A friend just asked me to recommend some scifi or fantasy books for a reader new to the genres, and I typed out an enthusiastic reply. I think the response is a pretty good primer, so I’m going to post some excerpts here, for the use of anyone just now getting into these genres, the present and future of Literature.

First let me congratulate you on your adventurousness in seeking out new genres, and let me express my hopes that you’ll enjoy them; I’ve always liked genre lit (”genre lit” meaning anything other than “Literature”, be it scifi, fantasy, murder mysteries, romance, etc), and while I may not like all those genres (romance, etc), I heartily believe that each genre is capable of generating Art, or Good Art, if you will, and I heartily disdain the literati who look down on anything because it has spaceships, or monsters, or anything that isn’t “real”; art transcends genre, dammit. If anything, SF/F are MORE able to explore and comment upon our reality, as they have unparalleled powers for allegory that “LITERATURE” lacks; they allow you to examine the world from a wholly new perspective.

All right. First of all, scifi and fantasy are often lumped as one, and they have many things in common, but they are two different things - or can be. The genres have broadened so much and overlapped and grown together that there are works genuinely hard to classify, but generally speaking, scifi books are interested in futurism and, often, science, while fantasy is about the supernatural or mythical, usually in other, fantastic worlds - my tastes generally lie in fantasy, because I’m more interested in historical or cultural issues, which I think are better explored in fantasy than scifi. BUT these are only broad generalizations, and both genres have a lot going on.

Another catch-all term is “speculative fiction”, which can mean works that are both of these things, or neither, but nonetheless contain weird or extraordinary elements.

Within scifi, there’s “hard” and “soft” scifi. For a long time, hard SF dominated the field, but “soft” has enjoyed a surge in popularity over the past 20-30 years. Hard SF tends to care about the details of science and be interested in the nitty-gritty of how the spaceships run, how alien planets are terraformed, etc. Soft SF elevates character and plotting over that. I tend to prefer soft, but I’ve read excellent books in both subgenres. For “hard” scifi, Robert Heinlein’s “juveniles” are very good - they’re books written for teens in the 1950s. The young audience forced him to keep his plotting under tighter control, it seems, as well as his political diatribes. They’re fun, a bit pulpy. I really enjoyed “Starman Jones”. The first Heinlein book I read was “Friday”, about an “artificial person”, a genetically modified human being built in a lab, and her struggles against discrimination and for survival in a crumbling world. It’s good, and good-natured for a Heinlein book. “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress”, about the moon fighting a war of secession against the Earth, is my personal favorite. Disclaimer: the dude was a hardcore libertarian, and his political views are disgusting, and never expressed more strongly than in “Moon”; however, the plotting and characters of the book are good enough to outweigh that. Great book, take with a grain of salt.

Another hard-ish SF I really enjoy is anything by Lois McMaster Bujold. Her stuff is often lumped as “military SF”, but it’s really not; she describes her own books as “novels of character”, and, indeed, her characters are superbly developed. She also has a good sense of humor and an absolutely riveting control of plot and pacing. Currently one of my favorite authors. She has more Hugo awards for Best Novel (that’s SF/F’s highest honor) than any other author but Heinlein, and she will probably surpass him, having the advantage of still being alive.
Her main SF work is the “Vorkosigan saga”, about Miles Vorkosigan, a brilliant though deformed young officer in the Barrayar Intelligence Services; he foils coups, invasion plots, leads mutinies against insane officers, etc. The books are supposed to be readable in any order, but I recommend starting at the start, with “Shards of Honor”. “Shards of Honor” was bundled with its direct sequel, “Barrayar”, as “Cordelia’s Honor”, which is what I recommend buying.
Failing that, try “Young Miles”, which collects “The Warrior’s Apprentice” and “The Vor Game”.

Another excellent series, which bridges hard and soft SF and mixes in a bit of humor, is Dan Simmon’s “Hyperion” series. It’s two books - “Hyperion” and “The Fall of Hyperion”, and they are two halves of one story so you have to read both, but they’re so good it won’t be a problem - and they take place in a far future where seven pilgrims are selected to visit the tomb of the “Shrike” on the planet Hyperion - the “Shrike” being a terrifying, totally alien godlike entity that will kill six of them and grant the seventh whatever he desires. As they travel, they tell the reasons why they came and what they hope to get; it’s like the Canterbury Tales in space. But better. Then, having established the basic conflict and situation in the first book, Simmons pulls back in the second book and shows how the fate of the pilgrims has ramifications for the whole universe. So good.

“The Forever War,” by Joe Haldeman. Haldeman was a Vietnam vet who wrote a deeply allegorical novel inspired by his experiences; but it is so much more than a mere allegory, it’s also a contemplation on how technology changes war and how war changes those who fight. Made me cry. “The Forever Peace,” a much later book, is not a sequel, merely a spiritual successor, and it’s just as good.
Soft scifi - I enjoy Philip Jose Farmer, who was known for his craaaazy ideas. The “Riverworld” books are top-to-bottom excellent, but it’s a four-book series, so a bit of an investment. The first is “To Your Scattered Bodies Go”. I read it in one sitting, it’s that good. All of humanity that has ever lived (some 36 billion people) is simultaneously resurrected along the banks of a 20 million mile-long river. They are now immortal. Who put them there? Why? Historical badasses like Mark Twain and Richard Burton and Cyrano de Bergerac team up to find out why.

One difficulty with SF/F is that it has historically been dominated by white male writers - SF especially. Ursula K. Leguin leaves most of them in the dust, though. Her intelligence is staggering. I recommend her short novel, “The Lathe of Heaven”, about a guy who sees a sleep therapist because his dreams have the ability to alter reality, and he wants to stop that. But the therapist has other plans. DUNH DUNH DUNH! It’s a brilliant exploration of psychology. Her “Dispossessed” and “The Left Hand of Darkness” both won Hugos, but I haven’t read ‘em. On my shelf.

Fantasy! Much of fantasy is typical “epic fantasy” - that is, elves, wizards, dragons, everyone being very serious all the time, giant books or book series that go on and on. “Lord of the Rings” is the original one. The “Wheel of Time” series and George RR Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” are other examples. I tend to avoid this stuff, as it can get turgid or boring, but it’s still the most popular form. I understand Martin’s series - “A Game of Thrones” is the first novel - is quite good. Jacqueline Carey’s “Kushiel” series, of which “Kushiel’s Dart” is the first - is supposed to be good, but I tried it, and it wasn’t my thing. But it sells and gets good reviews, so I cautiously recommend it.

Then there’s sword-and-sorcery, which is the low-rent cousin of epic fantasy, the nitty-gritty stories where there are no heroes, just a couple of bastards fighting each other. I love this stuff. Conan the Barbarian is the most famous example, Fritz Leiber’s “Fafhrd and Grey Mouser” series is also prominent (and excellent), Michael Moorcock’s “Elric of Melnibone” is another - I understand that is the edgiest of all, though I haven’t read it yet. Post-modern, brutal, fantasy intended to challenge the reader. Got ‘em on my shelf. But this subgenre, I acknowledge, is pretty masculine, definitely not for everyone.

There’s also an astronomical rise in popularity of “urban fantasy”, which strictly means anything fantastic or supernatural in a modern setting (such as Jim Butcher’s “The Dresden Files”, but usually means “self-insertionist protagonist has boring or ridiculous romances or fights with vampires or werewolves.” The dreck of this, of course, is the execrable “Twi—–” series, but also includes such bestselling bottom-feeders as Charlaine Harris. You can do better than this. Humanity can do better than this. I consider the subgenre as a whole polluted.

I recommend, though, unreservedly, everything by Fritz Leiber. He is intelligent, hilarious, satirical, poised, confident. He writes across several genres - horror, SF, fantasy - and his experiments in each are always rewarding. His Fafhrd-and-Mouser “Lankhmar” stories were hugely influential, and always fun. I highly recommend, too, “A Specter Is Haunting Texas” - a guy who grew up on the moon comes down to Earth a few hundred years in the future for some reason or other, and most of North America is now part of the country of Texas, where genetically-modified enormous white Texans drive huge Cadillacs and monstrous horses and maintain a weird feudalism over their genetically-stunted Mexican slave races; the hero finds himself an unwitting messiah-figure for a Mexican rebellion. The book is laugh-aloud funny cover-to-cover, and gripping, and tragic.
Also, “Conjure Wife”, his first novel, about an anthropologist whose wife takes up witchcraft. A smart, incisive look at the interplay between people who read fantasy for fun, and those who study it for a living.

Lois McMaster Bujold, the McMaster of my heart, has lately jumped genres and started writing in fantasy. I haven’t read them yet, but they’re cleaning up Hugo awards and selling like hotcakes. She has the “Chalion” trilogy, of which “The Curse of Chalion” is the first, and the “Sharing Knife” series of four novels. Haven’t read them, but if she exercises her usual mastery of character and plotting, they’d be worth reading.

One of my favorite writers currently is China Mieville, a British Harvard- and Oxford-educated socialist/D&D nerd who writes “new weird” fiction. It is putatively fantasy, but has heavy tones of horror and steampunk (which is basically Dickens-flavored scifi, fantastic stuff with Victorian trappings). He has done more in the past decade to break boundaries than any other living writer. His stuff is smart, well-plotted, and not merely “edgy” but actually EDGY. His books stick with you. Wildly original. Brilliant stuff. He wrote a loosely linked trilogy in his fantasy world, Bas-Lag, which begins with “Perdido Street Station.”

Finally - I recommend Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy: “The Northern Lights”, known in the US as “The Golden Compass,” “The Subtle Knife,” and “The Amber Spyglass”. These are supposed to be young adult books, but they are dense and weighty with delicious themes and indelible characters. His plotting is superb, his fantasy worlds are rich and fascinating, and the books seriously, no kidding, improve page by page from the beginning to the end, the final book being three hundred pages of constant emotional high. Stunning books.

Finally, an author that falls into none of these genres but is merely regarded as “speculative” - Harlan Ellison. He wrote many of the more famous Outer Limits and Twilight Zone and Star Trek episodes, and is one of the few authors to build his career almost entirely on short stories. His work rewards a random sampling, but some recommended stories are “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” and “Mephistopheles in Onyx” and Djinn, No Twist” and “Send Not to Know for Whom the Lettuce Wilts”. He’s funny and often savage, and his stories are bite-sized. You can’t go wrong with a “best of” collection.

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