I Like Sci-Fi Books and I Cannot Lie: A Sci-Fi Reading List

Post by BookPerson Joel N.

I am an unabashed nerd for life. A lifer. Some of my earliest memories include watching Star Wars and Tron with my dad. By high school I was mainlining 800 page space operas while waiting outside, overnight for tickets to one of life’s biggest disappointments, Star Wars Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace. Uhg. Let’s not talk about it anymore.

Ultimately I got a job at BookPeople and started moderating a monthly science fiction club* to feed my sci-fi addiction.

Sadly, the label Science Fiction carries a stigma that wards off the average reader. Even though lots of people like Star Wars and other equally nerdy fare, they are reluctant to enter the Sci-Fi section of a store. John DeNardo with Kirkus Reviews recently tried to explain why in his article “SF Signal: Don’t Be a Literary Snob, Try Sci Fi”.

Basically it boils down to marketing. Those who haughtily say “I don’t read sci-fi” have probably read plenty but just didn’t know it. The Passage by Justin Cronin, Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, absolutely anything ever by Kurt Vonnegut – these are ALL science fiction stories, just sold in the general fiction section.

A lot of those books have been lavished with praise by the literati, but wouldn’t have been given nearly as much adulation were they filed in the genre fiction ghetto of sci-fi. On one hand, that’s a shame. On the other, this means there are a lot of amazing books out there to discover. And since you’ve asked, I’ve made you a short list.

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. – Miller only completed one novel in his life, because he only needed one crack at it to succeed wildly. The book opens with the discovery of an artifact of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads “Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels–bring home for Emma,” an untranslatable message from the ancient past. From there, the book pinwheels over a thousand years, dropping you in at three pivotal points, Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man), Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light), and Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will Be Done). I recommend this book unconditionally.

The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick – Welcome to post-war America circa 1962, where slavery is once again legal, Jews hide under assumed names and the United States and much of the world has been divided up by the two global super powers: Nazi Germany and Japan. Though a world so different from our own could make for a ridiculous Michael Bay movie gimmick, here it serves as a tense backdrop to a hand-wringing slice-of-life story that deftly weaves multiple plotlines back and forth. People were writing alternate histories before Dick, but nothing was the same after this book.

Neuromancer, William Gibson – I can sum this book up pretty quickly: William Gibson coined the word cyberspace for this book and it was first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction awards: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. Done. Now go read it.

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin – This is science fiction for the thinking reader, a thought experiment writ large on a planet of permanent winter, whose human inhabitants have no gender. There are no cardboard cut-out characters in this book, and there are also no explosions in space or dueling with laser swords. LeGuin’s prose is hypnotic and her world and its characters are completely enveloping. Reading this book actually made me feel cold while the characters were outdoors. Beautiful.

Altered Carbon, Richard K. Morgan – At its heart this is a crime thriller, but Morgan can write, and write well. Without giving too much away, Morgan’s narrator, Takeshi Kovacs, gets to narrate his own death… multiple times. If LeGuin sounded too slow paced for you, Morgan should be more you speed. There is hard-boiled tough guy humor, double crosses, plot twists and excellent action scenes.

*BookPeople’s Sci-Fi Book Club, Ludicrous Speed, meets the third Monday of every month. This month’s meeting is Mon 7/18 at 7PM, when we’ll be discussing The Passage by Justin Cronin.