My Top 15 Wonderful Science Fiction Books
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- Опубликовано: 27 июл 2024
- Fifteen of my favourite science fiction books, ranked
0:00 Intro
1:00 15
2:43 14
4:31 13
6:36 12
7:55 11
9:14 10
11:19 9
13:26 8
16:27 7
18:24 6
19:33 5
22:00 4
23:59 3
26:13 2
28:59 1
31:34 Final thoughts
#booktube #sciencefiction #scifi
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Hyperion is amazing. I read it a LONG time ago and there are ideas and scenes that are burned into my brain. Unforgettable. Got to re-read.
1Q84 Was a classic example of how a story can be all about the journey rather than the destination. I thoroughly enjoyed the book but to say it didn't provide any closure would be an understatement.
I would also recommend "The Culture Series" by Iain M. Banks and for space opera "The Polity Series" by Neal Asher.
Ian Banks was one of the most entertaining SF writers of all time. Funny and what a great imagination!
At last a top-list with Vinge, LeGuin and Smith! How any engaged fan of the genre could overlook them I do not understand. Nice Presentation, thankyou.
Wow!!! I found your list exceptionally well considered and balanced. I also really enjoy your little sound clips. Hyperion is very very hard to beat!!
Thank you for your kind words!
Great intro! I don't read enough science fiction but when I do, I always enjoy it! I will be coming back to this list for when I am looking to read more sci fi. All of these sounded so interesting!
Just found your channel and love your list. What I found to be really fascinating is that I literally just finished reading the first Riverworld book a couple of days ago. What an amazing journey that book was, looking forward to the second.
I am absolutely loving this list. So many books I've never heard of that I now need to look into! Thanks
It's a pleasure
Great list and double YAY for having Hyperion at number 1. It my favourite too and I've lost count of how many times I've read it. I actually think it calls for a second (third and so on) re-read because you just discover more and more every time. (Could be because English isn't my first language, but I don't think so.)
River World and Hyperion were great picks! The Shrike in my opinion is the most terrifying creature in sf.
Fantastic video. Some really interesting choices and I think it's great that you made it personal and didn't find it necessary to include the famous ones that you didn't connect with as much. Some of my favourites were in there like Frankenstein, Lathe of Heaven, 1984 and Clare North's Harry August, which I've mentioned a number of times on my channel. I need to find Black Cloud and The Cabinet! - I didn't know them.
Thank you! I had a lot of fun putting this list together. I'd love to hear your thoughts on those two if you get round to reading them.
Thank you for a nice breakdown of your favorite sci-fi books. Absolutely agree on Hyperion! The Fall of Hyperion is, in my opinion, a very good novel in its own right and definitely needs to be read to complete the story. And the River World Series brings back wonderful memories from my teenage years. Nice to see it on your list. :-)
Thee-Body Problem was dense and got denser as it went on, but the mind-blowing concepts made it well worth it. I read Hyperion last year and it will definitely make my top 15. Great list Robin!
Thank you Jack
Great video! Very well put together. You have made me add new books to my already massive TBR list 😅
Thank you! The ever-growing TBR list, I know what that feels like
Really good list! Thanks for the video
Oh excellent presentation! ... and no irritating background music!
Absolutely loved the recommendations. Especially stoked to see Hyperion and Remembrance of Earth's Past so high up on the list. The Q in 1Q84 also stands for the number 9 in Japanese which is kyu. Was expecting some Ted Chiang and Octavia E Butler to be on the list.
Cheers. I loved Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others. I've not yet read Octavia Butler but Parable of the Sower is an upcoming read on my bookshelf.
A great selection, love most of this books , thank you.
Reading Fall of Hyperion now. You may have convinced me to finally read 1Q84--I've had it for years and have let its length deter me. Great video!
Thanks! Hope you enjoy reading it
Yes, loved 1Q84 and all the Hyperion and both Endymion books. Great to see such a personal list. Thank you.
I'm glad you went with your favorites, as i'm not a fan of dune, good to see some variety :)
Reading TheThree Body quad now . Absolutely rich and satisfying . The Chinese names didn’t want to stick but the story made them.
Interesting you mention that - I'm just finishing off the first book on a re-read now. Definitely a satisfying series (I can't speak for the Redemption of Time spin-off as I haven't read that one)
Fabulous recommendations!! Thanks.
Really love that Cordwainer Smith’s stories made it- his ‘ Universe’ is one of the most amazing. Also from Farmer my fav is the World of Tiers series
Thank you for including _The Lathe of Heaven._ Couple of points:
Not every one of George Orr's dreams is an "effective" one.
There was a PBS movie made of the novel in the early 1980's. Ms. Le Guin was creative consultant, and they did a darn good job on a shoestring budget! It's available to watch here on RUclips.
Thanks, yes I've watched that adaptation before, it was pretty good
I love the First 15 Lives of Harry August! I was shocked how short it was when I re-read it for the first time. .... I keep forgetting there are people who haven't read 1984, which seems so wrong to me. I used to re-read it regularly until a few years ago. (First read it, unsupervised, at a young age in the 1960's. It definitely shaped quite a bit of my worldview.) I've read several of the books on your list, will check out those that I haven't read yet!
Another good time travel book is 'Replay' by Ken Grimwood, where a guy keeps replaying his life.
I've read Replay, I agree it's a good time loop story
Thanks! Added some of these to my list.
Excellent list. I have been a big fan of Riverworld since it came out. Have not read 1Q84 or The Lathe of Heaven, but those sound intriguing and will check them out.
Robin,
After your comments on 1Q84 and "The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August", I just ordered those books. Looking forward to read them.
Also already have "The Lathe of Heaven" on my shelf to read soon.
Thanks for another video and the suggestions!
It's a pleasure - I hope you enjoy them as much as I did
Nice discussion. Introduced me to some books I've missed.
Good list indeed!
I'm into Chaucer's Canterbury Tales now, before I get to Hyperion.
Maybe I should read them synchronously.
Great list! I love the SF Masterworks covers! I really need to read IQ84, but that giant 1200+ pages puts me off, I could read 3 other books in that time! But I do need to knuckle down and get to it.
Thanks for watching! Yes it's definitely a chunker but it's worth the investment of your time
Very nice selections! Most of these lists are very similar, refreshing to see some variety. Cordwainer Smith! I really thought everyone had forgotten him!
Based on your selections, I would like to draw your attention to Tim Powers. He won the Philip K. Dick Award for The Anubis Gates, but I think his best work is Last Call and subsequent related novels.
Thanks for the recommendation! I'm not familiar with that writer, but I will make a note of those two books.
love that you have the riverworld series in the background, one of my fav and a formative series that I read as a young adult. I got super interested in Richard Burton after that, I even have a copy of his Arabian nights translation.
I wish others wrote novels with such interesting blend of characters.
Thanks for watching! I also have a Burton edition of the Arabian Nights, it's one of my favourite books.
@@bookspin he’s a fascinating character, a renaissance man and a figure that was out of time.
I can't tell you how gratified I was to hear you mention the Riverworld series. Farmer seems to almost never get discussed in videos like this, so I got a real kick out of it. I've been a fan of his since I was in high school.
Another series of his that's similar - sci fi/action - is the World of Tiers series.
Thanks for watching. Yes, I'm working my way through some of Farmer's other works and I'd like to read World of Tiers at some point, along with his Dayworld trilogy.
@@bookspin - I don't remember enjoying the Dayworld book (I only read the first, as far as I can recall. I honestly didn't know there was a trilogy. This was all decades ago.) nearly as much as the World of Tiers. But the concept behind Dayworld is definitely interesting. It seems to me to have a lot in common with the show Severance.
I will admit that Farmer has some definite quirks that can be frustrating. Honestly, for a long time, I couldn't decide whether I liked his writing or not. But I kept reading his books, so that seemed to answer that question.
I'm glad to hear that his work is still being read.
Believe it or not, I believe that there have been two different attempts at filming a Riverworld movie/series. I don't believe either was particularly good.
@@kevinlaw6185 I watched the 2010 TV film adaptation produced by Syfy. It totally failed to capture the charm of the books and was pretty forgettable.
Re reading the River World series rg¿ight now (book 3 now) yet again. Must be like 4/5 times now in many decades. Great to see this one higlighted on this top 15.
I found the Riverworld series entettaining and fun, but was very dissapointed by the conclusion.
Excellent video, and I couldn’t agree more about Hyperion, Dark Forest and Fire Upon the Deep making the list.
I loved House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds and now I want to read Aurora rising.
Thank you! I just subscribed to your channel.
@@bookspin Thank You! I did the same; looking forward to your videos. 😃
An interesting list. Thank you for sharing.
Great list of books, touching on some I have never read.
Of these 15 I've read four:
1984. While I agree it is a classic and well worth reading I found it very depressing as well. Much like Schindler's List, I've experienced it once, recommend it, but am not eager to do it again.
A Fire Upon the Deep. I enjoyed it and do think the planet of the Tines is truly original and worth reading about. I just don't see how the larger idea of the "Zones of thought" could possibly work and that weakens the whole novel. Plus the ending... well, it also seems weak to me.
To Your Scattered Bodies Go. Don't often see this on a list. I enjoyed it and it is the best of the Riverworld novels. I think they steadily go down in quality. I kept going though as I wanted to learn the final solution to what is happening and why. (The problem is the aliens are so high up and humans are so low that we could be told anything and have no way of double checking any of it. We could be told 100% lies, 100% truth or anywhere in between and we wouldn't know.)
Hyperion. Agree it's the best of this bunch and one of my favorites as well.
Top books I recommend trying:
Almost anything by Larry Niven, but particularly Dream Park, Mote in God's Eye, Footfall and Legacy of Herot.
Gateway by Fred Pohl.
Startide Rising by David Brin.
Childhood's End and Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clark.
Thanks for watching and your sharing your thoughts. Among your recommendations, the only one I've read is Childhood's End, which I agree is a great read and I need to read more of Clarke's work. Gateway is on my bookshelf and my TBR, as is Larry Niven's Ringworld.
real science fiction is not really about science fiction, it is social commentary disguised as such, so if you are not a little bit depressed after reading one of these, then maybe you are missing the point: 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Gulliver's Travels, Ringworld, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Hyperion, and Frankenstein were all assigned reading from my high school literature class on science fiction. the Foundation series is really great, until you realized the characters talk and act just like they would from the 1950's thousands of years in the future...
Completely agree with your opinion of A Fire Upon the Deep. I thought it was contrived and weird, not the good weird but the strange weird.
I found Black Cloud lying in a drawer at a hotel I was staying at a decade back and was stunned by its complexity and brilliance. It also gave me a strange sense of ownership over the work as none of my friends had heard about it and I usually went about recommending it to anyone interested in science or literature. It’s so great to see it is finally being discovered by the book tube community too.
That's a great find to pick up in a hotel!
@@bookspin Especially if it is a battered old first edition😅. Guess some careless old sci fi lover had checked in some time before me.
A good selection with a few I've never read. My own favorites would include, Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, a book (actually 4 books) I've re-read numerous times and seems to get better every time. I also love The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. A very dark and dense story that also requires a few reads to digest and last but not least, the Culture series by Iain M. Banks, to me they are all worth reading, and so much fun
Thanks for the suggestions. I haven't yet read any Banks books but I definitely would like to give the Culture series a try at some point. I've read a few Gene Wolfe books (mostly his fantasy works rather than sci-fi), I enjoyed most of them but I had a bit of a tough time with Shadow of the Torturer, which put me off continuing the Book of the New Sun series. That said, I am willing to give it another try at some point, as you say it's probably more enjoyable on a second or third read (I had a similar experience with Neuromancer).
Enjoyed your suggestions. Going to try the 15 lives.
Thank you, hope you enjoy!
Quite a few to add to my reading list - thank you. I am surprised none of my top sci-fi books made your list.
Any particular favourites you could mention?
@@bookspin All 3 Andy Weir books, Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle, Ringworld and The Integral Trees by Niven, Tau Zero by Poul Anderson, The Ugly Little Boy by Asimov and Silverberg, The Year of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Foundation Series by Asimov, One Second After and Pillar to the Sky by William Forstchen
@@markdroka Thanks. I have Ringworld and the Foundation series on my reading list. Some of the others are on my radar but I'm not familiar with all of them.
Hi Mr bookspin, I enjoyed your list some great picks that I fully agree with and would feature on my top 15 or at least top 25 list. I liked Hyperion but had a nagging feeling of something that didn't quite work for me. The Prefect (Aurora Rising) I really enjoyed and is one of my favourite Reynolds but books like Absolution Gap are grander and more mind boggling for me. There is a couple on here I have not read so I will check them out. Riverworld I am happy to see here, this would also make my top 15 but don't see it much on other peoples lists.
Thank you for watching! I also loved Absolution Gap
Nice video!
Good choices. I love that I have never heard of a lot of them. So now I have a list of new/old SF to read. Try "The Poison Belt" 1913 by Arthur Conan Doyle. A similar theme to "The Black Cloud". I started reading River World when they came out in the '70's. Farmer exhausted me waiting for him to end it!
there's nothing like To Your Scattered Bodies Go opening, the wake up in processing. Until copied in Matrix of course.
Had to subscribe after hearing your list. All good choices.
Thank you!
As some other people have commented I highly recommend Jack Vance, specially his Planet of Adventure trilogy. Gene Wolfe is another good writer. But what I really is missing in the commentaries is Stanislav Lem (A Perfect Vacuum, Tales of Pirx the Pilot). Lem is the Jorge Luis Borges of Sci-fi. By the way, Borges is also a very good and thought provoking author.
Thanks - I have enjoyed a few Gene Wolfe books, but mostly his fantasy works (such as the excellent Soldier of the Mist trilogy). I enjoyed reading Solaris last year and would like to check out more of Lem's work. The other authors I will keep an eye out for.
Great to see, that it's not the standard list!
One of my favourite books is "Sheeps look up" by John Brunner.
Thanks for the recommendation!
First time i visit your channel and i agree with your number 1 pick
Nice collection!
Cordwainer Smith, The Rediscovery of Man -->Jack Vance, The Dying Earth -->Gene Wolfe, The Book of The New Sun. I read the Rediscovery of Man after reading The Book of the New Sun and then sought out Jack Vance.......when I read Cordwainer Smith last his stories took on more meaning and made each of the other authors works even better. Thanks for your list. There are a few of yours I'm going to seek out.
Really enjoyed your video , as a fan of Sci fi myself .inspired me to go out and read lathe of heaven and hyperion ,caught my attention . Thanks for your insight
It's a pleasure, thanks for watching! I'm sure you will enjoy those two
Ah! The Black Cloud. This novel was my entry into science fiction literature. I still love it.
Yes, 1984, definitely
The Lathe of Heaven. Yes, I read that, too and it's quite thought provoking.
Yep, Frankenstein is a classic.
My introduction to Alastair Reynolds was "House of Suns" which I liked quite a lot.
I did read and enjoyed the Three Body Problem trilogy.
I started Hyperion, but at the time I did not get through it. I should try again.
There are a few of those 15 that I should look into. Probably need to use the audio versions as my eyes get tired nowadays.
Thanks for the list. I am curious do you read or listen to audiobooks ? I tried to listen to your top 3 and just couldn't get into them for some reason. I think I will try reading the book instead. The First Fifteen lives of Harry August and A fire upon the deep are two of my favorite books. You listed a few I have not heard of, and I am excited to check them out. I have subscribed to your channel and look forward to future videos. Thank you.
Thank you for subscribing! For fiction I almost always read physical books, that is my preference, although sometimes I will listen to the audiobook as a re-read to experience the text in a new way. I also sometimes listen to non-fiction audiobooks.
I love the PBS adaptation of Le Guin’s *THE LATHE OF HEAVEN* (WNET/PBS, 1980), which was again adapted, as *LATHE OF HEAVEN* (A&E, 2002) to spotlight the oenirologist, Dr. Haber, played by James Caan.
I've watched the 1980 adaptation but not the 2002 one. I've heard the older version is more faithful to the novel.
@@bookspin Yes. Ms. Le Guin played a large role in the 1980 film … and it shows. Her absence from the 2002 film also shows.
Excellent list. My favorites have certainly evolved over time. Several books stand out as having been a favorite:
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein (1961)
Dragon's Egg - Robert L. Forward (1980)
Manifold: Time - Stephen Baxter (1999)
Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015)
I'd really like to read some modern, hard sci-fi concerning directed human evolution, if anyone has any ideas.
Try Charles Stross, Iain M Banks, Alastair Reynolds and Vernor Vinge
I read the three body problem and found what i understood interesting but alot of it went over my head..id like to reread it at some point so i can eventually finish the triolgy...
I read Hyperion 34 years ago. It has haunted me ever since. Truly #1.
Very interesting list!!
Interesting list - good to hear about some different books. For Cixin Lu, do I need to read them in order?
Thanks for watching. Yes the Three Body trilogy needs to be read in order to make sense of the story.
Books from you list I've read
A Fire Upon the Deep - great read
1984 - A cautionary tale, an interesting read, important especially in the times we live in now
Hyperion - In my top 10 as well
Here is my top 10
10. House of Suns - Alastair Reynolds
9. Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky
8. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
7. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
6. Foundation - Isaac Asimov
5. Childhood's End - Arthur C Clark
4. Starship Troopers - Robert A Heinlein
3. Anathem - Neal Stephenson
2. Hyperion - Dan Simmons
1. Dune - Frank Herbert
Great list! I loved Children of Time - I read it after making this video, but it would definitely also make it to my updated top 10.
Thanks great suggestions.
These lists are informative for people like myself looking for interesting new content. I have read a lot of what is presented here and agree with most of your recommendations. I have to wonder if you've ever read "Dune" or "A Canticle for Leibowitz"?
Thanks - I've read Dune but not A Canticle for Leibowitz
Thankfully, I agree 100% with your second choice ... 26:15 ... Riverworld is one of the best series ever. That series is one of the best that I have ever read. I read in high school, and it so changed my understanding on so many things -- even changed my viewpoint about religion. So, PJF's Riverworld series was very instrumental in becoming who I am. So, you have an excellent choice for your #2 pick. New to your channel, but I am subbing.
After reading multiple books of his growing up, he really changed many of my viewpoints. Another PJF book that was good was the Priest (I think) or maybe a normal guy that shoots at a UFO, and he gets mutated because of it. Maybe, "Stations of the Nightmare: Philip Jose Farmer". That is a book that I really was surprised by its directions and implications.
Thank you! I'm excited to read more of PJF's work and have a few more of his books in my TBR. I'm not familiar with Stations of the Nightmare - I will keep an eye out for it.
This list is fire! 🔥🔥
I didn’t know Murakami wrote scifi. I read his books a while back and enjoyed them, don’t know what I would think now 🤔. The Black Cloud honestly sounds really cool.
I’ve realized this year how much I enjoy scifi.😂
Murakami is usually associated with magical realism, however you could argue some of his books also have sci-fi elements, especially with regard to the use of parallel worlds. 1Q84 is a good example of this I think. Thanks for watching!
For The Black Cloud, I suspect the review on Goodreads is giving away that plot twist, a little indirectly.
Great list!
Thanks for watching!
My favorite series of science fiction is the Foundation by Isaac Asimov i highly recommend it in addition with Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem
Did you read Foundation any time recently? I liked it 30 or 40+ years ago but not sure how it would stand up today as eg Asimov didn’t write deep characters, nor is it (if I remember correctly) edge of your seat action driven.
My all time favorite as well.
Personally I would add the novel "Davy" by Edgar Pangborn, a US writer who passed away in the 70's. His work is always intensely humanising, and all of it revolved around the theme of "Love Vs Human Foolishness". (Indeed, in one of his stories set in the timeline of the world of "Davy", One character actually says : 'Still I persist in wondering whether folly will always be our nemesis...' (From 'My Brother Leopold', collected in "Still I Persist in Wondering" -- I strongly recommend the stories "Tiger Boy" and "The Children's Crusade from the same collection, but ALL are outstanding, as is almost everything he wrote. Even his attempt as a "hard SF" novel, "West of the Sun", which does not really 'work' as hard SF as there is a dream-like quality and a lot of metaphysical content, is well worth reading. I have placed 'Davy' in my "Top 5", ever since reading it first at University in the late 70's. Pangborn's most famous short story is NOT set in Davy's world, it is set in New England (His home area) and is titled "Angel's Egg."
Thank you for the recommendation, I must admit I don't know this author but you have piqued my interest! I will add Davy to my TBR list.
Love the opening space scene. I have The Lathe of Heaven on my TBR but I'm a bit intimidated.
It’s really readable. It’s from the height of Le Guin’s efforts to write in a particularly gentle, plain-appearing, Taoist sort of ways. It’s a *friendly* book.
I keep meaning to read Lathe of Heaven. Thanks for a great list to add to my TBR!
Thanks Josh, I'd love to know your thoughts after reading it.
@@bookspin I'm on it!...eventually haha
Thanks for reminding me of Cordwainer Smith!
I'm a slow reader but many of my favourites are in this list. Was wondering if you've read Man Who Fell to Earth or Blood Music.
I haven't but Blood Music is in my TBR
I don't think I've ever read a series more pessimistic of human potential than Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem series.
You should look into the work of Adrian Tchaichovsky. He has a background in zoology, and often imbues his characters with the behavioral traits of different members of the animal kingdom.
So many people gush about Hyperion that despite the fact I normally don't like short story anthologies I may dive into it.
I see a lot of the SF Masterworks books on your shelf, I think you may like Raft then. It's not Baxter's best work, but it's a good introduction to his Xeelee Sequence and Baxter himself.
My personal favorites:
Ring by Stephen Baxter, easy #1 for me.
The Manifold Trilogy by Baxter
The Spatteryjay Trilogy by Neal Asher. This one is like a mix "pirate" vibes and lots of AI. A ton of fun.
Helix and Helix War by Eric Brown
Sphere and The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Thanks for the recommendations
If I were to make a list like this, it woul overlap a great deal with yours, but it would certainly also contain both Ted Chiang's story collection Stories of Your Life And Others, and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Also, way out of left field, I was recently completely taken aback by Arno Schmidt's The Egghead Republic. I know few other books where I can this truthfully say that I have never read anything remotely like it. It is a difficult and demanding read, and not without its blemishes, but very impactful. It makes Dick and Vonnegut come off as your ordinary run-of-the-mill Airport literature.
I loved Stories of Your Life and Others. Thanks for letting me know about The Egghead Republic, not heard of it before, it sounds like a remarkable book.
I recall the black cloud that I read so long ago. 50s? Hyperion I've never read. River World's got to be one of the most entertaining. Lots of books left off your list but as an opening pretty good.
I read 1984 in 1984 when I was 15. Really enjoyed it and it led me to reading Animal Farm which I liked better. A good classic sci-fi that I don't hear talked about much is Isaac Asimov's "End Of Eternity." It involves time travel to the end of "fixing" dangerous trends in human history to ensure the safety of humanity with unforeseen consequences. There is a great twist at the end.
I've read End of Eternity and agree there are some great time travel ideas in that novel.
I wouldn’t have those three classics you mention at the end in my top 15, either.
A couple classics published by the SFMasterworks I would recommend, based on your picks, are The Stars My Destination, and Lord of Light.
Also, wouldn’t the first Riverworld book have the best elevator pitch of all time? I highly recommend Burton’s biography by Edward Rice. It may be even more fascinating than Farmer’s series.
Thanks for the recommendations. I have read Lord of Light and actually considered including it in this list. Stars My Destination is in my TBR.
That Burton biography sounds interesting, It'll have to keep an eye out for that. He certainly had a colourful life. The one aspect of Burton's work I'm mostly familiar with is his translation of the Arabian Nights, which he wrote in a distinctive archaic style.
Zelazny is a superb writer and lord of Light was good. There is his sci-fi/fantasy Amber series...... and the more fantasy oriented, but brilliant, 'A Night in the Lonesome October'.
I read The Black Cloud based on Richard Dawkins’ recommendation too. I loved it. Cool.
S.P. Somtow, a Thai-American author, wrotee some wonderful SF books back in the 1970s and 1980s. The Inquisitor series and his award winning Mallworld, are imaginative, funny, and relatable.
Thanks for the recommendation! I've not heard of that writer
Loved the video and cheered when HG Wells appeared. I do think you give far too much away, I had to stop some short because the idea is I want to read these books not know all about them. Very surprised at number one but the jury is out till I read it.
Thanks. I try to limit the information to the basic premise of each book, the kind of thing you might find on the cover blurb - but I understand, it's not always easy to get the balance right, and some people don't want this level of detail.
Cavorite - see also its use in League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Dr. Moriarty
I only love a couple of Claire North books of which "Fifteen Lives" is one and "Touch" (really good) is another.
Very interesting list, and especially good to see Cordwainer Smith in there. And a nice mix of old and new. But I was a little surprised to find no Philip K Dick, for me the best. Maybe you've not got to him yet.
Thank you for your feedback. I haven't read much PKD but I loved Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (and came close to including it in this list). I'm also planning to read to Ubik soon.
26:23 - There are two TV adaptations to this book. The 1st from 2002, that exist as only a pilot episode, is wonderful. Too bad it wasn't picked-up. One of the best SF TV.
I have seen the more recent adaptation, I think it was a 2010 production. It wasn't very memorable. I will have to look out for the earlier pilot version.
NIce to see Harry August, it doesnt often come up in SF stories let alone best ofs. Very enjoyable to read.
The Cabinet is in my KIndle, waiting to be read on my holiday in 3 weeks time. I skipped over your description (even though I know you arent doing spoilers).
I like Aurora Rising and I have read the sequel but dont recall what happens.
Didnt like T3BP. DNF'd.
Riverworld awesome and I had to read it in parts every few years as PJF doled out sequels every 2 or 3 years. Eventually ran to 5 books for the trilogy grrr. Not many SF books with Herman Goering and Alice Lidell plus a neanderthal and alien.
Hyperion contains the most scary SF monster apart from the ones in Ship Of Fools.
Thanks for watching! I ought to give Ship of Fools a try. Hope you enjoy The Cabinet
Interesting list. I'm surprised at some of them (more to check out!). Personally, I rate Peter F. Hamilton and Iain M. Banks alongisde Simmons and Reynolds.
I had just finished Fire Upon the Deep - and finishing it was like losing a best friend. A great read. Thanks for this list, some interesting suggestions which I'll get around to. No Iain M Banks in your list? For shame.
Thank you. I would like to get into Banks' Culture series at some point, I think I would probably enjoy it.
@@bookspin Based on the list here it seems likely. There's nothing quite like it.
Try Sheri Tepper, S m Stirling, Julie Czernada, SM Bujold i have a whole list but...
I thought A Deepness in the Sky was Vinge's best work. You missed the classic Dune which definitely has to be a top 15. Startide Rising has one of the most interesting universes to read about and my all time favorite Eon by Greg Bear is fabulous. Ender was a good read too and better than the movie by quite a bit.
Eon is one of my favorites too. I think it's epic, but it hardly ever gets mentioned. RIP Mr. Bear.
I love the lathe of haven. Its so good.
1:10 - Also inspired a memorable episode of 'Rick & Morty'. The one with the 'shwifty'
I especially liked (and purchased) #__, though I disagree about your take on __#____. I've also added to my cart the title __#__ and look forward to reading it.
The Foundation series, or trilogy by Isaac Asimov was the first "real" book I ever read. (ok 3 books)
Before that I had only read children's books like "The Mushroom Planet"
I thought for sure "The Foundation" would be in this list.
Excellent read, highly recommended.
Foundation is in my TBR. I have read other Asimov books before, I thought he had some great ideas but the writing style was a bit dry for my liking
@@bookspinI really liked Foundation when I read it decades ago. However not sure how it would stand up because Asimov didn’t do character depth, nor was their thrilling action. Dune, Endymion, Enders Game , etc likely stood up much better.
Severance was excellent. I was really surprised to see ion your list.
1Q84 is a long book. The audiobook alone is over 46 hours so be ready for a commitment on par with S Delaney's Dhalgren.
It's a long read and won't appeal to everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't read a lot of 800+ page doorstoppers, but this is perhaps my favourite that I've read.