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Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading List

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wraith808:
I love Lewis (one of my absolute favorites, if not #1). He's brilliant. His apologetics are amazing. His essays are remarkable. A wonderful author for anyone to read, and if he recommends it, hey, it's got to have merit~!
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+1
-kyrathaba (May 01, 2011, 07:33 PM)
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Agreed totally :)

JennyB:
Not on the list, but the book I always recommend to SF fans is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  In case you didn't know, it is considered the first SF novel by many.  It's one of my all-time favs.

C
-cthorpe (May 01, 2011, 02:23 PM)
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Indeed. Not at all what you might expect from the movies, and it's fascinating to see how its themes are revisited in more recent SF/fantasy.

For a more modern (very) short story with a deep impact, I would recommend Ursula le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, the Hugo award winner of 1974.

joiwind:
Yes, Lewis is one of my heros too (along with JRRT gws ( = goes without saying)), he said somewhere that his trilogy was strongly influenced by Lindsay's book.

There are also the novels of Charles Williams - in particular The Place of the Lion - these novels are even more 'religious' than those of Lewis but that depends how you read them, that doesn't bother me, some might say that they are quite old-fashioned but for me that just adds more charm.

And of course, as most people know, Lewis, Tolkien and Williams were friends and colleagues and members of a club called the Inklings.

- This may be a bit beside the point but in view of very recent events, it could be useful for some to read or re-read A Voyage to Arcturus to help reflect on what is the nature of evil and what we should do, or not do, about it.

rjbull:
Yes, Lewis is one of my heros too (along with JRRT
[...]
There are also the novels of Charles Williams - in particular The Place of the Lion - these novels are even more 'religious' than those of Lewis-joiwind (May 02, 2011, 10:50 AM)
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In his BOOKS REMEMBERED list, author Garth Nix says this:
Red Moon, Black Mountain by Joy Chant is what I would call ‘Harder-edged Narnia’. This is a novel in which children are transported to a fantasy world and take part in a great struggle against evil. Grittier and tougher than Narnia, , it was unjustly neglected, probably because it was way ahead of its time.
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But I digress... no longer on SF.

JohnFredC:
Of all the works on that list, IMO The Diamond Age is the most “prescient” for modern times...  what do others think?

Lists like this one both frustrate and excite me because so many worthies are listed, but so many ignored, too.

I’ve been avidly reading SF since 1961 (3rd grade, starting with Andre Norton).  Here are a quick three not on the awards list:

Edgar Pangborn: A Mirror for Observers
M.A. Foster: Morphodite
Cordwainer Smith: The Rediscovery of Man (anthology)

You’ll have to hunt for the first two.  See Wikipedia for more about these authors.

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