100% agree.
Butler belongs on the list. Only one person mentioned Neuromancer; it absolutely must go on the list.
It’s interesting to see–and I’m not saying anything about the folks in the thread, so much as about science fiction as a field–how few of the authors mentioned are non-white, and how few are not men.
The name “Kilgore Trout” was inspired by the name “Theodore Sturgeon.” He and Vonnegut were friends and fellow struggling writers in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. In general though, Trout and Sturgeon don’t seem to be much alike:
Vonnegut appeared in both Galaxy and F&SF, the core literary sf magazines, in his early career. But he also sold what we would consider f&sf to mainstream magazines like Collier’s. None of his first three f&sf novels, Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, and Cat’s Cradle, were marketed as sf. To the contrary, they appeared from prestige literary houses like Scribners, Houghton Mifflin, and Holt, Rinehart and Winston. They got excellent reviews, too.
A top literary writer shouldn’t need to keep finding new publishers for every book, though. His non-sf work fared even worse. Mother Night got published as a paperback original; Harper & Row (prestige publisher #4!) did the first hardback edition four years later. The short story collection Canary in a Cat House also appeared as a paperback original.
It wasn’t until after Cat’s Cradle didn’t get the respect he wanted that he figured out he had to loudly disclaim any connection to what was then still got considered as subliterate trash if he wanted mainsteam attention. Terry Southern, the leading writer of what was then called “black humor” reviewed it for the Times Book Review and said “Like the best of contemporary satire, it is work of a far more engaging and meaningful order than the melodramatic tripe which most critics seem to consider ‘serious’.” But Vonnegut wanted to be considered serious. If denouncing sf made him appear serious, fine with him.
Then Delacorte (#5!) published Slaughterhouse-Five as straight literary fiction and his career was made.
Theodore Sturgeon (Sturgeon/Trout: really) is usually considered the original. He and Vonnegut were friends, he was known as an outstanding writer who didn’t get the attention he deserved, and he had suffered serious writer’s block as a result.
The Sirens of Titan (1959) was first published as an SF-style paperback original. Holt issued the hardcover in 1961.
In my 1990s publishing days I was a bud of Knox Burger, who was Vonnegut’s agent at the time.
Thanks for the important correction. That certainly helps explain his attitude. Hmm. I turn out to have a copy of it. Dell First Editions did a lot of sf in the 1950s, and often did simultaneous firsts with hardcover publishers, like they did with Gnome Press and Judith Merril’s first four best stories of the year anthologies. That would have been a prestige paperback publication - but in an era when paperbacks were almost as derided as sf.
You’re teasing me now.
Would any of you consider Ender’s Game a classic? I’m inclined to, if only because it’s so popular. I know several people who have barely read any science fiction, but they’ve read Ender’s Game.
Sure (although it’s more recent than most of the books mentioned in this thread. How old does something have to be to be a classic?).
It occurs to me now that maybe The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy deserves consideration.
I suppose it could be considered a classic, but I (like you mentioned earlier) was thinking 1950s or 1960s or earlier. (It is sorta like debating if John William’s theme to Superman should considered classical music.) Books from the early years of SF as a modern genre. If you are going to conciser well liked books from the 1980s and beyond, the list is going to bloom even more beyond 12 to 15 books.
It wasn’t stated in the OP that these classics had to come from specific time period. Are we really limited to such a time period? I assumed classics just meant the best ones from any time. My list was all from the 1970’s and earlier except for one, but that’s because just by luck that’s what I considered the best happened to have been written.
I just assumed classic to mean older (that is pretty much part of the definition of classic to me–nothing is a classic until it has aged) but the OP did elaborate in post #44:
“How broadly are you defining “modern?” I’m particularly interested in material from the 1950s and 1960s. Definitely still willing to read things from earlier or later.”
I don’t use the word “classic” in that way, but whatever. I suppose I sort of mentally divide up books into (1) the ones that I knew about when they came out and (2) those that I wasn’t old enough to know about when they came out. If you look at my list in post #6, the only ones that I read close to the time they came out were the Riverworld books and Replay. Yeah, I was certainly old enough to read those on the list that came out in the 1960’s, but I didn’t have good access to libraries or bookstores or money to afford to buy books.
I have plenty of books on my shelves that say “A Novel” on the cover, and yet which are unambiguously science fiction and marketed as such.
Apollyon, I think you’re thinking of Asimov with the really bad puns, not Clarke. Clarke’s short stories often have a “punchline” twist at the end, but it’s not a joke sort of punchline, it’s things like “High overhead, one by one, the stars were winking out”.
And I absolutely agree that Ender’s Game and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy should be considered classics. It’s possible for a particularly good, thought-provoking, or influential work to be a classic nearly as soon as it’s published.
Putting on my pedant hat, the first definition that comes up when I google for “classic” is:
1.
judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.
“a classic novel”
In other words, a classic is something seen in retrospect after it has been tested by time.
I didn’t want to go as far as the 80s with my list but I agree with this sentiment. IIRC, “Neuromancer” was pretty quickly considered a groundbreaking work. It wasn’t an instant hit but it was intensely discussed in the months after publication and won the triple crown.
I think Apollyon’s thinking of Feghoots. Asimov wrote some, but so did many others. The TVTropes page lists examples by Asimov, Clarke, and many more.
The first sequel to “Ender’s Game”, “Speaker for the Dead” (Orson Scott Card has subsequently milked that series prolifically, but unevenly), in my view forever upped the bar for writing about aliens who are undeniably and disturbingly alien. One of my favorites, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned…
Ender’s Game was mentioned all the way back in post #13. It was published in 1985. 32 years ago. I started reading f&sf in 1963. The Golden Age starts, conventionally, with John W. Campbell taking over Astounding in 1937. That’s only 26 years. As a kid, everything published before I started reading was a classic.
Neuromancer was 1984. If that’s not a “famous, influential, noteworthy, and/or genre-defining” book, then what is? It was all those things before 1990.
Not in the 1980s they weren’t. And I’m curious how you know those books you’re referring to were marketed as science fiction.
No, Clarke wrote Neutron Tide.
Though I think that’s Clarke’s only pun story, while Asimov wrote a few (eg Shah Guido G).
So much good stuff out there!
Hands down, my all-time favorite sf book is George R.R. Martin’s Tuf Voyaging, a terrific collection of interrelated short stories about the misanthropic, sarcastic captain of a massive starship with very impressive ecological engineering and cloning capabilities. Great tales that tackle some interesting issues, including absolute power, overpopulation, environmentalism and militarism. I’ve often recommended the book here on the boards, and without exception everyone who’s read it has raved about it. Hope you like it, too.
Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise is a very interesting look at building a space elevator or “beanstalk.” Also very good by Clarke: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, and Childhood’s End.
John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War is the first book in a series, about humanity fighting a number of hostile alien races. It’s right up there with Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War for hard, page-turner military sf, but with more snark, humor and snappy writing.
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s The Mote in God’s Eye is one of the best-ever alien first contact stories, IMHO, set in the distant future when humanity’s starfaring empire is climbing back up after a long fall.
Frank Herbert’s Dune is a deserved classic, about a desert world with a hidden subculture at the center of galactic imperial politics.
Isaac Asimov’s The Robots of Dawn is my favorite book of his, but I, Robot and The Foundation Trilogy are also well worth a read, although slightly dated now.
Heinlein’s Time for the Stars, about near-FTL travel and ESP, is my favorite of his many books, although Have Space Suit - Will Travel, Glory Road, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Space Cadet, The Rolling Stones, The Puppet Masters, Friday and the aforementioned Starship Troopers are all excellent.
Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man are his best, I think - collections of just one amazing short story after another.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin is an engrossing tale of a human diplomat trying to learn about a very different alien culture with shifting sexual identities.
Alan Dean Foster’s Icerigger is, I believe, his best, about a small group of humans stranded on a wintry alien world who board a great ship that sails the frozen seas.
Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War is, as mentioned above, a great military sf novel. My favorite of his, though, is Tool of the Trade, a Cold War sf/espionage thriller about a Soviet sleeper agent in the U.S. who develops a practical method of mind control. A great story with a perfect ending.