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?
Timestamps: 1:58 T.H. White - The Master (1957) 4:29 Robert Stevenson - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) 5:32 Octavia E. Butler - Kindred (1979) 7:09 John Wyndham - The Chrysalids (1955) 10:55 Walter M. Miller Jr. - A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) 12:18 H.G. Wells - War of the Worlds (1898) 14:25 Ina Levin - The Stepford Wives (1972) 15:25 Yevgeny Zamyatin - We (1921) 18:31 Joanna Russ - The Female Man (1975) 20:06 Karel Čapek - Rossum's Universal Robots (1920) 22:08 Stanislaw Lem - Eden (1958) 25:01 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Word for World is Forest 1976)
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
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.
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...
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.
@@davedsilva Star Trek was largely inspired by fiction that came before...in some cases, hundreds of years before. I love that it spread those ideas farther and wider than many of its influences could hope to, but I still love reading the oldies~
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@MattMcIrvin The PBS one is okay, if you can get along with the 70s vibe. There are several books which can't be done justice by filming, - largely psychological ones - like Solaris, and this. Better to read them :)
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.
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.
@@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. 🎉
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...)
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. 🎉
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).
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 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.
Agree - great book. The second in the series has an amazing alien too, and he’s recently released Alien Clay, which I thought of during the discussion of Eden
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!
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 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.
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").
@@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.
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.
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 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.
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.
The little parable used to explain the setting that the title comes from has stayed with me so strongly ever since reading it the first time. It's one of my favourite bits of fantastical storytelling. The Strutagtskys' _The Doomed City_ is also incredible. Very dreary and a bit challenging but also deeply evocative and interesting.
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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!
1:58 The Master by T. H. White 4:32 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 5:34 Kindred by Octavia E. Butler 7:10 The Chrysalids by John Wyndham 10:57 A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr 12:23 The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells 14:27 The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin 15:29 We by Yevgeny Zamyatin 18:33 The Female Man by Joanna Russ 20:08 Rossum's Universal Robots (R.U.M.) by Karel Čapek 22:10 Eden by Stanislaw Lem 25:03 The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin
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.
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.
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
For me, "Fiasco" is a rewrite of Lem's "The Magellan Nebula" from 1956, I think never translated into English. And also gives a conclusion to "Tales of Pirx the Pilot" story.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Great video. Definitely added to my reading list. Also by Le Guin,,, Left Hand of Darkness is her classic. People have also mentioned The Dispossessed, which is brilliant. I also liked The Telling and Gifts.
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...
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".
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.
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.
Thank you Angela. That was a wonderful quick review. I haven't yet, but now I will read over half of all of these, maybe all. One thing I wish I could yell to the world, Do not google "best sci fi books of year xxxx"! It doesn't work. You get drek and all the names you already know. Your review Angela, and several others I've watched on TH-cam such as Bookpilled opened my eyes to dozens of authors I never even heard of. I thought I was done with science fiction. Now I'm just beginning. All over again. Grazie.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Great list, and please do yourself a favour and read everything else Le Guin and Butler ever wrote! I'm also really feeling the "make books short again". This year burnt me out with a few (great but) massive books, I'm thinking of sticking to novellas next year.
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'm just here to say I could listen to you talking about SF books all the time, it's such enjoyable experiance. Also great taste. It's funny how I've read all of these books except Female Man (because it's not translated to my language) and - that's a funny part - Eden by Lem altough I'm polish. It's a typical casus of "marveling about foreign things and not knowing well enough your own, local stuff" But I will definitly read all Lems works in the near future. Thanks for the video and I'm hoping similiar one will come someday! :-)
This video was a random youtube recommendation, and I'm so glad I clicked it! Now that I'm subscribed to your channels I look forward to seeing your new content while I continue to browse your back catalogue. As for book recommendations, it's a shame to hear you're not as much of a fan of series', as I tend to prefer them. However I think I might have a couple good ideas for you... *The Spin Trilogy by Robert Charles Wilson* is quite good, and you could get away with reading the first book as a standalone, if you didn't want to commit to the entire trilogy. The second book isn't as strong as the first anyway, but the third is my favorite. If you know what von Neumann probes are, this series takes the concept to its limit. The Earth isn't the only world suddenly encased in a slow time bubble either. *The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell* and its sequel *Children of God* are excellent, and again you could get away with just reading the first. There's no cliffhanger ending in the middle or anything. It has a pretty good depiction of realistic interstellar travel after SETI succeeds and the first alien signal is detected. However, the only group capable of funding the mission to the alien's world is... the Jesuit church. The story is told by the sole survivor of the mission, decades later due to the relativistic effects of the trip out and back. Currently I've been reading the *Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons* and I've been blown away by them. I'm almost done with the 2nd book and I can't wait to devour the next two. The first one was like a scifi version of The Canterbury Tales, with multiple characters telling their own stories and weaving various explanations about their far future world into a complex narrative, while they travel together to their destination; a certain death, possible salvation, or the beginning of an apocalyptic war. Unfortunately, this series DOES end on a giant cliffhanger between books, so multiple books are required for a complete story. So far though, I can say it is very much worth it! And finally, because I've seen you're not shy about reading things from the 1800's, *The Beetle by Richard Marsh.* Another work told from multiple points of view, 4 characters in 19th century London tell their version of events surrounding the mysterious Egyptian fellow and what he wants with the up-and-coming young politician, the politician's lover, her childhood friend who has a crush on her, and what this all has to do with hypnosis, real magic, and chemical warfare? Not to worry, our dashing detective is on the case! There's a great audiobook version available for free here on youtube.
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 can add to that annoyance: There is a direct translation, by Bill Johnston (so you know what to look for), published in 2011. While I say "published", that basically only amounts to e-book and an audio book, neither of which I can find in any store in the Netherlands. I was extremely happy to get my hands on the most recent translation of "We" (by Bela Shayevich), but Solaris still eludes me.
Informative! Learning that there are so many bite sized sci-fi stories out there. The description for 'Eden' sounds curiously like the set-up for the recent streaming show Scavengers Reign.
It's not always thought of as sci-fi, but one interesting thing about the Dragonriders of Pern books is that the setting there was that kind of space colony with a massive communication delay between them and earth, and that resulted in them just forgetting about Earth. After a few generations, nobody cares that they came from another planet, and after a few more, nobody knows it.
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!
The most life-changing book I ever read was Ursula K LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness". I hear her interview on the subject, and she said that her original inspiration for the novel was the sentence, "The king is pregnant." Once you've read this book, you will never look at sex roles the same way again.
Children of Time, Children of Ruin & Children of Memory, by Adrian Tchaikovsky - space colonization and human evolution stuff. The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut series) by Mary Robinette Kowal - beginnings of space colonization. I Have No Mouth and Must Scream by Harlan Ellison (others from him too). Berserker by Fred Saberhagan - killer space robots (others from this author are good too).
Fun fact - The Chrysalids was published in the US using the title Re-Birth. I read it about 50 years ago (along with all the other John Wyndham books my library had). The one thought that has stuck with me all those years was the telepaths feeling sorry for people who we all alone in their thoughts forever.
Thanks for the recs Angela. I would definitely recommend reading Le Guin, she's a fantastic writer. The Earthsea trilogy is great, but it's fantasy not scifi.
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.❤❤❤❤
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
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.
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.
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.
People still read Joanna Russ! Hooray! One book and one collection of stories that are emotionally on the opposite end of the scale: 1) Cyteen (might be one volume or bound as a trilogy) by C J Cherryh. On a future colony far away: murder, politics, the ethics of cloning and genetic manipulation. Designing people and designing societies. 2) Any of the short stories by Cordwainer Smith (pen name of Paul M. A. Linebarger.) One to start with: The Ballad of Lost C'Mell. You'll either be hooked on his lyrical writing style and the universe he builds or you'll hate it. I don't think there is an in-between.
Each chapter of the 1880's book ends on a cliff hanger because they were written and published one chapter at a time in magazines.
This practiced continued into the 1930s, at least, although later books were more smoothly edited into novel form.
And we've continued this tradition, in arguably a lower form, in fan fiction.
@@mjacton Specifically Royal Road. Though there are a few gems for unrelated/non-fanfic on there, depending on taste.
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
Timestamps:
1:58 T.H. White - The Master (1957)
4:29 Robert Stevenson - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
5:32 Octavia E. Butler - Kindred (1979)
7:09 John Wyndham - The Chrysalids (1955)
10:55 Walter M. Miller Jr. - A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)
12:18 H.G. Wells - War of the Worlds (1898)
14:25 Ina Levin - The Stepford Wives (1972)
15:25 Yevgeny Zamyatin - We (1921)
18:31 Joanna Russ - The Female Man (1975)
20:06 Karel Čapek - Rossum's Universal Robots (1920)
22:08 Stanislaw Lem - Eden (1958)
25:01 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Word for World is Forest 1976)
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.
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. 🎉
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.
@@drmaybe7680Great blurb showcasing this book's awesomeness! Thanks.
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.
@@davedsilva Star Trek was largely inspired by fiction that came before...in some cases, hundreds of years before. I love that it spread those ideas farther and wider than many of its influences could hope to, but I still love reading the oldies~
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.
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.
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.
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.
I feel this one gets overlooked. IMO it's her superior work. Brilliant.
@@MattMcIrvin The PBS one is okay, if you can get along with the 70s vibe. There are several books which can't be done justice by filming, - largely psychological ones - like Solaris, and this. Better to read them :)
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.
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.
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 TH-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. 🎉
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.
@@meesalikeuFire Upon the Deep space battle vs House of Suns space battle for GOAT
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).
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.
Agree - great book.
The second in the series has an amazing alien too, and he’s recently released Alien Clay, which I thought of during the discussion of Eden
This person is so smart. I really enjoy their ramblings and rants
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.
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 was looking forward to seeing this list after you first mention Canticle!
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 🐑
@@philbertbrainstain Is that where that title comes from? Damn, that hits hard.
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.
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.
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.
The Word For World Is Forest legitimately made me cry.
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.
When you said your #1 choice I literally hissed “yes!!! Yesss!!!” One of my favorite books
She did space Vietnam before it was cool
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.
The little parable used to explain the setting that the title comes from has stayed with me so strongly ever since reading it the first time. It's one of my favourite bits of fantastical storytelling.
The Strutagtskys' _The Doomed City_ is also incredible. Very dreary and a bit challenging but also deeply evocative and interesting.
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.
EE "Doc" Smith is an overlooked gem.
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
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.
Oh, Dr Collier, Parable of the Sower! You MUST!
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).
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.
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.)
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.
Let me echo all the others: more Le Guin and Butler! They’re both literary geniuses
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!
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!
1:58 The Master by T. H. White
4:32 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
5:34 Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
7:10 The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
10:57 A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr
12:23 The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
14:27 The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
15:29 We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
18:33 The Female Man by Joanna Russ
20:08 Rossum's Universal Robots (R.U.M.) by Karel Čapek
22:10 Eden by Stanislaw Lem
25:03 The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin
"reading classic sci-fi until the world makes sense" Oh what perfect words in this time, just instantly relatable.
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.
"Ender's Game" if you haven't already, seems like it would be something you'd enjoy.
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.
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
For me, "Fiasco" is a rewrite of Lem's "The Magellan Nebula" from 1956, I think never translated into English. And also gives a conclusion to "Tales of Pirx the Pilot" story.
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.
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.
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!
So glad you liked Canticle. I also read this about 6 months ago and really enjoyed it.
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.
Yayayayay!!! So happy you loved Kindred! I'm a big Octavia E. Butler fan
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.
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.
Great video. Definitely added to my reading list. Also by Le Guin,,, Left Hand of Darkness is her classic. People have also mentioned The Dispossessed, which is brilliant. I also liked The Telling and Gifts.
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...
I'm not a big reader but I now really want to read these books. Angela, you have a way of describing books that makes them really interesting.
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.
Rewired my brain, second this reccom 👍
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
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.
Great realization of your project!
So glad you love Le Guin. She's an all-time great. Any book of hers will be a solid recommendation.
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.
Thank you Angela. That was a wonderful quick review. I haven't yet, but now I will read over half of all of these, maybe all. One thing I wish I could yell to the world, Do not google "best sci fi books of year xxxx"! It doesn't work. You get drek and all the names you already know. Your review Angela, and several others I've watched on TH-cam such as Bookpilled opened my eyes to dozens of authors I never even heard of. I thought I was done with science fiction. Now I'm just beginning. All over again. Grazie.
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!
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'm going to read a bunch of them. Thank you for the recommendations!
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.
I loved the quantum shift in delivery when you reached Butler. I was like "Yeah, a book; another book; but now a BOOK, like a REAL BOOK."
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.
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.
The world makes sense you simply refuse to permit me to solve it.
Great list, and please do yourself a favour and read everything else Le Guin and Butler ever wrote!
I'm also really feeling the "make books short again". This year burnt me out with a few (great but) massive books, I'm thinking of sticking to novellas next year.
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?
@@scottmclaughlin1410i mean they did start it with “i feel”….
I'm just here to say I could listen to you talking about SF books all the time, it's such enjoyable experiance.
Also great taste. It's funny how I've read all of these books except Female Man (because it's not translated to my language) and - that's a funny part - Eden by Lem altough I'm polish. It's a typical casus of "marveling about foreign things and not knowing well enough your own, local stuff" But I will definitly read all Lems works in the near future.
Thanks for the video and I'm hoping similiar one will come someday! :-)
'Make a book short again' made me lol
This video was a random youtube recommendation, and I'm so glad I clicked it! Now that I'm subscribed to your channels I look forward to seeing your new content while I continue to browse your back catalogue.
As for book recommendations, it's a shame to hear you're not as much of a fan of series', as I tend to prefer them. However I think I might have a couple good ideas for you...
*The Spin Trilogy by Robert Charles Wilson* is quite good, and you could get away with reading the first book as a standalone, if you didn't want to commit to the entire trilogy. The second book isn't as strong as the first anyway, but the third is my favorite. If you know what von Neumann probes are, this series takes the concept to its limit. The Earth isn't the only world suddenly encased in a slow time bubble either.
*The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell* and its sequel *Children of God* are excellent, and again you could get away with just reading the first. There's no cliffhanger ending in the middle or anything. It has a pretty good depiction of realistic interstellar travel after SETI succeeds and the first alien signal is detected. However, the only group capable of funding the mission to the alien's world is... the Jesuit church. The story is told by the sole survivor of the mission, decades later due to the relativistic effects of the trip out and back.
Currently I've been reading the *Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons* and I've been blown away by them. I'm almost done with the 2nd book and I can't wait to devour the next two. The first one was like a scifi version of The Canterbury Tales, with multiple characters telling their own stories and weaving various explanations about their far future world into a complex narrative, while they travel together to their destination; a certain death, possible salvation, or the beginning of an apocalyptic war. Unfortunately, this series DOES end on a giant cliffhanger between books, so multiple books are required for a complete story. So far though, I can say it is very much worth it!
And finally, because I've seen you're not shy about reading things from the 1800's, *The Beetle by Richard Marsh.* Another work told from multiple points of view, 4 characters in 19th century London tell their version of events surrounding the mysterious Egyptian fellow and what he wants with the up-and-coming young politician, the politician's lover, her childhood friend who has a crush on her, and what this all has to do with hypnosis, real magic, and chemical warfare? Not to worry, our dashing detective is on the case! There's a great audiobook version available for free here on youtube.
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
I can add to that annoyance:
There is a direct translation, by Bill Johnston (so you know what to look for), published in 2011.
While I say "published", that basically only amounts to e-book and an audio book, neither of which I can find in any store in the Netherlands.
I was extremely happy to get my hands on the most recent translation of "We" (by Bela Shayevich), but Solaris still eludes me.
Informative! Learning that there are so many bite sized sci-fi stories out there.
The description for 'Eden' sounds curiously like the set-up for the recent streaming show Scavengers Reign.
It's not always thought of as sci-fi, but one interesting thing about the Dragonriders of Pern books is that the setting there was that kind of space colony with a massive communication delay between them and earth, and that resulted in them just forgetting about Earth. After a few generations, nobody cares that they came from another planet, and after a few more, nobody knows it.
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!
The most life-changing book I ever read was Ursula K LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness". I hear her interview on the subject, and she said that her original inspiration for the novel was the sentence, "The king is pregnant." Once you've read this book, you will never look at sex roles the same way again.
I had good luck reading Hugo and Nebula Award winners to find SF authors I like.
"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.
Children of Time, Children of Ruin & Children of Memory, by Adrian Tchaikovsky - space colonization and human evolution stuff.
The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut series) by Mary Robinette Kowal - beginnings of space colonization.
I Have No Mouth and Must Scream by Harlan Ellison (others from him too).
Berserker by Fred Saberhagan - killer space robots (others from this author are good too).
Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg, 1980. Fast-evolving life on a neutron star... basically "Flatland" for techies.
Thank you I've wanted this content since your first videos, thanks!
Excellent video! Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and The Lathe of Heaven are all superb and I highly recommend them.
Fun fact - The Chrysalids was published in the US using the title Re-Birth. I read it about 50 years ago (along with all the other John Wyndham books my library had). The one thought that has stuck with me all those years was the telepaths feeling sorry for people who we all alone in their thoughts forever.
i didnt know that title, but its been back to chrysalids for quite awhile now.
Thanks for the recs Angela. I would definitely recommend reading Le Guin, she's a fantastic writer. The Earthsea trilogy is great, but it's fantasy not scifi.
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.❤❤❤❤
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
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!
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.
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.
i was looking for something new to read and a lot of these sound great
People still read Joanna Russ! Hooray!
One book and one collection of stories that are emotionally on the opposite end of the scale:
1) Cyteen (might be one volume or bound as a trilogy) by C J Cherryh. On a future colony far away: murder, politics, the ethics of cloning and genetic manipulation. Designing people and designing societies.
2) Any of the short stories by Cordwainer Smith (pen name of Paul M. A. Linebarger.) One to start with: The Ballad of Lost C'Mell. You'll either be hooked on his lyrical writing style and the universe he builds or you'll hate it. I don't think there is an in-between.
Thanks for the recommendations; im currently Reading Kindred, The Disposessed and Red Mars