reading classic sci-fi until the world makes sense
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- Опубліковано 11 чер 2024
- Canticle Review: • this book made me mad ...
Stepford Review: • the scariest book scene
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My friend grew up across the street from Butler; 12 years old, drinking tea, just two chicks sitting in Octavia's kitchen talkin' stories. Can you imagine?
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin is a book that you likely will appreciate.
it is genuinely unmatched
This one Dr. Collier
Word
Especially given what she mentions about the ansible stuff in the review of Forest
I've not read The Dispossessed but I would recommend The Lathe of Heaven by Le Guin as well
Fun fact: Philip K. Dick, a legendary science-fiction writer himself, believed Stanisław Lem,, was a communist committee. According to a letter he wrote, Dick thought Lem didn't even exist as a single person, but rather as a figurehead created to spread propaganda. He claimed Lem was "probably a composite committee rather than an individual." Dick's justification for this accusation was that "[Lem] writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not."
This is wild!
Possibly worth mentioning that this was one of the _less_ out-there things that legendary science fiction writer Philip K. Dick believed.
PKD also called the FBI in a drug fueled paranoia on one of his housemates at the time, author Thomas Disch. Then there is the semi-autobiographical VALIS delving into his drug induced religious experiences.
Not saying PKD was not an amazing author, not saying he didn’t believe that about Lem, I’m just saying.
About a dozen of his books were translated to English by Michael Kandel, but he had a variety of translators for his earlier books.
To be fair, Phillip K Dick was widely regarded as a bit "off" and had lots of crazy theories.
Left Hand of Darkness is one of my favorites, it's alo by Le Guin
im starting that next after lem futurological congress - which im almost done with. i have read lathe of heaven loved it. 🎉
Yes!
It’s genius.
Agreed. Also, _The Dispossessed,_ which is about the invention of the Ansible, the neat FTL communication gadget our host mentions, in Le Guin's Ekumen universe. Or rather about the inventor, since Le Guin is more about characterisation than hard science.
While _The Word for World is Forest_ read pretty directly as a allegory of Vietnam at the time it was published, in _The Dispossessed_ the background for the novel was more a commentary on the Cold War, and a critique of the capitalism vs communism dichotomy. It would be interesting to read it again forty years later. Mmm, more like fifty years later, damn.
Left Hand of Darkness is a gorgeous book, wonderful reading on so many levels. Want a deep exploration of human interactions without the filter of gender? It's your book. Want dystopian horror? Same. Fantastic myths? Same. A gripping Odyssey about crossing a polar ice cap? You'll be sensing a theme developing here...
Yes! The Left Hand of Darkness is a true classic.
Iain M Banks: The Player of Games. This is a stand-alone novel in the 'Culture' series. They're all great.
Someone gave me The Hydrogen Sonata and I’d never read any of his books. I enjoyed it immensely. Some writers are skillful enough to write in such a way that their series books can be enjoyed individually without having to read everything before or after.
Such writers should be encouraged. Although it’s probably too late for dear departed Ian.
Iain M Banks *The Algebraist* (2004 - now classic in your defn.) is not a short-story. It’s a huge (non-culture) book and a very digressive story (at 544 pages) about a gas-giant civilisation that revels in being digressive both neurally and verbally, as they live for hundreds of years, in a loose society where money means literally nothing, but kudos is everything that defines you.
@@MsZeeZedyeah. This one for sure.
@MarcosElMalo2 :)
I might recommend Use of Weapons instead of Player of Games, but Iain M Banks is absolutely one of the all-time greats and well worth reading.
Every Octavia Bulter book is beautiful and crushing and something you read once and can’t read again. Parable of the sower and parable of the talents are both amazing
Yep, I came here to recommend those two books. So instead I will second your nominations. :)
I too strongly recommend these.
Octavia is one of the most underrated sci-fi writers of that era for sure.
God it's so true. I wish she'd gotten to finish the next books in that series...
How would you compare those to the lilith's brood trilogy?
I liked the concepts, the peaceful but abusive aliens, their perspective and way of perceiving other species but it was just too many pages without any kind of developing of those ideas.
I haven't finished the last one, giving it a break but wondering about how other books from her are.
I live in Cuba, and growing up I had access to Soviet Sci-Fi, classic (19th century) Sci-Fi, Cuban Sci-Fi, and American (as Isaac Asimov, etc.) Sci-Fi.
My favorites were the soviet, as their approach to stories was not "kill the other", and more likely about overcoming some difficulty: how to communicate with aliens, or an hostile environment.
Nice. Sounds like the original Star Trek theme.
Le Guin is such an amazing author. My aunt gave me "A Wizard of Earthsea" and it's some of the most rich and deep writing in such short stories.
Vernor Vinge, "A fire upon the deep", is a wild ride full of strange and interesting concepts, and weird aliens (including different laws of physics across the galaxy, and sentient plants riding around carts...). Rainbow's end is also really good, closer to our times (augmented reality, virtual worlds, and questionable methods to digitise libraries...)
I'd absolutely second A Fire Upon The Deep. Suuuper cool concept
Yes! and A Deepness in the Sky, the Sequel is just as excellent
the levels of the universe were interesting in fire and it gad the best space battle scene i’ve ever read. also the book has a grat funny lol final scene remark. otoh the journey to get to the dog planet was tedious af and i did not care about the dog planet, too much of that. would still rec tho. 🎉
Oh, and Vinge's "Peace War" and "Marooned in Realtime" are great too.
My first, and still favourite, Ursula le Guin is The Lathe of Heaven - about a man who believes that his dreams are re-shaping the world, and a psychiatrist who takes advantage of him.
That one's my favorite. It's got an almost Philip K. Dick feel to it.
There have been a couple of screen adaptations--an old PBS one I have not seen that is well-regarded, and a terrible one I have seen for A&E.
My first Le Guin was The Dispossessed. It changed my life, and it is my most re-read book. The instantaneous communication device from The Word for World Is Forest, the ansible, is possible because of the physics done by the protagonist in The Dispossessed. I'll echo others who've suggested reading all of the Le Guin you can, but if you had to pick only one, that would be my recommendation.
110%
Yes, also!
I liked reading Le Guin’s short stories.
@@magicsinglez I did as well! Her novella Paradises Lost was another particular favorite.
Octavia Butler was a great writer. Parable of the Sower is also heartbreaking but worth the read, and Liliths Brood is one of my favorite book series that i read every few years.
White’s _The Once and Future King_ is absolutely phenomenal. The first section was the basis for the Disney film _The Sword in the Stone_ (my favorite Disney flick).
Must recommend Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. Dude imagined today's "AI" used mainly for targeted advertisement in 1968.
the Hungry Sheep Look Up And are not fed but swoln with the wind and the rank mist they draw rot inwardly and foul contagion spread 🐑
@@barryturner8994 Is that where that title comes from? Damn, that hits hard.
Stanislaw Lem has something like a tetralogy that can be described as a 'First Contact Cycle.' All four books-The Invincible, Eden, Solaris, and Fiasco-are excellent sci-fi, and what's cool is that in every case, the aliens are incredibly well-conceived. Fiasco may be the most complicated, with all its intertwined plotlines and the main plot that seemingly contradicts itself, but in a sense, it is quite unique. Lem experimented with the relationship between the information he gives to the reader and the information that the reader infers, and with every book, this relationship shifted towards 'don't tell the reader; let them infer it themselves.'
I also recommend the cycle of short stories Star Diaries, which is full of good laughs.
Lem also has philosophical and futurology works, but I tried and failed to read them. I must admit, they are too hard for me
In high school I read everything I could find by Larry Niven. He wrote “hard” SF, in which the word building includes much discussion of the science, physics, and technology enabling the space stories. I have no idea how it holds up today, but his won awards for his 1970 novel Ring World.
I watched a snippet of an interview with Le Guin not too long ago, and I found her absolutely captivating. I didn't want to blink in case I missed something.
Do you have a link?
Edit: searching "interview with Ursula K Le Guin" returns several UA-cam vids, plus more.
@@AndrewBlucher the one i highly highly rec is the pbs interview companion to the original lathe of heaven movie (1980). watch the movie, then the interview both are terrific and are up on the youtubes. factoid - lathe was the very first pbs funded movie. also ps - skip the recent remake of lathe. 🎉
I'm always gonna push the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams, I absolutely love those books! Although I feel like they're a bit underrated in 2024, i never really hear them get brought up in classic book discussions.
They are pretty light fare. I mean, I've read them all, I love them. I also like Terry Pratchett. I like humorous books as much as the next person. But they don't exactly spring to mind when I think classic sci fi. Usually when someone thinks of sci fi they are thinking of something a littler 'harder.' Those books are technically sci fi but they read more like fantasy.
I'm also not sure it's fair to say that a sci fi book is underrated when it has been turned into a radio show and a big budget movie. There are 10s of thousands of sci fi books, only a handful of them ever get opted into movies.
I think it's a reaction to being a little *over*rated in the 2000s. But those books are still great! I love the Dirk Gently books as well, even though the first one has a plot that really doesn't hang together at all.
Bumping for Douglas Adams (both Hitchhiker's Guide and Dirk Gently)!
Also yes to LazloHo, they read more like fantasy than sci-fi.
Rather than exploring the implications of a hypothetical technology (which I might use as a loose definition of sci-fi), technology is more used for periodic Dei ex Machina.
**Snow Crash** is a decent sci-fi book (albeit about 50% longer than it needs to be).
It's the dystopia from which we got the "Metaverse". Because Facebook uses a dystopian novel as its namesake.
I've read and enjoyed all of these. They were recommended to me after I told someone I loved Terry Pratchett.
@@acollieralso If you like Pratchett and Adams, it might be worth having a look at Jasper Fforde...
I would suggest Anathem by Neal Stephenson. It is a BIG book but you get three genres in one. First, there is a alternative earth history where physicists and astronomers are restricted to monasteries. Second, there is a thriller section involving the aliens. Finally, there is a space opera with realistic orbital mechanics.
Loved this book! (And others by Neal Stephenson)
I like Anathem a lot, but (as I said about Greg Egan in another comment) I can see why some people wouldn't, there's something quite... self-indulgent, I guess, about it, which can easily happen with such long books. Anyway, your summary is good, and probably helpful in deciding whether to give it a go.
@@juliusapweiler1465 Stephenson has always been self-indulgent. Snow Crash is wildly imaginative but frankly puerile at times, Diamond age is a little less of both, the baroque cycle is the absolute fucking epitome of your issues with Anathem which are legit. I'm a fan, but I recognise that you kind of have to be willfully along for the ride with him to an extent.
If I were to earnestly recommend a Stephenson to Angela it would probably be Seveneves (or else Snow Crash with the expectation that she would roast it. It's probably his closest thing to a well-known "classic").
I'm having trouble getting past page 40 because of the format. I want a story, but it's a long long series of recorded messages or something...
@@jeffwillis2592 I think you are mistaking the book you are talking about. The first chapter going to page 40 is just discussion and introduction of two main characters prior to a one in a decade open day.
I'm sure others have already said so, but both in my experience and in common opinion Le'Guins books "The Dispossef" and "The Left Hand of Darkness" are her best reads. For me personally the dispossed is one of perhaps 5 pieces of media that actually changed my life. The word for world is forest sacrifices some of le'guins masterful culture building for, what seemed to me, to be very raw frustration and anger at irl politics
I thoroughly enjoyed your discussion on "The Word for World is Forest." Your insight into the motives behind deforesting an alien planet was spot on. You've captured the delicate balance between a writing sin and the depth of imagination with such eloquence. Thank you for sharing your thoughtful analysis!
Actually I thought stranger things have happened than people travelling 27 light years for wood. It's all a question of economics.
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester is an excellent scifi novel
My all time favorite angry character, especially an angry protagonist, mostly bc his anger is entirely justified which makes it feel very relatable.
My favorite Stanislaw Lem book doesn't get talked about as much: Cyberiad. It is not even slightly dry. It's chaotic fairy tales and extended jokes about almost (but not quite) omnipotent engineers and the silly things they create while exploring space.
Let me echo all the others: more Le Guin and Butler! They’re both literary geniuses
I have the same problem with kids in fiction. It's very, very rare to find a kid written like an actual kid. Sci-fi seems to be particularly rough in this regard.
I was looking forward to seeing this list after you first mention Canticle!
If you haven't read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman I think it might be up your alley. Particularly when you mentioned the communication and such in The Word For World is Forest, this is what came to mind.
Loved _Forever War,_ especially when read as a "rebuttal" to _Starship Trooper_ (which Haldeman didn't intend! He and Heinlein each praised the other's work and appreciated them as reflections on _their own_ wars).
_Forever Peace_ (completely different continuity, despite the similar name) would also be right up Angela's alley, and it also feels really timely right now.
Seconded
Yes, a must read. There is a graphic novel adaptation by Belgian cartoonist Marvano that I highly recommend as well.
Just read it coincidentally. Really excellent, and, without spoilers, I appreciated the way it ends very much.
Yes, FW is great, also a cutting riposte to Heinlein's juvenile Starship Troopers. Don't get me wrong, I've read and enjoyed ST, it's just that war ain't like that. It would be great if everyone came with big labels saying 'good guy' or 'bad guy,' but they don't. Reality is more nuanced.
You never find out what “evil” things that Mr Hyde does. It plays into Victorian inhibitions brilliantly. The ending of “War of the Worlds” was exciting when the Germ Theory of Disease was new.
This person is so smart. I really enjoy their ramblings and rants
If you haven’t read it, based on what you enjoyed on the list presented here I think you’d love The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. It’s essentially a big allegory for the Vietnam War, but more significantly explores themes of communication/conflict with aliens, time dilation due to space travel, the shifting of cultures over long periods of time, and much more. It’s genuinely a phenomenal piece of science fiction.
Great book.
Twenty thousand leagues under the sea! Excruciatingly comprehensive lists of fish! Strange old-school science, and enthusiastic victorian conjecture about the deep sea, and the fantastical potentials of electricity, in that era where it still feels like magic! I listened to it walk-commuting home at 4 in the morning and the wide-eyed optimism and breathless wonderment about the ocean and technology freaking transported me
I recently re-read that. It holds up. I'd been on a Jules Verne binge and it's by far his best--his other really famous ones are fun but it seemed like he was putting his whole heart into "20,000 Leagues". Lots of interesting wrestling with politics too, some of which got cut from early English-language editions. Captain Nemo is basically an anti-imperialist terrorist.
I've been trying to read his pseudo-sequel/crossover, "The Mysterious Island"--do not recommend. It's a hard slog. I have to get away from it and read several other books and then chip at it some more. Writers in the 19th century unaccountably believed that "Robinson Crusoe"-derived survival narratives were inherently interesting and you didn't have to do anything to make them more interesting.
When I was a kid my favorite was "From The Earth to the Moon" / "Round the Moon" (it's a two-parter). Reading it again recently, what strikes me is to what extent "From The Earth to the Moon" is a really funny satire about how Americans be crazy, mixed with lectures on the engineering details of the giant space gun.
Whereas in "The Mysterious Island", the characters are also American but the lead is this Mary Sue engineer who is such a genius that he can MacGyver all of civilization out of rocks and sticks using the principles of chemical engineering, and Jules Verne is going to explain ALL THE STEPS. There are a lot of descriptions of the landscapes of this island which is frankly not a very interesting place. And I think Captain Nemo eventually shows up but I haven't gotten there yet. The MacGyver has also got a Black sidekick who... eeeeuuuhhh... Jules Verne was *trying* to write a sympathetic portrayal of a Black guy, his heart was in the right place, I'll give him that.
"reading classic sci-fi until the world makes sense" Oh what perfect words in this time, just instantly relatable.
Lem is fabulous. Both his books about profoundly alien aliens and his feudal robot fairy tales. Annoyingly, I've only found Solaris translated via French.
I also like The Mask (short story) and The Futurological Congress
Thanks for reviewing some older classic books so thoroughly. This was a great concept for the video. 10 other sci-fi to consider if you haven't already read them:
Isaac Asimov - Foundation is probably the most famous and worth reading, but I actually prefer the first three R Daneel Olivaw robots series (Caves of Steel, Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn). In these books the 3 laws of robotics that Asimov developed are explored with interesting detective stories. Well worth reading (the books are complete so you don't need to read the full series if you don't want to, but it works even better when you do).
Frank Herbert - Dune (extra popular thanks to the movies) is a great foundational scifi read. Again, parts of the themes are explored more completely (including the downsides of the rise to power that happens in the first book) if you read the later books in the series, but again there is a complete story if you just read the first book.
Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars is really good hard sci-fi about colonizing Mars. Again, the trilogy is worth completing if you enjoy the first book.
William Gibson - Neuromancer is basically the foundational text of cyberpunk, and Gibson is a great author (I actually think his later books are even better, but Neuromancer is likely is most important/impactful to the sci-fi genre). If you enjoy cyberpunk then Snow Crash by William Stephenson is well worth reading as well as a bonus recommendation.
Arthur C Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama is not as well known in general public as 2001 a space odyssey but I remember preferring it, and an interesting sort of alien encounter story from one of the big three
Robert Heinlein - The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is my favorite Heinlein and well worth a read. Heinlein's politics were interesting and if you span this, Stranger in a Strange land, and Starship Troopers you certainly cover some interesting perspectives, but despite this, the book is still worth a read.
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale is a cautionary dystopian that unfortunately seems to grow in relevance (similar to the way Parable of a Sower by Butler does too) but that might extend that scifi from a feminist perspective.
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game has lots of children, training for war, but is still worth reading. Like some of the others, you don't need to read the sequels, but if you do you actually get a rich recontextualization of the experiences of the first book and I actually think Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide are in some ways more interesting, if less actiony, than the first book.
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 has a special place in my heart as it was the first scifi book that really got me into scifi (at least for books, star wars movies were before this for me) but this is another classic of the genre.
Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice is much more modern than the others on this list being only 10 years old instead of 25-75, but this is a classic and won all the awards (Nebula, Hugo, Clarke, Locus) and has an interesting perspective of protagonist (Breq, the offshoot ancilliary of the AI of a destoryed Imperial Starship).
I just read Roadside Picnic recently, and it was a pretty quick read but really interesting!
And also the movie "Stalker" based on the novel.
Love the Strugatskys and I need to read more of them. "The Second Invasion from Mars" is a great satire, with that feeling that you're seeing everything from the POV of a little guy on the street who only incompletely knows what's going on.
I just recently finished Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time", I loved the heck out of it. It's one of the few sci-fi books I've read that really plays with evolutionary concepts and timescales (dovetailing nicely with long-distance space travel), which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I second this. Great book.
I third this, that book is the main reason why I read anything of Tchaikovsky I can get my hands on. The other reason is that all his other books are great too.
Regarding your comment on the cliffhanger chapter endings in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a lot of those books were first published as serialized stories in newspapers, which encouraged the cliffhangers to get people to buy the next paper.
Also, I think you would like "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell, which is a great first contact story, where the cultural assumptions of both sides have some big consequences for everyone involved.
stanislaw lem is soooo good (unless he isn't. which is rare, but then he is really bad). probably the most underrated, or underappreciated scifi author. at least in the west.
Reccos:
- The Left Hand of Darkness and the The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin (The first two Earthsea novels are great too, if you want fantasy instead of sci-fi.)
- Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (Worth it even though you say you prefer standalone books to series.)
Oh, Dr Collier, Parable of the Sower! You MUST!
Left Hand of Darkness! Ursula K le Guin too. Just make sure you have someone to hold afterwards, damn.
Oh gods yes.
Warning for books written in the later 1800s some were serialised in literary magazines and this was a way for known authors to finance longer works, so they can have this cliff-hanger structure. For example Dostoevsky’s *Crime and Punishment* was published in this way originally.
This is fascinating, but is not the case for *The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde* which is a straight up penny-dreadful inspired by two things. One a friend of Stevenson was prosecuted and executed for murdering his wife. Stevenson knew nothing of this crime, but attended the trial shocked by the revelations that emerged and later became convinced that his former friend was a multiple-murderer. Secondly Stevenson had another friend called Walter Jekyll who was a former clergyman, writer and probably a closeted homosexual, so the story was also about someone living a double-life.
Fun story, Stevenson wrote the first draft in three days while in a fever. His wife read it and burned the manuscript, she thought it was so bad. So he wrote it again, again taking three days.
"Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson quite literally changed my life and how I viewed the world. I think you might love it.
I think she mentioned reading and not liking it. I love it though and feel like it gets more relevant every day.
Try The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin and Neuromancer by William Gibson.
I had good luck reading Hugo and Nebula Award winners to find SF authors I like.
R.U.R. is one of the books almost every child going through the education system in Czechia has to read, myself being among them. Interesting you liked it so much! I didn't expect such a positive review at all.
I'll happily join the other commenters in recommending War with the Newts, it's a book Čapek wrote near the end of his life. The premise is actually very similar to R.U.R., but I personally liked it much much more, but it's not a play so it might not be your cup of tea as much. Čapek is one of the most important Czech writers, who's written many books during his unfortunately short life, including many other plays.
I appreciate your insights.
One author who I find generally does kids "right" is Stephen King. He remembers what it's like to be a kid, and how they are treated and viewed by adults.
When you said your #1 choice I literally hissed “yes!!! Yesss!!!” One of my favorite books
She did space Vietnam before it was cool
An interesting book which deals with the issue of vast time between events is Joe Haldeman's Forever War. Humans fighting aliens but the perspective is from one of the soldiers dealing with the changes in society that the army keeps experiencing every time they come back to base because they are using sub-light ships which the time dilation of near light travel drops them back into an increasingly alien to them earth.
Canticle for Leibowitz has long been considered one of the greatest sci-fi works of all. Pretty cool to see younger sci-fi fans discovering it and still seeing how great it was.
I feel like you will find the opinion disproportionately held by Catholics.
@@CarrotConsumerinteresting opinion, what do you base it on, just feelings?
My I suggest (Mr. Fix It and Miss Sue)
book?This is the poetic tale of Miss Sue, a contentious young woman no matter what a father and mother would do. In trying to raise a proper woman of dignity and respect, what she became as she grew up was something they did not expect. So what are the parents to do when they are down to their last wit, and realize they have no choice but to send for Mr. Fix It.❤❤❤❤
Even though its a series of books, and not sci-fi, I would actually highly recommend Ursula K LeGuin's Earthsea books. Each one is its own complete story that feeds into the greater world of Earthsea and they're all wonderfully thoughtful and philosophical takes on fantasy and wizardry and patriarchy.
Stanislaw Lem is great. His last scifi novel Fiasco is brilliant, if you like dystopian hubris in novel form. Other people have already recommended Anathem, and Children Of Time, both of which are amazing.
I have a few recommendations for you:
1. Hospital Station by James White.And the entire series that follows. The variety of alien species and creativity on display is impressive.
2. Man Plus by Frederik Pohl. This one is hard for me to explain without spoiling it. Basically for the first manned mission to Mars they decide to turn one of the crew members into cyborg. And there are at least two great plot twists by the end of the book.
3. Startide Rising by David Brin. It's a second book in the series, but it's my favorite. Human starship is stuck on a weird planet. They need to repair it, hide from various space-faring aliens hunting them, and because of human curiosity they are also figuring out why this planet is so weird. And there are dolphins.
4. Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. It starts like fantasy, but it's SF. And damn good one at that.
Also those old books have chapters ending on cliffhanger because they were first published in newspapers. After the story was ended, it was printed again as a book...
Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is great, takes a look at how an anarchical society might operate. I haven’t read it yet, but The Left Hand of Darkness is another highly regarded one of her works in the vein of 70’s feminism sci fi.
I am loving the evolution of your set up! The video quality and sound seems to have improved a lot (it could be my new phone and the bias comes with not looking at a broken screen on a device 3 years old but, I don’t think it is!)
Really enjoying the updates we are getting on this channel and seeing you have enough time in your day to day to still come in and update us with these fun videos!
For something unique, funny, and imaginative, try Jack Vance, very underrated writer
If you liked RUR, I HIGHLY recommend Capek’s War with the Newts. A satire about humanity trying to subjugate a race of amphibious creatures discovered living in the sea.
That sounds way cool. On my list. Ka-ching!
Definitely read more of Le Guin. I'd highly recommend The Left Hand of Darkness, it's one of the most touching books I've ever read. A bunch of her books are interconnected in what is known as the "Hainish Cycle" but this is not a series and she didn't like this name readers gave to her work (for instance, there's no cycle). However, you do get bits that inform stuff in other books, but the chronology isn't automatically evident. Others have recommended The Dispossessed. I just finished that book a couple weeks ago and would also recommend it. This is not at all the point of the book but something I really liked and kept thinking about while reading was the implied discussion around epistemology and how a different culture may view and do science. You get a brief and more explicit mention of that same sort of perspective in The Left Hand of Darkness, too, and the book also deals with some topics that I'd argue are handled a lot better there than in The Dispossessed.
I read War of the Worlds in 5th grade; the scene in the basement was both fascinating and terrifying to young me
The episodic nature of the writing of someone like H.G. Wells might be a throwback to the way Dickens wrote. I don't think he ever wrote a (cover to cover) novel. What he did was write this month's or week's episode of the story for the magazine that published these episodes, along with other content.
I don't think that's how things worked by the time H.G. Wells came along, but as part of knowing "how to write", he might've just taken for granted that a chapter has to end on a cliffhanger. He would've grown up reading Dickens - maybe even in the "latest episode/ soap opera" format.
So that would make him exactly, indistinguishably like us, then? We still do 90% of what we do just because that's "the right way" (i.e. "normal"). That's why when e.g. we try to replace our CO2 emitting vehicles, we just stick an electric motor in a car. Because people drive cars. Always have driven cars, always will drive cars. I mean what else can you do? "People don't want to live close together". (Or "crowded like battery hens" - which is another kind of "normal" sacred to us ---- because everything normal is also sacred. That's where religion went to. It never went away.)
At least Dickens didn't have Claudio di Muerte somehow return from the dead after having accidentally burnt alive - I forget why - to be there at the end of the final episode of the current series with that old lady whose only job seems to be to do the curses for them. OK, maybe you watch a different soap, so this makes no sense, so you'd have to make up your own example that makes no sense to make the point. Point is if Dickens fires one of the actors in the show, that's it, character is "dead", finished, never to be seen again.
It occurs to me that you might easily have missed out on hearing that Jeff Wayne made an LP record based on War of the Worlds, once upon a time, long, long ago. If memory serves, the narration was by Orson Welles. They tell a bit of the story, then there's a song about it, and then it reaches The End, and everyone lives happily ever after. (There's a movie, too. The LP record was the soundtrack. It has an orchestra at least part of the time.)
The stories were all serialised in magazines at the time. This is a fine SF tradition.
Narration was by Richard Burton! I have the double vinyl album, one of my favourites.
If you like weird aliens you will love: Blindsight by Peter Watts.
It's the best description of a truly alien species and its first contact with humans. Very imaginative.
If I may recommend you the works of Dan Simmons, who's novels can rarely be defined as belonging to just a single genre of literature. He has classic Sci-Fi novels, horror in the style of Steven King, novels inspired by true event that always involve some "supernatural" elements in the fictional parts, and many other. I know most people only know Simmons for his Hyperion and Endymion series, but to me many of his non Sci-fi novels are also masterpieces. Novels like: Summer of Night, Song of Kali, The Terror, Drood, Black Hills and The Abominable...to name a few.
Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg, 1980. Fast-evolving life on a neutron star... basically "Flatland" for techies.
I just got into reading any sicfi for the first time this year through the channel bookpilled, love to see this sort of content from you too!
Bookpilled!
'Make a book short again' made me lol
I loved the Chrysalids when I read it as a child. The day of the triffids was also excellent. You should definitely read that.
Both were required reading when I was in school. Great books!
If I remember correctly, many of the oldest books were originaly weekly serials, chapter by chapter, in newspapers, thus the cliff hanger at the end off each chapter.
For interesting aliens - I am not sure if 1992 is ancient enough, but "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge presented some of the most alien aliens I have ever read.
As for the magic "ansible" (a contraction of "answerable") instant communication device, I doubt you'll be surprised that it first showed up in Ursula K. Le Guin's book "Rocannon's World" from 1966. It's been reused a million times over.
You've got a great classic selection... but have you been introduced to the alternate timeline Vampire as a purposeful part of a crew aboard a spaceship traveling for LOONG periods? "Blindsight" by Peter Watts is way too new being from 2006, but it certainly left my mind going a bit. A DIFFERENT book for sure.
(edited to include authors name)
Thank you I've wanted this content since your first videos, thanks!
R.U.R. is such a great book, glad you loved it! I would absolutely recommend War with the Newts from Capek - it's the same core idea as RUR, but executed even better and more in-depth. It's not a play anymore, but if you like some experimental writing (using news articles, radio broadcast transcripts and such to tell parts of the story), you'll reallllllly enjoy it!
The world makes sense you simply refuse to permit me to solve it.
Oh, We is my favourite dystopia of all time. it’s idealistic but terrifying, so good
Not old enough to be a classic yet but Embassytown by China Mieville is so so good (seconding The Disposessed also!)
Embassytown was so good!
Agreed. _Embassytown_ is stunningly good, as is _The Disposessed._
It's interesting to compare and contrast with the "Three-Body Problem" series as very different takes on "aliens who don't really get the concept of lying".
Perdido Street Station and The Scar are much better.
The Once and Future King is a masterpiece. White was obviously troubled, but this work is special.
Good list and good discussion of the books. When you were describing your selection process, I was a little afraid there'd be a bunch of E.E. "Doc" Smith and Jack Williamson, but that apprehension was almost immediately dispelled. I was interested in what you had to say about "Kindred" - like you, I'm very glad I've read the book and found it enthralling, but haven't reread it.
Jeff Wayne’s musical version of the War of the Worlds is a classic experimental album. Richard Burton as the narrator was fantastic. The double vinyl album has a giant liner book with great artwork. There are no grooves left in my records. I had to get it on DVD. Scariest ‘oooo laaaa’ lyric ever btw.
C.M. Kornbluth "The Marching Morons"
Yevgeny Zamyatin "We"
Old sci-fi that I only learned about within the past few years. Gives a different take on dystopian visions from the past.
Grass by Sheri S Tepper is a great old sci-fi book. It definitely felt like it should be considered a classic.
Absolutely! Although Grass is nominally the first of three books in the Arbai series, it stands alone perfectly fine. Beauty is another standout among her many excellent books.
10:00 - 10:42 for those who like the premise of "The Chrysalids", I recommend "The Waves Extinguish the Wind" by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky.
28:01 Something to note about the Le Guin: it’s a part of the Hainish novels, so there are also implications of the development of the ansible and the FTL, which are talked about in The Dispossessed and other novels
I don't know that you would enjoy reading his stuff, but David Weber does a lot of military sci fi like the Honor Harrington series where communication delays are a thing. The interesting thing in this regard is how he takes a lot of inspiration from Earth navies and merchant shipping, so this communication delays seem reminiscent of delays in the age of sailing ships.
I second Tau Zero by Poul Anderson. Another option would be Gateway, by Fredrik Pohl, about near-future humans trying to figure out how to work a number of alien spacecraft found on an asteroid, for which (naturally) they need test pilot guinea pigs. Pohl and his friend Cyril Kornbluth wrote several novels together in the 1950s that are pretty good as well. The one I remember best is Gladiator-At-Law.
Gateway is great stuff, it really tickled my brain. His short stories are good too.
Oh these were really awesome recommendations! Loved your reviews of the ones I had already read, a *loooong* time ago, and the ones I've never heard of are going on my TBR. Thanks!
You should definetly read "Ice" by Anna Kavan, its a complete enigma and its perfect. And "We Who Are About To..." By Joanna Russ, a perfect antithesis to scifi tropes and amazingly written.
Glad to see that Karel Capek made the list. I highly recommend his satire "War with the Newts". Kind of a preposterous premise that resonates tremendously today.
If you're interested in Lem (and already can stomach his dryness), I would recommend reading such novels as The Invincible and Fiasco, and also some of his short stories compilations like The Star Diaries (and its follow-up The Futurological Congress) and The Cyberiad. Also, if you can find it, try to read his monograph called Science Fiction and Futurology: it's not only an attempt to define science fiction as a genre, it is also the most scathing criticism of Western science fiction tradition I've ever read, he does not hold any punches.
I'm so glad to hear you read Kindred!! It's my favorite book of the past year and easily cemented Butler as one of my favorite authors ever
For me, listening to Jeff Wayne's musical version of The War of the Worlds is as satisfying as reading a good sci-fi book. Everybody should check it out if not familiar.
Justin Hayward, "Forever Autumn".
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Must-read! My fave Le Guin book.
The speech by the New Zealander near the end of The Chrysalids was "borrowed" by Jefferson Airplane for the song "Crown of Creation". I think that I read R.U.R. for English class in High School. I love Philp K. Dick, my favorite of his books is "Martian Time-Slip" it is brilliant in a dozen different ways at once.
can only say 'read everything by le guin you can find' and...
chrysalids is I think the weakest wyndham 'proper novel' (he had a long history of shorts published in various sci fi mags etc going back to the 1920s). the kraken wakes is a fascinating take on 'alien invasion' stories, but for me his finest piece is 'trouble with lichen' which is that kind of sci fi that he does best - everyday ordinariness with one sciency thing that changes, and it is to me such a realistic take on the practicalities of coming across what would be a revolutionary discovery - do you make it public, do you keep it secret, do you use it for personal gain or to quietly shift how society works...? love it to bits.
I'm not fond of the ending of Chrysalids, too much preaching by that damn woman. Looong way back to New Zealand, imagine her gabbing all the way, she might just have had a nasty accident falling out the door of the helicopter, oh crap, there she goes, what were the chances. 'Chocky' is a really great Wyndham.
"Protector" and "Neutron Star" by Larry Niven are fairly short novels that might be amusing to an astrophysicist. The only book I've read by Jonna Russ is "And Chaos Died", but I'd say it's fairly problematic in a lot of ways... But it's not like Niven or most sci-fi authors of that time are going to sit comfortably today. I don't know, it might be an interesting read as long as you are in for that challenge.
Always a big fan of Niven. Love his Known Space books which include the ones you mentioned. Every 5 years or so I go back and reread Ringworld and The Ringworld Engineers. I thought it was cool that MIT students figured out that the Ringworld would be unstable.
3:53 "I don't even think I know any stereotypes about the Welsh"
me, laughing: OMG, please don't go there...
3:56 "and now I do I guess"
me, still laughing: the way you say it, it doesn't sound like it's the one I'm thinking about
Since you enjoyed R.U.R., I'd recommend Čapek's other work, namely the dystopian novel War with the Newts, which I think offers a fascinating glimpse into the 1930s zeitgeist with a fair bit of satire.
I enjoyed this so much, please make more of these videos if they interest you! I also love short books, slow and overly-detailed writing, and Le Guin. I'm going to check the library for everything on here I haven't read yet.
As you can see from the comments, you could probably do an entire Le Guin video, with The Dispossessed, The Lathe of Heaven, and, my very favorite book, The Left Hand of Darkness. Other short classics I love are Roadside Picnic, Rendezvous with Rama, and Remnant Population.
edit: just after posting this I realized this is a second channel from you come up in my suggestions, hah. I'm excited!
If you haven't read it already, I recommend "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny. It's a bit borderline on whether it's sci-fi, but it goes to really interesting places!
Yes, I second this recommendation
Also the Amber books
I read The Word For World Is Forest recently, and IIRC the earth had been logged out. There were no trees for logging.
So glad you love Le Guin. She's an all-time great. Any book of hers will be a solid recommendation.
You should read Once and Future King.
It's a good take on the Arthurian legend and if nothing else that particular iteration has been influential on the interpretation of the myth since. So even if you don't like it there's still some utility there in recognizing where other authors are pulling from.
Though the caveat is that I haven't read it in a long time. So make of that what you will.