# What should be my first science fiction novel? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 20, 2012, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880 "2012-07-20T20:04:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**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:** [July 20, 2012, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/21 "2012-07-20T23:27:50Z")
So much for the concept of the “Sci-Fi ghetto” being passe. :rolleyes: ---
**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:** [July 20, 2012, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/22 "2012-07-20T23:31:22Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’d also disagree. _Stranger in a Strange Land_ is good if you’re really into Heinlein at his most Heinleinesque - but it’s no book to use as an introduction to the SF genre. I’m not sure I’d even recommend _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ for that. If I were picking a Heinlein book as an introduction to science fiction, I’d go with _Double Star_. Why _Double Star_ is a great book, it is not all that science fictiony. A lot of the juveniles from the same period like _The Rolling Stones_ and _Have Spacesuit Will Travel_ would be better - but I’d still recommend Moon. Definitely not Stranger. > [@](#): > > I haven’t read _The Voyage of the Space Beagle_ so I can’t comment there. He’d say “oh, that’s where **Alien** came from.” The first part, originally \*\*Black Destroyer \*\*, was much better before van Vogt put his kooky Nexialist or whatever stuff in. It is also a bit creaky. > [@](#): > > But it’s time for us SF fans to admit the uncomfortable truth: Isaac Asimov was a hack. Which doesn’t make his stuff worthless - if you like SF you can read his work and love it despite the hackiness. But there’s no way he should be used to introduce anyone to science fiction. It shows its age. _The Caves of Steel_ would be a better choice of an Asimov book. For Clarke, Rama is good but don’t go near the sequels, which start out bad and go down from there. I’d prefer _Childhood’s End_ and _The City and the Stars_, the latter for being still in the future for us. And Clarke got video games right in the early 1950s, as I discovered when I recently reread it. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/23 "2012-07-20T23:32:37Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > So much for the concept of the “Sci-Fi ghetto” being passe. :rolleyes: Since you didn’t quote, I don’t know if that was addressed to me, but “literary” is a style of writing. Apparently, it’s a style of writing the OP likes. Think of it as similar to “arty.” ETA: OP, I’d suggest Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun as a starting point. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/24 "2012-07-20T23:38:50Z")
Oh, and I can’t believe I forgot Robert Charles Wilson’s _Spin_. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/25 "2012-07-20T23:42:48Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > It shows its age. _The Caves of Steel_ would be a better choice of an Asimov book. I really enjoyed The Caves of Steel. It was suggested to me because I like mysteries, and it worked. But I tend to like straightforward writing. (Asimov is a little too straightforward for me, though I wouldn’t call him a hack. Just not a master stylist!) ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/26 "2012-07-21T00:16:32Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Since you didn’t quote, I don’t know if that was addressed to me, but “literary” is a style of writing. Apparently, it’s a style of writing the OP likes. Hence my recommendation of Bradbury. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/27 "2012-07-21T00:49:38Z")
Personally I’d suggest Ursula Le Guin, maybe _The Left Hand of Darkness_, but I think the Alfred Bester recommendation is almost the alternaverse suggestion (I don’t want to be reductive but I might suggest LeGuin for women and Bester for men). I wouldn’t suggest Heinlein, although it’s definitely much more relatable than other “classics” like Ringworld and Foundation. Which aren’t really great books. ---
**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:** [July 21, 2012, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/28 "2012-07-21T01:37:08Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I wouldn’t suggest Heinlein, although it’s definitely much more relatable than other “classics” like Ringworld and Foundation. Which aren’t really great books. Don’t make me pull a knife here. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/29 "2012-07-21T01:48:36Z")
Margaret Atwood’s _Oryx and Crake_. It’s good literature rather than space opera. ---
**Author:** ![Carmady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f04885/32.png) [@Carmady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carmady)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/30 "2012-07-21T02:20:47Z")
I don’t know, _A Confederacy of Dunces_ is one of my all time favorites too and I absolutely love the Foundation trilogy. Besides, it’s worth a shot to try _Foundation_; you’ll discover pretty fast if it interests you or if the writing style puts you off. _The Caves of Steel_ is probably the better choice if you like mystery novels. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/31 "2012-07-21T02:45:26Z")
Oh God, there is so much good sci-fi out there, but if I absolutely had to suggest only one book to start with, I guess I’m going to agree with others and go with _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_. But I also like the mentioned(and also by Heinlein) Doubl_e Star_. If I was going with a juvenile by Heinlein I’d say _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_ or _Red Planet_. Something other than Heinlein? I’m going to go waaaay back and say _Little Fuzzy_ by H. Beam Piper. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/32 "2012-07-21T03:29:01Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > But it’s time for us SF fans to admit the uncomfortable truth: Isaac Asimov was a hack. Which doesn’t make his stuff worthless - if you like SF you can read his work and love it despite the hackiness. But there’s no way he should be used to introduce anyone to science fiction. I wouldn’t call him a _hack_. Stylistically, he was bland and and straightforward, but he told competently constructed stories and worked with fun ideas, mostly through dialogue rather than action. And that’s more than a lot of writers achieve. Asimov actually reminds me a lot of Arthur Conan Doyle. (OK, a lot of people have accused him of hackery, too.) ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/33 "2012-07-21T03:29:30Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’d also disagree. _Stranger in a Strange Land_ is good if you’re really into Heinlein at his most Heinleinesque - but it’s no book to use as an introduction to the SF genre. I’m not sure I’d even recommend _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ for that. If I were picking a Heinlein book as an introduction to science fiction, I’d go with _Double Star_. > > I haven’t read _The Voyage of the Space Beagle_ so I can’t comment there. > > But it’s time for us SF fans to admit the uncomfortable truth: Isaac Asimov was a hack. Which doesn’t make his stuff worthless - if you like SF you can read his work and love it despite the hackiness. But there’s no way he should be used to introduce anyone to science fiction. I find Stranger to be engaging, but other Heinlein might suit some better. He created a sub-genre and many of his stories would be a good start to experience this. Rama has been recommended, but I found it vapid. Space Beagle is more like science fiction of TV and movies. You can’t get confused about what you’re reading with something like this. Asimov wasn’t a great writer in terms of dialogue, or descriptive language, or engaging plots, or … alright fine, he was a hack. But he’s also an example of another subgenre and Foundation makes the flaws of his style the genre itself instead of smelling up things like Caves of Steel that a good writer could have turned into a real novel. But in retrospect while these stories need to be sampled by someone interested in reading the breadth of science fiction, they may not be great first books. It occurs to me now that the way to start in science fiction is the way I did. Read short stories. Take a taste of the different styles before diving in. For instance, I wouldn’t commit to reading Ringworld before try a few of the Tales of Known Space. ---
**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:** [July 21, 2012, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/34 "2012-07-21T03:48:01Z")
Jsgoddess recommended Robert Charles Wilson’s _Spin_ and I think it’s a great suggestion. First, because Wilson is a really good writer. But more importantly, because his plots are very accessible to a non-SF reader. Wilson often writes novels with a non-SF setting and then introduces SF elements into it (Spin, Blind Lake, The Chronoliths, Darwinia, The Harvest, Mysterium, etc). This is good for introducing non-SF readers to the genre because the characters in the story don’t live in a SF setting so they react to the SF elements as the reader does. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/35 "2012-07-21T03:59:38Z")
Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert Heinlein probably holds the record for introducing new people to science fiction. It’s quite old, and made for young readers, but still good. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein is a very good book, better in quality than HSSWT in my opinion. It’s a more “adult” alternative. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is my favorite science fiction book. It’s silly and funny and doesn’t even remotely take itself seriously, though, so it’s not for everyone. Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is a good science fiction series that isn’t nearly as “hard” sci-fi as the Heinlein books I recommended. It’s more science-fantasy than science fiction. Do not read Rendezvous With Rama, as someone suggested. It’s quite bad, in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/36 "2012-07-21T04:22:30Z")
I’d suggest getting one of the first two Hugo winners anthologies, and find out which classic author(s) you like. Now, some authors aren’t really represented, and some authors aren’t good at short stories, but this might be a good start. \*The Moon is a Harsh Mistress \*is quite political, but it’s also a great story, and it depends on future tech and situations to tell that story. I’d certainly recommend that as a first SF novel to read. That’s one of my definitions of SF, that the story requires future or alternative tech to make the story work. I don’t want a Western with rayguns and bug eyed monsters. I want situations that are not found on Earth at this time. ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/37 "2012-07-21T04:37:11Z")
_Solaris_ by Stanislaw Lem _Contact_ by Carl Sagan ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/38 "2012-07-21T05:52:17Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Oh, hell no. > > _Stranger_ is an awful place to start, for anything. Start with _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_ or _Rendevous With Rama_. I would skip Heinlein altogether, as IMO his stuff is too overtly political to be a good bet for a first read. Arthur Clarke’s _Rendezvous With Rama_ is an excellent choice. Another of his that I would recommend is _Fountains of Paradise_. These both focus heavily on science and technology. They are more about what _Star Trek_ would be like if the crew weren’t always battling evil empires and doing galactic crisis intervention. A personal favorite of mine is _The Forever War_ by Joe Haldeman. It’s about interstellar war, uncaring bureaucracy, and alienation from society. If you’re looking for something more lighthearted… Harry Harrison has a trilogy starting with _The Stainless Steel Rat_. Also _Bill, the Galactic Hero_, a bitterly black comedy. And _Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers_, a parody of… everything. Keith Laumer was a State Department officer who became a science fiction writer, and wrote very funny stories about intergalactic diplomacy. They generally feature a character named Retief (who name appears in most of the titles). [Here’s the Wiki page on the character and story collection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jame_Retief). There were several collections of short stories and a couple of full length novels. Frederick Brown wrote a very funny novel called _The Marching Morons_, and you can kind of see the seeds of the movie _Idiocracy_ in it. The the writer whose style I think of as the most poetic is Cordwainer Smith. He is one of my absolute favorite sci-fi writers, but I hesitate to suggest his _Norstrilia_ as a first book. Not because I don’t think you you’d like, but because it is so unlike anything else before or since. It’s tremendous, but it’s so much an outlier that it’s not really representative of anything else in sci-fi. Roger Zelazny is another guy I think of as rather poetic, that is when his books cross over into fantasy. Baal mentioned a couple of his outstanding novels upthread. And there’s a whole area of sci-fi mixed with fantasy mixed with swords-and-sorcery that I haven’t read much in, because I want a bit more science than fiction. Maybe someone else can suggest some choices from that realm. Og, this is impossible. It would be very hard to go wrong with Robert Silverberg or Clifford Simak. Ooh, ooh, ok, I got it. Frederick Pohl’s _Gateway_. Great story. Great mystery. Great characters. The start of a series of you like it, but it’s fine on it’s own. Won pretty much every award there was to win. Yes, yes, that’s the one. Unless you’re in the mood for something else. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/39 "2012-07-21T07:14:58Z")
If “A Confederacy of Dunces” is one of your faves (and it IS one of mine) then I suggest you start your foray into Science Fiction with the writings of Jack Vance. He has a similar affinity for humor, outlandishness, and the theatre of the absurd. The “Dying Earth” series would be a good place to start. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880/40 "2012-07-21T14:10:22Z")
Oh, I agree with _Gateway_ except that the framing story is kinda meh. (I also agree that Cordwainer Smith is amazing and was doing “New Weird” half a century early, but that it isn’t at all representative of… anything, really.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-my-first-science-fiction-novel/628880.md?page=3)