h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh, I forgot to mention Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Lathe of Heaven". That's a great read, particularly if you've ever pondered causality and quantum mechanics...

SC

I've just discovered a whole new section of h2g2. Will the madness never end?

What is a genre anyway? Yes, if you have a pile of formulaic books it can be annoying, but if they're individual with their own character and plot, who cares what the genre is?

"There is no such thing as a Sci-Fi or a non-Sci-Fi book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
-D. Gray (attrib.).

Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust is a classic suspense novel. It's a how-do-people-change-under-stress novel. It's a man-versus-the-universe novel. And it's a science fiction novel.

For many authors, science fiction and fantasy exist only as backgrounds to set a story in, not as ends in themselves. Take Lord of the Flies, for example. It's about a bunch of boys who are evacuated from Britain by aeroplane because of the danger posed by a (nuclear?) war. Does that make it a sci-fi story? Technically, yes, I suppose.

As for Fantasy, why has no one yet mentioned Pratchett? The first three or four of his Discworld novels are take-offs of the sword-and-sorcery formulaic stuff you've been talking about here. After that he widens out. I'm very fond of Pyramids, which gets very strange indeed before it ends. And then there's Night Watch, a novel which had an almost physical effect on me. That book hit me. Powerful writing.

I recommend reading the series in order, because that way you see his ideas developing and his world, his 'sub-creation', growing more real. His kids stuff also is brilliant. (I've read the Nome trilogy (The Bromeliad) and the Johnny Maxwell trilogy. (I've also read the rather odd sci-fi novel Strata.))

A6002876 http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/ (The APF has plenty of spoilers and will spoil your fun of working his obscure jokes out for yourself.)

Did you recognise the word 'sub-creation'? It's Tolkien's, from his essay "On Fairy Stories", published as part of Tree and Leaf. How can you talk about fantasy without mentioning Tolkien? All other fantasy writers merely rearrange the stuff in Tolkien's attic, as Pratchett said.

In The Lord of the Rings, the world is in many ways the point of the thing. Yes, it's a good tale with a moral point, but Tolkien started with the backdrop, the world. The story and characters came later. I don't say it's brilliant, but it is, as far as I know, unique. Read The Lord of the Rings for the simple reason that there's nothing else quite like it.

I've also read The Silmarillion, but that's only because I'm very strange.

A672022 http://tolkien.slimy.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/~steuard/booklist.pl (The booklist is a handy resource. It recommends an order in which to read his books.)

TRiG.

On the subject of Clarke, The Gods Themselves is a good starter for ten.