Reading the Earth Abides thread has starting me thinking about great books that are extremely difficult to find. A favorite of mine that I had to search for a long time to find was The High Crusade by Poul Anderson. What others would you suggest as being well worth reading but difficult to find?
Despite the relatively high number of Dopers who seem to have read it, I would nominate Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, an epoch-spanning work which influenced Arthur C. Clarke most visibly in Childhood’s End and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
That’s definitely the kind of work I’m thinking of Knead. Hopefully we’ll get more responses and suggestions.
One that was available in my small town libary in the 50s and took me a lot of time to find recently was Eric Frank Russell’s Three to Conquer. Its an almost film noir take on a natural telepath who is the only one able to detect that three astronauts returned from Venus are infected with an alien life form bent on conquering.
The 50s were a hotbed of “psi” stories, and many of them are hopelessly dated. But this is a great adventure story worth hunting down.
EFR’s output in general did not get the attention over the years that it has deserved, IMHO. He’s has a fine sense of pace, a flair for dialogue and a wicked sense of humor. Part of the Good Old Stuff that is too often overlooked.
Uh, all of Burroughs’ Mars series (11 in total, many out of print), plus the 5 in his venus series. Also, there are a few threads with long lists of must-read Sci-Fi books through the decades, i don’t have links off-hand, i am sure someone will come along…
How many people out there have actually read The Martian Chronicles? No? Didn’t think so.
Pretty much anything by Jack Vance. I can’t believe how few young (as in younger than me, of course) fans have never read Vance.
Other individual titles:
Haldeman’s The Forever War
Farmer’s The Lovers
Sturgeon’s More Than Human
Dick’s Man in the High Castle
Piper’sa Little Fuzzy
Not classics but they should have been and everybody who reads this should track them down and read them right away:
Wolfe’s Three Novellas (also published as The Fifth Head of Cerberus)
Crowley’s Engine Summer (with Beasts and The Deep gettingg honorable mention. Pick up all threee in the omnibus collection and you will thaank yourself later.)
I’ve got a copy of Earth Abides. It is, I agree, a little-known and hard-to-find work of sf. I first read it in hardcover, and was surprised when it came out in paperback circa 25 years ago.
The entire The Best of ___________ series that Ballantine books (laster Del Rey) put out between 1973 and 1979 was excellent, and all are now out of print (except for The Best of Lester Del Rey, which was recently republished). Absolutely superb series highlighting the short fiction of writers from the 1920s through the 1960s. I never would have known about the work of folks like Raymond Z. Gallun, Stanley G. Weinbaum, or Edmund Hamilton otherwise.
Other works – heck, a lot of good SF from the 1960s through the 1970s is long out of print, even by “big name” sf writers. Try and find most of Asimov’s prolific output these days. Ace books published a lot of Jules Verne’s work back in the 1960s, but try and find The Purchase of the North Pole or The Village in the Treetops or The Begum’s Fortune now. Or H.G. Wells’s In the Days of the Comet, or The Food of the Gods or Star Begotten.
A read an interesting little book by Czech writer Karel Capek IIRC called war with the newts.
He was the guy who coined the term robot in his 1920 work called R.U.R. Rossum’s Universal Robots which I haven’t read yet.
Oh, and I can’t believe I missed the chance to remind everyone that your ability to read a rare book is not limited by your ability to find it for sale. Public and academic libraries have a service available to their users known as inter-library loan, by which you can obtain things you might never have thought possible, often for no cost.
Just a handy thing to keep in mind when reading this kind of thread. I used ILL to get a copy of the Stapledon book I mentioned back when I read it 10 years ago.
H. Beam Piper’s Fuzzy books are good, as Spiritus suggests, but I bet it’s harder to find his Four Day Planet and Lone Star Planet which are also a lot of fun.
And there was a coooool book by Harry Harrison about a heavy gravity world where EVERYTHING tried to kill you, called Hellworld or Deathplanet or something like that.
Can we do fantasy recommendations too? How about Three Hearts and Three Lions? A great retelling (by Poul Anderson I think) of the Oliver saga.
War with the Newts is back in print; I just bought it from Amazon.
I read some of EFRs stuff back in the 60’s and loved it. I wish someone would bring back Men, Martians, and Machines; my copy fell apart.
I’d also like to see some of Zelazny’s stuff back in print besides the Amber stuff.
I read the The Martian Chronicles when I was in high school, about 30 years ago.
i read it in high school as well, and at least one other person did, since she was asking questions on my views of certain things when i gave my report on it.
You can get a few of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ finest right here. Forgotten classics make for great e-books, and you haven’t lived until you’ve read A Princess of Mars on your Palm Pilot.
Also, Jules Verne, and all the Oz books.
All public domain these days.
Oh, and in the more recent category, John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids.
Edgar Pangborn’s “Davy.”
In addition to “The Day of the Triffids,” there’s Wyndham’s “The Kraken Wakes” (aka “Out of the Deeps”).
Tom Reamy’s “Blind Voices” and “San Diego Lightfoot Sue.”
Alfred Bester’s “The Stars My Destination” and “The Demolished Man.”
A.E. Van Vogt’s “Slan.”
Kate Wilhelm’s “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.”
“Replay” by Ken Grimwood.
And, of course, “Staroamer’s Fate” by Chuck Rothman 
It’s Deathworld. There were two semisequels, and they were sold bound as one volume, The Deathworld Trilogy.
It’s Deathworld. There were two semisequels, and they were sold bound as one volume, The Deathworld Trilogy.
These are back in print, as well as two more volumes of Besteriana (one entitled Redemolished. I just bought them over the past two years.
Thanks Cal, I knew someone would come through!
Thanks Cal, I knew someone would come through!
Me, for one. Just reread it this summer. Seems a bit dated now, but still cool.
I remember one called “Moon 02” about a broken-down lunar pilot and a pretty, young girl who look for her murdered brother on the moon and get caught in a corporate conspiracy. Sort of a 1930s detective story set on the moon. I lost the book a long time ago, and have never seen it since, so maybe it’s not as classic as I would believe.
Isn’t Olaf Stapledon still in print in those nice twofers from Dover Publications? As I recall, LAST AND FIRST MEN was paired with STARMAKER, and ODD JOHN (a personal favorite) came with SIRIUS.
The aforementioned Sturgeon and Bester books – MORE THAN HUMAN and STARS MY DESTINATION – are newly reissued in nifty trade paperback editions.
…I’M pissed that you can’t find a nice in-print edition of Charles Finney’s THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO, or Fredric Brown’s MARTIANS GO HOME. (As you can tell, I like my SF on the lighter side.)