Ten Must-Read Science Fiction Novels

by David Kubicek

It seems like everyone and his brother are doing “best” lists of novels, so I decided to get in on the act. Here is my list of ten must-read science fiction novels.  I haven’t read every science fiction novel that has ever been written, but of the ones I have read, these are my favorites. Perhaps someday I’ll do my list of the next ten and later the ten after that until I, this blog, or time itself come to an end, whichever comes first.

All of these books are currently in print, and I have linked to Amazon out of convenience; however, I don’t get paid when you click through, so whether you find these books at another bookseller, a used bookstore, or a library, I don’t care. Just find them and read them.

Here are my picks for the top 10 in the approximate order I would rank them:

1) Rite of Passage (1968), by Alexei Panshin

Although there may be some wiggle room as to the order of these novels, Rite of Passage is definitely first. First published in 1968, Rite of Passage, is a coming-of-age story, but it is not a young adult novel. More than a century after Earth has been destroyed, humanity is scattered through the galaxy. Many people live on asteroid-sized ships, and many others are descended from colonists who were seeded on planets. Most ship people look down on the colonists and vice versa. Because space is limited on the ships, every person who turns 14 must be dropped on one of the planets in a ritual called Trial. If they can survive for a month, they are picked up and return to the ships as adults.  The story follows Mia Havero from the age of 12 to 14 as she, along with others in her group, prepares for and then experiences Trial. This novel won the Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula award and nearly won the Hugo award (it lost by a few votes to John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar). This was also Alexei Panshin’s first novel, expanded from a novelette called “Down to the Worlds of Men” which was published in a science fiction magazine in 1963 and later adapted (and expanded) to become part three of the novel. It is first on my list because of the depth of its characterizations and its message–what my science fiction teacher in college called the “deeper, inner, secret meaning”. The first time I read the novel, it hooked me in the first page and a half; that had never happened with another novel before, and it hasn’t happened since.

2) The Martian Chronicles (1950), by Ray Bradbury

This is the story of Earth’s colonization of Mars, how the Earth people destroyed the existing Martian civilization, and how the Earth settlements quickly fell into decay after they were abandoned. It is an allegory for atrocities we have committed on one another on Earth.  The Martian Chronicles is a collection of Bradbury’s Mars stories arranged in a way, and with specially written bridge passages, to give the collection its larger, more cohesive theme.

3) Fahrenheit 451 (1953), by Ray Bradbury

This book is often simplistically called a story about the horrors of burning books, destroying knowledge, etc. But it is more than that. Bradbury abhorred book burning so he used it as a structure to tell a story about the desensitization of society.

 

4) Kindred (1976), by Octavia E. Butler

A young black woman of the 1970s finds herself transported to a slave-owning Maryland farm in the early Nineteenth Century. She is “called” by her distant white ancestor whenever he is in trouble, starting when he is five years old. Although she is gone from the present for only a short time, her stays in the past stretch into months.

5) The Time Machine (1895), by H.G. Wells

I’m a fan of time travel stories, especially time travel stories to the distant future. H.G. Wells’ story about a future where humanity has devolved into two distinct species–the vicious Morlocks who feed off the gentle Eloi–is at the top of the list.

 

6) The Handmaid’s Tale(1985), by Margaret Atwood 

Most dystopian stories are set in the distant future after the society has been screwed up. The Handmaid’s Tale captures the screwing. It is a near-future story that shows the society transition from a democratic to a totalitarian state seemingly overnight, and we see how June’s life and identity are stripped away by the new order. In the new order she is no longer June. She is Offred because she belongs to Fred, one of the new society’s head honchos. This story is very significant now because our society is going through the same changes, although not quite as quickly and decisively.

7) 1984 (1949), by George Orwell

People didn’t listen to Ray Bradbury. They didn’t listen to Rod Serling. They didn’t listen to Margaret Atwood. And they didn’t listen to George Orwell. 1984 is Orwell’s portrait of a fascist society (based on Stalin’s Russia) that disturbingly bears some resemblance to where our own society is headed.  Winston, Orwell’s main character, works for the Ministry of Truth, which makes sure history is consistent by going back into all of the news stories and videos and making sure they support what the current version of the truth is. For instance, Winston knows he’s in for a long weekend when Big Brother declares that the society is not waging war against one enemy (which they had been at war with for years) but is actually at war with a different enemy and has been for years. Winston and his coworkers will have to work overtime to  make sure previously printed or aired news coverage doesn’t contradict this “truth”. Does anyone remember alternative facts?

8) Flowers for Algernon (1966), by Daniel Keyes

Flowers for Algernon was a novelette first published in a science fiction magazine in 1958 and anthologized in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I. Keyes later expanded it into a novel, which was made into a film, which won Cliff Robertson a best actor academy award. It follows Charlie Gordon, a young man with an I.Q. of 70 at the beginning of the story, who, after undergoing an experimental operation, becomes a genius.

9) The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003), by Audrey Niffenegger

This is a short respite from some of the terrible things that happen in other novels on this list. It is a love story between Clare Abshire and Henry DeTamble who has a genetic disorder that causes him to take sudden, uncontrolled journeys in time. One serious drawback is that he can’t take anything with him, so his first order of business on arriving in a new time period is to find clothes.

10) Parable of the Sower (1993), by Octavia E. Butler

This may not technically a post-apocalyptic novel, but things are pretty bad. Set 31 years in the author’s future (the story starts in 2024), Butler did a pretty good job of predicting where current trends in American society would lead, but the timeline is a little short–in 50 to 75 years, if we don’t get our act together, I can see our society reaching this state of decadence. There is something about Butler’s stories that makes for easy reading. I don’t know if it’s her style, the way she told a story, or her characters–it’s probably all three. I would say that it’s a pleasure to read her stories, but “pleasure” seems to be the wrong word here because she wrote (at least in the two books on this list) about some seriously awful things that people do to people.

For information about David Kubicek’s books click here.