What Is Your Favorite Sifi Book?

[AriLea]

Book? That's an oldie question if ever there was one. And Why did you like it? But seriously, if you like SiFi for what it should be, most definitely it would have to be a book. Except for Star Wars, IMHO there the books didn't have any more intrinsic content than the movies. But that was OK I found plenty of deep considerations, or maybe not that deep?

We have a couple weeks, I'm guessing, of 'silence' while all things Elio get going for 2016. So why not parse out some SiFi? OK, OK , you can include film and TV SifFi too, if it's 'deep' enough.

So anyway, what do I mean by 'should be'? Classic SiFi was never actually 'simply' about monsters and escaping scary unknowns. It was traditionally about parsing out what it means to be human and/or what the true nature of life is. As probably all good writing and story telling is.

For example, if you think the 1956 'Forbidden Planet' movie was simply about escaping a dangerous and foreboding possible future. You are right, but maybe for the wrong reason. What the movie exposes is the 'inner truth' of our own potential and pitfalls. A future landscape just makes it more accessible, having transposed it externally so we could see the struggle more in the open. Every where we go, and in everything we do, we take our own monster(s) with us. There IS a cliché here; Sometime now or in the future, you will have to face them. How will -you- escape? Every player in the move had their own escape plan. Which plan would you choose?

So, then what is your favorite(s)? What did you like about it? What message did you find in the bottle?

 

[Okie51]

Babylon AD. Book was confusing, liked movie with Vin Diesel better.

I liked Prey by Michael Crichton. He was my favorite novelist. I usual read history or nonfiction. Shadow divers, Into Thin Air, Where Men win glory, In harms way are some of good nonfiction I have read.

 

[NSTG8R]

I liked the book better than the movie, which was really well done, but I'd have to say Cloud Atlas is at the top of my list right now. A challenge to follow in the movie version, but very deep.

 

[floydv]

Ah, now we're talking.

I love the Dune series, especially the original volume and God Emperor by Frank Herbert, although some of the sequels and prequels written by his son Brian were pretty good, too. The Frank Herbert books helped me keep my sanity while I was prepping for the Bar exam. Starship Troopers (the book) was awesome; I know everyone wetted themselves over Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, but I preferred ST.

If you're talking fantasy, my all time fave is Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (all four series). In my modest opinion, it's hands down the best fantasy series (even better than, gasp, Tolkien).

Movie- and TV-wise, gotta give the thumbs up to Alien & Aliens, Star Trek (all the series, even Enterprise, but especially TNG), Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica (TV reboot), and X-Files. Loved the first Tron movie (way into video arcade games at the time). I loved the short-lived Space: Above and Beyond, which was clearly influenced by Starship Troopers. And the first Matrix movie blew me away. However, for a complete mind-blowing experience, you should watch the Matrix back-to-back with Dark City, which was a great sci-fi flick with a similar alternative reality theme.

 

[Hotscoots]

I like the Dune series also . But my favorite SciFi reading past time is any Robot related book by Issac Asimov .

The Three laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

 

[WilliamH]

Favorite books? Tons of them.
........
The-Lost-Millennium...Walt and Leigh Richmond
... explains among other things...
... the breakup of Pangia
... the simultaneous appearance of Pyramids all over the Earth
... the great flood stories
... the origin of the human race
... the origin of flying carpets
... the strange doors to no place in ancient buildings
.. Wow! all of that in one story! Great read!

Lone Star Planet... H. Beam Piper
... Some great ideas on how to deal with paid professional politicians!

The Paratime stories... H. Beam Piper
Lord Kalvin of Otherwhen... H. Beam Piper
... Lots of fun to read.

The Lensmen series... E. E. "Doc" Smith
... Real classics

The Retief stories... Keith Laumer
... Lots of fun

 

[aknaten]

Heinlein - I Will Fear No Evil
Very old rich guy, dying of old age
Needs a donor body for an illegal brain transplant
His 20-something female secretary gets mugged, brain dead, perfect donor match.
The rest is totally unbelievable but totally logical.

 

[ehwatt]

Heinlein, Farnhams Freehold. It made a lasting impression on a 12 year old so that years later we named our home school Farnham Memorial, the seventh home school in the Commonwealth. Can't recall if it was Heinlien, Clark or whomever said, he didn't write science fiction, it was future history.

 

[AriLea]

I think it's so funny, we have an commercial campus in Tempe AZ called 'Fountain Head'. Just tossing that into the crowd.

 

[NSTG8R]

I need to toss Blade Runner into my favorites. Kind of the old Sam Spade narrative, with a futuristic backdrop. If I remember right, it takes place around the year 2016.