Ask Slashdot: Good, Forgotten Fantasy & Science Fiction Novels? 1244
jjp9999 writes "I've been looking for some good reading material, and have been delving into the realms of some great, but nearly forgotten authors — finding the likes of Lord Dunsany (The King of Elfland's Daughter) and E.R. Eddison (The Worm Ouroboros). I wanted to ask the community here: do you know of any other great fantasy or science fiction books that time has forgotten?"
Hellfire. (Score:4, Interesting)
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever.
Not quite forgotten, but I keep running into people who haven't heard of the series. Great read, really; it's a strangely wonderful blend of Tolkienesque high fantasy and dark smarminess.
Re:gene wolfe -urth of the new sun (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not really fascist, but Smith was big on eugenics back before the Nazis gave eugenics a bad name. It shows....
Some classics (Score:4, Interesting)
Some classics:
fantasy (Score:5, Interesting)
Bulfinch's Mythology contains the roots of much of the modern 'fantasy' universes. But Bulfinch's is itself a collection of more ancient texts.
In other words, why go back 50 years, when you could go back 1500?
Re:Some classics (Score:3, Interesting)
I would definitely suggest Venus Equilateral. See this link to be sure to get the right one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Equilateral [wikipedia.org]
There are several books, some without all the stories.
I would add http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_Station_(novel) [wikipedia.org] Way Station by Clifford D. Simak.
Not as old, but still a good read (and FREE!)
The Warrior's Apprentice http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1290-warriors-apprentice.aspx [baenebooks.com]
Changer of Worlds http://www.baenebooks.com/p-62-changer-of-worlds.aspx [baenebooks.com]
One more (Score:4, Interesting)
Look at Gutenberg.org for Edgar Rice Burroughs. He wrote the Tarzan novels and also John Carter of Mars. Dated but fun to read.
Look at old awards and nominations (Score:5, Interesting)
The realization that i hadn't heard of three of those books before and might never have read them caused me to go back and review the complete list of Hugo awards [wikipedia.org] and Nebula awards [wikipedia.org] for best novel.
There are a lot of old favorites on there, but there are also a lot of other books that i know of but never gotten around to reading and a lot more that i've never even heard of, especially for the earlier years. Unless you're a lot more knowledgeable than me you've probably never heard of a lot of them either. All the books in those lists were considered one of the best books that year either by the fans or the writers, and a lot of them probably still hold up well today. I've now got a plan, or at least a desire, to try and start working through those older books a few at a time. (Though how i'm going to manage that when i can't even keep up with all the _new_ books coming out i don't know.)
A Few Titles (Score:4, Interesting)
The Description of a New World, Called The Burning-World by Lady Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Late 1500s. Very strange early SF, semi-autobiographical. Requires tolerance for Elizabethan English, though it's easier than Shakespeare since it's prose not poetry. Author also composed poems about pixies responsible for moving atoms around.
The Three Impostor: and Other Stories, by Arthur Machen. Very Lovecraftian, except that it predates Lovecraft.
Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling. Not read as much as his other stories these days; basically a tour of English/European history from a decidedly British perspective, courtesy of tour guide Puck.
The Days of Chivalry,or, The Legend of Croque-Mitaine; original in French by Ernest Louis Victor Jules L'Epine; free (VERY free) translation by Thomas Hood the Younger, late 1890s. 177 illustrations by Gustave Doré. Originally a children's book, this heavily allegorical book follows the adventures of Mitaine, female squire to the legendary French knight Sir Roland. Would never hand this to a child now. Illustrations of impalements. Thoroughly racist, sexist, and every other kind of -ist you can think of. Shows illustration of Mohammed getting his teeth punched out by Roland (!!). Despite all that, fun in a horrifying kind of way. Reading this helped me understand how World War I came about. If this is the kind of thing they were raising their kids on, no wonder they killed millions of each other.
A Gift Upon the Shore by M. K. Wren -- two women struggle to preserve knowledge in post-apocalyptic Oregon. SF only by membership in post-apocalyptic sub-genre, but beautifully written.
Interesting question. Will keep eye on discussion. Note to self: must take refresher course on personal pronouns.
Re:Farmer (Score:5, Interesting)
Farmer's Riverworld series is a classic. I don't know if you'd call it forgotten, per se, since BBC made a movie out of it a few years back, but it's a really neat combination of sci-fi and stone age technologies in an afterlife setting for humanity on a distant planet. =)
Stanislaw Lem (Score:5, Interesting)
-I'm just sayin'
Re:Out of the Silent Planet and also Perelandra (Score:4, Interesting)
But Perelandra ... well, it isn't really sci-fi or fantasy, except as a really thin veneer of that on top of some religious ruminations on matters such as: the creation of man, the Garden of Eden, the problem of Evil, and spiritual warfare. It is of some interest to the reader who is interested in Christian thought (either as a Christian or an outsider interested in how Christians think about things), but aside from some clever floating islands, its offerings to the genre of science fiction (or fantasy for that matter) are sorely limited. It has more in common with the likes of The Screwtape Letters than science fiction proper.
Varley, Steakly, Zelazny, and Brust (Score:5, Interesting)
John Varley
Titan, Demon, Wizard - Three great futuristic tales of a large, sentient, organic space station out in our solar system. Probably my favorite blend of Sci-fi and fantasy in one setting.
The Ophiuchi Hotline - What if the internet was really a signal from another galaxy? One of the best of the "eight worlds" novels. (Just an opinion)
"The Pusher" - Short story published in Blue Campaign and other places. This is a story that makes you feel dirty but so worth the read.
Roger Zelazny
Chronicles of Amber - Great stuff. Alternate worlds controlled by an elite bloodline. Fun family politics. 5 books each of which are short and can be read in a single setting.
John Steakly
Armor - This is an exciting read and will wear you out and make you feel the physical exhaustion of the characters. As Steakly said this book is the action in starship troopers. Orson Scott Card mentions it in his introduction in one of his books. I forget which one. If you do read this. Don;t stop after part one. You'll want to: Don't.
Vampire$ - This is what a vampire novel should be. People working for the Vatican to slay vampires for fun and profit. The book rocks, but Damn, the John Carpenter movie version in the 80's sucks ass. Don;t ever watch it.
Finally,
Steven Brust
Jhereg - This and all of the 11(?) other books follow an human assassin, Vlad Taltos, that kills "elves." It involves the fantasy elements of gods, sorcery, witchcraft, elves, etc in a world as dark and gritty as you want and as rich as Tolkein. Why these books haven;t "hit the big time," I have no clue.
David R. Palmer (Score:3, Interesting)
Read Emergence, if you can find a copy. A genius eleven year old girl and her pet macaw travel a post-apocalyptic America. The writing style is hard to get used to -- a lot like Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" -- but after a few pages your brain starts filling in the missing words. (The in-story explanation is that it's her personal diary written in Pitman shorthand.)
Unfortunately, the sequel "Tracking" is only available as a bootleg right now, (check torrents). It was serialized in a now-unavailable sequence of Analog magazines. If you can find "Tracking", it's also worth reading.
Palmer seems to have done a lot of research for the books. He makes some mistakes regarding firearms that grated on me, but the rest seemed correct.
Re:Van Vogt (Score:5, Interesting)
Collecting A.E. Van Vogt has become something of a hobby to me. My wife is pretty good at digging out obscure stuff, so I have both "Weapon Shops of Isher" titles in one book. She also picked up "The Silkie" for me recently. I just checked and I have 10 Van Vogt books, and that doesn't count the above 2.
Then there's EE Doc Smith Lensman and Skylark series, the 2 Subspace Explorer books, one Family deLambert.
Some of the old stuff can be pretty poorly written, but there was an innocence and optimism about it that's missing these days.
Re:Many Many options (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:gene wolfe -urth of the new sun (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think that "giving X a good name" means what you think it does. I would say by the tone of your post that eugenics has a very bad name with you. It has a bad name with me too, and yet I do, in general, think well of Planned Parenthood's activities. Whatever Margaret Sanger may or may not have believed, I don't think eugenics has a good name with many people in the U.S.
So you didn't really answer the question. You did, however, reap the usual karma bonanza that accrues to posts that remind us all that the U.S. has done some very bad things in its history, so I guess that's good.