SF to knock your socks off

[lethargic_man]

In 1995 Focus magazine gave away a little book of short SF stories. The introduction said something along the lines of "If you are reading this in an antique bookshop in 2026, part with your digi-cash now: you are holding in your hands a collection of some of the greatest SF short fiction of the late twentieth century." Yeah, right, I thought, and started reading—and was completely blown away by the first story, "Prison Dreams", by Paul McAuley. Something that had that effect on me was rare, but this little anthology then did it again with the second story: "Blood Music" (the original novella), by Greg Bear.

Of course, it was too much to believe that the anthology could keep that level of quality up, and so indeed turned out to be the case. Nevertheless, these two stories illustrate well the sensawunda which is what in SF really does it for me.

I look back now as a golden age upon the period of several years starting eleven years ago, when rysmiel first began recommending me books. (papersky, on reading a story I had written before this period, commented "Where have you been since John Campbell left Astounding?") In rapid succession I read such sock-knockers-off, and other not quite so astounding, but still impressive books as, Greg Egan's Permutation City, Axiomatic and Diaspora; Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, Dan Simmons two Hyperion books, Kim Stanley Robinson's Icehenge, Daniel Keys Moran's three published Tales of the Continuing Time, Walter Jon Williams' Aristoi; Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons, Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, Ken Macleod's The Stone Canal, Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and Marooned in Realtime, Paul McAuley's The Invisible Country.

But then there came a time when a hundred stars could be seen in the same sky as the noonday sun I had effectively "caught up", and the pace of sock-knockers-off slackened. I was still getting my socks knocked off from time to time, whether through new fiction such as Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky or Charlie Stross's Accelerando, or the book I've just finished reading, Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson; or through discovering classics such as Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Nevertheless, the genuinely new ideas in SF only come along from time to time, and much of the rest of the time I now find myself reading material that, whilst a decent read, failed to evoke that sensawunda, failed to get me excited.

So now I'm writing here to ask if anyone reading this has any recommendations for me? If the above don't make it clear, what has the best chance of piquing my interest is stories evoking the white heat of new (hypothetical-) scientific or technological ideas.

A few more examples: Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward, set among aliens living on the surface of a neutron star, and "High Abyss" by Gregory Benford, in what seems at first to be a similar setting (but turns out to be <rot-13>ba gur fhesnpr bs n pbfzvp fgevat<rot-13>). Bob Shaw's classic "Light of Other Days". Raphael Carter's "Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation", and Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life. Neal Asher's "Spatterjay"; Bruce Sterling's "Swarm".

And, whilst I'm at it, the other SF stories in the last decade of my reading list I rated when I read them as "excellent": John M. Ford's Growing Up Weightless and "Erase/Record/Play"; Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon; Ian McDonald's Necroville and "Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone" (though I can no longer remember what this did to justify it; maybe I should read it again). Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. Greg Egan short stories including "Transition Dreams", "Reasons to be Cheerful" and "The Planck Dive"; R.A. Lafferty short stories including "What's The Name Of That Town?", "Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne" and "Narrow Valley".

So, any recommendations? (Though it's not as if I don't have a huge list of books to read already, but...)

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

You should probably try out Alastair Reynolds; Revelation Space is a good place to start.

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

Try Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Arabesk(sic) series. I found them excellent.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

This lot'll keep you occupied:

• Paul J. McAuley and Red Dust;
• Jeff Noon: Vurt and Pollen;read them both!
• Peter F. Hamilton and Mindstar Rising, followed by A Quantum Murder and The Nano Flower;
• If you can find it, Neil Asher and Cowl. I see you've already found Skinnner;
• Richard Morgan and Altered Carbon;

Paul McAuley is varied: superb at his best, derivative and dull in much of the rest; and unreadable when he descends into formulaic anticorporate whingeing. But Red Dust is top of that list for a reason: go to it, and good luck - it's a road trip novel, across the decaying Chinese colony on Mars, in a declining society that's losing interest, centred on a disillusioned ex-believer from an Elvis-worshipping cult. What is not to like? Then try Fairyland and Whole Wide Web.

Vurt and Pollen defy description. They are possibly the strangest books I have ever read, and yet they are cohesive and coherent: readable, with identifiable characters and a sense of connection that you will come to value when you realise just how deep the rabbit-hole can go.

Peter Hamilton's Mindstar trilogy are near-future and the first books I've read with a convincing post-Global-Warming society. Very different to his Neutronium Alchemist space-opera trilogy. They are also set in places I know and used to cycle 'round as a lad, which gives odd flashes as I read the books: Hamilton writes with a superb sense of place. If you've only got time to read one of them, make it Nano Flower all three books are self-contained.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your recommendations.

Paul McAuley is varied: superb at his best, derivative and dull in much of the rest; and unreadable when he descends into formulaic anticorporate whingeing. But Red Dust is top of that list for a reason: [...] What is not to like?

Er, quite. :o)

Then try Fairyland and Whole Wide Web.

I read Fairyland, and found it a reasonable read, but it didn't do anything for me like The Invisible Country, in which it started excellent, and, with the exception of one story, each story raised the bar and knocked my socks off all over again.

Vurt and Pollen defy description.

I read Pollen years ago; I wasn't all that whelmed with it.

If you can find it, Neil Asher and Cowl. I see you've already found Skinnner

Actually, what I read was The Engineer, which consists of the eponymous novel plus the short stories "Snails", "Spatterjay", "Jable Sharks", "The Thrake", "Proctors" and "The Owner". I thought they were all pretty good, but rysmiel has posted a series of negative reviews of Asher's novels, most of which seem to be blowing the above short stories up to novel length. (Maybe they work better at short story length; maybe I'm just blind to the faults rysmiel sees in them.) rysmiel reviewed (http://rysmiel.livejournal.com/593776.html) The Cowl too, concluding "Highly not recommended".