I need a science fiction title to suggest to a reading group

[hedgehog]

that doesn't really like science fiction.

I'm thinking 1632 by Eric Grant. Any other suggestions?

[Forkboy]

1. The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson.

I've now read it three times since it came out in 2002, and I get more out of it each time. It's a fascinating book with an epic scope, and an extremely poetic ending.

It's an alternate history novel where the Black Death kills 99% of the European population, which results in Christianity never being more than a minor religion that never achieves any influence. That's the take off point. Robinson is usually a writer of "hard" sci-fi, but this book is nothing like that (though there is plenty of science). It follows a bunch of characters through multiple reincarnations (not always in human form even), but the character's names all start with the same letter from chapter to chapter.

From wiki, here are the ten Chapters and it's main theme.

* Book One - Awake to Emptiness - plague in Christendom; the Golden Horde; Zheng He's explorations and imperial China. This chapter is written in a style reminiscent of the Chinese classic, the Journey to the West.
* Book Two - The Haj in the Heart - Mughal India and colonization of empty Europe.
* Book Three - Ocean Continents - discovery of the New World by the Chinese military.
* Book Four - The Alchemist - Islamic renaissance in Samarqand.
* Book Five - Warp and Weft - Native Americans align with Samurai.
* Book Six - Widow Kang - the Qing dynasty meets Islam in western China.
* Book Seven - The Age of Great Progress - beginnings of industrialism in Southern India; Japanese diaspora to North America.
* Book Eight - War of the Asuras - a world-wide Long War, fought with 'modern' weapons.
* Book Nine - Nsara - science, urban life and feminism in Islamic Europe's post-war metropolis.
* Book Ten - The First Years - globalization and sustainability.

And here's a very cool quote from the book that serves as a great illustration of where it's coming from.

"My feeling is that until the number of whole lives is greater than the number of shattered lives, we remain stuck in some kind of prehistory, unworthy of humanity's great spirit. History as a story worth telling will only begin when the whole lives outnumber the wasted ones. That means we have many generations to go before history begins. All the inequalities must end; all the surplus wealth must be equitably distributed. Until then we are still only some kind of gibbering monkey, and humanity, as we usually like to think of it, does not yet exist."

There's one segment in The Widow Kang chapter called "Wealth and the Four Great Inequalities" that should be mandatory reading.

I've never read a book like it, and I see myself reading it many more times as I get older.

[hedgehog]

2. That's a good one, but might be too long. I wish I could recommend

his Global Warming trilogy - Forty Days of Rain , Fifty Degrees below, and Sixty days and Counting.
Would 40 Days of rain stand on its own?

[Forkboy]

3. 40 Days pretty much leaves everything hanging at the end.

The D.C. flood is just starting when it ends. It drove me nuts waiting for the second novel. :)

[hedgehog]

4. That's what I thought I remembered. I think this group would go for

a book set in the near future with only a few tweaks. I don't think they are in to experimental narrative styles, either. I liked World War Z, but that is probably too horrific for their taste.

[Forkboy]

5. Oh, definitely make them read World War Z!

:evilgrin:

[phantom power]

7. The Changeling Plague

Actually, I just read this one called "The Changeling Plague" by Syne Mitchell. That's actually a good one. Starts with a viral gene therapy gone wrong, and gradually builds up to a hacker using the virus to engineer himself.

It would be pretty accessible to a "non-SF-fan" since it starts fairly easy and builds up some more classic SF ideas gradually. It doesn't jump right into some hypothetical genetic-engineering future.

It's also a self contained novel, not too long.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

6. The Forever War

by Joe Haldeman. This book has never lost its timeliness.

Similarly, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr.

[hedgehog]

8. I was thinking of the Forever War, but it's apt to start a fight between

the liberals and republicans in the group.

On edit: I'm afraid that's true of a lot of science fiction!

[salvorhardin]

10. Heh. Speaking of liberals v. conservatives...

Our book club recently read Dune. It was something like the fifth or sixth time around for me so I was really hoping to talk about some of the major themes in the book, but the whole discussion was sort of torpedoed when one of the older, much more conservative, members just sort of came out of nowhere and declared the book "turgid eco-porn." Then she went on a fifteen minute rant about Rachel Carson followed by holding forth at length on how great of a book Ender's Game is.

[hedgehog]

9. I think I've got it:

[bluescribbler]

11. Childhood's End

Arthur C. Clark's masterpiece.

[hedgehog]

12. That might be too intense for people not used to science fiction.

The notion of evolution into higher beings would put this crowd off. I'm trying to remember the name of that book by a mystery writer about sudden worldwide total infertility. It was made into a movie a year or so ago. Would that count as science fiction?

[hedgehog]

13. Children of Men by PD James

Does that count as science fiction?

[Swede]

14. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civilization and, apparently, most life on earth. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road

[Orsino]

15. Go all post-apocalyptic on 'em...

...with A Canticle for Leibowitz or, if they enjoy a linguistic challenge, Riddley Walker.

[scubadude]

18. I've always loved "A Canticle for Leibowitz", I come back to it

at least onece a decade. Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin is another every decade book, and is on my palate now.

I think my decade for Canticle is up. Maybe that will be the next one. Yeah, thanks,

Scuba

[hedgehog]

20. I suggested Left Hand of Darkness, but I got the feeling it is

to thought provoking for this group.

[scubadude]

16. Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

If they like a story that uses the Canterbury Tales as a model they might like this. It won a Hugo award, and is the first of a 4 book series.

Simmons is considered a master among science fiction writers.

Best,

Scuba

[SheilaT]

17. Time and Again

by Jack Finney is a book I've recommended over and over to people who think they don't like science fiction, and it's always a hit.

Another good one is Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, which I understand has never been out of print since it was first published in 1959.

I would also recommend Replay by Ken Grimwood or Wildside by Steven Gould (who also wrote Jumper, but if they've seen the crappy movie that was made from the book their expectations will be misplaced).

The thing with getting someone who doesn't like s-f to read it, is you have to select a book that doesn't assume any prior familiarity with the genre. I honestly think that many of the suggestions already made actually require that. DON'T try to get them to start a trilogy. Years of Rice and Salt, which I personally loved, was not all that well-liked by many of the members of my s-f reading group when we did that. There was, on the part of some of the members, an amazing ignorance of Islam, and some of them never quite figured out how the reincarnation thing was working. And this was people who read nothing but s-f, for the most part.

I think in general simple time-travel or alternate history is the best way to go with a group of non s-f readers.

Let us know what you decide and how it goes over.

[hedgehog]

21. I'll have to read years of Rice and Salt again -I don't think I realized

that reincarnation was happening.

She's not considered science fiction, but you might want to look into Jeanne Larsen's books. They tend to involve reincarnation.

[Forkboy]

22. The Years of Rice and Salt is probably the best book I've ever read, imo.

I've read it three times since it came out and I've gotten something more from it each time. And the last line was perfect. :)

[and-justice-for-all]

19. Anything by Arthur C. Clarke...nt

[Ozymanithrax]

23. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

It is Science Fiction and great fiction.

or

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein.

Both are great pieces of fiction and both are Science Fiction.

[krispos42]

24. "A World of Difference" by Harry Turtledove

No surprising, futuristic technologies or political systems there... it's basic US v. USSR global politics exploring a planet. But the concept that our 4th planet goes from a small, virtually airless one to a larger one with a breathable atmosphere and intelligent life is interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_World_of_Difference_(novel)