Maybe this thread will send a few people scurrying to used book websites, since my entry, at least, is out of print.
I’ll start off with The Penal Colony, by Richard Herley.
The basic plot is that (in 1997 according to the book, but meant to be a few years in the future) Great Britain is running island prison colonies to isolate murderers, child rapists, terrorists and other extremely dangerous convicts away from the rest of the population. The penal colonies are reputed to be living hell for those sent there, places of violent anarchy where the strong and ruthless are preyed upon by the stronger and more ruthless. The main character is a regular desk-working Joe who gets sent to one of these colonies for a murder/rape he didn’t commit, and the story follows him through his arrival, acclimation and survival among these convicts.
The book is great because of Herley’s tremendous talent for characterization. He’s able to depict the thoughts and motives of complex people in a few deft strokes, and the characters seem really, really alive. He also takes an interesting premise and fleshes it out in a largely believable fashion. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a 300 page novel a little more intellectually hefty than Grisham or Koontz (whom I like), but still exciting and readable. I’d love to know why this guy didn’t have the chance or inclination (whichever it was) to write more books.
Anyone else want to pimp an obscure masterpiece to the SDMB?
I am surprised that so few science fiction fans have ever read Vernor Vinge’s True Names.
While many fans attribute numerous important concepts of cyberspace to author William Gibson, I’d like to look a bit farther back, to True Names. In this striking work of fiction (written in 1979 and published in 1981, long before personal computers and the Web became part of our daily lives), Vinge gives vividly imagined details of many concepts which are everyday Internet realities today. Vinge’s online communities prefigure chatrooms and multi-user domains in an uncannily accurate fashion (complete with a few disagreeable and destructive individuals who take pleasure in wreaking havoc). Vinge was, as far as I can tell, the first SF writer to use the term “avatar” to describe a digital image that represents an anonymous user. Vinge called the online access point a “portal.” As you read this 25-year-old story, it seems contemporary: much of what was fictional in 1979 is factual today.
A personal note: I regard this novella so highly that, when choosing my Google Answers screen name, I very nearly went with “Erythrina,” the name of a major character from True Names. I decided not to use this name after I told a friend about my plans, and she said “Erythrina??? Isn’t that a disease?”
I’d like to pimp a lot of obscure masterpieces, but I’ll stick with one – The Ideal Genuine Man by Don Robertson.
It’s about an ordinary guy examining his life and trying to cope with aging and the loss of his wife.
The key word is “ordinary”. The protagonist isn’t an artist, lawyer, doctor, politician, college professor – he isn’t leaving anything of value behind, and no one will take note of his passing. We won’t read his obit and think “What a cool guy, wish I’d known him”.
Except that people will remember him. Saying more would spoil the shocking ending.
Don Robertson’s an exceptional writer with a distinctive style. He doesn’t always set his dialogue out in quotes, but he doesn’t need to. His characters are so well-drawn, you know who’s talking because of what they’re saying and how they say it.
After reading this one, I went on to read his three Civil War books, and his magnum opus, the two-volume Paradise Falls. Haven’t been disappointed yet.
Breakfast with Scot – a charming novel about a gay man (and his partner) who gains custody of a 11 year old boy when he is named legal guardian by an ex who OD’d. Confusion and uncomfortable introspection abound when Scot arrives and they realize he’s rather… swishy. The fellas wonder if they should “straighten” Scot out for his own good or leave him to be pummelled by more socially acceptable bullies on a regular basis. A funny yet touching tale of accidental parenthood.
This is neat little book destroyed by a horrible cover design and the underwhelming publicity budget of a teensy press. When I worked for Borders we tried our damndest to lift this book out of the obscurity to which it was obviously doomed, to little avail.
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. Barth is out of style these days, but Sot-Weed is still one of the best American novels written.
It’s the story of Ebeneezer Cooke, poet and virgin, who is name poet lauriat of the colony of Maryland in the 17th Century. Cooke is naive, and travels to Maryland and falls in love with the whore Joan Toast. It’s a picaresque tale, as Cooke goes through a serious of bawdy and hilarious adventures, all leading up to him writing his cynical masterpiece of a poem which gives the book its title. Most of the plot involves finding Captain John Smith’s secret of the sacred eggplant, which he desparately needs as an aphrodesic in order to have sex with Pocahontas and save his life.
What’s even more fantastic is that there really was a poet Ebeneezer Cooke of the time who did write a poem called “The Sot-Weed Factor.*” And the secret of the sacred eggplant really existed (if you’ve read the novel, that fact should astonish you).
It is well worth searching out; there are few novels more bawdy and more fun.
*The title, translated into modern English would be, “The Tobacco Farmer.”
In several posts I’ve mentioned my admiration for The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad. It’s an enormously admired and influential book to those in the SF community who’ve read it, but AFAIK it’s been out of print for some time, and hard to find copies of.
This book succeeds in doing in print what Verhoeven tries to do in film: take a standard archtypical story and deliberately twist it to make the audience wake up. It consists mostly of a story within a story called “Lord of the Swastika” by… Adolf Hitler. Lord of the Swastika is the 1955 Hugo Award winner in an alternate world in which Hitler emigrated to the United States after WW1, and ended up becoming a science-fiction writer. Set centuries after an atomic holocaust, LotS’s hero is Ferik Jaggar, a genetically pure “Trueman” in a world of mutants, who’s career mirrors an idealized version of the rise of the actual Hitler and the Nazi party. What starts out at first like a simple heroic fantasy eventually becomes a paen to fascist militarism, anti-Semitic paranoia and genocide.
As Spinrad himself said in an essay: “Nearly everyone got the point <…> The American Nazi Party put the book on their approved reading list; apparently they liked the happy ending.”
The White Plague by Frank Herbert. Also, his Pandora Sequence of novels. Seems everyone thinks hsi Dune series is what he put most of his energy into. Well, not everyone. Still, The White Plague is such an overlooked story. It’s a stand alone novel, dealing with bio-engineering as a terror weapon, terrorism in general, Irish history, international law, mental illness, extremes of nationalism and regionalism, the Catholic Church, and so on, and so on …
Illusion is based on the events and people of the French Revolution, but set in an 18th century-like fantasy world with magic. The magic that used to be possible for the Elite ruling class is turned against them when their excesses lead to a revolt by the peasants. The main character is Eliste, a young noblewoman.
I love the book, but it’s much better in theory than in practice. The book itself is poorly written and badly chiched. I know that was Norman’s point (and he deliberately wrote it that way), and it’s very clever intellectually, but reading it is a real slog.
I also don’t think it’s particularly admired or influential – it’s a very clever idea, and makes some interesting points, but once you get past the idea, the actual book is similar to Mel Brook’s High Anxiety – interesting to see the parallels, but not much good as a work of art.
Delia Falconer’s two novels - “The Service of Clouds” amd "The Lost Thoughts of Soliders:. Falconer has an immense gift, she’s a memsmerising writer and deserves a lot more recognition.
John Christopher’s Tripods Trilogy was always a favorite of mine (and my Dad’s), growing up. Basically an english boy and his newfound friends’ quest to escape a de-industrialized europe held for a century under the mental domination of alien conquerers.
The same author’s The Death of Grass was a good read, too. I don’t know if I’d say great, but it was pretty memorable. Basically, the end of civilization brought about by a grass blight. Simplicity itself. Yow.
Anne Lindbergh’s Three Lives to Live. A thirteen-year-old girl, Garet, is living a quiet life with her grandmother, Gratkins, in their rambling Victorian mansion. One day a strange girl named Daisy falls out the laundry chute, dressed in an old-fashioned party dress. Not only is Daisy secretive about her past, Gratkins happily adopts her into the family, and suddenly Garet is saddled with a “twin sister”. A fabulous pre-teen novel, one of my favorites when I was Garet’s age. Hilarious and smartly-written.
As odd as it seems to me (as I read it as part of public education), no one I know has ever heard of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn.
Probably the best novel I’ve ever read, although I do mix it up with Elie Wiesel’s Night occasionally.
I know that several other Dopers know about these books, and I’ve pushed them shamelessly here on the boards in the past, but here they are again.
P.C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath books–Godstalk, Dark of the Moon, and Seeker’s Mask–are amazing works of fantasy that don’t get nearly the attention they deserve. They follow the adventures of a young woman named Jame as she attempts to return to (and fit in among) her people…who appear to be the most honor-bound, god-ridden, bloodthirsty lunatics that ever tried to save the universe. The worlds of the books are incredibly vivid and full of odd quirks, a description that fits the characters and plots equally well. The books are very dark, but still full of oddly whimsical humor.
The first two books are available in a combined edition under the title Dark of the Gods and Seeker’s Mask is available separately. There’s also a collection of short stories called Blood and Ivory, which contains several Jame shorts (some of which are not canonical) and the oddest Sherlock Holmes story I’ve ever read. Fair warning: The series isn’t complete, and Hodgell often takes a long time between books. Fortunately, each book can stand on its own.
This one’s non-fiction: The Brass Ring by Bill Mauldin, an unsentimental grunt’s-eye view of World War II from the great cartoonist. From Mauldin’s humble beginnings in a Southwestern border town to his vocation as a self-trained cartoonist, troubled family life, and a ringside view of virtually all the European theater of the war, he saw a side of the conflict we rarely hear about: Corrupt Americans, enemies with surprising nobility, a battle (Monte Cassino) where Americans are pretty universally acknowledged to be the bad guys, generals who are just a little too comfortable with the castles and trappings of European nobility, Italian and French villagers doing what they have to to ingratiate themselves to whatever troops occupy their village, and a face-to-face meeting with General Patton (and possibly one with Pancho Villa, IIRC, when he was a baby).
A fun little book, and surprisingly cheap on Amazon.
Allow me to quote myself from a similar thread last year:
The book I just read is called Silverlock, by John Myers Myers. Half the time I was reading it, I was thinking “Dopers would love this!” I had the sneaking suspicion that everyone knew about it but me, so I did a search, and I see that plenty of Dopers have already recommended it. But hey, I’m not going to let that stop me.
The copyright on this book is 1949! Apparently it’s been out of print for years and has just been reissued. When I first picked it up, I noted the lovely cover art and general glossiness of the thing, and I thought to myself, “Great. Obviously they’re trying to polish up an old turd here.” Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The three forewords are written by Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle, and they are all so effusive that no book could live up to their praises. Still, I was not disappointed.
Silverlock follows the adventures of an American man who is shipwrecked and washes up on the shore of a land called the Commonwealth. This land is peopled by characters of literature and mythology. It was lots of fun to catch all the references (not that I caught all of them!) And it was refreshing that the protagonist was not interested in anything so silly as finding his way home. I found him a very realistic character, and not outdated, as I had feared.
[Fifth-grade book report mode]
Although I’m not generally a big fan of fantasy, I was very happy with this book and I hope I’ve said something here that will encourage someone to go pick it up, because I think you’ll like it too. [/FGBR]
Well, I’ve seen it referred to once here on the boards, but nobody I know IRL has ever read Dave Barry’s Big Trouble, except for my hubby who brought it home one day, threw it on the table in front of me, and said “Here. You gotta read this”.
Mea culpa. EtherealFreak has no hubby that I’m aware of, and one of these days I promise I’ll start checking out who’s logged in on this machine before I post.