What are the truly great science fiction novels?

The Goat Tower by Gary Meaman

>>8453431
Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination
Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama
Isaac Asimov - The Caves of Steel
Frank Herbert - Dune
Philip K. Dick - Ubik
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
William Gibson - Neuromancer

>>8453446
You read all these?
I already read 'Solaris' and liked it a lot.

What about Samuel Delany? I'm told 'Dhalgren' is supposed to be pretty fantastic too.

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Flatland

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The Sirens of MOTHERFUCKING Titan

>>8453465
Already read that, and found it masterful.

>>8453455
Yes, I've read them. I've read some other books by all of those authors too, but the ones I named are the ones that I thought were the best. Foundation usually gets picked as Asimov's greatest, but it didn't click with me and I preferred his robot series (Caves of Steel is the first).

Haven't read Delaney yet. Dhalgren has a big repuation, but it's also long and complex so it's one I figure I'll work up to.

>>8453471
What about 'Roadside Picnic'?

>>8453474
It's good too, but it's really only some sections of the books that are top-notch. Those bits are very memorable, though.

>>8453446
Neuromancer is pretty fucking awful on all accounts, why do people like it?
The characters are shit, the prose doesn't make sense half of the time, the plot is a boring action movie.

Greg Egan - Diaspora
Bruce Sterling - Schizmatrix
Arthur C Clarke - The City and the Stars
Robert Heinlein - Time Enough For Love
Paul Park - Soldiers Of Paradise
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War

Since everyone else seems to be spruiking the classics, i'll toss in the Vorkosigan Saga by Louis McMaster Bujold. She handles character growth like no one i've ever read.

>>8453524
Can you recommend some that are not considered classics, but are nonetheless excellent?

>>8453530
Well, theres that one which has around 25 books and short stories (should be read by internal chronological order, rather than by release), id also recommend Hell's Gate by David Weber and Linda Evans. Scifi with magic theown in for good measure. Ill think of some more.

Vatta War and the Serrano Legacy by Elizabeth Moon. David Webers Honorverse, though it drags on a bit near the back half.

Some of you have been posting a lot of classics. I just wanted to chime in with some newer ones.

Margaret Atwood- Oryx and Crake
Paolo Bacigalupi- The Windup Girl
Robert Charles Wilson- Spin

Chiming in to say Solaris is one of my favorite stories of all time

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Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon

>>8453488
Mainly because it was a "new" thing at the time. Plebs read it because they think it's good.

This >>8453635
Also The Machine Stops by Forster.
http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html

>>8453691
I get that, but coming into it now, after everyone has seen dozens of movies and played video games and everything, it's devoid of anything interesting outside the "historical influence".

>>8453530
Utopia by Thomas More and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain..

>>8453446
I like Ubik, but it feels a little juvenile to me. Dick has much better books, like Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, or Valis

>>8453431
>Gene Wolfe
The Fifth Head of Cerberus
Book of the New Sun

Nothing really stands up to these two off the top of my head.

>>8453446 feels pretty on point as a runners up shortlist with the exception of Neuromancer, which I couldn't get into at all. Japanese cyberpunk is where the substance is, Gibson was just fucking around with some edgy nonsense and got lucky that enough of his scattershot ideas seemed vaguely prophetic enough to get him labelled as a visionary.

And I agree that if there's one Phillip K. Dick novel to highlight it's probably 'Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.'

>>8453471
Foundation is bloated with tons of boring dialogue. But that and Heinlein's Future Histories really set the tone for the genre, including Star Wars and all that shit

>>8453510
>city and the stars

my nigga

>>8453767
>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
I highly recommend this. It's not exactly literature with much of a point (or at least no point that Twain didn't already beat to death in one of his other works) but it's a very good read.

who is that guy that said that american science fiction was about robots, by robots, for robots?

>>8453775
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is superb.

Heinlein should probably be in this thread more. I also liked Stranger in a Strange Land.

>>8454232
Starship Troopers is a book that will always stop me from ever picking him up again.

>>8454252
That's a shame. I've never had any desire to read or watch that.

What does /lit/ think of Vernor Vinge?

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>>8453431
post more goats, please.

>>8454252
I couldn't read more than 20 or so pages of it, but Stranger in a Strange Land is excellent and basically the polar opposite.

>>8454290
The movie is fantastic because it's the same thing, but ironic, instead of retarded preaching 150/300 pages long.

>>8454290
The movie is super fun and subversive though, fuck the book.

>>8454290
It's not very literary and the science is absurd but it has some nice ideas and is severely underrated for his contributions to cyberpunk. True Names is a fun romp, The Cookie Monster fills me with existential dread.

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godtier polish sc-fi

>>8454319
You might like Rainbow's End by him. It's a pretty good thriller with a really interesting and seemingly insightful look at the near-future

The City and the Stars - Arthur C Clarke

A lot of Arthur Clarke in here. I haven't made my mind up about him. While The City And The Stars was a good imaginative work, Rendezvous With Rama felt prosaic.

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>>8453446
AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO LIKES THIS!?

>>8453431
Truly great Science Fiction Novellas?

>>8453446
This, but read Burning Chrome over Neuromancer (Gibson is primarily a stylist and the short story is a medium which suits his talent), don't let yourself skip Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and add in Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut.

>>8453510
I finished reading The Forever War yesterday night, it lacks depth imo. That said I read it almost compulsively. Really entertaining stuff.

>>8453746
the plot of Neuromancer is subservient to the world of Neuromancer, which is where the real story is told-- The story of civilizations sagging under their own weight and the dystopia limping away while it vainly nurses mortal wounds. What's readily there to the characters is there to ground you in the results of that history, but the bits to be appreciated are the tragedies inherent in hubristic overexpansion and globalist empiredom. You might give John Shirley's City Come A Walkin' a shot-- it starts in a more metaphysical place, rather than focusing on the low elements of the world, so it might be easier to let yourself focus on the grander social elements instead of finding yourself glazing over the bits which you've come to view as neutral aesthetic indicators of the 'cyberpunk look' as hollywood has taken it.

>>8454391
thats fine too

>>8454410
already read Cat's Cradle, and I'm certainly glad I did

>>8454471
I'm not, it was basically an obnoxious, dull Dick novel.

>>8454371
i do

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>>8454874
what do you like about it?

>>8454890
lik everything its good book

>>8453510
>Bruce Sterling - Schizmatrix
this

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the only one that belongs in the canon

>>8453446
Just finished reading Dune the other day. I watched the movie and mini series, can confirm the book is way better. The Navigators were a little less interesting than their film counterparts but the overall plot is much more detailed and explained a lot of the things I had no idea about while watching the film.

>>8453524
It won 3 Hugo awards, how is that not a classic.

>>8455092
Dhalgren is shit and mimes literary merit, but doesn't earn it like Le Guin does. Just because he can whip up a pretty sentence doesn't automatically earn him canon status.

>>8455137
Back when Hugos actually meant something...

>>8455156
>>8455137
Hugos were shit even then.

Name 5 Hugo winners that deserve canon status. Protip: You can't.

>>8455231
Gene Wolfe.
Oh, fuck, wait a second....

>>8455231
Asimov
Dick
Herbert

Fuck...

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>>8453431
No one's mentioned Thomas Disch yet. Camp Concentration, 334, and Wings of Song - all rock.

>>8453465
>>8454410
>>8453470
>Vonnegut
It's still summer, I see.

>>8455433
Vonnegut cuts close to the boundaries between satire and serious in a way I can't help but like. He's not my favorite author in history, and he's pretty inconsistent, but there's never been much I disliked about Cat's Cradle or Slaugherhouse V.

>>8453455
>>8453471
Dhalgren absolutely lives up to the hype. It belongs in great novels of the 20th century, period.

End of Eternity
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Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban