Personally, I refuse to talk to people who have not read Dick - he is one of the greats. (I am almost kidding.) But I don’t consider him unknown…
Probably less forgotten than Ubik. A classic examination of time and reality, and one of Dick’s best. Hard to find any non-sf fan who’s even heard of it.
This thread has prompted me to go digging through my old books. (I have way more books than bookshelves.) And I’d like to mention a few more books that stand out in my mind. Whether you will like them or not is up to you.
Manifest Destiny by Barry B. Longyear - The movie “Enemy mine” came out of part of this book.
One that more properly belongs in the favorite series thread, was the Janissaries books by Jerry Pournelle - Earth mercenaries kidnapped to another planet to fight older, established mercenaries kidnapped earlier by aliens.
An old theme, but well done.
Empire of the East by Fred Saberhagen - originally published by DAW as Changling Earth according to Amazon. This is actually the first of a trilogy, the other two volumes of which seem to have made their escape.
Sword and Sorcery at its best, IMHO.
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell - The basis for two movies, “The Thing from Another World”, (James Arness as a humanoid plant) and later “John Carpenter’s The Thing”
A truley scary alien invasion type story.
Finally, a couple I like for no particular reason:
The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz - Beautiful human female versus the alien invaders on another world, good juvenile fun.
Fire Time by Poul Anderson - Can’t find my copy, so this is a little sketchy - human observers on an alien world at war, great characters, IMHO.
A few more:
“The List of 7” and “The Six Messiahs” by Mark Frost. Nice little horror fantasies starring Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle. The author was creator (with David Lynch) of “Twin Peaks”.
“Pavanne” by Keith Roberts – first-class alternate history novel.
With all the people mentioning the fine work of Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, AKA Lord Dunsany, I’m amazed that nobody’s mentioned Clark Ashton Smith. Un fortunately, most of his work is only in print in anthologies, pretty well scattered around, but it’s well worth looking for…
Suo Na, Hanofer et al: I was wrong. The collection I have is 50 Science Fiction Short Shorts edited by the Good Doctor & Groff Conklin. I have never seen either 100 Short Short books. Thanx for mentioning them as I must check them out.
Danimal: I would not call either “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” or “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale” obscure sci-fi works. I’m afraid I agree with another poster – if you haven’t heard of Dick you haven’t read much modern science fiction.
I think Tepper is fairly well known, but regardless, Grass is probably her best effort in her own little create-a-planet-with-a-bizarre-alien-culture-and-then-peel-it-apart-slowly genre.
That book was, frankly, creepy. Talk about an interesting way of depicting fox-hunting…
Crompton Divided – Robert Sheckley, very funny
Our Friends from Frolix 8 or Now Wait for Last Year-- Philip K. Dick
The Gamesmen – Barry N. Malzberg (funny part is that it is quoted extensively in the original Win/Win negotiation book (I forget the author), but as a scientific study, not as a sci/fi novel!)
Time is the Simplest Thing – Clifford Simak
The End of Eternity – Isaac Asimov (I know everyone reads Asimov, but this one of his lesser published works, very good)
Friends Come in Boxes – Michael Coney
By the way, I think Lem sucks. It may be the fault of the translators, but his stories appear to be campy, disjointed, and slow. It least that is how it appeared to me, in the two works of his I looked at. I agree also that Capek’s “RUR” is dullsville.
Damn, I nearly spit my coffee.
I have the paperback of this wonderful novel (it’s hard to describe the tone, but think of it as a more somber version of the Adam scenes in “Good Omens”), and the cover is exactly as described. The only think I can think of is that they mean to offset the beam from the Stone of Ra. The sillhouette of Slally is nice, though.
I’ll try and scan and post the cover the the hardcover, which I buckled down and order last month Bibliofind. Lovely dark watercolor painting of the laek behind Bentley’s house, with an eagle flying over it. Very nice and appropriate cover.
Diamud:
I’m a big Sheckley fan. I think his stuff is generally too neglected and (as I’ve noted many times on this board) too much ripped off. That said, I don’t much care for his “middle” period of sf. This includes “Mindswap” and "“CRompton Divided”. CD is actually an expansion of one of his short stories from the 50s – “The Humours”, which I like a LOT more. His early stories were written with subsurface irony, but could be read on the surface as straight adventure yarns, and I liked them a lot more. They’re collected in “Notions Unlimited”, “Shards of Space”, “Untouched by Human Hands” and other collections.
No one has mentioned the twin gods of the original Twilight Zone – Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. Both wrote a lot of biting short sf and fantasy in the 50s. They also wrote short novels and wonderful screenplays. Matheson wrote “The Shrinking Man” (THERE’S a neglected book) and the screenplay for “THe Incredible Shrinking Man”, which is STILL a good flick. He’s still around, and his stuff is still being adapted (“What Dreams May Come”). Beaumont wrote the screenplays for “The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao”, “The Haunted Palace”, and – believe it or not – “Queen of Outer Space” (Eve, take note!). I’m sure that last one was some kind of put-on. Unfortunately, Mr. Beaumont died young. I have collections of their stories, but can’t recall most of the titles. One of Matheson’s is “Third from the Sun”, which includes the chilling “Born of Man and Woman”.
I love Sheckley. He’s probably tied with Tenn as one of my favorite short, humorous SF writers.
Of all his stories, I’d have to say my three favorites are a tie between “The Accountant” (a story about how horrified a family of sorcerers are that their son wants to drop out of the black magic trade and be…an accountant. Includes one of the best last lines ever); “The Minimum Man” It’s decided decides that steel-jawed, wavey haired explorers are just too competent to determine if the average man can survive on a given planet. They can survive where normal people can’t. So explorers are now the lowest common denominator; and “Cordle to Onion to Carrot”: The great stew that is life is filled with many different kinds of people, who are like the vegetables in the stew. Cordle(sp) is a round, pearly white onion, who one day decides to become a brash, bold carrot. And what happens after.
Fenris
Sheckley’s “Skulking Permit” is one of my all time favorte short humorous science fiction stories. God, that man’s mind was like a stainless steel razor in the fifties.
Back to the OP. I must admit that a lot of the stories and authors listed here I have certainly “heard of,” but have never read. Such is the field of science fiction.
Sir
Hmmm. I’d whole-heartedly endorse Stanislaw Lem (especially “His Master’s Voice”), E R Eddison, and Tanith Lee, but I’m not sure they qualify as particularly obscure.
I’ve only skimmed through this thread, but I didn’t spot any references to Olaf Stapledon, so I’ll mention him. Best known for “Last and First Men”, arguably best book is “Star Maker” (similar setup to L&FM, but a much broader canvas… which, given that L&FM covers the entire future history of the human race, should tell you something…)
Personal favourite: Christopher Hodder-Williams. Author of a number of near-future dystopian thrillers, examples “98.6” and “Fistful of Digits”, also of “Chain Reaction”, a very early (late fifties, I think) story of a nuclear accident - no meltdowns or other explosive pyrotechnics, just a very credible and well-paced scenario.
Another personal favourite: David Lindsay’s “A Voyage to Arcturus”. Weirdly inventive allegorical fantasy, and the ending sent shivers up my spine.
Stapledon is back in print in the UK at the moment, I think the Lindsay book either is or will be soon, but where you’d get hold of Hodder-Williams at the moment, I just don’t know.
If you are talking Sheckley short stories, my two faves would be the abovementioned “Cordle to Onion to Carrot” and “The Smell of Fear.” Also love the AAA Detective Agency stories.
Danimal said:
Not particularly favorites. IMO, the best thing that happened to Androids was making it Blade Runner. Sure, it took off in a different direction about halfway through, and the “replicants” weren’t necessarily androids. I think that’s what made it better. It goes off into an examination of what makes a human. Though I will admit there were points to the book.
Just thought of another obscure book by a famous author.
The Blue Planet by Jack Vance. I really like it.
One of the single most important works of 20th-century fiction is Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban:
[ul]“This is what literature is meant to be–exploration without fear.”
–Anthony Burgess
“Set in a remote future and composed in an English nobody ever spoke or wrote…lighting by El Greco and jokes by Punch and Judy…and a hero with Huck Finn’s heart and charm.”
–The New York Times
“Russell Hoban has brought off an extroardinary feat of imagination and of style. Funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece.”
–The Observer
“One of 1981’s best novels.”
–Newsweek
“An artistic tour-de-force in every possible way.”
–New York Review of Books
“Marvelous…Suffused with melancholy and wonder, beautifully written, Riddley Walker is a novel people will be reading for a long, long time.”
–The Washington Post Book World[/ul]
His Pilgermann is also nearly without parallel in modern fiction:
[ul]“What we have here–pirates, seductive pigs and violent battles to the contrary–is not so much a tale of adventure as a meditationon history, loss and grief, a dark treatise on the mysterious nature of things…a network of small interlocking essays on matters no less significant than mutability and mortality…merely remarkable.”
–Joel Cannaroe, front page, The New York Times Book Review
“Pilgermann does live, both as a character in a vivid moment of the historical past and as a living questing spirit. Hoban successfully creates a pilgrim who once traveled and who has not stopped. His novel is not an easy read, only a fascinating and rewarding one.”
–Time
“A novel that is both Riddley Walker’scomplement and mirror image…a direct approach to ‘the living heart of mystery.’”
–Harper’s[/ul]
I urge you to track down and read these books, and his other novels. Including Fremder, which takes as a source Bester’s The Stars My Destination:
[ul]“He [Hoban] displays prodigious storytelling skills and an uncanny talent for fleshing out allegories. The result is an urgent, bitterly ironic but at the last, tender evocation of the capacities of the human spirit.”
–Independent on Sunday
“Shot through with Hoban’s trademark luminous prose…a book to read and re-read.”
–Financial Times
“Unputdownable, moving, ingenious…”
–Evening Standard
“Nobody concerned with the future of either mankind or humour could ‘nilspond’ to this funny and funky tour de force.”
–Mail on Sunday[/ul]
Well, I was afraid someone was going to say something like that. No one I’VE ever talked to has heard of Cook. (Actually, that’s not true… I met one person one time and was really excited).
I’m looking forward to some of the authors recommended in this thread!
I’m not sure that Eric Frank Russell is obscure, but “Next of Kin” was entertaining.
Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War? Is that obscure enough? It’s certainly old enough, and is the book that got me started on sci-fi. 'Course I was a young teenager at the time and probably only started reading it because it had a lot of that forbidden word (you know, the f-word) in the first chapter. Whatever the case may be, I found it to be kind of poignant, and a really interesting commentary on War with a capital W. I still enjoy it, even though it’s kind of campy in a way.