What Was the BEST Decade of Science Fiction? 

The 60’s had Dune Do Androids Dream… Flowers for Algernon Solaris 2001 Cats Cradle Moon is a harsh Mistress And more! Totally the best.

awesome. I'm holding a pen while watching this. 🖋

This is fantastic. Love how you break this stuff down.

What a fun idea for an interesting video Jonathan! I really enjoyed it. 🙌

This is an intriguing idea! I want to chart my own reading like this now. I thought you were going to say the 2010s was your favorite. I say that because I feel certain ideas get better treatment over time. Like, Ray Bradbury deserves all the credit for his original ideas- but other authors have taken up his original seeds and created more fully-fleshed versions over time. So when I go back and read authors like Bradbury, sometimes they feel... kinda flat. I wonder too if your scoring has to do with what decade you were born in...?

I just checked my 'completed' folder on the e-reader for what decades I've covered so far this year (22 books completed). Earliest is We by Yvgeny Zamyatin (1920) and latest is Eversion by Alistair Reynolds (2022). 102 years spanned in 2 1/2 months - obvious time dilation fan. 😀

Great video! Interesting analysis of the main themes of the decades

Very much agree with Dying Inside. Great choice!

While I don't have your numbers to back it up, my favourite would be the 70s. Some of the authors who came to prominence in the 80s and 90s already had great works in the 70s. That, and the cover art of the 70s is my absolute fave. Authors of note: CJ Cherryh, Joe Haldeman, Orson Scott Card, Spider Robinson.

I can agree on the outcome, the 60s was a great era in many ways and Vonnegut was someone special. The oldest hardcover on my bookshelf is The Sirens of Titan which my mum bought me when I was a young teenager.

This is a fun way to compare different eras!

So cool, dude. I love this. Am stealing the idea for my reading journal :)

What a great concept for a video!

Very interesting video! I'm pretty sure my ratings would favour later decades, probably 2000's and 2010's. A lot of the older books I've read were hard to get through......not difficult, just not very good.😅 Of course, there are some older books I loved too.

I 100% agree with you. The 60s Sci-Fi was a combination of real tech and hypothetical tech combined that led to incredible stories and concepts. the 50s were just too hypothetical, and the 70s and beyond got so realistic tech, that imagination got kinda lost. The 60s sci-fi really encapsulated the idea of real knowledge+what-if knowledge = fastastical realms to explore for readers

I have no research or data to support this, just a pure gut feeling thing. But I have a strong suspicion that as time progresses, our idea of the classics and golden ages is heavily influenced by time. While almost every science fiction book released in the age of the internet, say the 2000's-2020's gets widespread attention, reviewed online and read by thousands, be it good or bad, not many people are just reading every book published in the 1960's, instead readers tend to gravitate towards enduring classics from that era, fostering the belief that literature was superior in the past. As someone who values big sci fi ideas over characters normally, I think I prefer more recent work on balance, as authors can build on ideas laid down by previous works. Great video as always!

A last, a book video that doesn't go deep into a book I've not read and thus make me go and get it. Because I read eBooks it's easy to listen to an engaging review and almost immediately get the book onto my e-reader. I should keep a database of what I read to check how I'm doing for spreading them out over the decades.

This was a very cool idea for a video. I am curious how my decade breakdown would look. Probably similar.

"More than human" by Theodore Sturgeon for the Win! Good call, Jonathan! Probably my #1 favorite Science Fiction novel... and that's a firm probable!

I think it was in his _Before the Golden Age,_ an anthology of early SF put together by Isaac Asimov, he defined the Golden Age of SF as 12.

I love this idea of a video. Win for Children of Time! Love that book.

I will read anything Blake Crouch writes. His books are so addictive they should be categorized as Schedule I 😆 Also love Andy Weir.. I'm not a huge audiobook listener (maybe 1-2/month in addition to the 8-12 physical reads/month) but omg Project Hail Mary is one of the best audiobooks ever. Brings one of my all-time favorite characters to life. Fist my bump! And I'll be reading The Expanse Series this year, can't wait!

Every decade has its SF highlights and the age at which you read these works. I've been reading SF/Fantasy since the 80s with Perry Rhodan, Frank Herbert / Asimov / Michael Moorock / Robert Wilson / John Brunner / Stanislaw Lem / Douglas Adams / Ursula Le Guin / R. Silvenberg etc. but somehow I've stuck with this generation of authors/series. I find the whole cyberpunk genre with William Gibbson Neuromancer, Tad Williams Otherland the most exciting today.

Thanks. I'm going to have to read Children of Time now. I'm still mindblown from PKD's Ubik. Searching for more of material containing alternating schemes in destiny with revisions from past events.

Growing up in the 80s most of my sci-fi reading was from the 50s. Cheesy as it can be, it's probably still my favorite decade. Obviously, once we got into space the 50s books quickly became quite dated, so I probably wouldn't introduce someone to sci-fi with 50s selections, but if I was offered a box of paperbacks from any decade, I'd go 50s.

Sci fi changed as science changed as well as social issues. In the late 60s and 70s the science took a back seat to social issues. Stories were more thought experiments. In the 80s Star Wars and sci fi TV were going strong so you have more fluff. Read a lot of Jack L Chalker and Piers Anthony. Books had to compete with movies so likely did have tonhave more action. Early on they could just make stuff up but modern readers likely hold authors to a higher worldbuilding standard. But authors now just have more to play with like VR or can add some science that can almost make sense.

The Revelation Space series is the next SciFi series on my TBR! I am so excited to read it. Nice big chunky floppy books too. Was trying to read it this month but will have to get pushed to next month. I never really hear anyone talking about it, so glad to see the second book made your Favorites list. 😄

very interesting concept and surprised but pleased blood music was your fave of the eighties⚛😀

For me, so far, it's 60's and 70's. Thanks for the upload!!

I think the 60s would probably be my pick as well. And also really like Children of Time. Do you use Goodreads by chance?

I think for me it's between the 50s and 60s. Although Clarke and Asimov that are probably my favourites wrote increasingly better books or at least they got better in the fields they lacked, so i have some love for the 80s too, outside of the cyberpunk wave

nice video.

I was modern sci fi fanboy for a while and modern to me is 90’s and newer. Then i started trying out more 60’s and 70’s work and I got to say that it has been more satisfying and a little more unique? Felt like less ideas were repeated. But who knows, I have barely even scratched the surface from most decades. Too much to read and so little time.

Interesting concept, interesting video. As the decades were all fairly close (allowing for the outliers), you could say that every decade is a golden era for science-fiction which, as yiou have said before, is the best fiction.

Have you tried Gravity's Rainbow? I'm curious to see what you would think.

Agreed, I think it's hard for the 60s to be topped for great SF. I've really enjoyed works from the 50s too. Aldiss & PKD are two that immediately spring to mind. This might be me being a stick in the mud but nothing from the last 10-20 years has really jumped out at me or impressed me.

Hard to go wrong with an era that had Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke and Bradbury…..

Pre 1970 were great SF years. But...Possibly due to popular TV shows and films such as Dr Who and Star Trek and 2001 and Close Encounters... ...In the 70s a whole flood of SF was published. New novels in abundance plus an almighty flood of paperbacks republishing for the first time since their pulp days, all those great Novels, Novellas, Short stories and Fix-Up books. I have a fair few thousand SF paperbacks. I haven't counted, but I have a feeling that over 50% of them are from the 70s. So in that respect the 70s was an important decade.

I'm from Poland, but I think Solaris was underwhelming for me. Wanted more from the plot. From new books I want something like Children of time and not more books that want to be a movie. I also heard that rise of YA and Romantasy made the agents promote to publishers SF with more romance and 'feelings'. That's the future I guess...

The writers were interdecadal Heinlein's best books were written in the 60s. So were Asimov's.

Not saying you haven't but if you haven't: 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch'.

❤❤❤❤

I would say the best decade was 1965 to 1975

60s or 80s

60s rule! but the best book of the 80s was Neuromancer

Not saying you haven't but if you haven't: 'Daemon'.