Intro to Hard SF for the non-SF Reader
This work is copyright M.A. Mohanraj 1994, all rights reserved.
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This list is designed as an introduction to and a sampling of the best
of modern science fiction. Assuming you're looking for hard,
reasonably literary sf, here are my personal favorites, from memory.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some classics:
* = Nebula winner (the Nebulas are given annually since 1965 for the
best sf of the year, voted on by the members of the Science
Fiction Writers Association -- unfortunately, my list only
goes to 1985)
- Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation books, starting with
Prelude to Foundation (classic sf)
- Banks, Iain
The Culture novels
- Bradbury, Ray
Farenheit 451
The Martian Chronicles
- Brin, David
* Startide Rising
Sundiver
The Practice Effect
- Butler, Octavia
Anything by her -- she's brilliant, and frightening
- Card, Orson Scott
* Ender's Game
* Speaker for the Dead
Songmaster
- Cherryh, C.J.
Cyteen trilogy
- Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
* Rendezvous with Rama
- Delany, Samuel R.
* Babel-17
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Dhalgren
The Motion of Light on Water (autobiography)
- Friedman, C.S.
In Conquest Born
The Madness Season
- Heinlein, Robert H.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Stranger in a Strange Land
- Herbert, Frank
* Dune
- Hogan, James P.
Inherit the Stars
- Kay, Guy Gavriel (this is fantasy, but if you're going to read one
fantasy novel, this is the one to read)
Tigana
- Keyes,
Daniel
* Flowers for Algernon
- LeGuin, Ursula
* The Left Hand of Darkness
* The Dispossessed
- McIntyre, Vonda N.
* Dreamsnake
- Niven, Larry
* Ringworld
- Panshin, Alexei
* Rite of Passage
- Pynchon, Thomas
The Crying of Lot 49
V., A Novel
Gravity's Rainbow
Vineland
- Wolfe, Gene
* The Claw of the Conciliator (the books in this series
have been recently collected into two volumes:
Shadow and Claw
Sword and Citadel
If you're interested in short fiction, you should also take a look at
Ben Bova's, _The Best of the Nebulas_. It includes the best (as voted
on again by the SFWA) of the short stories and novelets from 1967 -
1985. I didn't like all of them, but many were truly brilliant.
I list them for you below, in order: