Recommended by
Conrad Wyatt
| Novels | Comment |
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Iain Banks
| The protagonist is a man with no memory and no personality -- a true blank slate -- who wakes up on a bridge that starts nowhere and ends nowhere. All life is lived on the bridge, on a crossing between two nonexistent endpoints. A great existential novel about creating one's identity out of nothing. |
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John Brunner
| Here is the granddaddy of all if-this-goes-on novels, a picture of a future in which population growth has been allowed to continue unchecked. There are several plotlines, all concerned with controlling a world in which the inhabitants are packed in like sardines. In showing this poly-everything world, Brunner used a variety of styles, some of which are sheer razzle-dazzle. Reading Stand on Zanzibar is an experience -- one no lovers of SF should deny themselves. |
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Lois McMaster Bujold
Any of the Miles Verkosigan novels | Surely there is no more likeable character in all of SF than Miles Verkosigan -- 4'9" tall, plagued with brittle bones, and smart as a whip. He also has the ability to laugh at himself; and while he doesn't always land on his feet, he does so more often than not. The Verkosigan stories are grand adventures, funny and exciting and humane. I've lost track of how many books are in the series now, but Miles makes his first appearance in The Warrior's Apprentice. |
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Arthur C. Clarke
| Any of Clarke's uncollaborated work is a must-read, but Childhood's End has already become a classic. I love Clarke's quiet, civilized narrative voice with its occasional moments of understated humor. This alien-contact story demonstrates the yearning for something greater than ourselves that forever drives humans forward; it's a good example of Clarke's belief that mankind can achieve whatever it sets its mind to. |
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Dean Ing
| This post-holocaust story tells of a young man's struggles to get out from under the thumb of an oppressive religion that rules the remnants of society. The book probably will seem a bit dated today, but Ing is such an amiable storyteller that it's well worth reading. The hero's struggles continue in two further books, Single Combat and Wild Country. |
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Rebecca Ore
| A yokel is plucked off the farm and transported to another planet, where he is the only human among a multitude of other races. He's told he's to be Earth's representative in a federation of planets, and at first his struggle is just to survive in an environment where nothing at all is familiar. But as he gradually begins to understand the other races, he comes to understand his own race's xenophobia. This intricate story needs two more books to be complete, Being Alien and Human to Human. |
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Barbara Paul
| The best keeping-the-jungle-at-bay book I've read. The jungle planet in this book is so vivid it's almost a character itself; you can feel the heat and hear the hum of insects and smell the mildew. The conflict is between two offworlders over the best way to live among an indigenous society without losing humanity's precarious toe-hold on the planet. One wins, the other loses; but Paul leaves you wondering whether the right one really did come out on top. Great story. |
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George Turner
| Turner was 75 when he wrote this remarkable novel about a young man who gradually learns he is part of a genetic experiment to enhance intelligence. The action grows out of an ongoing debate about the ethics of gene manipulation; Turner is not anti-genetic-engineering, but he is sharply critical of the sort of Heinleinesque worship of superbeings that he sees as unwholesome and ultimately destructive. This is a book you won't forget. |
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John Varley
| Human clones have spread out through the solar system -- changing, evolving, being easily replaced whenever one dies, giving up old identities to the process of change. For over forty years, a constant radio signal from somewhere in Ophiuchus has mysteriously been providing technical and medical information that solves most of humanity's problems. But then a new transmission arrives: a bill for services rendered. The book contains some unsettling pictures of humanity's possible future, all made believable by Varley's strong storytelling gifts. |
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Roger Zelazny
| Zelazny wrote a whole slew of Amber novels, but the first five form a complete cycle (and, frankly, I wish he'd stopped there). But this cycle of five is fantasy for people who don't like fantasy, such as me. Wizards and dragons and the like just aren't my cup of tea. Nevertheless, I couldn't put it down, regardless of which "it" in the cycle I was reading. I defy anyone to read Nine Princes in Amber and not go on to read the next four books. |
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