Iain Banks: the final interview | Books | The Guardian

Iain Banks: the final interview | Books | The Guardian

SF and Fantasy Novels from The Guardian's "1000 Novels Everyone Must Read"

Science fiction and fantasy

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Non-Stop by Brian W Aldiss
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
The Drowned World by JG Ballard
Crash by JG Ballard
Millennium People by JG Ballard
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
Darkmans by Nicola Barker
The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
Vathek by William Beckford
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite
Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown
Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Coming Race by EGEL Bulwer-Lytton
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The End of the World News by Anthony Burgess
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Erewhon by Samuel Butler
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
The Influence by Ramsey Campbell
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Man who was Thursday by GK Chesterton
Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Hello Summer, Goodbye by Michael G Coney
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq
The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R Delaney
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
Camp Concentration by Thomas M Disch
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Under the Skin by Michel Faber
The Magus by John Fowles
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Red Shift by Alan Garner
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Light by M John Harrison
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein
Dune by Frank L Herbert
The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Children of Men by PD James
After London; or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies
Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Shining by Stephen King
The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski
Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
The Monk by Matthew Lewis
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
The Night Sessions by Ken Macleod
Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Ascent by Jed Mercurio
The Scar by China Mieville
Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Mother London by Michael Moorcock
News from Nowhere by William Morris
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Vurt by Jeff Noon
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth
A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett
The Prestige by Christopher Priest
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
Air by Geoff Ryman
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Blindness by Jose Saramago
How the Dead Live by Will Self
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Affinity by Sarah Waters
The Time Machine by HG Wells
The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
The Sword in the Stone by TH White
The Old Men at the Zoo by Angus Wilson
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Schedule Q3-4 2014

Date      Title / Author              Discussion Leader        Recommender / Month 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7/21       The Forever War       Aleta Stein                      Cathy Rudolph / Sept 
               Joe Haldeman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8/25       Timescape                Phil Zawa                       TBD / Oct 
               Gregory Benford
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/22*     TBD                            Cathy Rudolph               Nov 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10/20*                                                                               Dec 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/17*                                                                              Jan 2015 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/15*                                                                              Feb 2015 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Tentative

What We've Read So Far - June 2014

Daemon                      Suarez

Freedom                     Suarez

Calculating God             Sawyer

Inverted World              Priest

A Clockwork Orange          Burgess

Oryx and Crake              Atwood 

The Left Hand of Darkness   Le Guin

The Stars My Destination    Bester

We                          Zamyatin

Android's Dream             Scalzi

American Gods               Gaiman

Ringworld                   Niven

A Fire Upon the Deep        Vinge

When Gravity Fails          Effinger

The Diamond Age             Stephenson

Consider Phlebas            Banks

Spin                        Wilson 

The Windup Girl             Bacigalupi

Lest Darkness Fall          L. Sprague de Camp

The Amulet of Samarkand     Stroud

The Unreasoning Mask        Farmer (Nov 2013)

The Polar Vortex            The Atmosphere

The Year of the Flood       Atwood (Jan 2014)

The Polar Vortex Part II    The Atmosphere (Feb 2014)

The Sparrow                 Russell (Mar 2014)

Ilium                       Simmons (Apr 2014)

Little Fuzzy                Piper  (May 2014)
Fuzzy Nation                Scalzi

Ubik                        Dick (June 2014) 

The Forever War             Haldeman (July 2014)

Timescape                   Benford (August 2014)              

Calendar Update

Most thought Lest Darkness Fall was OK, but no great enthusiasm.  Adam's one sentence summary: "It was unbelievable".

The group chose Philip Jose Farmer's "The Unreasoning Mask" for November.

Notes:

• 10/15 meeting tentatively changed to 10/16.  Location tentatively at Janet Rae's office.  Confirmation and details to follow in a few days.
• Due to continuing interest in The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, I've tentatively scheduled it for Jan 2014.  At our next meeting, we will discuss whether or not to go ahead with this suggestion.
• We may be switching to the 3rd Wednesday of the month or alternating days based on conference room availability.  Both Susan and Janet Rae have generously offered to host at their offices when possible.

Date           Title/Author                            Discussion Leader             Recommender

10/16           The Amulet of Samarkand     Darlene/Charles                 Phil Z. for Dec

                   (The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book 1)
                   Jonathan Stroud 

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Nov            The Unreasoning Mask          James Henderson            TBD for Jan 2014 (The Sparrow)

                  Philip Jose Farmer

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Dec            TBD                                    Phil Z.                             TBD for Feb 2014

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 Jan           The Sparrow                        TBD                                 TBD for March
                 Mary Doria Russell

And thanks again to Marc-Paul for hosting.
Regards,
Phil Z.

Recommendations for November 2013 - Jim Henderson

The Dark Beyond the Stars by Frank M. Robinson. Orb Books, 404p. (1991)

After returning to his ship from an away mission, Sparrow wakes up with no memory of his past. While recovering, more accidents occur and it's not long before our main character realized someone is trying to kill him. Set aboard a ship that left Earth hundreds of years earlier, Robinson's book explores multigenerational space travel and asks what price we are willing to pay to find evidence of other life in the universe.

The Dark Beyond the Stars brings together an interesting plot with unusual characters on an extraordinary set. Yet, what makes this book succeed is the interactions of the characters. They love, they fight with words and fists, and they have sex. They find out that sex and love are not the same. Sparrow explores what it is to be a part of a group, as well as an outsider. Through him, Frank M. Robinson works out what it means to be human, both with our frailties and our nobilities. While most versions of this book are out of print, many copies can be found through Amazon. It is one of the great reads of sci-fi.



Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley. Ace Books. (1968)

Where, among all of the possible configurations in time and space of Earth, is the Earth he left behind, and how can he find it? On his journeys Carmody meets a handful of disenchanted gods, and visits numerous permutations of the Earth, none of which is quite like the one he remembers. In one, he visits a town that talks to him in a gratingly solicitous tone, always making sure he's had enough dessert and is comfortable napping - but there is no other human being to be found. In another, everyone speaks in advertising slogans. In another, dinosaurs are sentient and avid practitioners of science. In another, Carmody seems to recognize everyone in his home town as old friends, except they are all famous movie stars.

Re-released in 2002 by NESFA Press as part of their glorious omnibus edition  .

Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh. DAW Books, 432p. (1981)

"The Earth Company built its first space stations to mine the resources of the solar system. Centuries later, it now controls only the first few stations reaching out from Sol. The interstellar distances, and the delays in crossing them, have lead the outer stations to independence. Further out, a Union has been formed, a fascist empire of a few free leaders and uncountable cloned slaves. The massive company fleet, once intended to enforce discipline in space and to battle the Union, now survives by leeching off of the stations it once protected. Pell station, the 10th one, orbits the first new world that is habitable by humans and more importantly, on which the first alien life has been discovered. For many years, the Konstantin family have ruled Pell Station and the colonies on Pell itself. Angelo and his two sons Damon and Emilio must fight to protect their fragile domain, now overloaded with refugees from neighbouring stations against overwhelming external forces and insidious internal subversion."

The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. Van Vogt, Collier Books, 240p. (1950)

"Okay, here's your tip sheet. If you like whales, read Moby Dick. If you prefer dogs, try The Call of the Wild. If you like horses for your literary courses, go for Black Beauty. But if you're looking for creepy monsters from outer space, this is your book. Contrary to what you may have heard elsewhere, A.E. van Vogt doesn't actually use the term "bug-eyed monster" at any point of The Voyage of the Space Beagle, but whenever sci-fi scholars (no, that is not an oxymoron) refer to BEMs (yes, that is the accepted acronym), this is frequently the first literary work they mention, the granddaddy of them all." - Dana Goia

The Unreasoning Mask by Philip Jose Farmer. Overlook Press,243p. (1981)

All the skills and the soaring imagination which have won Farmer over a million dedicated fans are abundant in this highly charged, far-future, space adventure story. The Unreasoning Mask is the story of Ramstan, captain of al-Buraq, a rare model starship. It is capable of alaraf drive: instantaneous travel between two points of space. Three of these special ships were built to explore and make contact with the many sentient races inhabiting the universe. Suddenly, one of the ships mysteriously disappears. And then it is discovered that an unidentifiable "creature" is marauding through the universe, totally annihilating intelligent life on planet after planet.

Ranstan, a thoughtful and moral man, becomes a fascinated yet reluctant pawn in the hands of the strange forces which arise to fight the deadly destroyer. Ultimately, he is the one man who, in a fearful race against time, can stop the destruction. But what price must he pay for becoming the savior of intelligent-kind? The Unreasoning Mask is Farmer at his best--fast-paced, complex, slightly mystical, high-action adventure.

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Vintage Books, 259p. (1962)

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war--and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.

This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning, novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.

Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock. Overlook Press, 144p. (1969)

Karl Glogauer is a disaffected modern professional casting about for meaning in a series of half-hearted relationships, a dead-end job, and a personal struggle. His questions of faith surrounding his father's run-of-the-mill Christianity and his mother's suppressed Judaism lead him to a bizarre obsession with the idea of the messiah. After the collapse of his latest affair and his introduction to a reclusive physics professor, Karl is given the opportunity to confront his obsession and take a journey that no man has taken before, and from which he knows he cannot return. Upon arriving in Palestine, A.D. 29, Glogauer finds that Jesus Christ is not the man that history and faith would like to believe, but that there is an opportunity for someone to change the course of history by making the ultimate sacrifice.

First published in 1969, Behold the Man broke through science fiction's genre boundaries to create a poignant reflection on faith, disillusion and self-sacrifice. This is the classic novel that established the career of perhaps contemporary science fiction’s most cerebral and innovative author.

SUPER-CANNES by J. G. Ballard. Picador USA, 392p. (2000)

Eden-Olympia is more than just a multinational business park, it is a virtual city-state in itself, with the latest in services and facilities for the most elite high-tech industries. Isolated and secure, overlooking the luxurious French Riviera, the residents lack nothing. Yet one day Dr. Greenwood from Eden-Olympia's clinic goes on a suicidal shooting spree. Dr. Jane Sinclair is hired as his replacement, and she and her husband, Paul, are given Dr. Greenwood's house as a residence.

Unable to work while recovering from an accident, Paul spends his days taking a close look at the house where Dr. Greenwood shot himself and three hostages. He discovers clues in the house lead him to question Eden-Olympia's official account of the killings. Drawn into investigating the activities of the park's leading citizens, while Jane is lured deeper into Eden-Olympia's inner workings, Paul uncovers the dangerous psychological vents that maintain Eden-Olympia's smoothly running surface. An experiment is underway at Eden-Olympia, an experiment in power and brutality. Soon Paul finds himself in race to save himself and his wife before they are crushed by forces that may be beyond any one's control.

Man Plus by Frederick Pohl. Orb Books, 267p. (1976)

Ill luck made Roger Torraway the subject of the Man Plus Programe, but it was deliberate biological engineering which turned him into a monster -- a machine perfectly adapted to survive on Mars. For according to computer predictions, Mars is humankind's only alternative to extinction. But beneath his monstrous exterior, Torraway still carries a man's capacity for suffering. A bestselling, Nebula Award–winning novel when first published more than thirty years ago.

The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe. Orb Books, 252p. (1972)

Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a universally acknowledged masterpiece of science fiction by one of the field's most brilliant writers. Far out from Earth, two sister planets, Saint Anne and Saint Croix, circle each other in an eternal dance. It is said a race of shapeshifters once lived here, only to perish when men came. But one man believes they can still be found, somewhere in the back of the beyond.

In The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Wolfe skillfully interweaves three bizarre tales to create a mesmerizing pattern: the harrowing account of the son of a mad genius who discovers his hideous heritage; a young man's mythic dreamquest for his darker half; the bizarre chronicle of a scientists' nightmarish imprisonment. Like an intricate, braided knot, the pattern at last unfolds to reveal astonishing truths about this strange and savage alien landscape.

Looking 32,000 Years into the Past:

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