• home
• words
• images
• etc

Best of Science Fiction

June 19, 2007

Many people before me have compiled lists of their favorite science fiction novels, and I thought I'd take a few minutes to note my favorites as well.

The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Consisting of Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars. This trilogy is, for me, the best science fiction has to offer. The basic premise is that humans colonize Mars and terraform it to have an Earth-like climate. Hard science, intelligent characters and plot, and a good lot of philosophy, sociology, and utopian politics as well. The books also rate well because Robinson has a great command of language, and his sentences read like poetry:

And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe—its culmination, like the color of the flower at first bloom on a wet morning. It's a holy feeling, and our task in this world is to do everything we can to foster it. And one way to do that is to spread life everywhere. To aid it into existence where it was not before, as here on Mars.

Gateway and the Heechee Saga by Frederick Pohl. Human encounters with the alien, and a robot psychologist to boot. The entire series makes a fantastic read.

Dune by Frank Herbert. A sci-fi classic for good reason. The story is solid, and the desert world of Arrakis, where every drop of water is sacred, is as rich in history and culture as the realms of Middle Earth. The story is about a boy who becomes a messiah, and is full of excitement, great characters, and an excellent plot. The sequels lack the greatness of this first book, but might still be worth your time.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Another sci-fi classic, and definitely worth mentioning. This is the story of a very young boy training for combat in a space station. The characterization of Ender is spot-on what I remember it feeling like to be a young boy, and that alone is a great reason to read this book. But the story is so fascinating, puzzling, and ultimately surprising that I have read this book over a dozen times and loved every minute.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I actually liked this book a bit better than some of Stephenson's other books, such as Snow Crash, but you may disagree. This book is about code-making and code-breaking, and much of the story focuses on the Enigma machines of WWII, as well as modern cryptography and surveillance techniques (he discusss Van Eck phreaking, which I have written about previously). At one point in his digressions on encryption algorithms, Stephenson even indulges us with a bit of Perl code. I would argue that if you are a programmer (or even if you're not) who is looking for a casual introduction to cryptography, this book is for you.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. Mars again, but Bradbury's Mars is very different from Robinson. For Bradbury, Mars is a place of mystery, of the paranormal and bizarre, of humans encountering things they can't quite see nor understand; dreams becoming reality. The book is a series of short stories, many of them notable as standalone works: The Million-Year Picnic, There Will Come Soft Rains, and Rocket Summer. Taken as a whole... well, yes, this book is just magnificent.

A few other books that deserve mention:

• Startide Rising by David Brin
• Hyperion by Dan Simmons
• Ringworld by Larry Niven
• The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

And some books that don't really deserve all the praise they're receiving:

• Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
• Singularity Sky by Charles Stross

What books would you add to the list?

© cm