Great List! I can feel this list is coming from your heart not from the what is most popular. I do tire of the lists that only feature the "popular titles"
Thanks for sharing! I never look at lists as definitive, just a great place to find great recommendations. Have you read the Hyperion Cantos? It's top 10 sci fi for me.
Three Stigmata is so good, read it recently and was blown away. Must check "Hard-Boiled" out now. Thanks for the vid, will definitely check out Zelazny too.
When pondering my personal list of favorite novels, regardless of genre, the two science fiction titles that immediately come to mind are Anthony Burgess' 'A Clockwork Orange' (1962) and Thomas M. Disch's '334' (1972) [another book I immediately consider, John Crowley's 'Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament' (1981), while containing some futuristic elements, belongs more securely to the fantasy genre]. Burgess' cloaked Christian parable is distinguished, among other features, by its author's brilliant linguistic invention of a hybrid slang for his future antihero, whereby the committed reader, forced to engage with the story through the mediation of this strange argot, is distanced somewhat from its brutal content. The novel also continues to resonate as philosophy through literature, important ideas on the endless tension between social order and individual agency being explored within the parameters of a compelling fiction, with theological tenets also being worked out with comparable fluidity and grace, without the text ever lapsing into didacticism. I prefer even more '334', a fix-up by Disch of stories he conceived of life in New York in the early twenty-first century, centering on a single struggling family and the tenement block that houses them. Just as there is "low fantasy", Disch's book could be regarded as "low science fiction", with the author taking the novel path of focusing on how much has not changed between the time of the book's composition and the speculative future it postulates. The emphasis here is on social entropy, with characters struggling, with advancing degrees of despair, to survive and make some meaning out of their compromised lives. The subject and tone are bleak, but Disch's style is lively and engaging, and his sympathy for his characters is always evident. One of the chapters, "Angouleme" (first published as a stand-alone story in 1971), is an especially memorable achievement, the horrific content (a group of children plotting a random murder for the sheer thrill of it) mitigated by the author's lyrical and richly descriptive language.
Intriguing comment, coming back to note your recommendations, I actually read a clockwork orange in jail and have a high regard for it, but for some reason it’s left off alot of sci fi lists.
The three book trilogy currently on Netflik. All three bodied books are terrific. Maybe not ten but my literate non sci fi partner was staggered by them.
Hey Liminal Spaces. I just wanted to say that I love your videos, love your book reccs, and that you should be confident that we want to hear whatever you have to share 🍻 I particularly love the lax nature of your videos, I feel like we're old friends discussing our favorite books over a beer. Looking forward to what you'll create in the future!
Man i couldn't agree more with you about Hard Boiled... I found it scarily along ago now and i cant wait to re-read it again. IMO fair better than IQ84 too.
Have you read any Gene Wolfe? For me, it’s the absolute height of science fiction. They are books FROM the future, not ABOUT the future. Absolutely amazing.
"The Lathe of Heaven" is a great choice. My first exposure to it was the 1980 PBS TV adaptation. You could call it Le Guin's tribute to Philip K. Dick.
Have I read enough? I tried to commit to a hobby to read every novel that had won an award or be reputed for great literary merit. I managed to read every hugo and nebula award winner up around the year 2000, and got through most of the top 100 sci fi books of all time according to most lists. I forgot most of them from my youth, but after getting into audiobooks I was able to relive some classics, and also review my own opinions and memories about what was worth the time and what was not.
@@LiminalSpaces03 there are some works that made an impression on my teenage mind that failed to keep my interest as an adult, while other stories such as Dune became more inspiring when i had the time to appreciate the storytelling
Awesome video but man I only have two of the books listed in this video. I gotta work on my collection, are you planning on doing any lists for Space Opera in the future? It's my favorite sci-fi sub genre.
Thanks very much for your video.. Several books added to My List =) Have you read The Stars, My Destination, by Alfred Bester or anything by Stanislaw Lem? Sorry if you've covered these before. I am new to the channel.
It’s very funny, I had known about Murakami for a few years and had been recommended Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84 and others, and wound up reading Hard Boiled Wonderland first because I was getting on a train and that was the only one by him they had at the news shop. It blew my mind and is easily one of my top books of all time, and I chewed through all of Murakami’s other books in a matter of a couple years hoping for something similar and nothing really compares to the one I read first.
Agreed. Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a close second to Hard-Boiled for me, but I don't think he was ever as clear, organized, and focused as he was when he wrote Hard-Boiled. so good!
I'm reading anti-oedipus for my graduate philosophy class right now, and I feel like you'd really enjoy it. It might really inform your reading, especially since it was published in the 70s/80s, which seems to be when a lot of your favorite scifi were written :) it's a real tough read, though (to say it "expects a lot of the reader" is an understatement, it's basically written in the style of a schizophrenic breakdown.... not quite as schizo as Burroughs cut-up novels, though) but who doesn't love a challenge?
Since stumbling across this channel, I find myself musing about typical fannish topics, like what is SF really, and what is any kind of story FOR? Historically, what was/is the raison d'etre of SF and what relevance might that have to a newer reader? And what's that "sensawunda" business about? (Here's a clue: SF has often been described as a literature of ideas). I recently re-read a story that was entirely devoted to setting up a stinger at the end. Fun, but how does one compare that to a different sort of story with different goals? And should you? That sort of thing. Top 10 top books or movies? One might have only a limited window even to try anything like this, early on while one's field of possible nominees is still of a manageable size. Is that why I sometimes watch "reaction" videos to get a secondhand new experience? It might be a little easier and more fun to come up with categories and think about which entries stand out within those boxes. Of course SF itself encompasses quite a wide range of categories... Warning, recursive cascade in progress! For instance, when I start thinking about post-apocalyptic stories in general, I easily get diverted into a smaller category - what one might call "survivor cultures", in which unusual events isolate some smaller group which is forced to build its own mini-culture. One could try to squeeze "A Canticle for Liebowitz" into this box, but it doesn't really belong. Think more "Lord of the Flies". In these stories, a stranded group may understand their situation, but is stuck and has to build on what they have, Robinson Crusoe style, as in Robert Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky" or Jerry Sohl's "Costigan's Needle". Then there are those generation-ship stories like Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky", Brian Aldiss' "Starship" or Harry Harrison's "Captive Universe" in which the crew and passengers of sub-lightspeed colony ships may have lost all memory of their actual origins and environment. Unique environments can also produce some interesting speculations, like Daniel F. Galouye's "Dark Universe" in which nuclear survivors live in a vast and lightless underground cavern. They adapt in interesting ways. One of my favorite novels of this type is James White's "The Watch Below", where a sunken ocean liner becomes the slowly deteriorating home to a couple of generations of survivors. Then the aliens show up... There's a related "big idea" sub-genre typified by Fred Pohl's "Man Plus" or James Blish's "The Seedling Stars" story collection. Here, humans are genetically or surgically altered to survive in alien environments. The first of these Blish stories, "Surface Tension", can be found in "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, vol 1". In all such survival stories, a large part of one's enjoyment lies in the freshness of the central concept and the working out of practical details, again like "Robinson Crusoe", but also in the variety of imagined cultural development and how humans might behave in strange circumstances. An entertaining alt-history flavoured variation is the time travel tale in which a current-day group is thrown into the past, as in the "Island in the Sea of Time" trilogy by S. M. Stirling. The thematically similar multi-authored, multi-book "Ring of Fire" shared universe has practically become its own publishing sub-genre/cottage industry, all of which evolved from the late Eric Flint's novel "1632", first published in 2000. In this storyline, an enigmatic cosmic phenomenon causes a sizable chunk of West Virginia geography and its inhabitants to be exchanged for a piece of Germany during the Thirty Years War. Events proceed from there and the participant writers take their history and technology seriously. It's great fun and for me, quite addictive. Do give "1632" a try, but don't blame me if you get sucked into this imagined world.
I love the idea of breaking this into sub-genres! I have an organizational mind, so that is a fun topic. As I read more I'm absolutely going to do more themed top 10s. Thanks for your wonderful comments, as always!
First, we are all entitled to our favorites, based off our own experience. There is no "wrong" when it comes to whether or not you like something. Second, there is a LOT of ego and judgement in the sci-fi community. Try not to let it influence you or make you feel like you have to read every obscure out of print novel ever written to have some sort of authenticity. Third, don't be afraid to read and enjoy some modern sci-fi.. I know someone you mentioned preaches that nothing written since 1980 is worthwhile or even legitimate sci-fi but that is a bunch of BS. There are great books coming out all the time.. try on the Starfish trilogy by Watts, or The Gone World by Sweterlitsch for a couple of my recent favorites. Finally, just wanted to let you know I thought Brave New World was boring as well, and a huge disappointment for all of it's hype. Good worldbuilding for the first third, quite amazing foresight for technology of the future...otherwise extremely flat and often absurd characters, no real statements of morality or consequence. It didn't really say anything in the end. Also quite nastily racist and sexist. I felt like there was a great premise of a story in there, crying to get out of an ugly, poorly written book. Yet if I had a dollar for every time it showed up as top five best sci-fi book ever I'd be able to retire.
Personally, I think The Stand is one of the most overrated books I have ever read. If I could go back and NOT read it, I’d be happy to have that time back
Oh no, not 1984 and Brave New World. How about dystopia less than 20 years old? *Daemon* and *Freedom* by Daniel Suarez The dead cyberattack corporate America with NAZI zombie. Wait it can't be a zombie if it was never alive, can it? "I so enjoy my verk!"
After finding the Zelazny book online I’ve decided that all the books you recommend are going to be exactly the kinds of books I love to read. I’ve read most of Philip k dick and love most of those. Hard boiled wonderland was a great read I agree, my nephew had me read it because he couldn’t solve the riddle heh!
