disappointed me.
Gaines wrote: "Those four books would make for an interesting mash-up. The Old Man Takes Soma in Response to a Prophecy that He Will Become King of the Sea and Farm in 1984."
I might read that as long as there's some humor thrown in along the way...
Heather wrote: "John wrote: "Now that I think about it I am sure I read Heinlein's martian novel (name completely escapes me at this moment) for grade 13 English B."The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? It ..."
No it was the one that introduced the word "grok" to the reading public. Stranger in a Strange Land?
John wrote: "Heather wrote: "John wrote: "Now that I think about it I am sure I read Heinlein's martian novel (name completely escapes me at this moment) for grade 13 English B."[book:The Moon is a Harsh Mist..."
Yes. That's the book.
Not sure why I couldn't recall the name yesterday but when I was writing the earlier post my mind simply went blank. Not sure but I think that may have been my first Heinlein novel. Pretty sure it was the first Heinlein for some of my classmates.
I think I need a magnifying glass to work my way through that :-) And I have a pretty big computer monitor. But fun...
Am I the only one who didn't like "Stranger?" I just kept laughing at the things like - women faint when they kiss him! mmmm orgies....
I have been actively working on that list for a few years. So far I have read 70 of them.
Heather wrote: "Am I the only one who didn't like "Stranger?" I just kept laughing at the things like - women faint when they kiss him! mmmm orgies...."As far as my class went I can't recall what the reactions to the book were. Mind you that was about 43 years ago. Not sure that any of the young ladies in that class were into Science Fiction. If they were we guys who were didn't know about it. Now that I think about it Ken Campbell would have had fits it he knew we were reading that book.
My theory is that sci-fi was code for boy books with sex. :) Wives and parents were clueless! I just don't see as there's all that much sci-fi in many of those books. It's more social ideas.
Heather wrote: "My theory is that sci-fi was code for boy books with sex. :) Wives and parents were clueless! I just don't see as there's all that much sci-fi in many of those books. It's more social ideas."I think it depends on which books you read. Stranger was the first SF book I can recall reading that had any sex in it. As for social ideas again it depended on the author. Ben Bova wrote hard science and didn't have much to do with what were called the "soft sciences" (or more pejoratively the "fuzzy sciences). The implication of these terms being that they weren't really sciences at all.
John wrote: "Pretty sure it was the first Heinlein for some of my classmates. "It was certainly the one that made the biggest splash, back in the day.
Heather wrote: "My theory is that sci-fi was code for boy books with sex. :) Wives and parents were clueless! I just don't see as there's all that much sci-fi in many of those books. It's more social ideas."Haha. Sex?! Where?@!? I guess I've been reading the wrong sci-fi books!!!
...But yeah, true, come to think of it :-p
Heather wrote: "My theory is that sci-fi was code for boy books with sex. :) Wives and parents were clueless! I just don't see as there's all that much sci-fi in many of those books. It's more social ideas."My husband had a lengthy jury duty, so I gave him Requiem for the Conqueror to read. He came back blushing, said it was all shoot-shoot-shoot/sex. Hah!
Anna wrote: "Heather wrote: "My theory is that sci-fi was code for boy books with sex. :) Wives and parents were clueless! I just don't see as there's all that much sci-fi in many of those books. It's more soci..."lol. Well you'd better not give him Dhalgren then, or he'll blush so much people will think red is his normal complexion. It's sex-sex-weirdness-sex-sex-orgy-sex-weirdness-etc. lol
I'm exaggerating a bit but wow. And I'm not even halfway through reading it!
John wrote: "Heather wrote: "My theory is that sci-fi was code for boy books with sex. :) Wives and parents were clueless! I just don't see as there's all that much sci-fi in many of those books. It's more soci..."Sorry - been catching up on other stuff.
I didn't notice the 'boy books with sex' business, but it's true that most of the books I heard about were from boys!
I agree that what is presented as scifi had more social science in them in the 60s and 70s. Some writers had their own particular themes - one had a range of short stories addressing overpopulation, two of which stick in the mind even now. Pollution was another theme - although that could often be mixed up with nice technogadgetry.
But then, space opera ought to have plenty of room for psychology and sociology, surely?
As far as the Spec Fic crowd were concerned Sci-Fi had outgrown (or should have) the adventure elements that were important to both Space Opera and Scientific Romance, Stories that had adventure and swashbuckling in them were considered to be giving SF a bad name. The other thing is that what science there was in Space Opera is usually of the hard kind. Psychology and Sociology were considered soft sciences (if they were even sciences at all). So a lot of writers and readers wouldn't have anything to do with them.
Heather wrote: "My theory is that sci-fi was code for boy books with sex. :) Wives and parents were clueless! I just don't see as there's all that much sci-fi in many of those books. It's more social ideas."I'm a girl and grew up reading sci-fi and don't remember any sex in sci-fi (apart from some lurid covers). In fact, I was once told by an English teacher that I shouldn't be reading sci-fi "as it was inappropriate for young ladies". Good thing she never caught my mother reading Dune
Not sure if any of the girls I went to school with read Sci-Fi. If they did we guys didn't know about it. The covers could be lurid but that was just marketing. Sort of like putting all the best scenes from a terrible movie into the trailer. They were intended to hook your interest, even if they didn't deliver.
Kirsten *Dogs Welcome - People Tolerated" wrote: "In fact, I was once told by an English teacher that I shouldn't be reading sci-fi "as it was inappropriate for young ladies". Good thing she never caught my mother reading Dune"Zoiks, what an enlightened educator.
(*the tone of that was dripping with sarcasm, by the way*)
Hell at one time science-fiction wasn't deemed appropriate for anyone, this despite many reputable authors having written it.
I didn't get into sci-fi books until college. My mom was fine with me being into sci-fi but not fantasy. As an aside - I watched Space 1999 last night. I ran across it on Hulu. Funny that in 1975 they assumed we would have a moon base and store nuclear waste on the moon in 1999.
I think science fiction has a history of thinking mankind will advance technologically faster than we really do. Mind you if my memory serves me correctly (apologies to Chairman Kaga) the Perry Rhodan novels predicted the first lunar landing to be in 1969.
For some reason, people originally thought the moon was worth building on. Doesn't really seem that useful now. So many older sci-fi has moon bases.
John wrote: "I think science fiction has a history of thinking mankind will advance technologically faster than we really do."So, so true. And not just that, but society doesn't change or evolve as fast as so many books would have us think. How different is human society now than it was fifty years ago? How different is it really?
When I see a show or read a book set just fifty or a hundred years from now, yet the changes (on many levels -- technological, social, biological, etc) in it are so massive and profound that it would realistically take thousands of years for them to come about, I groan, and have to work extra hard to suspend my disbelief.
The problem is that our minds are not built for imagining truly vast expanses of time, so doing so doesn't come easy to us. Noticeable evolutionary change occurs over hundreds of thousands and even millions of years, not mere centuries or even a few millennia. I love it when authors take some time to ponder this, and set their stories far enough into the future to make them actually believable.
Heather wrote: "For some reason, people originally thought the moon was worth building on. Doesn't really seem that useful now. So many older sci-fi has moon bases."Moon bases do make sense as a stepping off point for further space exploration and such. The lighter gravity would make it easier to launch a rocket. If you are going to have a launching base there (a la Cape Canaveral) then you will end up with a community there with all that entails.
Heather wrote: "For some reason, people originally thought the moon was worth building on. Doesn't really seem that useful now. So many older sci-fi has moon bases."I for one am still very solidly in the moon base camp (no pun intended). We should go and build one!
I do not approve of a moon base. I think the ISS is great because it is close enough to not need lots of fuel burn to get there. Landing on the moon is just so inefficient. We should only use the moon for sling-shotting.
Gaines wrote: "I love it when authors take some time to ponder this, and set their stories far enough into the future to make them actually believable."Haha, I didn't know before now that you can reply to your own post :-p
Just wanted to add to that: I also love it when authors (or producers of shows) spend time thinking about how relatively quickly language morphs and grows. Even in a society where near instantaneous communication is possible (i.e. the internet, today), human language continues to evolve -- seemingly, and against most expectations, even faster than before. That's definitely one thing I appreciate about shows like The Expanse or The 100; they have taken that into consideration, and taken a leap of imagination to depict how language might have changed after so many centuries.
One thing I wonder is, how many of our lesser-used languages will be extinct, say, a thousand years from now? And by extinct, I mean not actively used anymore, except perhaps in literature or in the classroom (the way Latin still is today). Surely the major languages will still be around in some form or other (though I could be wrong; so much can happen, of course), but many of the thousands of more minor languages that currently are spoken on Earth will likely die out over time. That's sad, too, because it means a lot of perspective and ideas will be lost forever.
Quoting something I found on the internet (not sure of its accuracy though): "There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers."
Speaking of the loss of knowledge, I once met a man who taught botany at Northland College up in Wisconsin. He was Ojibwa (I say "was" because he was already elderly when I met him, and this was over twenty years ago), and his area of expertise was Native American plant lore. He told me that roughly 90% of Native American knowledge about plants (what they can be used for, etc etc) has been irretrievably lost.
It makes me wonder what we will lose over time, as language and society evolve; as our words and perceptions are trimmed down and become streamlined, so that we can forth to explore the stars.
*sorry for the off-topic tangent / ramble there*
Actually Latin is still in use. It is the official language of the Vatican and not just for religious ceremonies. When Vatican II was held for instance it was held in Latin. The same would be true for any similiar major meeting held. As well a form of Latin known as Romance is one of the four official languages of Switzerland.
What Bush should have done: part 1. Build that planned Moon base and go to Mars instead of restarting the crusades. Just saying. We would learn from building on an object with little gravity and potential building material. That material being mass we didn't have to spend trillions of dollars getting out of a gravity well. Unless we are proposing spending said trillions on the space elevator that we don't currently have strong enough materials to build. It's very likely we'd find those materials while experimenting with manufacturing facilities that had more access to production in a vacuum and on different molecules where chemical bonding reacts differently and said molecules like Helium-3 are abundant. China is thinking about it already.Thoughts on NPR's list. Boo. I liked most of the books on the list, and haven't read a few, but my favorites were towards the bottom and middle, like The Hyperion Cantos and Culture Series. Since we are looking at a list how about we make our own from titles in their list. My top ten would have been.
(view spoiler)
Gaines wrote: "John wrote: "I think science fiction has a history of thinking mankind will advance technologically faster than we really do."So, so true. And not just that, but society doesn't change or evolve as fast as so many books would have us think. How different is human society now than it was fifty years ago? How different is it really? "
Pretty different, I'd say.
*Humans* aren't different, but our society has certainly changed. There's two forces working against each other as time marches on: social inertia and generational progress.
I think back just 10 years and my 41-year-old self would find it incredibly difficult to believe that gay marriage would be the law across the land. Go back just a few years earlier and tell me that half the states would enact a near-universal ban on public smoking and I would have been gobsmacked.
There's a line in Back to the Future after Marty says of Goldie, "That's right! He's going to be mayor!" where the diner owner says, "A colored mayor. That'll be the day." He's not being mean or racist, he simply can't imagine it.
If you told an American in 1999 that within a decade the US would be attacked by terrorists resulting in the destruction of the Twin Towers which would kick off a $3 trillion war against two countries who had nothing to do with it, followed by the near-collapse of the global economy resulting in the election of the first black President, they would have looked at you askance.
Nearly everything we take for granted right now -- smart phones, DVRs, YouTube, Facebook, ubiquitous civilian GPS, Amazon Kindle, etc. -- have all been invented since 1999. Driving around in a hybrid car went from a pipe dream to reality to comedian fodder to being passé in the space of about 6 years. Bluetooth seems like it's always been around, but the first consumer products didn't appear until 2000.
Lots of things like the iPod, Blackberry, Segway, and so on, came and went between 1999 and 2009. The kids born in that decade will likely have never heard of them when they hit college and the lists of "things that were popular the year you were born" show up. When I was in Australia a few years ago, I watched crowds of American tourists take photos of pay phones. Pay phones.
So yeah, 2001: A Space Odyssey was wildly optimistic because Kubrick and Clarke didn't anticipate that the moonshot would be a one-off program we'd abandon, but you never know what developments might come about which push us over a tipping point into rapid change, either technologically or socially.
In Science Fiction authors take a shot at predicting those changes, and some get it right every now and again, but it's impossible to get everything right.
To be honest I never really care about all the predictions author's make. The ultimate book like that is Hugo Gernsback's Ralph 124C 41+. It is really nothing but a catalogue of what he saw as the inventions that would be part of everyday life in the future. It is also virtually unreadable. If the story is good that is all I ask really.
Gaines wrote: "I also love it when authors (or producers of shows) spend time thinking about how relatively quickly language morphs and grows....One thing I wonder is, how many of our lesser-used languages will be extinct, say, a thousand years from now?"I've run into that problem myself when worldbuilding :-) I write 'science fiction decorated epic fantasy' that's set in 3,500 BC instead of the usual high fantasy medieval world, so I keep getting people who are upset there are no thee's and thou's in my books. The problem is, the ancient Sumerian language went extinct, as in, no tracers of what it sounded like, anywhere, around 600 BC. It's not like Ancient Egypt, where the Coptic church kept it alive in their high-mass. It's dead. As a dead planet. Ain't no bringing it back to know what it really sounded like, only guesswork.
They covered this in the original Stargate movie with James Spader and Kurt Russell. Daniel Jackson got to Abbydos and could read the language, but not speak it until his to-be wife figured out he was speaking the ancient picture-words of the gods. What will space faring archaeologists ever think if they dig Earth in a few thousand years and unearth all our Twitter accounts?
Space Opera Fans
Books mentioned in this topic
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