The Night Bazaar | Category Archive | Favorite Science Fiction

Posts in the "Favorite Science Fiction" Category

Futures I’ve Known

Favorite Science Fiction

I like the above title for a piece on my favorite science fiction novels — not because it is right, but because it is wrong. The title relies on what I consider to be a common misreading of science fiction — that it’s about the future. In fact, science fiction, like all literature, is about the present — the moment it is written, and the moment it is read. And every other present. And some that aren’t. And quite a few that, thankfully, will never be. And some where we sure as hell wish that they would. And a few we’re not sure about. And maybe some presents that are, or aren’t quite, but may as well be. Science fiction, in short, is about everything — except fantasy, and sometimes it’s even about that.

SF takes as its fundamental premise that at least one significant piece of human infrastructure (social, cultural, biological, technological, physical, etc) has changed in a way that leaves (at least some) other established laws of science (both social and physical) intact and predictable — as opposed to fantasy, which arguably starts with a blank slate, and horror, which isn’t a genre at all, but an emotion. Accepting that general definition for science fiction (which you don’t have to, but I’m going to, for the time being), the shortest route between now and then, for most science fiction, is to look into the future. (more…)
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I even liked Heinlein in his ‘dirty old man’ phase…

Favorite Science Fiction

Not that Henlein ever had a ‘clean young gentleman’ phase. If he did, it would no doubt be far creepier and more disturbing than his action-packed, polyamory paens. His books read like thin-veiled arguments for why his wife should let him fool around. I get the impression she didn’t buy it.

Still, someone had to go there, didn’t they? The joy of science fiction is letting the reader try on different ways of being human like a new suit, to see whether the future fits and how comfortable they are in it. I prefer science fiction over other genres, but I do go through phases where I prefer a good frilly-dressed romance or swashbuckling naval battle to robots and laser. It’s been difficult lately to forage for a good steady diet of science fiction with all the gluttonous amounts of urban fantasy crowding the shelves these days. (more…)
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A Sense of Wonder

Favorite Science Fiction

I like my SF like I like my women, hard, tight, and with big Bussard ramjets.

Now, I know some folk like their space operas, and that’s just fine. I’ve read a few and enjoyed them. But for my money, if I’m reading SF, I want it hard and with a solid grounding in science, or what science might bring, looked at realistically and thought out in all the myriad ways *wink*. Star Wars ain’t SF, in my book. It’s fantasy.

(Okay, I do agree that fantasy is the Ur genre, the proto-genre under which all fiction falls, so, okay yeah, it’s fantasy. Still.)

I’m not trying to be a purist or anything, it’s just that I don’t count horror novels with a slight techy premise as SF nor do I count swashbucklers in space-ships as SF either. But that’s just me. It has to be nerdier to suit my tastes. And the best SF appeals to my sense of wonder. The vast expanses of space and the unknown. The infinitesimal and the infinite, both sides of the same coin. (more…)
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My Favorite Sci Fi

Favorite Science Fiction

While I’m not sure that I’ll ever write a science fiction novel, I do enjoy science fiction, both reading and writing. I’ve written a number of science fictional short stories, the most recent about an uprising on a solar mining platform. I tend to like science fiction of the hard sort, though I don’t really mind soft science fiction if the story is there.

I don’t really remember a lot of early novels. I read The Dragonriders of Pern a looonnnggg time ago, and as anyone who’s spoken with Anne McCaffrey knows, these are pure science fiction. No fantasy here.

The Integral Trees, by Larry Niven, was my first exposure to a really far out, science fiction concept that felt like science fiction. This later led me to Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. This was a pretty engrossing novel for me, and it was a very well thought out “what if,” playing on the potential of a major asteroid strike on Earth, and it was well before the 1990′s meteor movie hoopla. (You remember… Armageddon and Deep Impact?) I later read The Mote in God’s Eye and The Gripping Hand by the same tandem, both of which were again quite good, especially the former.

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The Dark-Adapted Eye

Favorite Science Fiction

Like Courtney, Madeline L’engle and John Christopher were my Sci-Fi gateway drugs, but I’d been reading Fantasy, classical myth, and kid’s Horror since long before that. My first Fantasy novel favorites tended toward the dark and spooky. (Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Witches of Wyrm, Joan Aiken’s series that starts with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.) My tastes have run the genre gambit ever since, but what are my favorite Science Fiction novels?

I’m a huge Ray Bradbury fan. So, no list like this is complete without Fahrenheit 451. Not only is it beautifully written, it’s an amazing story. Other favorites are: Frank Herbert’s Dune (although, I was never able to get through the other books) of course, Margret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Charlie Stross’ Bob Howard — Laundry series which starts with Atrocity Archives, Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, C.J. Cherryh’s Faded Sun series as well as Cyteen, Neil Stevenson’s Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, William Browning Spenser’s Resume with Monsters, Joan D. Vinge’s brilliant Snow Queen, Richard Matheson’s’ I Am Legend, David Brin’s The Postman which is as far as I know the only feminist post-apocalypse novel written by a male, Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, Stephen King’s The Stand, Peter Hoeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow, George Orwell’s 1984 and also Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Oh, and I just have to toss in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and Garth Ennis’s Preacher — even though both series are graphic novels. As you can see, my favorites have a tendency for the dark, creepy and gritty (for the lack of a better term) in my Science Fiction. When it comes to Sci-fi, I enjoy most the stories that make me think. My favorite thing about Sci-Fi is when it is used to address topical social problems like over-population, fascism, racism, and other issues that need talking about but seem to be too sensitive to discuss openly. I feel that’s when Sci-Fi is at its best. If I want a no-brainer, I tend to go with Romantic Comedy, Adventure or Suspense more often than Sci-Fi and the more psychological the better. But to each their own, I say. What about you? Do you have any patterns to your Sci-Fi habit?
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Strange New Worlds

Favorite Science Fiction

I love thinking back through all the books I’ve read and loved, because it’s like flipping through a photo album full of old friends. Some folks you might not have talked with in years – but seeing their smiling faces brings happy memories back in a rush, and you resolve to visit them once more.

As with fantasy, I started early with science fiction. Madeleine L’Engle’s time novels, the third series of Tom Swift books, the Danny Dunn books, Gordon R. Dickson’s Secrets of the Deep…I read all those at such a young age I don’t remember exactly when I first came across them. And that was just the start. My local library had an excellent selection of YA sf, and I read every single book in the section several times over. A few more childhood favorites: (more…)
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Barbara Hambly: Favorite Science Fiction

Favorite Science Fiction

Barbara Hambly is a New York Times bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as historical novels set in the nineteenth century. After receiving a master’s degree in medieval history, she published The Time of the Dark, the first novel in the Darwath saga, in 1982, establishing herself as an author of serious speculative fiction. Since then she has created several series, including the Windrose Chronicles, Sun Wolf and Starhawk series, and Sun-Cross series, in addition to writing for the Star Wars and Star Trek universes. Besides fantasy, Hambly has won acclaim for the James Asher vampire series, which won the Locus Award for best horror novel in 1989, and the Benjamin January mystery series, featuring a brilliant African-American surgeon in antebellum New Orleans. She lives in Los Angeles.

I still remember the first science fiction book I read. It was Secret of the Ninth Planet by Donald Wollheim, and I was blown out of my socks. It had a blue cover and was shelved on the west wall of that tiny school library at Kingsley Elementary School. I can still feel the cool of the gray concrete floor. (more…)
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