By James Davis Nicoll: Side project. I am going to recruit some young people I know to read and react to a selection of SF’s canon, the classics people my age are sure people their age should have read. It’s inspired by this Facebook comment by Adam-Troy Castro:
Nobody discovers a lifelong love of science fiction through Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein anymore, and directing newbies toward the work of those masters is a destructive thing, because the spark won’t happen. You might as well advise them to seek out Cordwainer Smith or Alan E. Nourse — fine tertiary avenues of investigation, even now, but not anything that’s going to set anybody’s heart afire, not from the standing start. Won’t happen.
So my question to your commentariat is: which dozen works should I pick.
They should be considered core works. I’ve arbitrarily selected 1980 as the cutoff date: it is mid way between us now and WWII.
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Of my two younglings (now college-age and twentysomething, the elder loves fantasy and always has, including especially Tolkien (inc. Silmarillion!) and Beagle. Earthsea’s misogyny (“weak as women’s magic”) really put her off at first, but she later became fully enamored of Le Guin.
As a teen, the younger *loved* Heinlein juvies, read aloud by her father. They both love Andre Norton, especially my favorites: Beast Master, Lord of Thunder, Zero Stone, Catseye.
What stories/novels to try is very sensitive to the age, gender, & race of the subjects.
> “I like it when folks explain their recommendations.”
all right fine twist my arm
Here are explanations behind my top 12 recs:
Douglas Adams: The HItchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Some humor doesn’t wear well with time; other types manage to persist for generation after generation. Monty Python’s Flying Circus is still hilarious, and so is HItchhiker’s Guide. While it’s not to absolutely everyone’s taste, it’s had broad appeal in a variety of different media for decades.
C. J. Cherryh: Gate of Ivrel
Picked not just because it’s one of the few Cherryh works that falls within the time constraints (which Downbelow Station does not, although The Faded Sun books do), but also because the Morgaine books are accessible, entertaining, and a good entry point for Cherryh. Well drawn characters, and inferences that can be drawn from unspoken things reward an attentive reader, but it doesn’t have the hyper-complex plotting that might push a reader away if they don’t already like Cherryh.
Frank Herbert: Dune
An enduring classic for a reason. A feast of complex world-building, memorable scenes, and a vision of the far future which didn’t become outdated in a decade’s time. Not a slim book or an easy one, but for all that it’s still a page-turner.
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon
Some say the short story is better; I say either is fine. A gut-punch right in the feelings, an eternally relatable tale of gain and loss, and a perfect story perfectly told.
Ursula K. LeGuin: The Dispossessed
There are other LeGuins I could have recommended. Lathe of Heaven is an easier read and brimming with ideas. The Left Hand of Darkness is a book that has it all. But as a choice for teen-and-up younger readers, it’s hard to match The Dispossessed’s combination of idealism and cynicism.
Madeleine L’Engle: A Wrinkle In Time
It hasn’t aged as well as some of the others on my list, to be honest, and on a different day I might swap it out for, say, The Cyberiad or The Sheep Look Up. But today I’ll say it’s a YA novel that with wildly inventive ideas and compelling characters, that has kept much of its considerable appeal.
Anne McCaffrey: Dragonsong
Better for younger readers, but how can any such resist the allure of a heroine who just wants to write songs, but no one wants to let her, and then she gets A DOZEN TINY DRAGONS. It’s the ultimate distillation of all that is YA, and, although it’s hard to tell it from this book alone, it is actually SF.
Walter M. Miller Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz
Post-apocalyptic stories have never lost their hold on the reading public, and this early one is also one of the best. A stunning combination of optimism, pessimism, and good storytelling.
James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection)
Story after story after mind-blowing story. There’s plenty you could pick that could appear today with no changes at all, which would seem just as fresh and compelling as they did then.
Jules Verne: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Early SF that still rocks the house. Wells and Shelley went deeper, but Verne knew how to write a cracking good tale. If you want to convince a reader that old doesn’t mean musty, Verne is a good place to start. Find a good translation, though.
Kurt Vonnegut: Cat’s Cradle
Easy to read, full of ideas, and social commentary that remains bitingly relevant. A memorable book about philosophy and ideas that never feels like a lecture.
Roger Zelazny: Doorways in the Sand
This one avoids Zelazny’s periodic problems with female characters mostly by, well, not really having any. That aside, it’s a wild book with a memorable main character and generous helpings of mystery and mayhem.
Egregious intrusive sexism may well be an issue in any Niven with women in. See Jo Walton’s review of A Gift From Earth. Wait, that one would still have EIS without the women: the Gift is pretty clearly designed only with men in mind.
This is the stuff I would use and my reasons:
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
This one is basically Count of Monte Cristo in space and the theme of revenge will always work. It hooks you up from the beginning and is (if I remember correctly) not that bogged down by archaic technology. I was never fond of The Demolished Man myself. Thought it was antique when I read it 20 years ago.
Dune
Again, not that bogged down with old technology. Hooked you up quick and fantastic worldbuilding.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Some parts have aged, like it being hard for a computer to emulate how a person would look and move. But the rest. It is a story with both humour and drama. With social changes that are still interesting. I hope it still works for new readers.
The Vintage Bradbury by Ray Bradbury
As Mike says, much of the best classic SF is short stories and Bradbury is top of the pops. Some of the stories are more achin to horror and I think that will have a draw that always works for younger readers.
Douglas Adams: The HItchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
This is a special kind of humour that still works and will always work. For those with that kind of humour that is. I have a friend who has read less than 10 books in his whole life. Three of those were in the hitchhikers series.
Jules Verne: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
This is most likely one of the first SF books I read, and while it didn’t start me in on SF at once (I was more into horror tales then), without a doubt it was something that had a high influence when I picked up SF a few years later. This is a real classic.
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: The Mote in God’s Eye
Yes. Absolutely yes. This one was fantastic when I read it, 30 years after it was published. If I could read it while deep in the computer age, I think young people now can.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: Roadside Picnic
I haven’t read this one in 20 years, so I might be wrong, but if I remember correctly, it had a special feeling that I think would still exist for modern readers.
The Technicolor Time Machine, Harry Harrison
This is a fun story, not that dependent on technology. Fun in history, nice use of time travelling paradoxes. Hasn’t aged as much as The Stainless Steelrat.
And as an extra, books that I wouldn’t recommend because they felt outdated when I myself read them:
Day of the Triffids
The Demolished Man
Cat’s Cradle
The Gods Themselves
Man Plus
Tunnel in the Sky
Flowers for Algernon: heck, they taught that in my public junior high. Short version’s better
Andre Norton: kitties! Star Man’s Son is post-apoc, which the kids like.
Dune: teenage hero, big fights, evil politicians, light philosophy
Dragonsong, etc: Girls will love it, boys will like it. All of Pern, really.
Earthsea, tho more for boys
Dispossessed: for kids who’ll dig the anti-The Man attitude
Left Hand of Darkness: because duh
20K Leagues in a modern translation (not the public domain Victorian)
Snowcrash, if they understand that it’s an alternate future now. The jokes are still fun.
Mission of Gravity
Either “A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hoorah!” (I forget the alternate US title, but it’s a steampunk ancestor) or “The Technicolor Time Machine” or maybe “The Starcrossed”… the funny non-Stainless Steel Rat Harrison, IOW
Ringworld got mined for Halo, if I recall correctly, so it might also come across as strangely unoriginal to modern eyes.
I think everything I would suggest has been suggested, assuming the requirement is science fiction and no fantasy. The most I can say is if, with as clean and un-nostalgic vision as possible, the book or story still seems pretty decent then it will be fine so long as the young people in question are willing. If they’re not, you’re probably a bit doomed from the start.
Great to see everyone’s reasoning why and why not. 🙂 I’ll give it a more thorough read tomorrow when I’m less out of it.
@Bruce Baugh
Nice to see you! I hope your work is going well?
… *gvpxl obk*
I remember I used to like The Wasp by Eric Frank Russel. Has anyone tried it in modern times to see if it holds up?
With the caveat that I have not reread it in years, I liked Andre Norton’s Catseye. Telepathic animals, a hero who tries to be kind and do the right thing, telepathic animals, a bit of mystery… did I mention telepathic animals?
It was also the only Norton book in the house when I was a child, which meant I could reread it whenever I wanted, and the first of hers I read, so I may be a bit biased towards it.
I’d include the single best science fiction story ever written: Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Sentenel”.
Rich Lynch
Surely you mean Lion Miller’s “The Available Data on the Worp Reaction ” ?
Ah, probably not.
@ Soon Lee
re: Beloit mindset
Thanks for that. My grandson is a freshman this year and completely resembles that list. But he’s a third generation SFFer and isn’t that useful for opining what would interest newbies. His initial exposure wasn’t even to many of the pre-1980 ‘classics’ as his father’s library has more post 80s works.
Hmmm, I think I’ll email them both and see what recommendations I get!
Someone upthread pointed out how important short stories are in Golden Age SF/F. To that end I second John Varley (Persistance of Vision) and Zenna Henderson’s People stories.
I think Sir Arthur Clarke’s short “The Nine Billion Names of God” might still strike a spark.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan works, all of them. Miles’s outlook would grab anybody.
Eric Flint et. al.‘s 1632 universe for the history buffs.
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden Universe novels and shorts.
I’m pretty sure “A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!” was/is the US title.
Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow, or The Sword of Rhiannon, or the Skaith books,
James H. Schmitz’s Telzey Amberdon stories. I recently reread these and was surprised how well they held up in terms of characters (especially the women) and even technology.
I have read THE WASP recently. It’s old fashioned and not good for this time period. It was dated when it was written.
Frederick Brown’s short story collection.
And a collection of Kuttner-Moore short stories.
THE TECHNICOLOR TIME MACHINE impressed me as “almost funny”.
My daughter first watched the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer when she was five. Her reaction: “It’s old. But I like it.”
Pray tell, how has it aged at all?
They did snip out Yukon Cornelius shooting off his rifle.
Meredith: Thankee. It’s been a hard stretch – Mom’s having various health troubles, and at 85 that’s a complex thing. I just needed to chat about something.
Anyone who dismisses a work of fiction written prior to 1980 because the author didn’t anticipate the existence of Cell Phones and Google doesn’t deserve to call themselves a nerd. Such people are posers. Geek day-trippers. Nerd-culture fashionistas with smart-phone addled minds and Wikipedia-stunted imaginations. I would not waste my time recommending ‘classics’ for such a person. Science fiction writers are story-tellers, first and foremost. If you can’t read works set in the futures of H.G. Wells, Clifford Simak, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C Clarke without your imaginations seizing up over the absence of social media, you should stick to watching Doctor Who and reading Star Wars novels. If you can’t run with the big geeks, stay on the porch.
I tried to write something snarky about John Popham’s demonstrated ignorance and foolishness, but got nowhere. I can’t do a parody to match the genuine thing.
@Bruce
He just wants those pesky kids to keep off his lawn, is all.
@Bruce Baugh
I’m sorry to hear that, and I hope things start looking up soon. 🙁 I always enjoy your contributions so any time you need to talk about something else for a bit I’d certainly be happy to see you here. I’d missed seeing you around.
@John Popham
Gatekeeping? Really? You think that’s a good use of time and energy?
Meredith: Thanks again. 🙂
@Robert Whitaker Sirignano: We might agree that the animation techniques in Rudolph have passed from the domain of the used.
@John Popham: You do you, man.
@Bruce @Mark – I do respect your desire to make a virtue of cultivating ignorance and coddling flabby thinking. If shuttered minds are what you value, far be it from me to discourage you from making more. Anyone who tires of your tepid group-think is more than welcome on my lawn. The only requirements there are a questing mind, an active imagination and the love of a good story.
I infer some additional requirements! It’s the analyst in me.
John: Looking at the bookshelf closest to me, featuring only books I’ve read multiple times and want to have for citing/quoting from…here’s Leslie Klinger’s annotated volumes for Lovecraft, Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes, the Foreign Language Press editions of Water Margin and Journey to the West, two different editions of several of the von Bek novels by Moorcock, my nigh-dead-from-rereading copy of The Reader’s Guide to Barsoom, two editions of various Cordwainer Smith books, the complete Borges in two volumes, Essentials editions of Iron Fist and Uncanny X-Men, my lovely little first edition of The Agonizing Resurrection Of Victor Von Frankenstein And Other Gothic Tales, and like that.
It’s just that I recognize that there’s a difference between what worked for me as gateways into f/sf in the ’70s and what would be good gateways now. But the principle of gateways as I understand them remains the same: what takes me from where I the reader am now to possible futures, to worlds where it’s gone differently, to worlds where “where I am now” isn’t even an issue? But someone who’s in their teens now isn’t where I was when I was a teen, so of course it takes different means to produce the same kind of effect. Insisting that what was sufficient for me is like insisting foreigners will understand English if only you shout it loudly enough.
There is older work that ends up feeling very fresh in some ways, of course – we’ve got dozens of such works tallied in this very thread. But it’s my responsibility as an advocate to think about how the people I’m recommending them to will take them, and whether that’s what I want. I would, for instance, happily recommend both Shockwave Rider and “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” to a teen or college-aged person interested in sf now, but I’d have some more to say about the predictive context Brunner was working in. And so on.
It can be interesting what’ll grab someone, too. I remember an acquaintance in City of Heroes getting hooked on Philip Dick. She’d been recommended a bunch of possible authors from various of us older sf junkies, and went to the bookstore to flip through several. There’s a description early on in Ubik of an office manager conservatively attired in an outfit including propellor beanie and acrylic sandals. She said, “That won’t ever happen, but it could.” She felt like Dick grasped something true in the high weirdness of his fashion descriptions, and that led her to trust him with further mysteries and strangeness.
I like to think this would have delighted him.
John Popham: My understanding of the current criteria is not ‘classic SF worth reading’, it’s “classic SF that may still work to *introduce* to new or newish to the genre college age kids to the ideas and possibilities of SF. This means books that won’t alienate them out of the gate. some books are better for suggesting to someone after they’re interested and want to see the whole range. ones whose technology is strangely outdated may be stumbling blocks – or may not, with a suitable introduction and discussion. Some *social* attitudes are much more likely to be alienating. But in either case, it’s excessively snobby to say a person who has a hard time with a *future* without information technology is small-minded and not therefore worth approaching. Rather, the way to expand such a mind isn’t to scorn them all, it’s to introduce them with something less alien and introduce the dated concepts more slowly.
______________
one I haven’t seen mentioned that I think might still work and just makes the cutoff is Joan D. Vinge’s The Snow Queen. (Catspaw is alas too late.)
Seconding suggestions of Card, Norton, McCaffrey and *possibly* Bester – the last is fast and easy to read (and the sensory weirdness still works) but the rape in Stars My Destination may not exactly go over well. It made me a bit uncomfortable way back when (and more so as more time passes), but I think modern attitudes will skip the “a bit” part.
I recently finished The Skylark of Space and The Lathe of Heaven. I think I’d save the former, more whiz-bang as it is, for someone already into SF, as the writing feels a bit dry, and the women, even the brilliant and charismatic musician, are very prize-like. (actually, I was pleased to note that the women do some useful diplomatic and language-based jobs – but Doc didn’t care about it so it’s off-screen and we only see the results). Lathe has some minor technological blips, in that the dates are all wrong a la 1984, and 7 billion people was the starvation-and-death number, but the actual visions of the future and concerns feel much less dated, and the three human characters are very real.
I just started into Dune, and my impression so far is that it will survive a reading by at least some modern young persons. And in fact some bits will go over better with college age than they will with me. The language is good, certainly. (So far the politics don’t feel especially clever.)
@Meridith – Absolutely. I am absolutely gate keeping, and it is absolutely worth the time.
You want to be a nerd, you’ve got to do the nerd heavy-lifting. Being a nerd is about having passion for the genre. Not just for a bite here and a nibble there, but for the whole banquet. It’s about loving science fiction even when it makes you a social outcast. By definition, if it’s nerd-chic, it ain’t nerd.
Being a nerd means accepting science fiction on its own terms and in its own context, just like you would ‘real’ literature. That doesn’t mean you have to like all of it, because nobody does. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t know it all, because nobody does. But you’ve got to want to explore it and grok the totality of science fiction. Because it all fits together, and if you don’t know how, you don’t know science fiction. And if you don’t, at the very least, want to know science fiction, you’re not a science fiction nerd.
If I came to you and said ‘I really want to get my head around the classics of Chinese literature’ but insisted that only Chinese literature that meets me on my terms is a true classic, you’d be right not to take my passion for Chinese literature very seriously. And it wouldn’t be gate-keeping for you to say I wasn’t a real Chinese literature nerd. That would just be you telling me a self-evident truth. The same holds true for science fiction.
You don’t get to be a nerd just by buying a few comic books, watching a few episodes of Orphan Black and showing up at the door in a twenty-foot-long scarf. You’ve got to earn your nerd stripes.
I heard back from son, d-in-law and grandson.
The only new suggestion (at least I don’t remember seeing it) is Gateway or the HeeChee Saga by Frederick Pohl.
Otherwise they also mentioned (without my prompts) The Mote in God’s Eye, Ringworld, Hyperion, Left Hand of Darkness, Rendevous with Rama, The Forever War, and Dune. And most of whatever else Clarke, Niven, Le Guin, Pohl, etc. wrote because these are the old books they now remember first and most clearly being excited about after reading. Most of their more memorable reads are from the 80s onward, though.
My d-in-law didn’t get interested in SFF until her late 20s, but is now hooked. 😉 Son and grandson were raised as SFF readers.
@Jim Henly
“I infer some additional requirements! It’s the analyst in me.”
In that case I must conclude you’re not a very good analyst.
John Popham
So, are you saying I’m not a nerd because I’ve never seen an episode of Buffy or Orphan Black, or any Doctor Who episode after Doctor #9, and have never read a Batman or Aquaman comic? Why or why not?
Wow. I thought purity-test gatekeepers like John Popham were a myth.
Someone shows up at my door with little more than knowledge of a few comic books and “Orphan Black” and a twenty-foot scarf?
I welcome them with open arms. Enjoyment is enjoyment and I find the happiness of people who have found new things to love to be invigorating. Welcome to the party!
Not everyone is or can be deeply steeped in All The Lore, and that’s fine. I would rather rejoice in their happiness than sneer at them for only knowing a little bit.
I’m quite sure I can’t maintain the standards of communication that I prefer in this conversation, so I’m going to bow out of the gatekeeper strand.
After pointing out that my name has two e’s in it. So does ‘Henley’.
ETA @Peace
Really? You’ve never met one before? I’ve met more than I care to remember.
@ Bruce Baugh: I appreciate your points. And I do apologize for coming out in full curmudgeon mode. As you say, it’s important to keep accessibility in mind when introducing someone to the written genre.
That said, when someone asks for recommendations on the classics it’s usually because they’ve been reading more recent science fiction works and want to take a deeper dive into the genre. In that case, far less hand-holding should be called for. I would be slow to just hand someone a reading list for which they didn’t seem ready. Then again, if they seemed too inflexible a reader, I probably wouldn’t steer the toward classic science fiction.
@Peace Is My Middle Name
By all means, welcome them. They might one day be nerds.
@Cally
‘So, are you saying I’m not a nerd because I’ve never seen an episode of Buffy or Orphan Black, or any Doctor Who episode after Doctor #9, and have never read a Batman or Aquaman comic? Why or why not?’
If you read what I wrote to Meredith (with two Es) I think you’ll see that’s exactly the opposite of what I’m saying. Though, I would recommend Orphan Black. I think it’s one of the best-written shows on television today.
@Meredith:
Sorry, that was a startled reaction.
Thinking about it, I *have* run across people like that, people who want to keep the country club pure.
I guess it’s just that I tend to drift away from them towards the youngsters in their steampunk gear and gaming t-shirts and Doctor Who props, towards the ones who are happy to discuss and recommend their favorite works with anyone and everyone, towards the curious and experimenting, towards the friendly inclusive types.
I find it deeply ironic that anyone would try to make “nerd” into an exclusive term.
@Peace Is My Middle Name
‘Wow. I thought purity-test gatekeepers like John Popham were a myth.”
Oh, by the way, it’s not about purity, it’s about passion. Purity, it seems, is your thing.
Project much?
@Peace Is My Middle Name
‘I find it deeply ironic that anyone would try to make “nerd” into an exclusive term.’
Words that define everything define nothing.
@John Popham
Didn’t you write the following several months ago:
You might want to revisit your own words.
@John Popham:
However you see it, I suppose.
Level of passion seems to me a poor measure whereby to exile people from fandom.
I guess it’s a sign of privilege, but when someone tells me I can’t call myself a nerd my instinctive reaction is to laugh in their face. If I want to be a nerd I’ll be a nerd any way I like. I’ll order two starters and two desserts and send back the fish. I’ll explore the bits that interest me and ignore the bits that don’t. Try to stop me!
I apologize for being unclear.
I find it deeply ironic that someone would try to define and exclude people from claiming a term originally used as a mocking insult meant to define and exclude.
Lenora Rose says:
Oh, seconded!
And then junego mentions Rendevous with Rama. I’ll endorse that as long as you don’t let them know about the sequels.