Classic SF Book Haul | 5 of My Favorite Authors 

Hope you enjoy The Futurological Congress!

Dune Messiah is great. Very different but each of the sequels feels that way. All 6 of the Frank books are fantastic. And yeah, we read Mother Night in high school and I’ve adored Vonnegut ever since. Happy reading!

Hard SciFi Elephants? 🐘 sign me up! 😆

God emperor of dune is my favorite but the others are very good reads also.

That sliced bread joke was simultaneously the dumbest and funniest thing LMAO So deadpan a delivery, brilliant! XD

I relate to your taking your time to get through Vonnegut books so they don't have to end. That's how I am about Joyce's corpus.😅

Awesome stuff Jonathan! I loved Dune Messiah just as much as Dune, and I think you will too. I need to read more Philip K Dick, and give Vonnegut a try.

Absolutely love all things Vonneguts. Timequake may be my favorite of his. Although The Sirens of Titan is up there as well.

My situation is identical to yours with regard to Clarke so I'll be very interested to hear about your next Clarke reads!

With Dune, the first book is the classic. People have their preferences with 2-6 & pretty much everyone agrees than Brian Herbert's expansion is a level (or 2) behind his father's. Dune Messiah was considered a disappointment when it came out, but it served it's purpose - I liked it better than most - and served as a needed bridge for those that followed.

I loved The City and the Stars, the next Clarkes I want to read are his Collection of Stories, A Fall of Moondust - and also The Fountains of Paradise. Dune Messiah is also on my list to be read soon. I've read two Lems by now, The Astronauts and The Invincible, both were fantastic. I already own The Star Diaries and The Futurological Congress and hope to get to them this year. I'm curious to hear what you think of it.

Loved this list buddy. Someone definitely needs to name a book "Sliced Bread" lol. I can't wait to hear what you think of these books. I DNFed Dune Messiah, I may go back to it, and I really liked City and the Stars. Haven't read the rest. Great video

I just recently read Tmequake and Deadeye Dick and enjoyed both immensely. I wouldn't say the latter book is science fiction. More post-war American dark satire. He has a great line in there about amphetamines being " safe unless discontinued ." As far as Herbert goes I always recommend the Santaroga Barrier and the Dosadi Experiment. The White Plague is a good one too. I just finished Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling. One I reckon you would enjoy.

Kurt Vonnegut is someone I need to read more of. I've only read the big one and that was quite a while ago. I do have a few on my shelves. I also have a lot of PKD in those same editions and some Lem that's not Solaris too. I enjoyed The City and the Stars. You've got some great reading ahead of you. 🙂

Cool that you read some more lem, dunno why apparently nobody seems to read more than solaris😅I definitely recommend to read the futurological congress to the end :D From the ones I read so far I would recommend 'Peace on Earth' and/or 'Memoirs, found in a bathtub'. But everything he writes seems to be genius :D I'm looking forward to read 'His master's voice'

Great channel! I am adding books to my reading list all the time since I subscribed. I would love some more spoiler heavy reviews here, I love finding out what other people feel about some books. I just read Flowers for Algernon and I can't find anybody that really got into it. I mostly find spoiler-free reviews

The City and The Stars is set *billions* of years in the future!

Of those three, Deadeye Dick is one that stood out for me. Probably 'cause of the memorable way he got his nickname.

Can’t wait to hear your take on The Futurological Congress; it’s been probably 35 years since I read it (overdue for a re-read). Btw, “King of Manhattan, the Last President of United States…” is that a foreshadowing of the upcoming election. 😬

I read City and the Star recently and really enjoyed it. Not quite up there with Childhood's End, 2001 and RWR. As for Dune...I'm kinda with you. Love the book yet it never comes to mind when I'm doing top 10 lists. Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are good, but nowhere near as good as Dune...don't think that's a hot take :) I want to read God Emperor of Dune this year. That's the one a lot of folk seem to think it up there with book 1.

Actually there are hard scifi elephants.😊 It's Alastair Reynolds' Poseidon's Children series, my favorite of his.

I actually thought that Dune messiah is a better book than the first one. Yes everyone can hate me for it. But the whole idea and structure of the book it just great.Yes there is a trap and yes MuadDib knows about it, but because of reasons he chooses to play along. It's a great mindfuck off a read and the end just nails it. Great stuff!

You're not crazy they dont have Hocus Pocus in the other style. It seems like we have the exact same opinion on Vonnegut he makes me feel sane too. I can definitely recommend City and the Stars. Slightly generic but it's a great story with a great messege

I'm Vonnegut's greatest fan (I started a Ph.D on his work) but after Breakfast of Champions I'm afraid the quality deteriorated. Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Mother Night and Slaughterhouse 5 are the ultimate Vonnegut. Dick is also in my top 3 but I read these 2 so long ago I can't remember them! Do Androids Dream, Flow My Tears, Ubik and The Three Stigmata are my favourites.

I think a book by Lem I would recommend as his next best book would be The Invincible…It kind of gets overshadowed by Solaris because it was his next published release after Solaris even though they were 3 years apart…I am not saying it was as good as Solaris because it wasn’t but it’s underrated because it followed up his magnum opus…Try The Invincible by Lem…Would love to hear your perspective about it…

Have you read the short story Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut? one of my favorites.. I especially love the 90s film adaptation.

🛒 I love a good haul, but a themed haul is really excellent 👏 Mine tend to be a bit all over the place, mainly because I’m trying to optimise the 📦 contents or postage. My haulage has slowed down as I wait for 2024 releases to become available, and also to try to reduce excess expenditure this year. My TBR is bonkers so I need to slow it down, but damn my fingers are getting itchy 😝 Sliced 🍞😆 I have a ton of old MMPs in my Library, but the rest are mostly 20cm tall - B Format here in 🇬🇧- so I’m assuming your Dune is - by “tall and thin”- taller than an MMP but just as wide as an MMP? If my interpretation is correct then I haven’t seen that size myself that I can recall 🤔 I too have already overcommitted to things for the year. I am gagging to get into some of my off-piste SF, but the Readalongs are keeping me away. I have never read “Dune” but maybe one day…? I also recently picked up “The City and the Stars” based upon your recommendation in previous episodes 👍 “Hard SciFi Elephants” you say? Have you not read Alastair Reynolds’ “Poseidon’s Children” yet?!? Get to it, man 🤣

Arthur Clarke has been my favourite since I was a teenager. There's something about his ideas and his hard scyfy that gets to me. Fountains of Paradise is one I liked a lot. I really recommend also reading Songs from a distant Earth, the premise is really cool. A colonial ship from the year 3000 comes to an old colony founded by a crioship 'manned' by robots that brought up a first generation of humans 700 years before. The colony is an engineered utopia but this ship that appears in there sky brings technology and knowledge that is really foreign to them... So do we let them open Pandora's box? Really cool book

Iain M. Banks is your greatest miss! SF would never be the same without him.

Vonnegut is my fav. Deadeye Dock is one of my favs, though it’s dark and not really sci-fi. Hocus Pocus and slapstick aren’t KV’s best, but still worthy of reading.

If you're new to PKD then I'd recommend UBIK as a good entry point. For more underappreciated works Id say Maze Of Death (I read this when I was 11 and it blew my mind), or Galactic Pot Healer - there are sections of this which are pure PKD magic.

Ooh. I do have the sudden urge to buy some books. Hope I get a sudden urge to read some too. 🙄 I had a good time with Lem's FC. Well, with all of Lem so far.

I've only read two books by PKD but neither are considered among his best so I need to read more vonnegut has always been a favorite ever since I read slaughterhouse five way back in 1969 haven't read the city and the stars and the fountains of paradise but loved childhood's end the rama books and imperial earth⚛😀

I'm always surprised to hear people say that Dune is the greatest of all time. I've tried to read it a few times and always get bogged down in it and give up. However, since Christmas I've rocketed through the three Quantum Thief books and straight into all five of the Book of the New Sun. Both extraordinary works and totally engaging. So I wonder what it is that I'm missing in Dune as i don't mind complicated stories running over several books. I've seen the Dune movies, with Sting (weird) and Chalamet (very polished) but they haven't been enough for me to enjoy the book.

Just finished the swarm (amazing book by the way) and I was taking a look at my tbr list because she is huge now partially because of you, but heretics of dune is making my conscious heavy looking at me from the shelf, bc when I read the dune series, I ended up stopping halfway through the 5th book for health reasons and now I need to go back to it. Is such a heavy book, but I feel too bad not finishing one of my favorite series, it's a physical book in Portuguese (my native language), I'll probably get a pdf with something else in English to read along with it when I get too tired or something like that. Thanks for the indications, I love your channel!! Ps: my dune ranking so far: 1 > 3 > 4 > 2, but all of them are great!!

Hi Jonathan. Hocus Pocus was released by a different publisher, so that's why the editions won't match.

Uh oh, I've read 2 PKD, underwhelmed, but I'm open to reading more, and one Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan and i HATED it, 🤮, not in a rush to read more. Heresy! Still, I am keen to read some Lem and i do have Solaris and Futurological Congress on my shelves. I re-read Dune Messiah last year, first time for decades. Enjoyed it. Some say Clarke is a bit of a plodder from a style point of view, but i read a bunch when i was younger.Not City and the Stars, funnily enough, although I do have it. Must get that one read. If you want hard sci fi elephants, Alastair Reynolds has the books for you. 🐘🚀🔫👽📚

I read it quite awhile ago, but I remember Hocus Pocus being a real favourite. I don't know if it's justified, but I kind of group it in with Jailbird and Bluebeard as standouts in his 'middle years'. They're not quite as supercharged as his early peak, but they have complex character depictions. They make me think of the Ram Dads book, I'm Still Here. What do you do after the fire of youth runs its course, the mistakes you made are painfully apparent, but you still have enough time to 'get it right', or at least do something different. Quick question, have you ever read any of Vonnegut's nonfiction such as Fates Worse than Death or Man Without a Country?

I read Dune: Messiah, and it was meh for me. Though I know someone that really liked it. Will be curious to know how you find it. I have one Vonnegut on my TBR: Cat’s Cradle. Not sure when I will get to it this year as of yet.

I prefer Anderson , Niven, Blish , Simak, Heinlien, Norton, Zelzany,Delaney, Bradbury. And of course Herbert. Clarke and Brunner.

I don't like the tall skinny format. I love the first Dune and really liked Dune Messiah. After that not so much, although something happens in the fourth book that I found very intriguing.

I personally believe Childhoods End is Arthur C Clarke’s best work…yes better than 2001 A Space Odyssey which is very good and his most famous and well known work but I still believe Childhoods End is his best work

I enjoyed The Dune series, however, it’s not that good on the re-read. Comparatively, “Lord of the Rings” got three full re-reads for me. This year’s re-read is slated to be “Hyperion”. Dune is best read in the early years, sometime in high school, and only once. I did enjoy the full series and would rank it in my top 50 series.

Sorry to say I found The FoP which i read very recently because a relative picked it up in a junk shop and bought it for me as he knows i like SF, unutterably dull and full of irrelevant filler. Maybe its better than that but I couldn't bring myself to start it again. City and The Stars i read years ago and loved and I like most Clark. I have read a lot of Vonnegut but not those.

Cyberiad.

Dune's structure is always weird... I felt that the three first books started with a spoiler of how and why the central plotpoint is gonna develop... Also I felt a bit cheated by the "off camara" change in Paul between book one and two. It's like there's a brutal book 1.5 that he never wrote about how he became a monster 😂 Not My kind of read really

Stop at the end of God Emperor.

I thought Dune Messiah was ok, but I thought the antagonists' plan was really dumb (I know there's layers to it and I don't want to say more because of spoilers, but at face value it made no sense) and Paul was just so emo throughout the whole book. Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune were good, but I'd still put the original first. I didn't think Heretics of Dune was that good, and I DNFed Chapterhouse Dune. Frank Herbert was trying to start a new Dune trilogy with those books, but he was just obsessed with weird sex powers, so I would highly recommend to anyone to just stop after God Emporer...

I Love Mass Market Paperbacks It’s my favorite format of books Dune is obviously a very good book and probably the most popular SF book of All-Time but IMHO it’s a bit overhyped and overrated…I rank Hyperion as the best SF ever written… Dune Messiah is a big drop off from Dune it was okay but it’s not something I would recommend people have to read if they read Dune…Personally I think Dune stands well enough on its own…