Classic SciFi (and I guess fantasy if you have to)

[Anonymous No.2206965]

Been reading quite a lot of classic sci-fi recently - most recently The Stars My Destination (pic related) and Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?. The Stars My Destination was particularly good - it kind of felt like a mess going through it, with quite a few seemingly unconnected ideas ("it's character study of a completely amoral avenger, oh and btw everyone can teleport") but it all ties up nicely at the end.

Recommendations:
>http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Recommended_Reading#Science_Fiction
>I've yet to read a bad novel from the Sci-Fi Masterworks line.

[Anonymous No.2206969]

Try some of the Larry Niven stuff.

Ring-world books are pretty cool, but the main character is a bit difficult to stomach. Thankfully the environment is more the focus.

[Anonymous No.2206981]

Stars My Destination is so, so good - so imaginative and almost fevered in its imagination, you have so many images and so many wild things - like the scene in the underground church with the burning man for instance - what a scene! And the ending is particularly good - always liked the ending. One of the better uses of the classical hero's journey in sf&f, where the hero really achieves transcendent knowledge, not just power, and uses it to transcend - both in achieving the ability to teleport at any distance, a literal manifestation of human power over space and in his determination to force responsibility and maturity onto the human race as a whole - "You pigs, you - you goof like pigs, is all - you got the most in you, and use the least - you hear me, you?" . Absolutely one of the great classic SF novels, in the sense that it is a great representation of what science fiction can be, for all that its plot is shamelessly torn from the Count of Monte Cristo...

Here's a link to one of my favorite SF short stories, The Man Who Lost The Sea by Ted Sturgeon- awesome writing and a great ending. Read it.

http://strangehorizons.com/2009/20090413/lostsea-f.shtml

[Anonymous No.2206992]

>>2206969
I've read Ringworld. It was pretty cool. Have you read Rendezvous with Rama? There are strong parallels between the two, but they are at the same time quite different as novels. Personally I enjoyed Ringworld more because it was just more readable (Rama is dry as hell in places and Clarke can't write characters for shit), but they're both very good.

[Anonymous No.2206997]

I just got off a long Heinlein spree. Finished it up with The Puppet Masters, which was good, but the whole "lol everyone needs to be naked always now" thing was kind of weird. I haven't read anything by him I haven't enjoyed though, so there's that.

I'm going on a PKD streak now, just finished A Scanner Darkly, probably going to read The Man in the High Castle next, as long as I can pirate a good version of it.

[Anonymous No.2206999]

>>2206992
Afraid I'm unfamiliar with that Book. Is it worth the read, or did Ringworld do it better?

[Anonymous No.2207003]

>>2206997
Heinlein is a fascinating author because he's all over the place in theme and tone and setting, but his stories are all identifiably Heinlein. Have you read any of his short fiction? It's quite good. "-All You Zombies-" is a personal favorite. I think the only one of his novels that's really of enduring quality is Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, frankly, but he'll live forever for his influence on the genre if nothing else.

>>2206999
I've never cared for Clarke, but Rendezvous with Rama is one of the more well-known works within the genre, probably worth at least checking out.

[Anonymous No.2207004]

Sort of related.

Just watched something that said Mary Shelly's Frankenstein was the first true Sci-Fi book.

Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.2207006]

>>2206999
It's probably worth reading. If you like your sci-fi hard and sciencey at the expense of drama and well-written human characters you'll probably like it more than Ringworld, and if you like the concept of an alien artificial world and want to see it taken in a different direction to Ringworld its definitely worth a go.

[Anonymous No.2207009]

>>2207003

All You Zombies was great if a bit weird. TMiaHM was really good, but the pseudo-russian-accent thing was really offputting.

My personal favorite of his is A Tunnel in the Sky. Reminds me of The Lord of the Flies a lot.

I think that he'll be read for quite some time, maybe not hailed as one of the greats forever, but definitely read and remembered.

Oh, Stranger in a Strange Land was one of his worst. I enjoyed it, but still, definitely not among his best.

[Anonymous No.2207014]

>>2207004
That's Brian Aldiss' argument, right? It's definitely true from a literary standpoint - it is the first work that fits a literary definition of speculative fiction. But it's not really true historically in that you can't draw a direct historical line between Frankenstein and science fiction as it exists today as a distinctly acknowledged genre. In that sense, Verne and Wells probably wrote the first science fiction.

Is the distinction I'm drawing clear here? It's been science fiction as a group of broadly similarly texts, on the one hand, and as an identified commercial genre on the other.

>>2207009
I find his juveniles hard to place - they're very enjoyable, and very well-written, and probably his most influential work in terms of how many people read them, but they're not of the highest in terms of literary quality.

[Anonymous No.2207027]

>>2207014

No, but if you're looking for a good way to kill a plane trip or rainy afternoon, they're hard to beat.

[Anonymous No.2207079]

A Princess of Mars was pretty interesting, but again the main character was an exercise in Gary-Sue-dom.

Though I get the impression he was an add on to the book. The setting and thing in it are pretty baller though.