What is the best science fiction book, ever?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by nostromo

(Lord of Light)

Wasn't it the book with the people who become Hindu Gods with the help of tech? I don't remember a Christian God... It sucked IMO. It was boring and uninteresting, IMO.

The christian was in there. And the book didn't suck, it was a real book with good characters, dialogue, plot and novel ideas. It easily outclasses everything mentioned so far that I have read, but I was unsure whether to include it in a list of Science Fiction as it doesn't count as such to certain purists.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sikander


The christian was in there. And the book didn't suck, it was a real book with good characters, dialogue, plot and novel ideas. It easily outclasses everything mentioned so far that I have read, but I was unsure whether to include it in a list of Science Fiction as it doesn't count as such to certain purists.

I too very much enjoyed 'Lord of Light'- I thought it combined sword and sorcery and technology and clashing faiths in a fascinating way, and I liked the way that Zelazny has the religious icon as a rebel and technological innovator, and the other gods as being selfish undemocratic users of advanced technology.

It certainly straddled Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism, and you could even see elements of Greek myth in there, with Great Souled Sam as a future Prometheus.



I miss Zelazny.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Sikander - post your thoughts on the books you like, I enjoyed your analysis of both Asimov and Heinlein. Since we are close to the same age, I know you will have read authors that have fallen out of common reading, such as my reference to H. Beam Piper. It's not just the best books - yes, I know that's the thread - but good reads, too. I also concur about Ender's Game, it was a nice read, but great?

Others here have read a great deal more of the genre than I have. Fiction accounts for perhaps 5% of my reading, and it's been that way since the late 1980s. So most of what I have read was in high school and college. Some of it I don't remember very well (not a good sign regarding quality btw). I manage to read perhaps 5 books a year of speculative fiction, and most of that tends to the fantasy side. That said, I save almost everything I've ever read (and owned), so let me dig through my old books and see if there aren't a few gems (or dogs) that have slipped my memory. I'm sure there are a few as I do remember reading quite a bit back then and being fairly happy about it.

One thing that has changed for me is that I can no longer put up with poor writing in order to access a few new ideas. This is almost certainly a function of age, as there aren't all that many new ideas (to me) that I am likely to encounter in a SF novel. This means that these novels have to work as straight fiction for me. Gone are the days where I could tear through the Foundation Trilogy in a couple of days and not complain about how flat the whole thing seemed.

This is why Zelazny is still one of my favorite SF / Fantasy authors. He had some serious shortcomings when it came to organizing much of his work, but he had really good ideas, interesting characters, colorful worlds and prose. And a sense of humor.

A lot of what I read back in the day was escapist froth. Stuff like Piers Anthony, Poul Anderson (I still remember enjoying Operation Chaos and Seven Conquests). Others are only vague memories. I remember one fairly comic series about a secret space agent and his loyal malfunctioning android for instance, but cannot remember the author or the series names.

I enjoyed Phillip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series, and one of his "world of tiers" books, but neither changed my life. More impactful was the crazy erotic novel he wrote late in life (whose name escapes me at the moment). It reminded me somewhat of De Sade, only a good deal more surreal. In the same vein watching Heinlein slowly reveal himself is fascinating in its own way. Farnham's Freehold is an amazing book in which he seems to almost advocate incest with his daughter and the castration of his own son and the exile of his wife. It is a remarkably self-indulgent book, and it amazes me that it was published in the mid 1960s. It's a good foreshadow of the silly stuff he wrote in the 1970s (Number of the Beast etc.).

[Mr. Harley]

Molly - your profile says 1969, trying to convince MrFun you are younger than you are? You hit the big four-oh then a couple of years back, joys and jubilations. However, it does beat the alternative. I cannot remember who said that they didn't mind growing older, it just the aging that sucks.

Most of what I read today for leisure (I do not consider keeping up on world events, American politics, etc. leisure, more necessity) is History with a smattering of science. I will read SF or Fantasy - I do differentiate the two - about once a month. I agree with Sikander, since I've hit around 35 I've gotten to the point that if a book is badly written, I will set it down. The one exception was Robert Jordan - I started his series because it kept making the bestseller list. I read FIVE of those stinking books before I realized that the writing was not going to improve, and that Tolkein had more talent in one pinky.

Once thing that I have found in recent years is that the well written 125-200 page book (smaller type faces 30-40 years ago) doesn't seem to get written these days. The tight editing and size constraints IMHO helped improve the quality of many books. Unless you were Tolkein, you didn't get o publish a 500 page book. I miss the terse, well written book.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by molly bloom



I too very much enjoyed 'Lord of Light'- I thought it combined sword and sorcery and technology and clashing faiths in a fascinating way, and I liked the way that Zelazny has the religious icon as a rebel and technological innovator, and the other gods as being selfish undemocratic users of advanced technology.

It certainly straddled Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism, and you could even see elements of Greek myth in there, with Great Souled Sam as a future Prometheus.



I miss Zelazny.

I agree completely. Sam wants to bring down the Hindu power structure, and what better way than to throw Buddha into the mix?

I thought the whole novel on another level was a critique of colonialism, with the Gods and their entourage in the role of the Euro / Americans, creating wonderous technologies but refusing to share them with the ignorant common element, even as that ignorant element worked harder and harder to keep the gods in ambrosia. Zelazny seems to have grasped the tendency in life for the rich to get richer and applied his observations to a population which had a limited capability for immortality. There were few truly bad people, mostly just people who came into conflict over self-interest or idealism, which rings pretty true to me.

One of my favorite scenes is when Sam and Kali made love in the room called despair, for old times sake. I have been in that room before under similar circumstances. I loved the Rakshasa too, hilarious and surprisingly moving characters.

I didn't feel like I had a real grip on this book until the third time through. The first couple of times I read it I got too excited and read too fast in places.

I miss Zelazny too. This was probably his most coherent work, but a number of friends and I read almost everything he wrote and passed the books amongst ourselves. Even his weakest stuff had something interesting or funny to talk about afterward, and with the exception of the Amber series he was not prone to unecessary longwindedness.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Molly - your profile says 1969, trying to convince MrFun you are younger than you are? You hit the big four-oh then a couple of years back, joys and jubilations. However, it does beat the alternative. I cannot remember who said that they didn't mind growing older, it just the aging that sucks.

Yea, a regular geezer-fest. Molly listened to early Roxy Music when it was new!

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Once thing that I have found in recent years is that the well written 125-200 page book (smaller type faces 30-40 years ago) doesn't seem to get written these days. The tight editing and size constraints IMHO helped improve the quality of many books. Unless you were Tolkein, you didn't get o publish a 500 page book. I miss the terse, well written book.

Interesting point, and I agree that liberal page allotments have reduced a lot of the tension, not to mention quality of many books. Slogging through the lesser minions of the Ender saga was sheer torture for instance.

[JohnT]

Once thing that I have found in recent years is that the well written 125-200 page book (smaller type faces 30-40 years ago) doesn't seem to get written these days. The tight editing and size constraints IMHO helped improve the quality of many books. Unless you were Tolkein, you didn't get o publish a 500 page book. I miss the terse, well written book.

Part of the issue is perceived value. I won't buy a hardback book unless it has a minimum of 500-odd pages and I won't buy a new mass market paperback if it has less than 200-odd pages. The things are too expensive to shell out $20 on a 2 hour read.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sikander

Yea, a regular geezer-fest. Molly listened to early Roxy Music when it was new!

Indeedy do.

Well do I remember the impact a Bryan Ferry with black eye shadow and a Brian Eno playing the synthesizer with glitter clad evening gloves and a Phil Manzanera wearing compound eye glasses and a rockabilly quiffed space suit wearing Andy Mackay had on my tender nine year old senses.


It was down hill all the way- drugs, debauchery, wine women song.

Well, maybe not the penultimate bit.


But you're spot on about the genius of Zelazny's novels often I find myself thinking about the bits that could easily be passed over- like Kubera endowing objects with a greater sense of their own essence so that Yama-Dharma's brain damaged daughter understands better what they are.

I found that very moving, more so when I found out about autism.

Molly - your profile says 1969, trying to convince MrFun you are younger than you are?

shawn- I started going grey when I was 13, and losing my hair at sixteen. No way am I trying to kid anyone about my age. I like being older.

It's a fault of the site apparently- as I entered my correct birth date in my profile. I really did hear the Beatles before they split up, and I can remember having to get up in the wee small hours to watch the Moon landing on black and white television.

Those were the days.... there were heroes bestriding the Earth like a Colossus....

[Jon Miller]

hmm

I only buy hardback when I can't wait...

or when it is a book I want to show off..

or when I get it really cheap

for me a big paperback is as good as a big hardback

Jon Miller

[Mr. Harley]

JohnT - go to used book stores, preferably old ones. Look for the SF with cover prices between fifty cents and two dollars (at a quarter you get too many of the old pulp SF, and so much of it was just soooo bad). You will find alot of forgetten gems, and they'll be cheap.

Zelazny I also Dilvish, the Damned plus Jack of Shadows. Not as good as Lords of Light and Darkness, but good reads. I also read The Dream Master. I didn't like the climax - but I was a teen when I read it and preferred happy or uplifting endings. It was an intriguing premise.

Another lost author is Eric Frank Russell. He wrote SF Satires, IMHO one of the hardest genre's to write a good satire for. He wrote one excellent novel titled Wasp, and another Novella - Short Novel titled The Space Willies. The former skewers authoritarian regimes, and the latter goes after the military mindset with a gleeful vengeance. If you can read The Space Willies without laughing out load, you are hopeless. Even better yet, because of his generic approach to science, they've aged well.

I absolutely loved Frederick Brown's short stories, one collection you can sometimes find is Honeymoom in Hell. He was a master of the short short, two or three pages. He had a hilarious/ironic series of variations on time travel. My favorite was the scientists are all assembled, and are ready to transport this block back an hour, creating a paradox. They discuss it and the ramifications, send the block (and I'm doing this from memory) and the block traveled back in time. The room, scientists, and the rest of the universe vanished (to deal with the paradox). He was superb at stepping out of the box.

I remember when Irish folk music in the USA consisted of the Chieftans and the Clancy Brothers, and Silly Wizard was cutting edge madrigals, of sorts. I'm right around Sikander's age. It's not the growing older, it's the fact I've always been so active, and the Blood Pressure bit starting to go out of control, which considering the number of heart attacks that have killed all the males in the family (my brother had one last year) makes me feel a little bit on borrowed time.

What sucks is that it was under control until two years ago, and then it escalated rapidly and rather seriously. I don't want to be young, per se, and the grey and hair thinning is fine, but the Blood Pressure issues and the drug interactions are a killer. Almost, so far. I will grant, though, that relationships and sex in your forties is much better than when one was younger. It's not that we're smarter, we've just managed to make all the obvious mistakes.

However, back to the older SF, which readers here read Analog while John Campbell was editor? While yes he had his character flaws, he was a brilliant man and pushed hard for well written stories with a firm foundation in size. I could not stand the magazine when Bova took over, he almost killed it. Robinson was a good editor.

[GePap]

Given I am ususally reticent to pick up new authors (I usually find a book and if I liked it, I seek out as much as I can from that author, having done this with Chriton, Asimov, Clarke, Lem, Niven, Brin, and Pratchett), of the people I have read, I have to say I respect Lem's writing the most. To me he is the best author of what I would consider "intelligent" sci fi- different from "hard sci fi" since he is not always the most scientifically accurate, but his works pose a lot of very deep questions, and he ususally does not answer them.

For example, aliens in Lem's books most of the time are just that, Alien, so that the human characters invariably are unable to grasp or understand them, and vice versa, since they hyave an alien way of thinking.

I also love his collections of book reviews for never writen books. He is able to play with a variety of ideas without even having to write the book, just present possible bits of them in fictional reviews. I loved the review of an art book made up of X-Ray photos of people in action, including people while having sex.

[LDiCesare]

I also love his collections of book reviews for never writen books. He is able to play with a variety of ideas without even having to write the book, just present possible bits of them in fictional reviews. I loved the review of an art book made up of X-Ray photos of people in action, including people while having sex.

I loved the book where statistics as a science are proved wrong.

[Nostromo]

After I read "Lord of Light", I promised myself never to read Zelazny ever again. Maybe I should try to read it again one of these days.

[Mr. Harley]

Try his Nine Princes of Amber. It's nice light reading with an intriguing world, and very fast paced. Lord of Light is a less approachable book, it took me a couple of readings to really appreciate it. It didn't help when I first read it I was a teen looking for escapist reading.

[ajbera]

Still reading Gateway by Frederick Pohl, but it is excellent so far. I hope it has a strong finish.

A couple of other worthwhile reads: Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock and The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson.

Moorcock is best known for his sword & sorcery novels involving heroes & anti-heroes like Elric, Corum, Dorian Hawkmoon, etc. Good, fun stuff, and very different from the standard Tolkienesque stuff (no disrespect to Prof. Tolkien, may his works live forever.)

Behold the Man is different, the story of Karl Glosgauer, and how he went back in time to meet Jesus Christ, and what happened. I don't want to give anything away, but suffice to say it's an interesting read. Bound to anger those who take their Christianity too seriously, but too bad. In a free society everyone gets pissed off sometimes. It's also a short book, so you can polish it off in a day or so.

The Shrinking Man is barely sf - a man passes through a glowing cloud and then begins to shrink, at the rate of 1/7th of an inch per day, one inch per week. Now, the protagonist whines and *****es a lot at his plight, which is understandable, but doesn't particularly make him sympathetic. The tale of his gradual diminution is interspersed with the near-end of his tale, as he is a couple of inches tall and trapped in his basement, trying to stay alive and find food, water and shelter, and hiding from the spider that lives in the basement too. I found this to be absolutely compelling reading, more survival-horror than anything else, but quite riveting. Again, it probably doesn't qualify as sf, but it was much more entertaining and fascinating than I imagined, and I recommend it unreservedly.

A good fantasy novel is To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust, a version of the revolt of Satan. High fantasy in Heaven, with a cast of famous characters - Yahweh, Satan, Michael, Rafael, Lucifer, Lilith, Belial, etc. Quite entertaining.