The Best SF No One Else Seems To Have Read

[Jim]

Captain came up with a great idea. What little known gems of SF have you found? It could be an author no one else seems to have heard of or perhaps a little known & under published work by a well known author. List them here.

[Jim]

The Paratwa trilogy by Christopher Hinz doesn't seem to be very well known yet is a fantastic SF adventure. I gave all 3 books 4 stars.

Planet of the Gawfs is kind of a guilty pleasure. My youngest boy & I both adore it. It's one of those books I love to reread when the world has just worn me down & I need a quick escape & pick me up. I gave it a 4 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Jim]

Thanks, Captain. Good review & book description. I put it in my cart at Amazon.

[Oleksandr]

Sounds interesting.

[Radiantflux]

I really like Greg Egan. For instance Permutation City, Diaspora, Schild's Ladder, Quarantine.

Looking forward to reading The Clockwork Rocket shortly.

[Ardis]

This topic is MY JAM because the SFF books I love most fall into this category. I'm always talking up Gordon R. Dickson's Ancient, My Enemy and Frank Herbert's The Dosadi Experiment and The Eyes of Heisenberg.

[Michele]

Blindsight by Peter Watts and a great unknown book In the Courts of the Sun

[Michele]

That is so cool. I'm surprised nobody has done a major release of a Blindsight movie. It would be so great if done well.

[Oleksandr]

I'd think that Blindsight is not that unknown - it has even several translations - which is rare for the truly unknown books. But it is very good as well as his other books.
One of the lesser known SF authors it seems is Linda Nagata - she had a very good book The Red: First Light - a rare military SF written by a women.

[Jim]

"Blindsight" definitely is well known. It has over 18K ratings here on GR. By comparison, Planet of the Gawfs has 22 & none of the Paratwa books has 1000, 2 of the 3 only about 400. Memoirs of a Spacewoman has less than 500.

Let's define "The Best SF No One Else Seems To Have Read" as having under 5000 ratings on GR. If 20 million users have only rated it that many times that's one quarter of 1%, pretty much unknown. While an argument could be made that a higher number would work, I think it's important to keep in mind that we're not a diverse group with a large number of shared books.

[Patrick]

Well then, David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus certainly qualifies. It is mentioned in all histories of science fiction, but comparatively few people read it.

Donald McEwing's Nouveau Haitiah is a contemporary novel in much the same spirit. One of the most original novels I have read in a long time.

Louis K. Lowy's Die Laughing is a brilliant alien invasion comedy in a 1950s setting.

[Jim]

Patrick wrote: "Well then, David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus certainly qualifies. It is mentioned in all histories of science fiction, but comparatively few people read it...."

Did you nominate it for the next read? I see 4 of my GR friends read it. 3 gave it 2 stars & one 3 stars. I've seen it around, but can't recall ever trying it. I pick them for similar tastes in books, so I don't think I will.

[Cheryl]

I wonder, too, about nominating books that are so new that they just haven't caught up yet. 'Die Laughing' is from 2015, and so it seems to me that it still has a good chance to catch on and become popular.

I'd recommend that the book has to older than that, maybe 2010? (Or, first translation into English could count instead of publication date, because this site and group are predominantly English-speaking.)

(Btw, I opine that plays are fine, whether or not I vote for RUR.)

[Patrick]

Jim wrote: "Patrick wrote: "Well then, David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus certainly qualifies. It is mentioned in all histories of science fiction, but comparatively few people read it...."

D..."

Oh, I think that A Voyage to Arcturus is an absolutely brilliant and original work of literature, an easy 5 stars.

2 stars, wow, I better not say anything about that because it would not come across well!

[Patrick]

Cheryl wrote: "I wonder, too, about nominating books that are so new that they just haven't caught up yet. 'Die Laughing' is from 2015, and so it seems to me that it still has a good chance to catch on and become..."

The two newer books that I mentioned are indy / self-published, so unlikely to attract much attention through ordinary channels.

[Cheryl]

Maybe a separate folder for non-traditionally published?

I mean, it's not just that they're new, and they haven't been vetted by a publishing firm, it's also that they're going to be purchases and/or e-books, not available for those of us who use libraries and/or who prefer print books.

[Patrick]

Indy / self-published books are a mixed bag for sure. I was reviewing ones that I was offered and that sounded interesting to me, of all types and genres, for about a year. The two I mentioned were gems at the top of the heap. Some others were quite bad.

But this is where the action is moving.

[Jim]

Do enough people think a separate topic for indy/Self Published books is justified? J.A. Konrath & Barry Eisler have some good essays/conversations published about why they quit the main publishing companies & now publish on their own. Mostly smaller markets (few magazines), lack of support, ever changing editors, low pay, & extremely long publishing times.

I get a lot given to me for free to review. I don't accept many & even fewer get a review since I don't think they're good enough to finish. Actually, I rarely get more than a few pages into most before their deficiencies overcome me. I have found some excellent ones, usually one or two a year. They're real treasures. A few indy/SP authors were so successful they were picked up by traditional publishers. Michael Sullivan & Hugh Howey come to mind.

I don't differentiate much between the two any more. Some think traditional publishers are a good gateway, sifting out the dross & keeping up editing standards. They might in some cases, but I rely more on my GR friends opinions. When authors become too popular, almost anything they write gets published no matter the quality & editing is often poor. Heinlein was the first I really noticed this in, but it has accelerated lately.

[Marc-André]

Charles Stross' Neptune's Brood and Accelerando top my list of best sci-fi no one else read.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is one of those original classics that need to be read by anyone of found 1984 and A Brave New World troubling as it inspired both novels heavily.

Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning is another one that needs a second look.

[Cheryl]

Jim, I use libraries. I don't mind reading indy, or at least trying the first dz pp or so, but I won't buy, and I won't hesitate to DNF.

I suggest a poll. And maybe another one for publication year.

But then, my suggestions only apply if we're actually going to do something with these books, like have a theme month or something. If we're just listing them here for the heck of it, I don't care.

(Well, I guess it would be nice if ppl mentioning obscure titles told us the year published, something about the history, etc.)

[Buck]

Marc-André wrote: "Charles Stross' Neptune's Brood and Accelerando top my list of best sci-fi no one else read.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is one o..."

I though Accelerando was a fairly well read book. It was nominated for a bunch of awards. I read it. Disliked it so much that I haven't read anything more by Stross.

[Jim]

We prefer books to be readily available for group reads, Cheryl. I doubt many indy books would make the cut.

[Jim]

Marc-André wrote: "Charles Stross' Neptune's Brood and Accelerando top my list of best sci-fi no one else read..."

Charles Stross is well enough known I'm surprised that any of his books fall below the 5000 rating mark. Accelerando certainly doesn't. Neptune's Brood barely does & it's second in a series. We certainly doesn't fit here.

[Oleksandr]

Marc-André wrote: "Charles Stross' Neptune's Brood and Accelerando top my list of best sci-fi no one else read.

I've read Accelerando, it is for me was notably weaker than his other works. It is clearly not the book no one read.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is one o..." It is an early example of Soviet SF, forbidden in the USSR till the late 1980s, once again I'd say not for this thread :)

[Oleksandr]

Marc-André wrote: "
Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning is another one that needs a second look."
it was short-listed for Hugo IIRC, several positive reviews from SF heavy weights

[Ed]

I was greatly impressed by Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy, but don't hear much about it anymore. (It is a single book, despite the 'trilogy' in the title.) The main thing I remember is a miniature animatronic Ayn Rand in a cage and giant alligators and maybe Walt Disney's head?

[Cheryl]

Oh that sounds far too bizarre for me... but if any of my libraries have it I'm going to check it out anyway!