Five books to get you to read SF

Damien Walter prompted his followers on Twitter to share books that would get people who don’t like SF to read it, with the added incentive that the best would get a mention on the Guardian. Who could resist?

I haven’t really tried to persuade people to read books they don’t care about. I constantly share reading recommendations with likeminded people, especially on the Urban Fantasy Fans community on G+, but converting SF haters has never been on my agenda. I’m not a convert myself, as readers of this blog may have noticed, having read SF very much from the beginning in various forms, so I don’t have the book that convinced me to offer either.

The assumption behind Walter’s prompt was that SF has become mainstream enough to get people who don’t usually read it interested in trying it out. They simply need a book with which to start. The assignment is somewhat vague, but I’m assuming that he means adults set in their reading habits; children tend to be more open to try different genres. I’m also assuming certain acceptance of SF in general, otherwise the idea of SF being mainstream would be void: “So you like True Blood? Why don’t you try reading the book.” Or: “You know, as ‘exciting’ as the Total Recall remake was, you might find the original short story to be better.”

The world is full of great SF in many different subgenres and the potential books to recommend to the hypothetical initiate too many to count. Some limiting criteria are therefore needed.

• The books can’t be too overwhelming. If the initiates feel like drowning with their reading, it won’t make them pick up another. Some of the suggestions Walter received included space operas that will take even a dedicated SF fan some digesting so offering them as the first read seems counterintuitive to me. Which leads to:
• The books should be relatively short reads. It’s much easier to get a reluctant reader to pick up a short book than a huge tome. Think of a gateway book that will lead to longer series.
• A classic isn’t necessarily the best book to start with. On the other hand, a book becomes a classic only because generation after another reads it. Choose wisely.
• There’s more to SF than science fiction and there’s more to sci-fi than hard-core technology orgies.
• Just because I love a book doesn’t mean everyone will. But there’s no point in recommending books I wouldn’t read myself just because I think I ought to recommend something better.
• Just because a TV series or a movie is popular doesn’t mean the book it’s based on is suitable reading for a novice. Or a very good book.

Following my criteria, I can leave out some books. The Lord of the Rings may be the classic introduction to fantasy for countless generations and the movies based on it have undoubtedly helped to make SF more mainstream. But an easy read it isn’t, nor is it short. Likewise, in sci-fi, there are some names brandished as ‘must reads’. Asimov may forever have his place in sci-fi canon, but his books don’t necessarily make for ideal first reads.  

Here’s my list. I’ve already written blog posts on the first three if you want to find out more about what I thought of them.

Ursula LeGuin: The Left Hand of Darkness

I wanted the list to have one book with space, faraway planets and aliens. LeGuin’s book has all that. It’s a relatively short book with important themes that are universal so should transcend the genre. And it’s definitely a classic. Moreover, it’s an interesting read.

Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

Another sci-fi classic, this one more technology oriented than LeGuin’s book. I wavered between this and William Gibson’s Neuromancer, but chose this one because of the movie. If one is trying to lure another to reading SF, a good movie with a better book behind it should make the transition easier. Reading one Philip K. Dick novel can easily lead to reading more of his work and from that, the path is open.

Terry Pratchett: Guards! Guards!

For fantasy, I went with Discworld. There are some epic fantasy series that I’ve enjoyed a lot, but since they tend to be those huge tomes that never end, they got discarded. Discworld is a brilliant fantasy universe, the books are short and funny, and the best of them are good commentary on our world. Any of the books in the long-running series would do fine, but the original Guards trilogy is my favourite.

Neil Gaiman: American Gods

As an introduction to UF, Neverwhere would probably be a more popular choice. And while it’s the book that first introduced me to the genre, I actually like American Gods better. It’s longer than other books on my list, but well worth every page. It’s also the only book that I have successfully recommended to someone who doesn’t read fantasy, though the result was them reading more Neil Gaiman, not more fantasy in general. But that’s a positive outcome too.

Jim Butcher: The Dresden Files

I must recommend the entire series, because the books should be read in order and they’re all good. Dresden Files has everything that makes urban fantasy great, with a good mix of mundane and mythology, monsters and humans and themes that are important regardless of the genre. They’re action packed and fun, and the quality of the writing has remained constant throughout the series, which isn’t always given in UF, so it has a good chance of becoming a classic eventually. More importantly, they are easy to read so if one is to pick up an UF book for the first time, this one will sweep them away.

As a bonus, I’ll throw in Harry Potter. If it got boys to read for the first time, it should get an SF virgin hooked too.

My list doesn’t necessarily contain the best or most valued books there are in the genre. But they are an easy introduction to different genres, styles and themes that make SF. Besides, I like them all. How about you?

Unknown future - unseen sci-fi?

I’ve read sci-fi in bursts, never in any cohesive manner and not much in recent years. In my teens, whatever sci-fi book happened to catch my fancy when I visited the library was picked up and read. I don’t think half of it made an impact; I most certainly can’t remember most of it. If I recall correctly, the theme was interstellar travel and faraway planets, inspired by Star Wars, no doubt. Of those, Dune is the only one that has remained with me and that one mainly because my husband likes it so much.

The Tripods, on the other hand, made a lasting impression. Only a few books that I read depicted the earth in some distant future date, the idea so novel for me that I read the series a couple of times. I found it very scary and for a long time I feared alien invasion – though the TV series V may have had something to do with that too. I didn’t want to end up as a slave to some machine or a lizard. However, as I grew up, I lost the certainty that the earth would be invaded by extra-terrestrial beings and so that kind of sci-fi lost its power too.

As an adult, though, the sci-fi that has stayed with me the longest is the kind that depicts a dystopian future for our planet. William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Philip K. Dick’s Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep? both picture an overcrowded planet destroyed by a war or pollution, where natural resources are almost gone, the flora and fauna are extinct and most of the population live in slums. Big corporations dominate the world and democracy is non-existent. Dystopias did – and still do – seem like a plausible end for our present way of life.

At the time the books were written, Dick’s in 1968 and Gibson’s in 1984, the height of Cold War, a devastating war between two superpowers seemed likely. Cold War is long over and with it the threat of nuclear destruction, but the themes of over-population and overusing the earth’s resources haven’t gone away. And while 1992 didn’t see our planet populated by lifelike androids and the cyber space like Gibson imagined hasn’t truly actualised yet either, both books retain the sense of plausible in their predictions for the future.

The world has changed more since Neuromancer was published than it did between the publications of Dick’s and Gibson’s books. I read an article recently by John Gray titled What’s going to happen in the next hundred years? In it, he takes a look at the past century and concludes that after all the turmoil of the past hundred years, the world has returned to the state it was in at the end of the 19th century. With that he means that there isn’t a leading power that would control the planet, which makes things unpredictable. According to him, it makes a war inescapable. 

Gray’s notion would make the kind of future Dick and Gibson describe even more likely. However, I’d like to think it opens up the future, makes it unknown. The next hundred years don’t have to follow the lines of the past century; it could be different. And that offers possibilities for imagining a new kind of future in sci-fi too. The best sci-fi authors have always been able to depict unknown futures that seem possible, but they tend to be narrow in their scope. For all their brilliance in predicting the course of humanity, Dick and Gibson failed to take into account quite a lot of human issues.

Science fiction set in near future earth could tackle different themes than destruction or technological advance: women and sexual minorities, for example. Both groups are better off than they were a century ago – or at the time Dick and Gibson wrote their books. Surely we could imagine a future where things would be even better – or worse, in case of dystopias. Asia won’t necessarily be the leader of the world like Gibson depicts, but what would be the alternative? “The shift to unconventional energy may still be a game-changer, as the effect is to make the position of oil-producing countries increasingly untenable,” as Gray notes. Would that speak for a future where the planet hasn’t been destroyed?

The idea that we have returned to the beginning, cleaned our slate, is intriguing. It isn’t entirely true, of course, but for utopian writing, or dystopian, it offers endless possibilities. I, for one, would like to read those books. How about you?

Here’s the original trailer for Blade Runner, the movie based on Dick’s book.