“A Canticle for Leibowitz” … SciFi at over 50 years old, still unsettling. I finally managed to read it. Never knew what it was all about, but even just the title tells you this is no ordinary book.(And I haven’t had to — mostly unsuccessfully — translate as much Latin since I left school …)
It is science fiction at its best: it gives you a possible future, and its implications, that is easily believable as something that could happen more or less directly on the world trajectory we are all on. In fact, could happen almost immediately even now again, although the Cold War supposedly ended. And demands: so what are you going to do about it? Highly recommended if you care about this world.
Bob Blakley 09:14 on November 30, 2015 Permalink
On my list of top 5 sci-fi books ever
Johannes Ernst 16:59 on November 30, 2015 Permalink
What are the other four?
Bob Blakley 17:38 on November 30, 2015 Permalink
Dune, Neuromancer, Fahrenheit 451, and the Foundation Trilogy. Runners-up include Ringworld, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Fire Upon the Deep, When Gravity Fails, Sundiver, The Book of the New Sun, The Time Machine, The Diamond Age (to be contrarian, I think this is Stephenson’s best), Childhood’s End, The Andromeda Strain, and the incredible Flowers for Algernon. I am being unfair to Ursula K. LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson, but their prose never spoke to me. Solaris is too precious and opaque; The Handmaid’s Tale is a good story poorly told. A Wrinkle In Time is great, but really for kids. Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep is great but it’s a story rather than a novel. There are wonderful books which are not “great”; Burroughs’ John Carter Series and Doc Smith’s Lensman series come to mind. The Forever War and Ender’s Game are highly rated but somehow fall short for me. I don’t consider 1984 to be science fiction – though Brave New World is. I Am Legend is barely science fiction, and for that reason I leave it out of the top of the list, though it is a great lesson in the social construction of reality. Fantasy is a whole other kettle of fish and I have lists there too.
Johannes Ernst 22:45 on November 30, 2015 Permalink
Ok, Bob, you just created a whole bunch of work for the Santa Clara City Library. Taxpayer money at work, but then, I’m going to claim it is a much better cause than many other uses 🙂
Scott Rosenberg 17:55 on November 30, 2015 Permalink
Good list. I would add Zelazny’s Lord of Light
Evan Prodromou 16:33 on July 28, 2016 Permalink
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