Reflection's Edge

You Gotta Read This: RE's Science Fiction Favorites

Reviewers: Sharon Dodge and Romie Stott

A few months ago the editors of Reflection's Edge came to the conclusion that a definitive best genre fiction list needed making. After all, we've read an awful lot of books; someone ought to benefit (besides us). Not surprisingly, this turned into a massive conquest that resulted in a list of several hundred books for us to read and review - and thus was born the decision to abandon any attempt at objectivity. So what we lack in objective viewpoint we promise to make up in our highly biased and enthusiastically supported list of these, our science fiction personal favorites.

Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand, by Samuel R. Delany
Quite likely the most complex discussion of sexual identity, gender, aliens, and cultural differences (and perhaps even sensory perception) ever to exist in a single book, Delany's story of two lives that briefly touch is as emotionally arresting as it is socially relevant, even now, more than 20 years after its publication. One man, brainwashed and enslaved, loses his planet, only to be delivered to another man, who is as free as only an interplanetary diplomat can be. Erotic perfection and the possibility of world collapse ensues; a book that cannnot be missed.

The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham
Although there are many excellent apocalyptic survival stories, this often-overlooked novel is our favorite of them. One day a beautiful shower of meteors rains down, creating a perfect natural display; the next day everyone who saw it has gone blind. As society desperately tries to organize itself, Triffids, strange little carnivorous plants once kept as curiousities, begin to flourish - as do other opportunists. While it's an outstanding look at the different ways a post-apocalyptic society might attempt to salvage itself, as well as simply the story of a man who, for the first time, finds a family in the midst of disaster, it may be even more memorable for the simple sheer horror of it: from the terrifying morning when most of the world wakes blindly to the loathsome plants, once considered funny little oddities, that thrive while society limps along, it is remarkable.

A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
It's not exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from 1912: green insectisoid warlords on Mars, a nudist red-skinned (literally) race, and a Civil War veteran who can't remember ever being other than somewhere in his thirties, it's the pulp fiction that pretty much began all sf/f pulp fiction. While its science is rather laughable by today's standards, the fantasy is terribly fun - and reading the book is practically like watching the birth of a genre. Campy, excessive, and often melodramatic, it fluctuates between being held captive by the moral and scientific limitations of its era and breaking into strangely poignant scenes and modern sensabilities. A must for anyone who wants to see the influences of the past on the present.

The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
In a world where New Victorians are the elite and nanotechnology the everyday, this hodgepodge of old and new tells the story of a impoverished girl who ends up with a very special book. Stolen from its creator, the book is part parent, part encyclopedia, and meant for only one girl in the world; instead, three copies are made, and hers teaches her everything from martial arts to computer programming. As the books' creators as well as its voice actor search desperately for the child, the reader is allowed a dark tour of a complicated world with one very special child at its center as the question of what makes a true education is put to the test.

The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin
If there is one thing we love, it's a smart book, and The Lathe of Heaven is exactly that. George Orr has dreams that come true, and he quickly falls under the manipulations of his psychotherapist who hypnotizes his patient into dreaming what he believes to be most beneficial to himself and others. Not unexpectedly, this all goes terribly wrong. The characters, however, keep the story from ever feeling manipulative, and the cleverness with which they battle his own psyche, which cannot believe in a utopian world, is fascinating. Questions of race, greed, love, and more are the subtle background against which this story is told where one man desperately tries to play God and save the world.

The Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
Time travel is a limited and very academic field in Connie Willis's Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel, and a field which graduate student Kivrin is desperately ready to visit, despite her professor-mentor's misgivings. Her trip, however, is mistimed, and she is marooned in plague-ridden medieval England. Her return is complicated by events in the modern world as an epidemic hits London, which regards sickness almost as a historical footnote. While she struggles to survive the Black Plague, her professor struggles to save her as panic ensues in modern-day London. Incredibly well-researched and beautifully told, The Doomsday Book, whose title is drawn from the the Domesday Book medieval census, delves into the question of the best and worst of what humanity is capable of in tragic times.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein
Though the hypersexed Stranger in a Strange Land is his better-known novel, it was this that he considered his finest. Who are we to argue? The story of Mannie, a Lunar colonist computer technician, starts when he realizes the colony's computer has become self-aware. With its help he is able to start a revolution badly needed in the planet's dire economic state. Ironically, Lunar life, despite being looked down on and in need of salvage economically, is presented as the better and truly free society, one in which racial equality, among other things, is taken for granted. The question of freedom - does it only exist in a frontier society? - is the major theme of the book, along with some subtler political innuendos. However, it also discusses societal norms - specifically, line marriages, in which a person marries not a single person but into an entire family. A book with all the gravity of Stranger in a Strange Land and the charm of The Door into Summer.

Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress
When geneticists figure out a way to remove the need for sleep, wealthy parents-to-be clamor to buy the advantage for their children. This proves to be the last straw for an increasingly striated society, and fear of "Sleepless" only grows as other positive effects of the genetic change manifest. Beggars in Spain is a perfect, epic book which follows the Sleepless through several generations - focusing especially on a Sleepless lawyer who fights to hold society together. It's great science fiction, great social commentary, and a thoroughly absorbing story with powerful characters.

A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Thousands of years after an atomic holocaust, society is just reaching a new medieval period. Stories of "the Fallout" have been incorporated into religious liturgy, and a small group of monks struggles to recopy and preserve the remaining fragments of 20th-century knowledge, few of which they understand. While they dream of returning society to its former glory, they fear they will copy the mistakes that created its downfall. A Canticle for Leibowitz is a moving account of the struggle for an answer, and a powerful condemnation of the way we treat technology.

Other books we love:

Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card
Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
Startide Rising, by David Brin
Dune, by Frank Herbert
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
The Door into Summer, by Robert A. Heinlein
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

Other links:

Arthur C. Clarke's top 12 list of the best science fiction films.
A survey of the 100 best science fiction books



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