# What is the quintessential science fiction novel? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 28, 2005, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022 "2005-01-28T00:37:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/41 "2005-01-28T15:24:01Z")
Please allow me to register a dissention for A Canticle for Liebowitz. I had heard so much about it, so I finally read it. Only my steely determination got me through it. What a pile o’ crap. I wouldn’t be starting non-SF readers on Dune, either. While a great book, it’s a helluva tough read, too. ---
**Author:** ![G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c67d28/32.png) [@G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G.B.H.Hornswoggler)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/42 "2005-01-28T15:40:11Z")
Where’s the love for **Ralph 124C41+**? What a shameful omission… But, more seriously, I’d probably go with **The Stars My Destination**. It still feels amazingly modern, fifty years later, and it’s a great showcase for all of the things SF can do well – new societies, intruiging ideas, good characterization, literary pyrotechnics – and wraps that all up in a compelling plot that perfectly fills what now looks like a quite short book. **Dune** is an excellent novel, but I wouldn’t recommend it for precisely the reasons some others have been reccommending it – it doesn’t _need_ to be SF, and the SF furniture is mostly maguffins or silly. (For a book that supposedly launched a thousand ecologists, it’s remarkably dumb on its “one climate per planet” thinking, which is straight out of _Planet Stories_.) **The Mote in God’s Eye** is also a good book, but I wonder if it would appeal to non-SF readers – maybe it could be a gateway drug for readers of Patrick O’Brian, though. (It’s also the second-best Heinlein novel not written by Heinlein, after Alexei Panshin’s **Rite of Passage**.) ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/43 "2005-01-28T18:36:24Z")
I don’t think there is any such animal as “the quintessential science fiction novel.” Unlike most genres, science fiction is tremendously open-ended – it can be about almost anything, can deal with it in almost any way and as a result there’s no single SF novel that can possibly cover enough ground to typify the genre. If you’ll look at the nominees so far, you’ll see a tremendous range of styles and themes. And that’s not touching on the weird stuff that came out up to the 60s when a lot of SF writers were just blowing smoke any way that looked good, so you had stories like ‘The Girl In The Golden Atom’ which were practically scientifically illterate, but were presented as SF. ---
**Author:** ![Wilson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/96bed5/32.png) [@Wilson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wilson)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/44 "2005-01-28T19:43:42Z")
For a good introduction to a new reader of Science Fiction, I like to recommend **Dhalgren**. Ahh I slay me. There are some great recommendations above, but one classic of the genre that I didn’t see mention is **Earth Abides**. I guess you could say that it’s a little too specific in its subject matter to be a perfect representative of the whole of SF (not that any book could be all that), but it’s easily accessible, a great read, and it stays with you. For a representative Heinlein, I like to recommend **The Door into Summer**. Great story, not too political, interesting time travel concepts. And one of Heinlein’s greatest characters ever (I’m referring to Pete, of course!). ---
**Author:** ![chefjef](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e480ec/32.png) [@chefjef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chefjef)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/45 "2005-01-28T20:09:10Z")
cool. I might have to check out Dhalgren – I’m just a little bored with the books I"ve been reading so I might check out the sci-fi thing. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/46 "2005-01-28T21:18:42Z")
> [@chefjef](#): > > cool. I might have to check out Dhalgren – I’m just a little bored with the books I"ve been reading so I might check out the sci-fi thing. **Wilson** was making a funny. Mind you, it’s a good book, well worth the effort it will take to read it, but for an intro to science fiction, I’d read any of the other books mentioned here before that one. ---
**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:** [January 28, 2005, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/47 "2005-01-28T21:31:49Z")
**chefjef** , let me offer an alternative to **Dhalgren** …sticking needles into your eyes. It would hurt less. **Dhalgren** is totally unreadable. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/48 "2005-01-28T21:34:28Z")
More unusual: Brian Aldiss: **Non-stop** Larry Niven: **A Gift from Earth** Kim Stanley Robinson: **Icehenge** Commonly known: Isaac Asimov: **The Gods Themselves** Ray Bradbury: **Fahrenheit 451** Orson Scott CardL **Ender’s Game** Arthur C. Clarke: **Rendezvous with Rama** Robert Heinlein: **The Moon is a Harsh Mistress** Frank Herbert: **Dune** Niven/Pournelle: **Mote in God’s Eye** Kim Stanley Robinson: **Red Mars** And we didn’t make room for Fantasy, but here I want put in a BIG plug for: C. S. Lewis: **Till We Have Faces** ---
**Author:** ![SusanStoHelit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@SusanStoHelit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SusanStoHelit)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/49 "2005-01-28T21:49:55Z")
> [@Khadaji](#): > > a close second would Zelazny’s Lord Of Light. Why? I struggled through half of that book, but I didn’t see the sf elements, and I don’t care enough about Hinduism for the mystical stuff to interest me. That book is _dense_, man. I didn’t like _A Canticle for Liebowitz_ much (I made it a third of the way through), but even if you do like it you must admit that it’s not exactly an **accessible** book, right? **An addendum to the OP: most of you are doing this, but please include your reasons for suggesting a book and a short description if it isn’t well-known. Thanks!** For something a bit more modern, what about Mary Doria Russel’s [The Sparrow](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0449912558/qid=1106949397/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-1343809-0553750)? It is about a cross-species misunderstanding that leads to personal tragedy for a Catholic priest. It is also a great example of something sf does better than any other genre: it puts a human problem, institution, or characteristic in an exotic situation to allow us to view it with more objectivity and insight. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/50 "2005-01-28T21:57:45Z")
The thing is, science fiction is such a multi-faceted genre I’d be hard pressed to think of a single book or author that is the quintessence of every aspect. That being said here are a few candidates. For traditional hard sf–Arthur C. Clarke, _Rendevous with Rama_, or any of his early stuff. For world spanning space opera–_Foundation_, with _Dune_ a close second. (I’d also nominate _Hyperion_, but that may be to recent to qualify as quintessential.) For military sf–_Starship Troopers_ To show off science fiction’s literary potential–_The Book of the New Sun_ (I know it’s a series, but I think of it as a single book. For experimental sf that annoys purists–anything by Philip K. Dick. For old school scientifiction–_The Martian tales_ For Cyberpunk–_Snow Crash_ ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/51 "2005-01-28T22:04:54Z")
What about going further back to H.G.Wells’ works? War of the Worlds must be one of the earliest alien invasion stories, and introduced the ideas of death rays and mechs. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/52 "2005-01-28T22:23:04Z")
To continue the Heinlein hijack: I could argue that he singlehandedly created modern SF. The defense will present these exhibits: - He took ordinary humans and put them in extrordinary circumstances, unlike many things before with superheroes, or at least ordinary heroes (starship captains and the like). - The juveniles transformed the “Go west young man” to the young lad, reaching for the stars. - He took SF out of the pulps and into hard covers, showing up on the NY times best seller list. - He brought social issues into SF. - He was clearly a great inspiration for the whole counter culture of the 60’s, wheather those who ambraced that culture knew it or not. - He always tried to make the science plausible. All of this doesn’t make him a saint and there are a lot of flaws, but I think that in discussing the quintessential SF novel, and dismissing him as “sexist”, is wrong. His biggest flaws is that later in his career, he spent quite a lot of time trolling. Most of his books after SiaSL are meant to provoke. I think he liked the attention - and sales - he got from SiaSL. Two of his finest works are post SiaSL: **The moon is a harsh mistress** , which gets my nomination, and **The tale of the adopted daughter**. I bet Joss Wheadon read that one before devising Firefly. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/53 "2005-01-28T22:25:25Z")
> [@Bippy the Beardless](#): > > … death rays… Ah, they’re 1890’s style death rays. I couldn’t help myself. ---
**Author:** ![bclouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@bclouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bclouse)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/54 "2005-01-28T22:35:13Z")
I absolutely agree with Alfred Bester’s “The Stars, My Destination”. It’s a fantastic read. One of my favorite books is “White Light” by Rudy Rucker. It’s sorta Alice in Wonderland crossed with Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s claimed by many, or by some at least, to be the first of the cyberpunk books. David Lindsay’s “A Voyage to Arcturus” is a book that was written in the 20’s thats turns a journey into outerspace into a journey inward towards our inner being. Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons “Watchmen”, although a graphic novel that pushes the boundaries of the superhero genre, I believe it can be encompassed in the science fiction realm. None of these books are typical science fiction novels but, at least for me, show how far the genre can pushed into different directions. ---
**Author:** ![psikeyhackr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/55 "2012-12-07T20:33:25Z")
Here is the quintessential science fiction story but it is not a novel. Omnilingual (Feb 1957) by H. Beam Piper > **[Scientific Language: H. Beam Piper’s “Omnilingual”](https://www.tor.com/2012/03/05/scientific-language-h-beam-pipers-qomnilingualq/)** > > Re-reading “Omnilingual,” an H. Beam Piper short story published in Analog in 1957 and collected in Federation, I decided it was the classic SF short story, the one everyone ought to re… [http://www.feedbooks.com/book/308/omnilingual](http://www.feedbooks.com/book/308/omnilingual) > **[LibriVox](https://librivox.org/omnilingual-by-h-beam-piper/)** > > LibriVox It is in the public domain and available as an audiobook. So much stuff called science fiction today has nothing to say about science. psik ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/56 "2012-12-07T21:03:38Z")
It must be Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. \ ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2012, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/57 "2012-12-08T03:02:07Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > **Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers**! Wow - someone else who has heard of that book! ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2012, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/58 "2012-12-08T03:10:50Z")
> [@SusanStoHelit](#): > > I didn’t like _A Canticle for Liebowitz_ much (I made it a third of the way through), but even if you do like it you must admit that it’s not exactly an **accessible** book, right? I thought the first third was the best part of the book. Second part, not so good. Third part, terrible. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2012, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/59 "2012-12-08T03:13:03Z")
_The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_. _Citizen of the Galaxy_. _The Mote in God’s Eye_. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2012, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022/60 "2012-12-09T13:21:21Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > BULL! > > Heinlein’s women were classic Frontier Women. Read a little history of the American West & you’ll find many that could & probably were models for the characters. For some of the characters, maybe, like Mimi, the senior wife in the Davis family in _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_. But Wyoming Knott, in the same novel? Or _any_ of the women in _Stranger In a Strange Land_? The frontier would have chewed up those women and spit them out. Heinlein never did get women right. His women, regardless of ability, wanted to crank out babies almost as soon as they were ‘husband-high’, as he puts in _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_. Until he realized the amount of grief he was catching for his sexist characterizations, and then he constructed some equally unrealistic superwomen. IMHO, one of the best windows into RAH’s thinking about women is how he sees and portrays his own wife in _Tramp Royale_, his account of their trip around the world together. In some ways, he views her as an equal, but in other ways, he’s all but patting her on the head in condescension. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-quintessential-science-fiction-novel/287022.md?page=4)