The Tilted Speculative Fiction Book Club
 

Have you ever wanted to get into speculative fiction?
Don’t know where to start?
Overwhelmed?

I invite you to navigate it with me.

I’ve recently decided that I want to delve into the world of speculative fiction literature. As a reader, I have read epic fantasy, "serious" literary works, but very little science fiction. What I have read includes such works as 1984 and A Brave New World, but there is far more to speculative fiction than these works. I want to read the classics, both old and new.

That said, I’ve been building a reading list of speculative fiction, and I've been methodical about it as I'm sure there is a lot of crap out there, just as with any publishing category. I’m basing many of my choices on the opinions of two people who are important figures in the community: David G. Hartwell (the celebrated, long-time editor) and Orson Scott Card (best-selling author of both science fiction and fantasy).

Hartwell’s book Age of Wonders: exploring the world of science fiction provides a wonderful overview of the genre, in addition to extensive recommended reading. Although I won’t make this a part of the book club, I do highly recommend it to those new to the genre. Also, Card’s book How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy provides recommended reading to formulate an understanding of the genre.

If you think you have the "gist" of science fiction (SF) based on the fact that you’ve watch every Star Trek episode, are a big fan of Star Wars, in addition to being a junkie of TV "sci-fi," you (as was I) are sorely mistaken. It is made clear by both Hartwell and Card that although TV sci-fi isn’t viewed with disdain by core SF readers, it is generally accepted that these things are usually SF "lite" and often rely on "bad science" (though there are some exceptions nowadays). Furthermore, much of it consists of stories akin to swashbuckling adventures and epic moral battles. Although there is nothing wrong with this in and of itself, SF is much, much more than that.

SF is an exploration of possibilities, and about feeling a sense of awe and wonder about the universe beyond our blue planet. There’s technology, discovery, moral struggles, etc. And if you haven’t read much in the genre, say Hartwell and Card, what you think you know about it is probably wrong.

Below I will list the books as we read them. I am reading Hartwell’s book as an overview, but my aim is to begin with Isaac Asimov’s seminal Foundation series. So, once I finish the overview, I will begin with Prelude to Foundation. Later on, I will give you an idea of when we can all hope to have finished reading the first volume, after which we can begin a discussion of the book before continuing with the next.

See below for a reading schedule. I hope to continue on by delving into the various subgenres that cover science fiction, fantasy, and even horror.

If you wish to "join" the club, pm me and I will list your names below as well to keep track of who’s participating. Otherwise, you can just follow casually. It’s up to you.

Also, if you are already a big speculative fiction fan, I invite you to read what you may not have read yet, or to reread if the case may be. Your input in the discussions will be greatly welcomed.

Members

amonkie
Baraka_Guru
Daniel_
Lindy
LordEden
ratbastid
Snowy

FAQ

What if I can't keep up with you guys when reading books? The club has already started; what if I want to join in the middle of things?

Threads will remain open for each book discussion, but you might wander into a thread after much has already been said.

Keep in mind that not everyone will read the book. Some threads will have little commentary. I'm sure down the road this could increase when people finish reading a particular book, if they do decide to read it in the first place.

No pressure. Read at your own pace if you want. You just might be a bit late to the discussion if you don't read books when others do.

Please read what interests you and go into the appropriate thread and participate. You will always have your own perspectives. And please agree to disagree and add a dimension to the discussions.

Do this even if you read the book a year after a thread was created. This will only help the club flourish.

Reading List*

[Space Opera]

The Foundation Series, Isaac Asimov

1. Prelude to Foundation [prequel] (IN PROGRESS: Discussion thread commenced April 1, 2010)
2. Forward the Foundation [prequel] (READING)
3. Foundation
4. Foundation and Empire
5. Second Foundation
6. Foundation’s Edge
7. Foundation and Earth

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein
The Dune Trilogy, Frank Herbet
The Hyperion Cantos, Dan Simmons
Ringworld, Larry Niven

[Hard Science Fiction]

Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke [DNF]
2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
The Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson
Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds
Dragon's Egg, Robert Forward
Tau Zero, Poul Anderson

[Parallel Universe/Alternate Reality/Near Future/Dystopia/Cyber- and Steampunk]

The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick (DISCUSSION commenced)
The Man Who Folded Himself, David Gerrold
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
The Sprawl Trilogy, William Gibson
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
The Difference Engine, William Gibson
Perdido Street Station, China Miéville
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Guns of the South, Harry Turtledove

[Science Fantasy/Planetary Romance/Apocalyptic/Post-apocalyptic]

The Space Trilogy, C. S. Lewis
The Barsoom Trilogy, Edgar Rice Burroughs
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Solaris, Stanisław Lem
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
Hothouse (aka The Long Afternoon of Earth and The Sun Is Dying), Brian Aldiss
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Crystal World, J. G. Ballard
Timescape, Gregory Benford

[Dark Fantasy/Horror]

Various, H. P. Lovecraft
The Chia Black Dragon Series, Stephen Marley
The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice

*Unofficial/subject to change, in no particular order, and organized -loosely- into categories that will allow us to keep an interesting variety.

I have to disagree with a sentence.
There is a large amount of excellent SF that never leaves the planet Earth. My personal definition of SF is "Let's pretend that (something) was invented/discovered. How would that affect (something else)?"

For me, one of the best classic What If? authors is Alfred Bester, especially "The Demolished Man", which asks "What if some people could read your mind? What if the police hired these people?"

I'll just be a casual follower at this point; I don't feel like delving back into Asimov right now.

We had a "MUST READ" compiled reading list in a previous thread, that included science fiction. these were the works:.

Science Fiction/ Fantasy / Comics

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and assorted sequels) - Douglas Adams
Foundation Series - Isaac Asimov
Earthsea Trilogy - Ursula Le Guin
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein
Dune Series - Frank Herbert
The Dosadi Experiment - Frank Herbert
The Amazing Spider – Man – Stan Lee
Small Gods – Terry Pratchett
Memnoch the Devil - Anne Rice
Illuminatus Trilogy - Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert A. Wilson
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny


Futuristic

Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Plowing the Dark by Richard Powers
1984 - George Orwell

A good point. I was glossing, generally, and I overlooked that aspect as I was typing. I guess you could also read that line as "our" blue planet, i.e. the planet we know in real life. I didn't mean to imply that alternative realities/histories and universes aren't a part of SF, because, well, they're an integral part.

I hope to incorporate much of these, if not all. At first I thought of focusing purely on SF, but I guess we can't stay away from fantasy entirely. I like the idea of including "science fantasy" (i.e. C. S. Lewis & Burroughs), and other genre mixes, but I'd be open to fantasy of other means. I just don't want to get swept up in epic Tolkienesque fantasy because it can easily overwhelm all else. Maybe we'll do circuits of surveys in the genre of "speculative fiction" in general to include all aspects. I have my reading list subdivided by subgenres. Maybe we can cycle through those and include epic fantasy and sword & sorcery too. :) I like variety.

EDIT: Okay, I just edited the OP to be more open to the speculative fiction category as a whole. I thought about limiting the book club at first, but now it's more reflective of my own personal reading list as I'm building it. Of course, I'm open to the recommendations and desires of the group, so feel free to continue to make suggestions.

SciFi is my favorite genre. Put me on the list.

I'm particularly infatuated with time-travel fic and alternate history.

My must-reads include:

The Man who Folded Himself, by David Gerrolds
Hyperion (and the rest of the series) by Dan Simmons
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson


..and many others I'm sure.

So the idea of the thread is to read the Foundation series and then discuss it, followed by other speculative classics? Or is this just compiling a list of favorites/classics? I'm just trying to get a handle on what the goal is here.

Having read way too many Dune novels, I'd like to offer the opinion that reading the first three—Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune—is the best Dune experience. Subsequent novels do expand a great deal on the universe and certainly finish up the main Leto story, but as far as quality of writing, world-building, creativity, and overall storytelling, Dune should probably be read as a trilogy. It's a lot like the Ender series in that it starts masterful and then begins going down hill after a few books.

Clearly I have to be here.

As it happens, I'm a few books ahead of you in a complete re-read of Foundation; having got as far as 1/3 of the way through Foundation and Earth (I was horrified to find after I'd finished "Edge" last week that I didn't have a copy of "Earth". I lent it to someone and it never came back - so I had to buy another.

Can I add to the list

The Uplift stories of David Brin

Sundiver (1980)
Startide Rising (1983)
The Uplift War (1987)
The Uplift Storm Trilogy
Brightness Reef (1995)
Infinity's Shore (1996)
Heaven's Reach (1998)

Robert Heinlein - everything he wrote, but you must grok Stranger in a Strange Land in fullness first.

Larry Niven's Ringworld

Haldeman's Forever War

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere

William Gibson's Neuromancer

Jon Courtnay Grimwood's Arabesk Trilogy

Is that enough to be going on with?

Welcome aboard, and thanks for the recommendations.

Yes, Willravel, we will discuss each book as we read them. After Asimov, we'll move on to some other classic work, hopefully sampling from the various subgenres as we go. We'll be more explicit with our navigation as we go along.

It'd be nice to have you along. Are you in?

Nice to have you aboard, and thanks for the recommendations. Standby for Foundation!

I greatly enjoyed Neuromancer.
I haven't been in a reading mood lately, maybe this'll light a fire under my brain. (ha)
I'm also more of a futuristic sci fi reader than straight up sci fi. So I might just start off here as a casual follower instead of a member.

I'd also like to recommend books by Torontonian Robert J. Sawyer. I like his stuff. :) I'm currently trying to read his latest Flash Forward, but like I said, I'm not in a reading mood. School puts me off it sometimes.

Can we discuss Foundation now or do you want to set a start date so people get a chance to make it though the first book? Or do you want to wait until you've finished the series?

We'll do one book at a time, regardless of it being a series. Of course, one can always read ahead. I'd recommend not discussing a book before a set time, to give people a chance to read the book first. So, yeah, we should abide by dates, so we can discuss things together.

Things will be more clear once we get started. I'm sure we'll figure things out as we go along.

I'm thinking that the use of spoiler tags in this thread will be silly. Maybe I should put a warning in the thread title and OP.... what do you think?

Perhaps it would be best to have a new thread for every book series. Once the designated time for finishing the book is done, we start a "SF Book Club: Foundation [SPOILERS)" thread and then go from there. Just a thought.

I'd say to use this thread as the master thread, for general discussion and proposals of new books. Each individual book would get its own thread; e.g. TSFBC: Prelude to Foundation, Issac Asimov. This way, even if it is a series, people could discuss each book as it comes along.

I think this is a good thread to gauge interest, and spin off a new thread for each book. No problem with multiple books going on at the same time, at least in my opinion. I'm usually reading at least 2-3 books at the same tim.

I don't know where to start off on this, especially since this topic has quickly morphed into a "group-think" sort of deal, but here's my effort:


http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4015/...22d055b3b4.jpg
The Science Fiction Book: An illustrated history, by Franz Rottensteiner


...as well as what I've found to be a superb interview (if a bit long) with Rottensteiner on the subject of many things,
including his works, the genre in which it encompasses, and the future aims of "worldwide fantasy". Interview found here.

I like the idea of starting a thread for each book. That would make it easier to navigate as we go along, rather than have a huge thread with all these book discussions.

In the meantime, I have Prelude to Foundation coming in from the library over the next couple of days, I'm thinking of maybe setting a date for when I'll start the discussion thread. Maybe April 1st?

Yeah, I think especially if it's a series like the Asimov (and let's face it, much of this genre works in trilogies and more).

I don't see the harm in getting started in a series and unfolding each thread as people read on. I'm just not sure about getting ahead too far on multiple books though. I'd like to be as inclusive as possible for the discussions. Perhaps we could set it up as something concurrently for reading (like one science fiction and one fantasy at the same time...plus people could choose whether they want to do one or the other, or both).

I dunno. But this is good. Keep throwing out ideas and we'll see what people want to do.

I vote "clubhouse thread plus thread per book". :D

i'm not a huge sci-fi person in the western-in-space mode...i prefer stuff that's "written in the subjunctive" like j.g. ballard said...so ballard, burroughs, some cyberpunk. so i may dip in and out of the readings. not a problem i assume?

but i like this idea alot.

I've updated the OP to include a rough outline of categories I intend on cycling through. The selections therein include many of your suggestions. As noted above, this isn't a final list or anything, and it isn't in any particular order.

Of course, many of these books would be able to fit into more than one category, but this isn't meant to be a definitive categorization; it's merely an attempt to read widely in such a varied genre.

We can figure out how to approach the material as we go along. Let me know what you think. We can always make revisions, additions, deletions, exceptions, etc.

Also, you will see that I've set April 1, 2010, as the date when I will set up the discussion thread for the first book of the Foundation series, Prelude to Foundation.

So get reading, and we'll hear from you then!

---------- Post added at 10:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:32 PM ----------

Feel free to pick the readings that interest you as we go along. We'd love to have you. As you will see, we will constantly be changing up the subgenres as we go.

This is great, I've been reading SF since the early '70's when I joined the Science Fiction Book Club and got my first tome of Hugo Award Winners in the mail. Just about everything in the OP has passed through my fingers.. The Foundation Series being a particular favourite, an obviously Dune, which took me three attempts to begin (starting in grade 9).

I was about to chime in with some more, when both Ratbastid and Daniel_ beat me to the punch. Clearly there's a lot to get into, without even going to Doris Lessing or the Russian works. Currently I am working my way through some Canadian authors (Stirling, Robert J Sawyer, William Gibson) but would like to promote a guy who actually lives in my neigbbourhood:

Karl Schroeder. He writes hard sci-fi. I just finished "Lady of Mazes" and have read Ventus & Permanence.




Similar to William Gibson coining the term/concept "cyberspace", Schroeder has developed the concept of "thalience":

Thalience is a concept invented by Schroeder in Ventus. The idea of thalience has been adopted by some members of the artificial intelligence community to describe the self-organizing properties of fine-grained distributed networks.[citation needed] As presented in the novel, however, the concept may refer to the attempt to determine whether non-human sentient systems are truly independent minds, or whether they are merely "parrots" that give back to human researchers what the researchers expect to hear.[citation needed] The novel says that the word was deliberately chosen as an allusion to "silent Thalia", the muse of Nature. However, Ventus also more consistently refers to thalience as a state of being.[citation needed] Entities are considered "thalient" if they succeed in developing their own categories for understanding the world.[2]

- from wikipedia

2 Terse Systems : Thalience and the Semantic Web

I'd like to be in on at least some of this discussion.

I would also like to propose that some of the titles previously mentioned, and some others yet to be added, be shifted into a category of "Alternate Histories;" this might include books like Gibson's The Difference Engine, but also things like Philip K. Dick'sThe Man In The High Castle, and a crapload of books by Harry Turtledove, including the Worldwar tetralogy, The Guns of the South, and Crosstime Trafficthe "Timeline-191" books; as well as books like Robert Harris' Fatherland, and perhaps Nabokov's Ada, Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union, and Roth's The Plot Against America.

BTW, though I love his work fervently, I would not include Tolkien as Science Fiction: I would classify him strictly as Fantasy fiction. Which is also why I haven't suggested Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, though it is a fascinating alternate history.

Also btw, when it comes to the Dune books, I agree with Willravel, although I'd include God Emperor, and read it as a tetralogy.

Good idea for a discussion group, though! Sounds like fun!

I've never liked the term "speculative fiction", because it is too vague and undefined, and because too little of it is not SF to merit its own sub-genre. Alternate reality and Alternative history (which accounts for the majority of non-SF speculative fiction) is found on SF shelves in stores/catalogues anyway. So I regard the speculative fiction sub-genre as defunct. I don't feel much for the few authors who didn't like to be "labelled" as an SF writer. Darwin's Children by Greg Bear is what I would classify as a Hard SF speculative fiction, and it is a good book to add to the list.

On-topic though, It would be useful for the discussion group admin to steer the discussion for each book with pointed questions, instead of letting us just post random reviews.

You see, this is why I use it as an overarching identifier: "speculative fiction" includes science fiction, fantasy, horror, parallel universes/alternate realities, the occult, etc. It's more or less a distinction from other genres such as literary, historical, mystery, thriller, romance, etc. Of course, you're always going to get crossovers and blends---there's no avoiding that---but I think the term "speculative fiction" works in the way I intend to use it for this book club. This will also explain why I've used the subgenre categories in the OP reading list.

Yeah, I get that, and I like what you did. Even so, I just felt like pointing out that the bottom category "Dark Fantasy/Horror" is the only thing on the list that isn't SF though.

What I would like to see though is that the book club discussion gets steered towards reflection on the speculative aspects of the book, and not just a general "what did you think/post your review here". Will you consider it?

I totally get that too. I don't view any fantasy or horror as "science fiction," though some of it may have elements of it. I'm still sitting on the fence regarding mainstream/epic fantasy and this book club. I feel it could use a club of its own, and it'd be easy to get carried away with something that I intended to be more focused on essentially science-fiction related material. I didn't want to rule fantasy out completely, considering much of it is written in the same tradition. If you consider what early works contributed to these genres, you look at Verne and Wells, but you also look at Stoker, Shelley, and Stevenson.

I fully intend to focus on the speculative aspects of the books, as well as discussing the books' major themes, messages, and questions. "General impressions" I hope to get out of the way early on so that we can get down to the meat, bones, and marrow. (Maybe even the DNA.)

I'm after engaging discussions. I want everyone to geek it up.

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

I've enjoyed the speculative fiction that I've read, starting in the late eighties with Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz when I was in middle school. I read it again a couple of years ago, and was amazed at how much more I got out of it after twenty years of life experience and other reading.:)
I've read several of Harry Turtledove's books, (especially liked Guns of the South) Eric Flint's 1632 series, and S. M. Stirling's Conquistador. I like Alt History partly because I like "straight" history and am knowledgeable enough that I pick up on some of the subtlety and detail. I'm currently working my way through one of the Alternate Generals books.
I look forward to exploring some of the older "classics" as there are books (and authors) on the lists that I haven't read, or in some cases even heard of.
I've heard of Asimov and Heinlein, but am embarrassed to admit that I don't think I've actually read anything by either.:sad: I've got an old, yellowed, paperback of Niven's Ringworld on my bookshelf. I bought it at a used bookstore solely because I liked the cover art, but I've never read it.

Put me on the list, Ill try to keep up.

Lindy

I'd also like to suggest putting Guns of the South on the reading list.

Done, and done! :thumbsup:

* * * * *

As promised, I've posted the first discussion thread today for Asimov's Prelude to Foundation.

Check it out: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-...-spoilers.html

So, hop in and have fun.

If you haven't finished reading it yet (or haven't started!), get going! :eek:

I would like to pose a question out there to current and potential readers: Should we continue with the next book in the Foundation series, Forward the Foundation, or should we leap into another category and come back to Foundation at a later time?

I'd like to keep a good variety, and let's be honest, it will take a really long time to get through the Foundation series if we read the volumes consecutively. For those not interested in it, this is a long wait.

I've classified the Foundation series as "Space Opera"; the other categories are listed in the OP above.

Any suggestions? Preferences?

I haven't had a chance to start the book, I'm still working on LOTR, so it's next on my list. Don't know how long it's going to take my to finish it.

Doesn't really matter to me--I will probably continue on reading the Foundation series as my holds from the library come in. Mixing it up for the sake of others interested in joining the discussion sounds like a good option.

Well, I'm leaning toward Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, as I'm curious to know how "hard" science fiction plays out in a novel. However, I know that many are interested in alternate histories/universes, and so going with that category next would make sense, in which case I wouldn't mind tackling The Man in the High Castle or Snow Crash.

So, I'm a bit confused, we can still comment on threads about previous books or are they "closed" when we go to a new book? If the later is the case, there is no way I'll keep up with the changing of the books, as I have been reading less these days.

I don't think they should be closed just because the larger group has moved on to a new book. I certainly don't mind revisiting conversations about books I've already read and commented on, as people may have new insights on the work in question.

Threads will remain open for each book, but not keeping up with the reading will mean you might wander into a thread after much has already been said.

But I don't think this will be an issue. Not everyone will read the book. If you notice the first thread has little commentary so far. I'm sure down the road this could increase when people finish reading, if they do decide to read it in the first place.

No pressure. Read at your own pace if you want. I just hope you don't mind being a bit late to the discussion if you don't read books when others do.

Please read what interests you and go into the appropriate thread and participate. You will always have your own perspectives. And please agree to disagree and add a dimension to the discussions.

Do this even if you read the book a year from now. This will only help the club flourish.

This is great. I think this is a good road map for participants.

I have used it as a basis for a FAQ, which is now available in the OP. :)

I've skimmed the threads in this post, and must say that as a SF/Fantasy (yes, I prefer that to speculative fiction) of 40+ years, I like the idea (I own in excess of 2000 SF/Fantasy books, but please, don't ask me to put my hands on more than a select few, lol). I saw the suggested reading lists and have actually read most of them. And enjoyed a lot of them.

I would suggest that anyone looking for a captivating (for the most part), well-written series, they look at the 4-volume Pliocene Epic by Julian May, followed by the companion 2-volume Intervention set, and the concluding trilogy of the Galactic Milieu. It is epic in its concept, and the twist in the final volume, The Magnificat, is every bit as unexpected and welcome as that at the end of Asimov's Foundation and Earth.

So I've decided to trudge ahead in the reading. Next up: Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle. From Wikipedia:

The story of The Man in the High Castle, about daily life under totalitarian Fascist imperialism, occurs in 1962, fourteen years after the end of a longer Second World War (1939–1948). The victorious Axis Powers — Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany — are conducting intrigues against each other in North America, specifically in the former U.S., which surrendered to them once they had conquered Eurasia and destroyed the populaces of Africa.

So we're moving into the realm of alternate history: What if the Axis Powers won the Second World War?

In a few weeks' time, I will post a discussion thread on the book.

Enjoy!

I put in my hold request this morning, as it's currently checked out. It's due back May 5th, so we'll see when it comes in! Hopefully it gets back to the library faster than Prelude to Foundation did.

There are a few available now at my library. I should get mine this week. :p