ted%bragg1@braggfs@caip.RUTGERS.EDU (01/28/86)
From: ted%bragg1@braggfs >Subject: Request from an SF Diletante >My question is: What else qualifies? I guess I am not looking for >just authors names, but key works from important authors. More >Heinlein? which? Doc Smith? really? Arthur Clarke? Which? Who else? >I of course don't expect to get anything out of your replies, I am >only asking on behalf of my little boy. :-) >Thank you folks, Dick Jackson. Well, I can tell you what I thought were classics when I was his age, books that helped solidify my adddiction to SF. I'm scared to reread some of them now (not to mention not having the time). Someday, I want to make a posting just of my favorite juveniles too. Doc Smith - Yes. People laugh at his characters today, but his books had such scope and sweep that I never noticed. (I'm not even sure I would today). Sense of wonder is what the genre is about and few people inspired it better. My personal favorites were an obscurer work, _Spacehounds of the IPC_, and _Skylark 3_, where he really started to pull out all the stops. Heinlein - Almost all of his jeuviniles are classics. If I had to pick two, they would be _Space Cadet_ and _Starship Troopers_. Of his non jeuvinile work, the best is probally _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ and _Time Enough For Love_ (though you might want to read them before passing them on to a 15 year old). Clarke - Clarke never had much appeal to me at that age (or now either for that matter), with the wonderful exception of 1 book : _Against the Fall of Night_. He later rewrote it as _The City and the Stars_, but for me the first version remains definitive. (Both stay in print). Along with a list of jeuviniles, I want also to make a fuller list of books that were important to me in starting off, but that would take more research and pondering than I have time for now, so just let me close by boosting an author I have mentioned before on the net and anthologies. Alan Nourse - Nourse wrote a number of jeuviniles that I read over and over again. My favorite (and still one of my all time favorites) was _Raiders From the Rings_, but I must have read _The World Between_ almost as much, and a book about two estranged brothers (_Scavengers_ ? maybe) learning to respect each other in some sort of crisis (sorry, that one's a little hazy now). He also had a story collection _Psi High and Others_, and a number of books and stories of a future galactic society where Earth was the center of medical knowledge (Hospital Earth). And anthologies. SF was, and still to a large extent is, a genre of short stories and many (perhaps the bulk) of its classic moments come in them. There is one absolutely essential anthology : _Adventures in Time and Space_, edited by Mccomas and Healy (I think). They mined the literature before anyone else thought to, and by and large every story is a classic. Also, Groff Conklin used to put together huge anthologies of classic stories and these are well worth having and reading. Beyond that, it gets spotty, but _The Astounding/Analog Reader_ edited by Harry Harrison (probably) sticks in my memory (Remember the first time you read "The Cold Equations"?). The Science Fiction Hall of Fame books cover good teritory too. As I say, one day I want to make a better list, but these ought to keep him busy for a while. Clear ether Ted Nolan ted@braggfs PS: Almost forgot ERB. He doesn't get much good critical press, but he was seminal and wrote some genuine classics. _A Princess of Mars_ in particular has to be one of the most imitated books in SF, enough so that there is now a subgenre of "swords and planets" books. Very few of them catch the true spirit of the original though; get it.