100 Must-read Science Fiction Novels

Nick Rennison, Stephen E. Andrews

• Publisher: A&C Black Academic and Professional
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780713675856
• eBook ISBN: 9781408136089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Publishing
• Index: Literature

"A reliable guide to what science fiction is" Christopher Priest, award-winning science fiction author "A really good introduction to the genre" SFX Magazine "Perceptive and glorious" Ian Watson, author of the screenplay for Steve Spielberg's A.I.
Want to become a science fiction buff? Want to expand your reading in your favourite genre? This is a good place to start! From the publishers of the popular Good Reading Guide comes a rich selection of some of the finest SF novels ever published. With 100 of the best titles fully reviewed and a further 500 recommended, you'll quickly become an expert in the world of science fiction.
The book is arranged by author and includes some thematic entries and special categories such as SF film adaptations, SF in rock music and Philip K. Dick in the mass media. It also includes a history of SF and a new definition of the genre, plus lists of award winners and book club recommendations. Foreword by Christopher Priest, the multiple award-winning SF author.

A-Z OF ENTRIES

BRIAN ALDISS (b. 1925) UK

HOTHOUSE (1962)

At some point in the far future the Earth has become fixed in its orbit in such a way that one side faces continually towards the sun and the other remains shrouded in perpetual darkness. The result has been a radical alteration in the flora and fauna on the planet. The sunward side of the Earth is largely given over to plants and it is dominated by the vast efflorescence of a gigantic, multi-levelled tree. While the vegetation and plant species, many of them weird and wonderful, and brilliantly described by Aldiss, have flourished, human life has retreated to one of the lowest rungs of the ecological ladder. Stranded amid the fecund jungle of the future, and surrounded by the berrywhisks, trapper-snappers, oystermaws and wiltmilts of Aldiss’s imagination, the green-skinned descendants of man have to struggle to survive. The story focuses on a boy named Gren who is taken away from his tribe and comes into contact with an intelligent fungus intent on using humans for its own purposes. Linked to the fungus in a symbiotic relationship, Gren and others are led on a journey that eventually takes them to the dark side of the planet.

Like Non-Stop, Aldiss’s first SF novel, Hothouse follows a human quest to understand the nature of the world. The narrative is driven forward by Gren’s voyage further and further into the unknown but what the reader eventually remembers of Hothouse is not so much the quest itself as the inventiveness with which Aldiss creates his alternative world. Aldiss has been an important figure in British SF for close on half a century and his Helliconia trilogy, first published in the 1980s, is an epic vision of the rise and fall of civilizations but his earlier novels, of which Hothouse is a fine example, can scarcely be matched for the sense of wonder and astonishment they evoke.

Read on

Non-Stop, Frankenstein Unbound, The Saliva Tree
Michael Coney, The Ultimate Jungle; Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood; » Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word For World is Forest

ISAAC ASIMOV (1920–92) USA

I, ROBOT (1950)

One of the most consistently recurring motifs in SF has been the idea of artificial intelligence and thinking machines, and it was particularly prevalent in the decade and a half immediately after the Second World War. The classic 1940s’ vision of the robot (although the stories were not published in book form until 1950, they had mostly appeared in SF magazines in the previous decade) is that of Isaac Asimov. Built around the famous Three Laws of Robotics, the stories collected in I, Robot did much to shape popular notions of what a robot might be and it is difficult to over-estimate their influence. Although the three laws were created by Asimov in close collaboration with Astounding editor » John W. Campbell, it was Asimov who used them to most memorable effect. The nine stories in I, Robot, self-contained but tied together by the character of Susan Calvin, a robopsychologist working for the company which first manufactured the thinking machines, explore the consequences and implications of the laws when humans and robots interact. Through the stories Asimov not only builds up a gripping fictional history of the development of robotics from the late 20th century to the late 21st century but also sets out the logical and moral dilemmas that face both humans and robots as machine intelligence grows more powerful. In one story a robot on a space station, after logically deducing the existence of a deity, decides to serve God rather than man; in another a telepathic robot struggles to reconcile contradictory interpretations of the Laws and self-destructs when it finds it impossible to do so. Asimov’s inventive stories, ranging in tone from darkly dystopian to humorous, examine questions about the dividing line between man and machine that have always intrigued SF writers.

Film version: I, Robot (2004)

Read on

The Rest of the Robots, The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun
Artificial men: » Barrington J. Bayley, The Soul of a Robot; Josef and Karel Capek R.U.R. (see Glossary: Robot); Sheila MacLeod, Xanthe and the Robots; » Robert Silverberg, Tower of Glass; » Jack Williamson, The Humanoids

FOUNDATION (1953)

Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, of which this is the first volume, is set far in the future when much of the known universe is united in a peaceful and largely benevolent galactic empire. Hari Seldon, a professor of psychohistory (statistical and psychological prediction of the future), foresees a disastrous era of war and anarchy in the empire to come, and establishes two Foundations on the galaxy’s edge, apparently dedicated to safeguarding civilized knowledge until it is again required. This first volume concentrates on the first Foundation, allowing readers to watch its history unfold over more than a century in a series of snapshots from the passing decades. More of Seldon’s long-term plans are revealed, years after his death. The influence of the Foundation begins to spread from the planet on which it was originally established to neighbouring worlds. Through the power of religion and trade, the seeds of a new civilization in waiting are planted.

Originally published in instalments in » John W. Campbell’s Astounding magazine (which explains the episodic structure of the books), the Foundation trilogy is a massively ambitious attempt to map out the decline and eventual resurrection of an entire galaxy-wide civilization. Working on such a vast canvas, Asimov has little opportunity (or indeed inclination) to make use of subtlety of characterization or carefully nuanced plotting but this scarcely matters. In Foundation, he is not concerned with the ordinary and the everyday but with the large-scale workings of history and destiny. The grandeur of his imagination as he allows it the scope to play with the rise and fall of empires remains impressive more than fifty years after the books were first published. In later life Asimov returned to the Foundation universe to write a series of sequels. All are disappointing when compared to the epic vision of the original novels, written when the concept was fresh in Asimov’s mind.

Read on

Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation (the other two volumes in the original Foundation trilogy)
Imperial explorations: » John Brunner, Interstellar Empire; » Arthur C. Clarke, Imperial Earth; Keith Laumer, Retief; » Ursula K. Le Guin, Worlds of Exile and Illusion; Dan Simmons, Hyperion

J.G. BALLARD (b. 1930) UK

THE DROWNED WORLD (1962)

In the mid-21st century an ecological disaster has struck the world. Temperatures have risen, the polar ice caps have melted and much of the Earth has been flooded. Only around the poles is civilization now possible. London has sunk beneath the waters and is at the centre of a vast swamp where life is much as it was in the Triassic Age. An expedition heads southwards from the Arctic to study the flora and fauna of this new world. One of the expedition members is a scientist named Robert Kerans. Amid the lush swamplands and hidden monuments of a drowned London, Kerans begins to experience strange dreams. Just as the Earth has regressed to a past state, so too Kerans seems to be making a psychic descent into prehistory. Left in the primal lagoons covering the city when the expedition heads back north, Kerans and two colleagues begin to respond to the deep, atavistic urges that are calling to them from the surreal landscape but they are interrupted by the arrival of Strangman, a dandified pirate with a cohort of violent henchmen intent on plundering the drowned world.

Ballard’s fascination with the exploration of inner space and with plumbing the psychic depths, so unusual and liberating in the SF of the early 1960s, is most brilliantly revealed in The Drowned World. His prescience in describing a world transformed by environmental catastrophe may seem all the greater as the years pass but the strength of the novel lies not so much in this as in the voluptuous power with which he conjures up his vision of a primeval landscape and its effects on those who enter it. The Drowned World is a short novel but it is one that provides a startling and memorable perspective on the conscious and subconscious mind.

Read on

The Terminal Beach, The Drought
Not with a Bang: » Brian Aldiss, Greybeard; Anna Kavan, Ice; Adam Roberts, The Snow

SUPER-CANNES (2000)

It is five minutes into the future ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• About This Book
• Introduction
• A-Z of Entries
• Science Fiction Awards
• A Brief Glossary of SF Terms