20 Sc-Fi Fiction Novels that will change your life

[dugbug]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I tend to disregard nominations as a sign of quality as it seems to me anyone could nominate anything. And people could have many motives to make a nomination.
But I could be wrong - it would be interesting to see the bottom 20 entries in such a database, and whether they are works still held in high regard.

Not these nominations. A book gets nominated to one of these, its going to be a great one. Slaughter-house five was mentioned by vivaldirules. It garnered a hugo nomination (the winner that year was The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin to get the idea of competition).


Also, just to answer a few comments: Im only including the category of novel. Novelette, novela, and short story awards are not counted.

Ill look into the clarke award. The big two in terms of industry respect and prestige are the Hugo and Nebula. The third is probably the Locus award.

-d

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by dugbug

Not these nominations. A book gets nominated to one of these, its going to be a great one.

Ah, is it just the shortlisted nominations you're including?

That'd make sense; because (as I understand it) there's nothing stopping me writing some awful bit of tripe, and nominating it for a Hugo myself:
http://www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk/hugo101.htm

But it'd never make it to the shortlist . So a shortlist list is likely to only have the good stuff.

[dugbug]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Ah, is it just the shortlisted nominations you're including?

Yes, should have mentioned that

-d

[tompe]

Originally Posted by dugbug

Ill look into the clarke award. The big two in terms of industry respect and prestige are the Hugo and Nebula. The third is probably the Locus award.

Well, they are the most well known but they have problems. Hugo has been criticised for being a popularity contests so popular but not so good authors gets nominated (like all the Robert Sawyer books that I then have to read...). And Nebula seems to have a problem with nominations based on that member of SFWA think people deserve the price and not on the actual book. But in recent years the Nebula nominations have been OK.

For new and maye a bit different books I think the Clarke Award and The World Fantasy Award (or whatever the name is) are better. The Clarke Award is a juryed award like the Nebula.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Now, if we could only get all of these books into e-book formats for anything at all...

[BlackVoid]

I have read some of the books on the list, a few comments.

Consider Phlebas (1987), by Iain M. Banks
I was not impressed, but it is readable. Lots of action, but otherwise a bit shallow and purposeless.

A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), by Vernor Vinge
Excellent book.

Pattern Recognition (2003), by William Gibson
Very, very boring. W. Gibson lost it after the Neuromancer trilogy. Other recent books by him have the same problem: BORING.

Glasshouse (2006), by Charles Stross
This is OK, but to put it into the top 20 its a bit of a stretch.

Some other recommendations:
Alastair Reynolds - very good except for the Absolution Gap
Isaac Asimov - Foundation series is a classic
Frank Herbert - Dune (AVOID the prequel books by his son)
Greg Bear - Most of his books are very good
Frederik Pohl - The Gateway series is a classic
Stanislaw Lem - some very good classic scifi.

My avoid list:
C J Cherryh - I read Cyteen and Deepstation, had to give up the former. REALLY boring stuff.
Dan Simmons - Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion - weird and boring at the same time.
Jack McDevitt - started two of his books, was not impressed at all.

Beware Hugo and Nebula awards, they are awarded for writing and not for the story.

Just my 2c.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

My avoid list:
C J Cherryh - I read Cyteen and Deepstation, had to give up the former. REALLY boring stuff.

Beware Hugo and Nebula awards, they are awarded for writing and not for the story.

If I had started to read Cherryh with Cyteen I would not have continued since the book was very hard to read and I did not like the ending. I really like some of her other stuff like Downbellow Station, Merchanter's Luck and Rimrunner.

Hugo is decided by a popularity vote and often a book wins because of the story. For example the year that the Harry Potter book won. If the writing is bad enough in a book it will probably not win.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

Dan Simmons - Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion - weird and boring at the same time.

Curious why you read both .

I'd have given up after the first if I hadn't enjoyed it.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Curious why you read both .

I'd have given up after the first if I hadn't enjoyed it.

I think it really is one book that for practical or economical reasons was published in two parts. So if you want to finish a book then there is a reason to read both parts.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

Jack McDevitt - started two of his books, was not impressed at all.

I got that from his book Chindi... a long way to go for a single punch line. However, I've been enjoying most of his other books, I like his style.

[astrodad]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I got that from his book Chindi... a long way to go for a single punch line. However, I've been enjoying most of his other books, I like his style.

Haha, Chindi was the first and last of his that I have read. Maybe I should look at the others.

[mazzeltjes]

I really enjoyed
Deepsix
The book is one of those
I finished in one sitting

[lmarie]

Heinlein's Time for the Stars is a book I remember vividly today, from long long ago junior high days, that somehow completely captivated my imagination and led me to read many of the other SF "classics" (Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury.) The story of twins, one who remained young because he traveled at the speed of light, while the other remained on earth to age, just blew me away. At the age of 12 or so I had no concept of the big ideas in physics.

My all-time SF favorite though is The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. Pure poetry, imho.

Lelah

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Timoleon

I remember receiving Dhalgren as a Christmas presentmany years ago from my little brother. I think that with the cover art on the paperback book he thought it was just another scifi book. I started reading it on Christmas Day, and if I recall rightly there was a scene early on in the book graphically describing a homo-erotic oral sex encounter that the hero of the book was engaging in. Since my tastes didn't veer in that direction (sixteen year old horny hetero teenager), I quickly put the book down and never picked it up again. Of course, to my brother's embarrassment and my parent's horror, I read out loud to everybody hanging out in the living room one particularly juicy passage that Christmas morning...

Well, Chip is gay, so the homo-erotic episode isn't a big surprise.

I'll have to re-read Dhalgren one of these days. In retrospect, I see it as an exploration of what happens when the usual constraints of civilization are removed. We never find out exactly what happened to the city of Bellona, but it's obvious that most have left, and those who remain are different from what they used to be.

Civilization is a shared construct, and the restraints we think of as normal are consensual and imposed partly from within, and partly from social pressure. (There are things we don't do because we think we shouldn't, and others we don't do because those around us would object. Different societies draw those boundaries in different places and whether the control is internal or external may vary, but the control will be there.)

What happens when external controls are removed? You can make a case that Delany was working the same territory as William Golding in _Lord of the Flies_.

And Chip dropped some hints that the protagonist was not a reliable narrator, and might not be what we think of as sane.
______
Dennis

[BlackVoid]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Curious why you read both .

The story had no ending really, I was curious what the Shrike was. I was hoping for some conclusion in the sequel, but in Fall of Hyperion, it just drags on and on and on.....