# Recommend some old SF **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 30, 2010, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387 "2010-03-30T21:43:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/21 "2010-03-31T11:17:14Z")
> [@](#): > > Good list. I’d add > Cordwainer Smith > Alfred Bester > Henry Kuttner/C. L. Moore (husband and wife; they often helped each other out so that many of their stories are collaborations. Also used the pen name Lewis Padgett). > William F. Nolan > John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids is a must, as is Out of the Deeps/The Kraken Wakes (US and UK titles). > Hal Clement > Theodore Sturgeon > Not for everyone: > A. E. Van Vogt. One of SF’s most popular writers in the 40s, though his reputation has diminished. But you should read Slan > > * * * I would’ve, too, but I was restricting my list to those on the Gutenberg site. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/22 "2010-03-31T12:11:54Z")
> [@Meurglys](#): > > My favourite **H. G. Wells** novel isn’t there (_The War in the Air_; Zeppelin warfare, with added autogyros!) but _The Island of Doctor Moreau_ is good. [Gutenberg does have it](http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/w#a30), just not on that list. ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/23 "2010-03-31T13:38:25Z")
Thanks for finding it! Much under-rated, in my view! I guess the early sections before his adventure starts might seem a bit slow to modern expectations… There’s at least one scene early on worthy of Jerome K. Jerome, though! ---
**Author:** ![iftheresaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecae2f/32.png) [@iftheresaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iftheresaway)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2010, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/24 "2010-04-01T04:18:33Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I missed it too, at first, but these are precisely the links in the OP. He wants to know which of the stories/novels are worth his time, I believe. She, but otherwise thanks; I was trying to be clever with my links but I guess I was mainly elusive. And thanks to everyone else for the recommendations! As much science fiction as I read, I really have no idea about the origins, so I am delighted and psyched about my new “to read” list. ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2010, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/25 "2010-04-01T04:38:35Z")
You may enjoy Ursula Le Guin. I believe she has some ebooks available. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2010, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/26 "2010-04-01T15:29:20Z")
Here are some of my favorites (some older than others): _Childhood’s End_ by Arthur C. Clarke – Powerful aliens offer us peace and prosperity, but we must give up our dreams of going to the stars. _The Fountains of Paradise_ by Arthur C. Clarke – The challenges, setbacks and triumphs of building an orbital elevator or “beanstalk.” _All My Sins Remembered_ by Joe Haldeman – A spy for a distant-future republic begins to lose his own identity the longer his career runs. _The Forever War_ by Joe Haldeman – If you’ve already read Heinlein and Scalzi’s military sf, you really should read this. Relativity draws soldiers in an interstellar war away from their homeworld. _Tool of the Trade_ by Joe Haldeman – A Soviet sleeper agent in late 1980s Boston develops a practical form of mind control, and decides to use it for his own purposes as both the CIA and the KGB try to catch him. _Fatherland_ by Robert Harris - Chilling alternative history about a murder investigation in a 1964 Nazi Germany. _Friday_ by Robert Heinlein – A courier/spy in the future is betrayed but decides to fights back. _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ by Robert Heinlein – Colonists on the Moon revolt against Earth’s harsh rule. _Time for the Stars_ by Robert Heinlein – Telepaths are able to keep starships linked as we explore nearby worlds. _Fevre Dream_ by George R.R. Martin – Dark vampire novel set along the Mississippi River before the Civil War; the kind of book Bram Stoker and Mark Twain might have written together! _Tuf Voyaging_ by George R.R. Martin - Satirical sf novel about ecological engineering, overpopulation, absolute power and war. One of my all-time favorite sf books. Love it, love it, love it! _The Time Traveler’s Wife_ by Audrey Niffenegger - The inadvertent and uncontrollable time-travelling of a young man wreaks havoc with his decades-long romance with his eventual wife. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2010, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/27 "2010-04-01T17:05:49Z")
You can also find a lot of stuff over at the [Baen Free Library](http://www.baen.com/Library/). ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2010, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/28 "2010-04-01T18:51:37Z")
> [@Busy\_Scissors](#): > > Two early classics in fantasy / horror are _The House on the Borderland_ and _The Night Land_, by William Hope Hodgson. Written in the early 1900s - I believe they were an influence on Lovecraft, and definitely have that creeping horror vibe, if you like that kind of stuff. > > They’re really exceptional in some ways - the language is very dated, particularly in _The Night Land_, but his imagery (The House of Silence :eek:) and ideas are timeless and still come through with a lot of power. _The Night Land_ is some amazing imagination. So good, there are a bunch of stories on-line set in it. One of the best is “Awake in the Night”, which I read in a printed anthology somewhere (which is how I found the original), but is available along with a bunch of other stories on-line at [thenightland.co.uk](http://www.thenightland.co.uk/nightfic.html#content) ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2010, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/29 "2010-04-02T03:05:43Z")
Haven’t read the works listed at the link, but Clifford Simak wrote _ **City** _, one of all-time-favorite Sci-Fi books (short story collection, as with most pulp era sci fi). > **[Authors: Simak Clifford Donald (sorted by popularity)](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/authors/search/?query=Simak,_Clifford_Donald)** > > Project Gutenberg offers 71,479 free eBooks for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Android, and iPhone. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2010, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/30 "2010-04-02T03:31:00Z")
H. Beam Piper wrote some excellent stuff (and there’s surprisingly little known about the guy, besides the fact he was a firearms enthusiast and talented writer who later committed suicide) and most of his non-Paratime or Little Fuzzy stuff is on Project Gutenberg from what I can see. _Orphans of the Sky_ by Robert A. Heinlein is also an excellent book and I’m going to mention _Dune_ (by Frank Herbert) as well- and, of course, the collected works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, for obvious reasons. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2010, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/31 "2010-04-02T06:51:49Z")
> [@toadspittle](#): > > Haven’t read the works listed at the link, but Clifford Simak wrote _ **City** _, one of all-time-favorite Sci-Fi books (short story collection, as with most pulp era sci fi). > > [http://www.gutenberg.org/authors/Simak%2C\_Clifford\_Donald](http://www.gutenberg.org/authors/Simak%2C_Clifford_Donald) Hear, hear! Anyway—I’ll suggest Cyril Kornbluth, who is horribly underexposed. And it seems his story [The Adventurer](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29908)—definite favorite of mine.—is on Gutenberg. Any of his other stories _Two Dooms; The Little Black Bag; That Share of Glory; The Mindworm,_ or his perhaps overall classic, _The Marching Morons_, should be at the top of the list. I’d buy _those_ for a quarter! Poul Anderson’s _Brain Wave_ is a good’un, too, if you can find it. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2010, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/32 "2010-04-04T03:29:14Z")
> [@bibliophage](#): > > Browse through these: > [Gutenberg’s fantasy bookshelf](http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Fantasy_%28Bookshelf%29) > [Gutenberg’s science fiction bookshelf](http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_%28Bookshelf%29) Thanks for the list. I read H. Beam Piper’s “Lone Star Planet” long ago and I’m going to read it again. I recommend it to the OP. It’s not Great Science Fiction. It’s space opera, in this case _very_ close to horse opera, an alternate title being “A Planet for Texans”. It’s a fun read. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/33 "2010-04-04T03:44:08Z")
> [@bibliophage](#): > > Browse through these: > [Gutenberg’s fantasy bookshelf](http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Fantasy_%28Bookshelf%29) > [Gutenberg’s science fiction bookshelf](http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_%28Bookshelf%29) > . It’s easy to forget how bad some of the old science fiction was: > [@](#): > > Nathaniel Lee looked into the face of Silas Stark, President of the United States of the World, and nodded grimly. “I’ll do my best, Sir,” he answered. > > "You have the facts. We know who this self-styled Black Caesar is, who has declared war upon humanity. He is a Dane named Axelson, whose father, condemned to life imprisonment for resisting the new world-order, succeeded in obtaining possession of an interplanetary liner. In case you’re curious, Axelson in in charge of a bunch of space communists who have a death ray on the moon. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2010, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/34 "2010-04-04T09:26:12Z")
I’m surprised by some of the stuff Gutenberg has. Ben Bova, Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, and Jack Vance, for example, are all still alive - how can their work be in the public domain? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2010, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/35 "2010-04-04T17:25:51Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’m surprised by some of the stuff Gutenberg has. Ben Bova, Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, and Jack Vance, for example, are all still alive - how can their work be in the public domain? Who owned the copyrights on their stories: the authors themselves? The magazines in which the stories were published? ---
**Author:** ![vdgg81](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/3d9bf3/32.png) [@vdgg81](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vdgg81)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2010, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/36 "2010-04-05T06:15:44Z")
I have just posted about him in the current vampire thread, but Peter Watt’s work is excellent and available for free download in his [website](http://www.rifters.com/index.htm). There’s a trilogy of novels there, of which I recently read and highly recommend the first book, **Starfish** , a great stand-alone novel called **Blindsight** and a bunch of short stories I haven’t read yet. If i had to compare the guy with someone it’d be Greg Egan: both write very hard sf with incredibly out there ideas meticulously researched. **Starfish** is a very good novel and I liked it a lot, but **Blindsight** is one of the best sf novels I’ve ever read. It’s a first contact story, but the crew sent by Earth to make contact with the aliens is by itself more alien then most other authors would ever manage to think up:[ul] [li]the captain is a vampire and he commands the AI that actually runs the ship (in the novel vampires are a recently rediscovered and revived species of hominids that evolved to prey on humans - they’re completly plausible and scary as hell, just not in the way you’d expect);[/li][li]the military officer is a pacifist and controls her soldier drones through a neural link;[/li][li]the ship’s doctor is so interfaced with his clinical tools that he can taste or touch or hear the results of his tests and is crippled without the machinery;[/li][li]the linguist has had her brain divided so she could have multiple personalities and act as a one person translation team - she’s nicknamed “The Gang of Four”;[/li][li]our protagonist is a “jargonaut”, a person whose function is to interpret and communicate to ordinary humans what all these people are saying, since they’ve become so complicated that non-augmented humans just can’t keep up - and oh, he only has one hemisphere of his brain.[/li][/ul] As if that wasn’t enough, the actual aliens are some of the most genuinely alien I’ve ever read about, the prose is excellent and the whole thing has layers upon layers. I was actually troubled by the philosophical questions raised by the book and haven’t stopped thinking about it since I finished it, about three months ago. The guy even included an appendix with some of his sources and suggestions for further reading in the actual science behind his stuff. All that said, it’s a heavy book, very complicated near the ending and demands close reading. It’s much more “literary” than most sf I’ve read and doesn’t offer the same sort of thrills I’ve come to expect from a first contact story. It reads very much like a “thesis” novel and is only rescued by the fact the author managed to be so incredibly creative. In a sense it’s like one of those Asimov novels in which all the important action happens with people sitting down and talking, but much more sophisticated than anything the Good Doctor could ever hope to write. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2010, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/37 "2010-04-05T09:57:48Z")
Olaf Stapledon has been mentioned, but not for the novel that made him a legend: **Odd John**. I don’t think it’s old enough for Gutenberg yet; neither is Philip Wylie’s **Gladiator**. Both are worth hunting down, though. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2010, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/38 "2010-04-05T14:40:37Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > …In case you’re curious, Axelson in in charge of a bunch of space communists who have a death ray on the moon. Was it a 1920s-style death ray, perchance…? ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2010, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/39 "2010-04-05T16:57:01Z")
Take a look at Jack Vance’s “Demon Princes” series if you haven’t seen it before; the five-volume story of an obsessed but on the whole good man’s search for revenge on five star-faring master criminals who destroyed his life and family when he was a boy. The first is _Star King_. If you look it up on Wikipedia, beware of massive spoilers - sorry! ---
**Author:** ![iftheresaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecae2f/32.png) [@iftheresaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iftheresaway)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387/40 "2010-04-14T05:58:57Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > H. Beam Piper wrote some excellent stuff (and there’s surprisingly little known about the guy, besides the fact he was a firearms enthusiast and talented writer who later committed suicide) and most of his non-Paratime or Little Fuzzy stuff is on Project Gutenberg from what I can see. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Now there’s a surprise: H. Beam Piper’s _Little Fuzzy_ is on the list. A classic! Read it! > [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > _Little Fuzzy_ is the real reason George Lucas is going to hell. > It’s impossible to do anything with Piper’s stories without hearing “Oh, you mean Ewoks, right?”. :mad: ☹ Thanks for this recommendation! I read it on the ride over, and it made staying up for 27 hours completely manageable - I could barely get to sleep at 1 the next afternoon because I didn’t want to stop until I know that everything was ok. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-old-sf/534387.md?page=3)