The feminists are mad because I said SF isn't girly. I think SF is girly, because I'm a girl, and my father gave me my first 3 SF books for my eighth birthday (Tunnel in the Sky, Sargasso of Space, and the third one escapes me). I spent one summer in Bantam Doubleday Dell's science fiction department, which was all female. I have an entire elaborate space opera planned out in my head which I may someday write, if my fiction writing stops being terrible.
But I think it's kind of hard to deny that there are a lot of women who do not like science fiction because it doesn't fit into their conception of girly. Stating that you are a woman who likes science fiction, and lots of women like science fiction, is theatrical, but it's beside the point; the demographic is overwhelmingly male. Connie Willis and Megan Lindholm and Sheri Tepper are great (I mean, at least until Tepper went off the deep end and started writing novels that implied men would be so much better if they were . . . women), but they are not the core of the genre. We can angrily declare that SF is so woman-friendly all we want, while women nod politely and bypass the SF section for the mysteries or the bodice rippers. Or we can try to convince them that they are making a tragic mistake, because what they are looking for in a romance novel or a good mystery can also be found in the SF section.
Really good SF taps the same emotional space as a fairy tale or a fantasy--the magic of reading about a world where the rules are different from, though no less coherent than, your own. (The people who thought I was saying "Women all want pretty little princess fantasies should actually, I don't know, read some fairy tales. Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm are considerably more complicated than the Disney versions.) It's a shame to miss out on it.
So I open the comments to my readers: what are good "starter SF" novels for people who think they don't like SF? (Male, female, or both). I hereby unnominate the entire oeuvre of William Gibson, but nearly anything else is fair game.
Ender's Game
Well, I think I mentioned this in the other thread, but Lois McMaster Bujold, at least before she started writing fantasy. Her Miles Vorkosigan series is really quite good, and a lot of people who don't normally like SF like her work.
David Weber's Honor Harrington books are more traditional space opera, but also very popular.
The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell. I've gotten several female friends started on SF with that one.
My wife, who actively hates SciFi, really enjoyed Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.
Well, she's got a point: those Friday night shows _are_ trashy. So what? Nothing wrong with a little space trash. Or trashy detective stories, or trashy Westerns (though I draw the line at Longarm and his cadre.)
That being said, sf likes to style itself as the literature of ideas; unless the writer is extremely capable, the genre works best in the short story format.[1]
I would suggest Lem's 'Cyberiad', the Kandel translation with the kooky illustrations, or one of the innumerable Sheckley packages - for stories over fifty years old, they have aged extremely well, cf, "The Night In Gray Flannel Armor". For someone who is perhaps a little more cerebral, Ted Chiang and his collection 'Story of Your Life and Others', or Greg Egan's 'Axiomatic' (in my opinion, one of the best collections of the last fifteen years.)
I suppose there are others that really aren't all that interested in the genre, and that's okay; for the regency romance types, a couple of evenings in bed with Bujold's 'A Civil Campaign' would be a good introduction. For the noir, I'd recommend Lethem's 'Gun, With Occasional Music'. Stay away from Heinlen, run away screaming. For 'feminist' sf, try Schmitz (much, much better than H.), and 'The Witches of Karres', or 'A Tale of Two Clocks', both Hubbish, the former technically is not.
Hmmm . . . looking over the list, if you can't abide the short stories, 'The Witches of Karres' is probably the best overall in the series. It's light, humorous, and modern in the sense that the putative hero, the bumbling but good-hearted Captain Pausert, is saved time and again by the female Witches. The sting of feminism is taken out by the fact that they are little Witches :-) Albeit not as good as they should sometimes be, The Lewitt, aged six, in particular.
My wife (not an SF fan) liked Neal Stephenson's 'Diamond Age', even though she thought the end was poor.
Science fiction manages to be both largely male yet not particularly masculine. It's not just that women aren't themselves interested in SF to much of an extent, many of them also have scorn for male SF fans.
Here's an interesting thought experiment: take 100 male SF fans, and 25 male NFL season ticket holders (about the most masculine thing in the world), keeping age ranges about the same Which group's members have scored with more women in the past year? I would say the answer is certainly the NFL fans, even though there are four times as many SF fans. It's highly likely that many of the SF fans are "40-year-old virgin" types with NO sexual experience.
I love the women in Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars, the trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. That is a different thing, of course, than saying women will necessarily connect with the book. But I thought the books were very good.
My sister seems to have gotten hooked on SF by Neal Stephenson's _Snow Crash_ and _Cryptonomicon_. (Though the latter isn't necessarily science fiction.)
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. The Dresden Files are basically Harry Potter for adults, if Harry Potter were played by a snarky Ed Norton. Wizard PI in Chicago, protecting the normal people from faeries, demons, ghouls, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and necromancers. All with a quick wit and a smile. As an example of a scene that illustrates the potential draw to women, in the first book there is a scene where a toad-demon breaks into Harry Dresden's house while he's "entertaining" a sexy reporter named Susan Rodriguez. Harry had just emerged from the shower in nothing but a towel when the demon broke in, and in the chaos he corners himself and Susan within a copper ring that helps generate a magic force field (intended for only one occupant really, , protecting them from the demon, but also leaving them stranded. To help Susan escape, Harry gives her a nearby escape potion, which basically lets you teleport to a location you envision in your head, within a certain range...except, it's not an escape potion, it's a love potion. So instead of teleporting, Susan gets hot and horny and begins groping Harry while the toad-demon continues to launch magic energy blasts at the force field. Needless to say, they eventually escape, but this is one example of how and why women may find this series fun. Also, Harry has a knowledge spirit that inhabits a human skull and entertains himself by reading Meg's so-called "bodice rippers," often cheering on the characters while they're in the throes of passion.
Sorry to ramble on, but I love this series, and any fan of SF should pick it up. Butcher's currently on book 10 (or is it 9?) out of a planned 27-30 book series. So there's fun to be had for quite awhile as well.
I always thought that "Songs of Distant Earth" by Arthur C. Clarke was a very good "first" SF for those who weren't hooked on SF early (like me!); lots of good SF themes, but totally focused on the human characters.
I've also always enjoyed everything written by Isaac Asimov, but I think he and Robert Heinlein are more "acquired tastes."
The Mote In God's Eye, by Niven and Pournelle.
It's a too-obvious product of the 1970s. Only one of the twenty-odd names on the list of dramatis personae belongs to a woman. The first two chapters are pretty scattered.
I feel pretty sheepish recommending it to people, but they always seem to start mumbling "this is so cool" to themselves around page 100.
I guess I would nominate Scalzi's Old Man's War, in part because it is awesome, and in part because the humor and the boot-camp-to-war story is a point of familiarity for non-SF readers.
By the way, on the subject of girls and SF, I just read a pre-release copy of Scalzi's Zoe's Tale and I think this would be an awesome novel to introduce girls to SF -- strong, funny teenage female character. Very entertaining.
It all depends on the pre-existing likes/dislikes of the person one is giving the recommendation to.
The Red Mars series would be great for someone who follows the news and current events.
The weirder writings of Arthur C. Clarke would be good for creative types.
Fantasy writers like Ursula Le Guin would be a good gateway for romantic personalities.
And anyone with proto-fascist tendencies or who seems to be on a Will-to-Power kick will probably enjoy the illiterate scribblings of Frank Herbert.
To echo Cheerful Iconoclast, I think Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan novels are an excellent choice for women.
They combine well thought-out "hard" SF elements (with a special focus on how technology could impact human culture, as shown by the contrasts between Barrayar, Cetaganda, Beta, and Jackson's Whole) and fast-paced action with truly character-driven plots and strong female characters.
Of course, they are an excellent choice for anyone!
I was going to suggest Lois McMaster Bujold, but Cheerful Iconoclast beat me to it.
I was then going to nominate Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, but raptros-v76 already suggested that particular novel.
Hmmm. Maybe The Dresden Files, a series by Jim Butcher? No, Codyak has already jumped in front of the line with that one.
So far as the three choices listed above, all have their strengths and weaknesses.
The Dresden Files has the most morally centered protagonist I've ever come across, but it isn't preachy in any way.
Snow Crash is so full of fascinating ideas that none of the copies I have lent out were ever returned, and now I just give them away.
Bujold's series are all fun reads, and I think they would be the most appealing to women because of the rich emotional detail.
But let us not forget Robert A. Heinlein. Anything from his earlier work would be a pretty good introduction to the genre.
James
Iain M. Banks. "Consider Phlebas" The first of a series of novels about an interstellar society called the Culture. Incredible twists and turns, in the best tradition of mystery novels, and really interesting political, societal, and technical issues.
Highly recommended.
I'd usually start off people reading Banks at "Player of Games" but there isn't really one correct order. He's certainly a better place to start than the other two members of the Scottish Socialist SF Authors triad.
I'll second all the people who've mentioned Bujold, Ender's Game, and the Dresden Files.
Enders Game is good. Jim Butcher is good but wizard novels are not SF. I say start with Heinlein and Philip K Dick. But choose wisely from their works. My wife really liked Fevre Dream by George RR Martin, which is more SF than the Dresden series. If you can find it, the old Wild Cards anthology edited by GRRM is good. Anything GRRM is involved with tends to be pretty awesome.
Rendezvous with Rama (arthur clarke) might work too. Basically, older SF work
is generally less technical and more thematic (Heinlein and Dick have a lot of political statements to make). So new entrants might be most comfortable there. Even some early Asimov.
Hrm. Short stories are probably more suitable for introducing sci-fi to newcomers, and there are plenty of good compilations to choose from. If I were to pick one from a single author, I would suggest Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov, but that's just because I think everyone should read Asimov, preferably starting in their early teens. If a person (boy or girl) fails to enjoy the short stories, it is implausible that they will find much edification in novels of the same type.
Some of the commenters are recommending things that aren't even science fiction. " The Dresden Files"? "Cryptonomicon?"
And for those who say "run away from Heinlein", well Heinlein is as close to being at the core of SF has a writer can be. Sure , his later stuff is overblown dreck, but Golden Age Heinlein IS SF, pure & simple.
Some recommendations:
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game. The most beloved SF novel of the last 30 years. If you don't like it, well you probably just won't like SF, period.
Robert Heinlein, Future History series and Starship Troopers. Classic, core SF
Isaac Asimov, the Foundation Series. Again, classic SF
Arthur C Clarke, Childhood's End, The City and the Stars, The Deep Range. Rounding out the big 3.
Joe Haldeman, The forever War. Good military Sf that is almost a reply to Starship Troopers
Poul Anderson, The Trouble Twisters and the Earth Book of Stormgate. Entertaining space opera.
There is a lot of good short story in the various best-of anthologies, published every year. IF you arte going to introduce anyone to SF, it might be a good idea to point that person to one of those anthologies for a look at what is current in the field.
How about something by Christopher Priest? I don't mean The Prestige, but his more science-fictional works. I particularly like A Dream of Wessex (an early virtual-reality novel), The Extremes (a later virtual-reality novel) -- both with female protagonists -- and The Separation (alternative history, WWII). Priest is a very good writer (John Fowles called him "one of our most gifted writers"), who likes playing with his protagonists' minds -- and yours.
Priest's books are not often in print in North America, so secondhand bookstores are a good place to look.
Yes, the Bujold SF is good. (Actually, "A Civil Campaign", when you get to it, is a romance novel - just set on another planet in another culture.) And Elizabeth Moon (who picks these names??) as well. But I have to agree with SoV that anything by James Schmitz is definitely the place to start. If you can't get enthralled by his stuff, you just aren't cut out for SF.
As for Heinlein, his early stuff is actually OK. But after some idiot made the mistake of telling him to his face that he "couldn't write a love story," and he determined to prove he could, it got really bad. Because, basically, he couldn't.
Also, I should say that the frequent appearance of Ender's Game in this thread doesn't surprise me. I'm not much of an Orson Scott Card fan, but I liked the book (I thinked it helped that I read it when I was 12), and I have found anecdotally an unusually broad awareness and enthusiasm for it-it's like the sci-fi book that people who never read sci-fi end up reading, for some reason.
Excerpt from "A Letter from Isaac Asimov to His Wife Janet, Written On His Deathbed," a poem by D. C. Berman
"For once I don't want to know the weather forecast. In fact,
I can't bear to hear it. The jealousy would kill me before midnight.
Perhaps they will make jokes at Doubleday tomorrow.
I can imagine an intern asking,"What were his last ten thousand words..."
How about Dune, by Frank Herbert? I haven't read beyond the first three books, but some people like the later ones a lot too. The first one at least has strong female characters.
Yeah, Asimov. Fucker had to go and die on me when I was 12. I was just getting familiar with his writing. I don't know that's it's the most edifying reading, however. It takes a certain turn of mind to find it interesting. He was always more interested in ideas than stories. So I would hesitate recommending anything of his outside of his short stories. A person who reads, say, the Susan Calvin stories, and really likes them, will find his other books on her own time. Starting with other books is just riskier. I liked the Foundation series, but come on-it was based on The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for chrissakes. The robot novels are really more or less mysteries couched in Asimovian futurisms, and while Asimov was good at manufacturing surprise endings, I don't think he really ever nailed the art of writing mystery novels. His other sci-fi books are a little too archaic to be read without already being introduced to his short stories anyway.
How about the Honor Harrington books by David Weber?
The title/lead character is a woman.
I'm a girl, and I loved 'em. Of course, I like military SF anyway, so I may not be a good barometer for how to introduce a new reader to SF.
What about Octavia Butler? I haven't read her (I'm not an SF fan, unless one counts alternate history, which I love) but my wife adores her.
If you are interested in feminist oriented SF , then the big mama of that category is Ursula K. Le Guin. I'm not really a fan of hers, but if your introductee is that way inclined, then UKL is the one for her. The most critically acclaimed of her stuff is "the Lefty Hand of Darkness" and the Earthsea trilogy.
Other women SF writers that I liked: Octavia Butler and Nancy Kress. I find a lot more women are writing SF these days as well.
We're also big "Doctor Who" fans, BTW, though she is moreso, which is further anecdotal evidence of the "Gurls Luv The Doctor" theory. She even likes the old serieseses, which I find pretty unwatchable (despite my somewhat Tom Baker-like hair).
AUTHOR: Robert Olson
EMAIL: GVChamp@hotmail.com
IP: 99.141.161.124
URL: http://moaes.blogspot.com/
DATE: 07/13/2008 01:18:04 PM
Ender's Game that is. Somehow the name got eaten...
really, someone should mention THE classics. The Time Machine and War of the Worlds are great reads, pretty accessible, and can make one feel they are reading high-brow at the same time.
I really like Steven Baxter, and some of his novels seem to have some female fans. Coalescent and Light of other days (co-written with Arthur Clarke) are interesting. Baxter also wrote a commissioned sequel to The Time Machine which was interesting.
The Rama series by Arthur Clarke / Gentry Lee is also a pretty good "first sci-fi" series, since it is pretty character driven (at least, books 2-4 are).
And since this is a libertarian blog, someone should speak up for Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
"It's highly likely that many of the SF fans are "40-year-old virgin" types with NO sexual experience."
Gee, we don't talk in outdated stupid cliches, do we?
People bashing Heinlein seem to forget that his works were one of the few that were very popular with women, especially the later stuff.
A big reason was that Heinlein was one of the few early SF authors who has lots of realistic strong female characters that female readers could identify with. Maybe I'm being sexist, but I don't think women enjoy reading books or watching shows that are sausagefests. Or that are filled with techobabble.
So I would definitely start with Heinlein or maybe Leguine or something like that. Stories that have more emphasis on character and drama than gee-whiz gadgets. Stay away from Asimov and Clark, at least to start with. Asimov, in particular, rarely wrote good female characters.
SF fans vs. nfl season ticket holder?
You know how much season tickets cost? And owning TICKETS is the most masculine thing on earth? Riiight. And all sci-fi fans are D&D nerds. You crazy.
I really think what to recommend depends on the person you're recommending it to, why they don't like science fiction, and what fiction they do like.
That said, I echo many of the recommendations made so far. I would add Leo Frankowski's Conrad Stargard series, Larry Niven's _Oath of Fealty_ and the Gil the ARM works, Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books, H. Beam Piper's _Little Fuzzy_ and some of his short story collections, Roger Zelazny's _Lord of Light_ and _Creatures of Light and Darkness_, Harry Turtledove's _Kaleidoscope_ (a very varied short story collection), any of Cordwainer Smith's short story collections, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Liaden works (either _Balance of Trade_ or _Agent of Change_, depending on the reader) and Charles Stross's _The Atrocity Archives_ and _Accelerando_.
I could make more specific recommendations if I knew something more the reader I was recommending them for.
I've got to recommend Dan Simmon's Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion. All of the pilgrims' stories have human interest and depth unlike some sci-fi. And more importantly than that, it's a spectacular read.
Also, can I do an anti-recommendation of Heinlein. That guy was completely unable to make a believable female character (not that his male characters are particularly deep.)
If television counts, what about Firefly? Even my mom loves Firefly, and she's been rolling her eyes at science fiction since she met my dad.
I think older SF is going to be a harder sale for many women. Before 1960 female characters in SF often were vixens, Amazons, spinster-scientists, housewives, or someone's kid sister. Although there are good women writers from then like Zenna Henderson, C. L. Moore, and Katherine MacLean.
I can kind of see why they'd object to "make it like a fairy tale" though. I really don't think that's necessary. However women, on the whole, I don't think gravitate to the "humans interacting with technology" stories. The SF that seems to appeal to women readers can have a good deal of science, but it usually has a great deal on people relating to each other or to society or to the natural world. (A great many of the female "Hard SF" do biology or genetics rather than physics or math)
I think C. J. Cherryh and Nancy Kress both do a fair amount of core-SF that many women enjoy. Cherryh's stories are even full of spaceships and a ruthlessness that is unlike fairytale ruthlessness, Among male writers well my sister really liked the Robot-mystery novels Asimov did. In that vein some other male SF/mystery writers might have appeal for some women, like Fredric Brown or Avram Davidson.
I guess I am curious to what extent writing about female characters with some depth plays a role in the decisions of women regarding literature. If you take a story with a male protagonist (say Ender, in Ender's Game), change that protagonist into "female," swapping out the appropriate gender interactions, and that's the only change you made, would the book then be more congenial to female readers?
Er, really, he's not. He served a particular market with a particularly loud voice. Not the same thing. That being said, the short stories and the juveniles are far and away his best stuff; he never was able to plot that well. Sometime in the late 50's to early 60's he became Too Big To Edit, which had a detrimental impact on the quality; he _needed_ an editor to keep him from running off the rails.
And _that_ being said, he is not a very good introduction to sf unless the reader is able to appreciate the juveniles. The older stuff has not aged well, in particular, dialogue has a distinct 'Pat and Mike' quality which is apt to put off new readers. And you really don't want to give, say, TNotB to someone as an intro to sf.
That may, or may not have been true X number of years ago. Now, there seems to be a consistent squick! reaction to his stuff. That's not to say that he's not very good, or that most people who read sf don't like him. It's just that he is definitely not someone I would use as an intro to the genre. And that's not a proscription that applies only to him - Megan has suggested dumping William Gibson; I'd extend this to the whole Cyberpunk subgenre. Ditto for - gag - 'libertarian sf' or 'military sf'. Stay away from Elfland. Yes, I know, this book 'changed your life', but that doesn't mean that it is not an acquired taste; _don't_ give 'Dahlgren' to a newbie and expect them to swoon over it. Or 'Illuminatus!' or 'Gas, Sewer Electric'. Don't recommend anything written before 1950. Yes, there were Giants in the Earth in those days, E. E. 'Doc' Smith, John W. Campbell, et al, but again, not for the young'uns (unless they truly are young - I read the Arcot, Wade & Morey stuff, the 'Skylark' and 'Lensman' series when I was eight, and was hooked for life.)
Ursula K. Le Guin has been nominated several times, and I'll reiterate those posters: especially The Left Hand of Darkness.
For younger people, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game isn't bad, although if you read it after you're 20 I think you're likely to be unimpressed with how facile it is.
Frank Herbert's Dune would work for many people, I think, though I suspect it falls into the female-unfriendly category.
Although it's mostly forgotten, Walter Michael Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz is very good and hits just the right political stuff without being overwhelming. It's a much deeper and subtler book than many give it credit for on their first read.
Those who say that average people should start with Philip K. Dick are wrong, though people who are highly literary to begin with might like him. I wrote a long post about science fiction and literature, which explains some of the issues with recommending SF to readers of literary fiction.
Gene Wolfe might be good for the hyperliterary, too, though I'm sure he'd be very offputing for the average person trying out science fiction books.
I would also mention Octavia Butler. I picked up one of her books because I liked her name. I was pleasantly surprised. She's a good writer and she takes on a whole lot of subject matter (e.g., racism and sexism) that isn't really a staple of the genre.
I see somebody beat me to listing Iain M. Banks. Well, my two cents is that the Player of Games is a better introduction to the Culture than Consider Phlebas; it was published later but written earlier, and its plot is more straightforward.
As a child I had a small wire paperback-rack-sized three-tiered bookcase that held maybe 45 books which I designed as my "thrilling wonder tales" bookcase. I still have it, and it's still full of thrilling wonder tales. Those that have stood the test of time: Jules Verne, Conan Doyle's Complete Sherlock Holmes, Asimov's Foundation series, some Heinlein (e.g. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) Samuel Delany (Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which has no plot but the lust object is a big, hairy male, so I think it's got its own special thrills for a straight female), Ray Bradbury, Gene Wolfe's New Sun books, James Branch Cabell, Thomas Pynchon, Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars and Venus books, and, of course, the Ultimate Thrilling Wonder Tales of All Time, E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series and his "Skylark of Space."
Because the ultimate space opera book, the one book no child should ever experience childhood without, is of course E.E. "Doc" Smith's "Galactic Patrol," which is just as thrilling now as it was the day it was published in 1937.
I heartily recommend Frank Herbert's Dune series. Female points of view do not get ignored in the plot; and, women play such a important, even essential and heroic role in the story.
A Canticle for Liebowitz was one of my late teenage favorites. And I loved nearly all of Ray Bradbury for the narrative style.
All that is light-years away *oops!* now, and I've found that I couldn't randomly pick up any scifi since I was in my mid-20s and read too far before it got buried by other stuff on the nightstand.
SF fans vs. nfl season ticket holder?
You know how much season tickets cost? And owning TICKETS is the most masculine thing on earth? Riiight. And all sci-fi fans are D&D nerds. You crazy.
Little do you know. Women drop their panties left and right for football fans and other Alpha males, and won't give sci-fi nerds the time of day.
@SOV:
Well, I guess you don't like Heinlein.. Well fair enough, and I agree than RAH Post Stranger is for the most part awful. However, it is what it is. RAH was simply either the most important , or one of the most important, writers of early SF and there's no denying that. Most of his faults ( clunky dialogue et al) were shared with the writers of that era. He was able to rise above those fasults.
You recommend Lem, Chiang , and Letham as good introductions to SF. The problem I have there is that the introductee might conclude that hey, most SF is like Lem or Chiang. Well, for the most part, it ain't- its more like, well, the early RAH, updated for modern tastes.
Again, the genre is what it is, ScentOfViolets. Lets not pretend its a genre full of folks writing in the high literary style.
The Heinlein "juveniles" are a good start for a younger reader and easily available in libraries: adventure with young protagonists. "Podkayne of Mars" is not officially in the juvenile series, but is similar. The Heinlein books are easy to read and basic in plot, but there are morals in there ...
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami.
Where did you get that idea? I think his work post-1960 went rapidly downhill. But so do a lot of other people, and for mostly the same reasons. Didn't you see me say the the juveniles were very good, ditto the short stories? I said he wasn't very good for introducing someone to sf.
You say it like you don't have to justify that. Leaving aside the fact that 'early' sf predates Heinlein by a good bit. You might want to sample Asimov's 'Before the Golden Age' to get a sense of what was being written about, the stylistic conventions, and the dates. This is sort of like Simak; at one time he was considered to be a Giant, one of the eternal verities. Now he's largely obscure (and undeservedly so.) Same goes for Jack Williamson. No, the big influences (imho) would be Smith, Moore, Kuttner, Kornbluth, Pohl, Dick, Asimov, Anderson, etc. Shoot, Asimov is still influencing the career paths of scientists, and his ideas are still seriously discussed. Heinlein? Not so much.
No, I did _not_ recommend them as typical sf. I recommended them as introductions to what the non-sf reader might think of as the 'ideas' part of sf, you know, what the fans are always patting themselves on the back for. And I did _not_ recommend authors, I recommended _specific books_. Big, big difference.
Er, did I say it was? In fact in my very first post, I said there was nothing wrong with being trashy, and in particular nothing wrong with a little space trash.
SOV: For 'feminist' sf, try Schmitz ... and 'The Witches of Karres', or 'A Tale of Two Clocks'
The latter, renamed Legacy, is available from Gutenberg. It slipped out of copyright somehow.
I find it difficult to believe the comments have gotten this far without mention of Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin and Ben Bova. Also, what happened to Ray Bradbury?
I agree that Asimov's Robot series and the Foundation series, including the three series follow-ons, are well worth reading.
I also agree on Arthur C. Clark's novels.
I have enjoyed all of Orson Scott Card's novels, especially the Ender series.
Then, there is always Spider Robinson.
A few of my favorites, which someone unfamiliar with SF may enjoy:
DUNE - Frank Herbert
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
Rendezvous with RAMA - Arthur C Clarke
POLARIS - Jack McDevitt
All are pretty hard SF, and all of the books have strong female characters and better than average storytelling.
Iain M Banks... he is the Tom Robbins of SF and more. Some marketing blurs from Amazon:
‘Banks is a phenomenon: the wildly successful, fearlessly creative author of brilliant and disturbing non-genre novels, he’s equally at home writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance’ WILLIAM GIBSON
Banks made a name for himself with non-SF first but the Culture SF series is something else. Use of Weapons has one of the most bizarre twists that I have encountered in literature but might not a good start for newcomer to the genre. Player of Games maybe?
Have not read Banks in years but this thread is enough to get nostalgic and order somthin.
Asimov seems to appeal more to those more interested in the science than the fiction side of the science fiction equation. I would recommend him to anyone (male or female) who likes science and wanted to get into science fiction. As others have said start with his short stories. Night fall is good because if you like the short story there's a novel as well.
Plus "The Left Hand of Darkness" was recommended by the one male participant in "The Jane Austen Book Club"? Which is not SF.
I'm obviously one of many to recommend Iain M Banks but my reasoning may be slightly different.
In the UK (under the name of Iain Banks (no M) he is a bestselling non SF (or mainstream) author. One of his novels was adapted for TV (The Crow Road).
Therefore he is the ideal choice for someone who reads mainstream SF as a gateway author.
In my opinion another good gateway author include is Richard Morgan (who writes SF thrilers).
Ten years ago Niven & Pournelle's big blockbuster novels would have been ideal but now they seem a bit dated.
Essentially my idea of a gateway author is one who can be related somehow to a readers previous experience. For example though I think he's great I wouldn't recommend Charles Stross to a non SF reader. you need to have a good understanding of the Genre to enjoy his SF novels.
For a first-time read for a woman, you might suggest the Susan Grant novels. They're a mix of SF and Romance.
And if your definition of SF is Speculative Fiction, which encompasses fantasy, I would also recommend the Kelley Armstrong "Otherworld" novels.
But I got both my wife and daughter interested in SF by having them read the early Heinleins. And they liked the later Heinleins too.
Once they are hooked, get them into Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series and Elizabeth Moon's Herris Serrano series(which in my opinon ought to be called the Brun sreies).
Then, if your daughter is a teenager with a head on her shoulders, have her read Child of Fortune by Norman Spinrad. Alexi Panshin also wrote a nice "coming of age" book, but I don't remember teh title.
Side note: I don't normally agree with much that SofV says, but just imagining starting someone in SF by having them read Dahlgren, as SofV rightly advised not to do, had me snorting my drink all over the screen.
How about Ayn Rand's Anthem? My wife just started to read Enders Game, she'd never been exposed to SF prior.
I disagree on the Stross bit, Rajesh - I think his plenty of his books (Halting State, Accelerando, The Merchant Princes) read quite well even without a knowledge of SF. Glasshouse, actually, is a really interesting book from a gender relations standpoint, as it involves a male narrator who, through typically Stross-ian singularity nonsense ends up in a female body for much of the novel.
I'd also like to nominate most of Neal Stephenson, as has been stated before (although I didn't really like Diamond Age that much and Snow Crash seems quaint 20 years later, he's a really great writer.) Not so much on the Cryptonomicon, although it is a wonderful work, just because it involves pages of Perl script and enough cryptology to make one's head hurt.
Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End is really good too.
Ho about some SF novels that are also just plain good, well written novels period? I nominate:
Karel Capek, War with the Newts (one of the most enjoyable novels I've ever read in any genre)
Walter Miller, A Canticle for Liebowitz
C. S. Lewis, Out of the SIlent Planet
An anecdote: I was out in central park the other day, with a mixed group. All of a sudden, we heard shouts of "Frackin toasters!"
Only men were amused by this.
"Frack" is the new "grok".
Anything by Phillip K. Dick or Stanislaw Lem is the best way to introduce non scifi fans to scifi.
My daughter is eleven. She has a black belt, like her older brothers. I've given her the Deed of Paksanarian, Planet Pirate Omnibus, Anne McCaffery's dragon novels, Lois Bujold, Carol Cherryh, Weber's Fury novels, etc...she eats them up. She used to walk around the house wearing a wooden sword.
Last year, when she was ski racing, some boys from another team started picking on one of her smaller girlfriends. She warned the ringleader off. Then, when he kept assaulting the other girl, took him down. She chose not to hurt him, which was good, but I think he was surprised that a girl could repeatedly best a larger boy in a fight.
"I'd extend this to the whole Cyberpunk subgenre." SOV
TR: What about Pat Cadigan? Or the movie "Akira". (Very weird, but many of the people I know who liked it are women.)
"was recommended by the one male participant in "The Jane Austen Book Club"?"
TR: That's a book written by Karen Joy Fowler, who has a long if non-standard association to the SF genre. She is a Nebula winner though. If a woman liked the JABC book they could try her "Sarah Canary", which has some SFnal elements while mostly being historical fiction. (This describes most of Fowler's work, in my experience)
Anything by C.S. Friedman. She may write slowly, but her work is wonderful. (And it doesn't hurt that the Whalen covers are gorgeous.)
Aside: Peter, do we have to do the embittered geek thing on this thread too? This geek *pleads* with you to let it drop.
I have recommended "Snowcrash" to SF noobs before, and would do so again. Great read with characters that will clear your sinuses.
My own introduction was probably "Stranger in a Strange Land", a Heinlein novel that appeals to those with a taste for the spiritual.
Also, in my opinion Zelazny's "Lord of Light" should rank in the top ten works of literature in ANY genre.
Since the thread began by discussing "feminists and SF", and hasn't mentioned this yet, I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on James Tiptree Jr and then perhaps sampling some of "his" stories. Not for beginners though ...
A good chunk of James Schmitz's short stories are available (legally) free from Baen Book's Free Library: http://www.webscription.net/s-89-james-h-schmitz.aspx
One of Lois McMaster Bujold's stories is also in the library, "The Mountains of Mourning", which is excellent, but may not stand alone very well.
(Baen Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm)
"The Steerswoman" and its sequels (by Rosemary Kirstein) might be a good and not well known pick for a woman-friendly first SF novel. The first two novels were reprinted in a single volume, "The Steerswoman's Road" a few years ago.
Well, this post is a surprise. I figured the world's tallest female econoblogger would be writing something about Fannie and Freddie after the developments Friday and today.
Since she has brought up the subject of women and SF, let me mention one of the few SF authors I have read, Michael Swanwick. His stories often have strong female roles or female protagonists. An excellent example, if you can find a copy somewhere, is his novel The Iron Dragon's Daughter.
I don't know what the common objections from women are, but as a lover of the form I can tell you my personal (very, very manly) pet peeves in science fiction:
1) plots that involve the imminent destruction of the universe, especially if we are assisted in saving it by superpowerful humans originating millions of years in the future. There's only so many times I can suspend my disbelief on this topic. Likewise, only so many riffs on creatures that rapidly lived the equivalent of millions of years during the first seconds of the Big Bang. Yeah, cool ideas, but DONE TO DEATH. If there's something left to say here, it better be wildly creative and *critical to your damn story*.
2) writers that provide us with Tom Clancy levels of detail on their fictional technology. I might conceivably be on a nuclear sub someday - it would be cool to be able to say "I've heard of that widget!" Much though I may wish otherwise, the same experience just isn't gonna happen with an interstellar ramjet. If you can't actually build it or talk to somebody who can, don't act like you have all the engineering details worked out in your research notes.
Stuff I have liked a lot that *may* appeal to non-SF fans as well (as opposed to e.g. Heinlein, who is really - despite his true excellence - a very acquired taste these days.)
-- Any "Hutch" book by Jack McDevitt - swashbuckling space adventures with human-scale crises. Engines of God and Chindi are especially fun. Straightforward SF. I can't recommend McDevitt highly enough for unpretentious, solid, exciting scifi.
-- Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen and The Summer Queen. Clearly a SF universe, but a romantic fantasy feeling to the writing.
-- Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh. Lots of her other stuff is good, but I started here and it's still my favorite.
Hmmm...I didn't deliberately set out to pick books with women protagonists, but there you go...
Oh please, NO woman like Science Fiction. Some may pretend to, but they don't really. Some may even write it, but that's just to pay the bills. It's like those female technology reporters, you know they're not REALLY into it.
My three favorite science fiction novels are Camp Concentration by Thomas Disch, Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury and Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks. That being said, allow me to recommend Edward Maret: A Novel of the Future by (who else) myself! It was picked by Booksense as one of the best science fiction novels of 2001 and was picked by Paul Levinson, at the time the President of the Science Fiction Writers of America, as one of the five best first novels he ever read. One reviewer described it as The Count of Monte Cristo meets Robocop, which was pretty much my intention...
What everybody else said about Ursula Le Guin, and Left Hand of Darkness. Also second the motion on Asimov's robot stories. Asimov's robots are, after all, not-quite-human creatures trying solve the mysteries of emotion through rule-based processing, which is just a long-winded way of saying, geeks. Your female friends will instantly recognize just the sort of guy they've been dating. There was one great robot story in particular, which might be in Robot Dreams though I do not recall the name of it, about a robot gigolo: a good-looking personal assistant type, programmed to please, whose owner was a lonely frustrated woman. She fell in love with him, and he got wrapped around the axle trying to figure out how to apply the Three Laws (do no harm to a human, etc.), and wound up going insane. I'm pretty sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.
Speaker for the Dead might be a better jumping in point that Enders Game. My wife was assigned it in an anthropology class and has loved SF and OSCard since.
I would recommend a couple of titles from Walter Jon Williams: "Metropolitan" and its sequel "City on Fire". Strong, realistic female protagonist; vivid, original setting and a page turner plot. Fair warning tho, the series is on hold until Williams gets a new publisher to pick it up.
DaveinHackensack (above at 8:22 PM) recommends Michael Swanwick's "The Iron Dragon Daughter". I will second that and add that Swanwick has a second book set in that world just out: "The Dragons of Babel".
Megan,
Have you read the Honor Harrington books by David Weber yet? I just discovered them lately, and I think they're a blast. She's a starship captain for a democratic space navy, fighting against a totalitarian empire. She's tough, smart, completely hopeless when it comes to romance (she gets the hang of it around book 3 or 4) and capable of inflicting (and surviving) unbelievable violence on the enemy. There are action sequences that are burned into my brain for life from those books. On the other hand, the political maneuverings are very well thought out and interesting.
More, Weber is incredibly proficient in establishing a believable technology, and mounts realistic battles that revolve around that technology. For instance, space travel uses hyper gravitic "wedges" that manifest around the ships like a shield, but only cover the top and bottom of the ships, leaving the front and sides and rear to be protected by weaker "sidewalls" of gravitic energy. The result is that there's a lot of Horatio Hornblower-style maneuvering, with broadsides (launched from hundreds of thousands of miles away...) and missiles with laser warheads and old fashioned nukes, with beam weapons reserved for up close tangling.
Super cool. I think Honor is my new favorite sci-fi hero, and her empathic treecat ally, (named Nimitz) is also a quick favorite, despite the risk that he could have been a grating pet sidekick. He rules.
For thoughtful fantasy with a daring heroine, try L. Warren Douglas's Sacred Pool Trilogy; The Sacred Pool, The Veil Of Years, and The Isle Beyond Time. Then look at his earlier sci/fi works, some of which have strong women characters important to the story. Full Disclosure: Friend of the author.
Slightly off topic, but Joanna Russ stands beside Ursula le Guin as a first-class feminist sci-fi writer. Based on my partial acquaintance with the works of both of them, I would call Russ's work more explicitly feminist than le Guin's.
Someone has mentioned Poul Anderson. I would recommend his Harvest of Stars series, or a least the first book. It has
1) a female lead
2) libertarian themes.
In many ways, it's a well written atlas shrugged ;)
Boat of a million years and Starfarers are also quite good.
Hmmm... starter novels....
"Little Fuzzy" by H. Beam Piper, followed up by the other two Fuzzy books. Also the Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen collection is highly recommended.
"Nor Crystal Tears" by Alan Dean Foster, although almost all of his SF is highly approachable, especially the Pip & Flinx books where there are a number of fascinating men, women, thranx and others roaming around.
"Holmes/Dracula File" by Fred Saberhagen, who takes a far different look at vampires than most others do. Very science based save for the origin of vampires.
"The High Crusade" by Poul Anderson, can't get much more starter and fun than that.
Any of the Retief books by Keith Laumer, although "The Pangalactic Pageant of Pulchritude" is a favorite collection.
"1632" by Eric Flint for a lead-in to one of the better alt-history storylines around.
"Rolling Hot" by David Drake, one of the best of the Hammer's Slammers books, and very compelling characters.
"Rendezvous with Rama" by Arthur C. Clarke, it comes in threes, take the first only.
"Gateway" by Fred Pohl, start of a much larger series of works, but fascinating stuff.
That pretty much covers the spectrum of SF: legal examination of what it is to be human, classic first contact novel, science applied to the mystical, satirical romp from the era of the crusades, diplomacy and humor, alt-history from a very different event than just an individual, military SF, and two novels exploring the artifacts of an alien culture that you don't get to meet one an exploration and the other examining the psychological effects.
Instead of "Dune", which is damned complex and you miss far too much the first read, try Gordon R. Dickson's "Way of the Pilgrim". That man had psychology down in a way no other SF author had or has.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned James Tiptree Jr., aka Alice Bradley Sheldon. She wrote some wonderful short stories and had a fascinating life to boot.
Second the motions for Bujold and Schmitz. The works of the latter have been republished recently and Bujold has started writing romances. Or so they seem to me.
As one of those supposedly elusive con-attending, costume-wearing Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans, I know many women who enjoy reading and watching SF. As a college student, I have girl friends who do little more than humor my enthusiasm for my fandoms. So I experience both sides of the SF fence, and I know that for many people, aliens, spaceships, and nerds who live in their moms' basements are what they think of when they think of Sci-Fi and Fantasy.
Some people have to be dragged into the genre, but they love it once they experience it. My mom's in that category--I grew up watching SW and ST with my dad, and she humored us. But after I brought all the BSG seasons home, she was looking forward to Season 4 as much as my dad and I were.
I think a lot of women *do* get into Sci-Fi at a younger age, but shows like "Battlestar Galactica," "LOST," and "Heroes," plus all of the huge Sci-Fi and Fantasy films (SW, LOTR, HP, all the comic adaptations, etc.) are pulling in fans of all ages and shattering the stereotypes of SF as being too 'masculine' and 'technical.'
The truth is, though, that not all women enjoy SF, just as not all women enjoy romance novels. I don't see how that's a "feminist" issue versus a matter of preference. Nobody's saying that Sci-Fi is over women's heads. Sure, the way women are portrayed in SF could potentially be a feminist issue, but romance novel women aren't exactly model feminists, either.
Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's end". It was my introduction as a young lad, although my mother was a bit of a fan - so I had a steady diet of Star Trek reruns and the like as a child. I haven't read in in close to 25 years, but I still remember the plot and much of the words in the story to this day.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is arguably Heinlein's best work, and it never fails to entertain - I recommend it to anyone. A good introduction to his writing style. IF you don't like it, you won't like ANYTHING else - especially anything with Lazarus Long. Those books could get confusing. I made the mistake of reading "The Number of the Beast" when it first came out - as my first Heinlein. Whoo, it was hard to follow. But "Friday" saved me, just in time. That one is highly recommended as well as a starter not just for Henlein, but for anyone, especially women, into SF. It has all the flavor the dystopian cyberpunk genre, but is generally easier to read and is a bit less stark (I'm reading Gibson's "Virtual Light" right now and it's future America is very depressing).
I don't recommend Asimov much, his writing style is too stilted and doesn't hold up well. But if you think you like SF, there's nothing I DON'T recommend for you to read - although I was a bit disappointed in his efforts to unite the Robots and Foundation novels.
Any C.J. Cherryh is a good start, especially "Cyteen".
"Ender's Game" is fantastic, another good intro. The rest just falls flat, although the "Enderverse" picked up a bit with the "Shadow" volumes.
I'm just getting started in the Miles Vorkosigan books - and I like them. Same with Honor Harrington.
And for God's sake, stay away from any book series based on a movie, video game, or TV show! Almost all of that stuff is pure crap!
Gibson "sucks"!- I strongly prefer Bruce Sterling in the 'cyberpunk' genre.
I would start with a large portion of John Varley- especially his "shorts" from "Blue Champagne", "The Barbie Murders", and "The Persistence of Vision"- then add a generous helping of Larry Niven-- (see also: Heinlein, J. Barnes, Alan Steele, Greg Bear, Neil Stephenson, and the always under-rated James Hogan).
I'm surprised that many seem to think that the lack of interest in SF is due to the lack of major women roles in the books/movies.
Almost all of the females that I have known (60+ years) have not had any major interest in the SF genre. Of course, that is no way indicative of the overall gender bias, but it does seem to generate a preference. I do think there is some ingrained gender work at play here...
I know that this is not PC at all...so have fun with it...
Jessica,
Yes, it boils down to little girls prefer dolls and dollhouses, little boys prefer cars and guns. Most of that is ingrained and has little to do with the environment that they are raised within (There are always exceptions). SF does not relate well to the dolls. And yes, that is a bit ingrained...
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon.
A nice exploration of technology affecting society and individuals, with a slightly "other" POV, but not delving heavily into hard science or the gosh-golly-gee-whiz factor.
The downside, is that the book's just a bit too long. She added a prologue in an attempt to give the story a happily-ever-after ending, and (IMO) it doesn't work. I'd cut that bit out before lending the book.
Heinlein remains very much at the heart of SF. But I wouldn't use him as an entry point for this purpose. His female characters weren't "strong" or "realistic", they were hyper-competant. ;) I recall Christopher Buckley busting Tom Clancy's balls over a similar treatment of female characters.
I also wouldn't use Asimov or Clarke for this purpose. They're all outstanding, but an aquired taste.
Orson Scott Card could be a good start for this purpose *if* the individual would be certain of reading Xenocide after Ender's Game.
Better yet, use some of his short stories. His SF collection Cruel Miracles is outstanding.
A Canticle for Leibowitz would be a great introduction, if you feel the individual won't be turned off by the first story. That's not necessarily a given.
Michael Flynn's Firestar would also be a good entry point for this purpose. His Eifelheim wouldn't be a bad start, either.
Niven and Pournelle are one of the best partnerships going. A Mote in God's Eye probably the best for this purpose. (As much as Lucifer's Hammer rocked, I can't recommend it as someone's first exposure to SF.)
For those of you who like military SF, I heartily recommend Glen Cook's Passage at Arms. But unless the girl in question likes Das Boot and Run Silent, Run Deep, it's probably not a good introduction into the genre.
If I had a daughter, I would tell her to read Dune. That is a good book. I read it as a kid. The Foundation Series is very good and so is the Rama series. I am one of those people who doesn't like scifi and even through I read a lot, a rarely read sci fi. Despite this, I found those books to be quite good and worth reading regardless of what you think about scifi.
My daughters got into sci-fi through with Terry Pratchett (great YA comic fantasy), then Ursula LeGuin, starting with the Earthsea books. A subscription to Analog, or something similar, in early adolescence, and they were hooked before high school. I'm surprised no one's mentioned Kage Baker as a sci-fi entry for women; wonderful time travel stories, and the first books in her Company series are almost pure bodice-ripping romances, except they're really extremely quirky sci-fi. Much better written than Bujold, though she's good too. But no woman could really like Heinlein; if they say they do, they're just messing with your mind.
As a female preteen, I got into SF by reading the "Telzey stories" by James Schmitz and then Andre Norton and Anne McCaffrey. Asimov, Anderson, Zelanzey Jack Williamson, Harry Harrison, A E VanVogt, etc. As a young teen 13-14 Heinlein crystallized my conservative worldview. "Time enough for Love" I read "Stranger" and he was very popular in the early 70's. That really was written well on multiple levels but it was his dreck period. Later I read the juvies, which are excellent. I had a large library dating to the 1950’s through the 1970’s of SF paperbacks from my fathers reading collection and just tried story after story. After that my brother and I added to the collection.
I had a hard time getting my son reading SF, though in grade school he read the Harry Potter books. I finally got him started on Heinlein juvies like "Have spacesuit will Travel” Then he started Honor Harrington. Now he is reading John Ringo " Ghost series" but I started him on "Unto the Breach" rather than the first since that has hard-core porn.
Now I have to say my favorite author 1980's on, has been Lois Macmaster Bujold "Vorkosigan" books. Her recent fantasy not so much. She is very character driven. On fantasy is PC Hogdell who after many years is getting another novel in 2010. After 25 years I finally got my older brother to read Hogdell and he has heard me enthuse about her for decades and he raced through that in record time. The Baen website is great they added a lot of my favorite authors in ebook form.
www.baen.com.
So I got started because I liked strong female characters and the optimistic can do attitude of SF. Schmitz had that in droves.
I do like hard SF and military SF if the battles and science are written well. Just don’t overdo the science rather than the story. Ringo has accomplished that in his work. The rest of his skill is improving.
But the best way to prove that a lot of women are in SF and fantasy is to go to a SF convention. Women are probably over 50 % of the attendees.
As to the NFL vs. SF male. I like an intelligent male. Brawny is fine just need to be competent, confident, capable, courageous male with rational worldview. Not a lunatic leftist please.
I agree with most of the authors listed.
Peter -- NFL fans DWARF sci-fan fans. The Super Bowl routinely draws 100 million viewers, and regular season games on cable mind can draw 12 million viewers. The NFL is very masculine, with emphasis on tradition, continuity, etc. But I doubt either NFL or Sci-Fi fans would do well with women. [Sci-fi channel's Battlestar Galactica is lucky by contrast to draw 3 million viewers, if that.]
NFL fans are often married, older, out of shape, and unwilling therefore to bend themselves into bad-boy pretzels to score with women. Sci-Fi fans are often too smart and geeky, and women despise in the main intelligence in men. Since it correlates with lower levels of testosterone.
I would not recommend ANY sci-fi. Women just won't like it. It's repellent to women, because of what sci-fi really is. Sci-fi is a social exploration through technological change. Whether it's Captain Nemo's doomed attempt to destroy European colonialism and restore his Hindu Kingdom by one-upping European science (his own technical background makes him unable to relate to his former subjects), or Babylon 5's projection of the Cold War dynamics in Space, women do not like these kinds of stories. Sci-fi is equal parts boyish wonder ("isn't that cool!"), social commentary, fanciful projection ("yes human evolution will diverge into Eloi and Morlocks if things continue") and manly adventure (Verne's travelers being the prototype for all that comes after). These are all things women detest.
FANTASY on the other hand, is well suited to women, since it contains none of that and often just has hunky men dying to serve women in social isolation, free from tedious aspects of life. Dracula or vampires making a woman eternally young, carefree, outside totally ordinary society looking down. A demonic prince perhaps for a demonic Cinderella, but there it is.
Women are just too different from men to like either the NFL much, or Sci-Fi. It's about as useless as trying to make a housecat enjoy swimming.
Look at for example, Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld novels. An alien experiment has Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mark Twain, King John, Hermann Goerring, and every other human who ever lived, re-incarnated and trapped on some alien planet where they have to find out who/what/why ... and stop it. That's core sci-fi and most women would hate it with a passion.
An excellent start for anyone interested in SF is the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov.
I'm sure it's been mentioned by now, but Michael Crichton seems to have done pretty well with his sci-fi novels.
- Brian
"But no woman could really like Heinlein; if they say they do, they're just messing with your mind."
Funny, there were a lot of women at the Heinlein Centennial in Kansas City last July. I don't think they spent their $$ just to "mess with" men's minds.
It's nice to see more than one commenter recommending James Schmitz. I don't know if any of his stories are still in print, but more than one female sf writer has cited his Telzey stories and Agent of Vega stories as having a big influence.
One other recommendation for a reader new to SF: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
It's not really all that technologically-centered, and its main story is both uplifting and heartbreaking, although younger readers (and the protagonist!) may miss the entire point of the novel.
Try the Swordswoman, by Jessica Amanda Salmonson.
Almost anything by James White - the early stories and novels are my favorite, along with Galactic Gourmet.
Jane Lindskold's Wolf's Novels - All of them.
For the Military side, John Steakley's Armor, or, if you're that kind of girl, John Ringo's Ghost series.
Clark's Tales of the White Hart and Nine Billion names of God
For the real classics, James Blish - Cities in Flight, John W. Campbell - The Mightiest Machine.
Asimov's Robot stories, up to at least I, Robot.
Larry Niven - his Ringworld is a must, plus all of the known space books. Plus his work with Jerry Pournelle. Mote in God's Eye, Inferno, the coming Inferno II.
Alternate timelines - start with 1632. Eric Flint / David Weber.
Enjoy, for a lifetime.
I have a friend who is an author of what we might call popular fiction, and he's pretty successful. There is a fair amount of calculation in that market. First of all, the majority of hardback book buyers are women. And women will buy more books with strong woman characters - and where there is a love interest. Not a guarantee of success, but if you are playing the numbers that's the way to roll.
While someone posted, it will depend on what the person is like, if you want an answer to what is a good introductory to SF for women, then pick things with strong woman characters and a love interest. Rules out Susan Calvin but not Heinlein's late stuff - Stranger in a Strange Land, I Will Fear No Evil, Friday, Number of the Beast - Time Enough for Love probably on the list but not as a starter.
Women writers, of course - Le Guin, CJ Cherryh, Andre Norton.
Probably stay away from Harlan Ellison...
But I don't know why there would be outrage at the idea that women, generally, don't like Sci-Fi. (Well, yes I do.) There are "chick flicks" and "chick lit" for a reason. Drop into an engineering class on one of our 55%-60% female college campuses, and see how it matches the general population. Summers said it at Harvard and women nearly fainted at the idea.
Honestly, if women don't dig Sci-Fi, I am perfectly okay with that. I don't realy like the work of most of the women authors, so I can't say that women should like Asimov or Niven or Gibson any more than they should like a Michael Bay or Ridley Scott film.
Attempts to Oprah-fy SF make it less appealing to the people who do like it, in an attempt to maybe gain an audience that might like it, but buys more books.
(Everything above caveated liberally with "generally" and "on the whole")
I'd lik to also endorse Elizabeth Moon -The Deed of Pakesenarion and David Weber's Honor Harrington series for anyone looking for some terrific SF. I've actually got everyting written by both authors and am intending to save them for my young daughters to read for examples of strong female characters who deal with complex topics and kick butt.
My wife was a strict fantasy fan when I met her, so I gave her my dog-eared copy of John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up," which could be classified as SF, dystopian fiction, fantasy, horror, or current events. She has been hooked since. I also like pointing out to non-SF fans that a lot of movies that they may like (such as "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") are straight SF. It helps open up their minds and wash away the 40-year-old virgin stigma associated with the field.
And this isn't a SF series, but someone mentioned George R. R. Martin, and I have to say that I was able to get a history-major friend of mine who didn't even read fiction (let alone fantasy) hooked on his series "A Song of Ice and Fire." Of all the fantasy I've read, that has the keenest sense of verisimilitude, starting with the logically brutal flow of events.
I'll second the opinions on:
Lords of Light (Zelazny)
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Ender's Game (Card)
Childhood's End (Clarke)
+ Any of the older dystopias (Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World), if you never got around to them
These are relatively accessible, thematic introductions to SF. (More recently, I found "Spin" and CJ Cherryh's books to be pretty accessible and reasonably well-written as well.)
Comments above notwithstanding, I would strongly suggest not beginning with Neal Stephenson, Gibson, or Greg Bear; the first *I* find almost incomprehensibly obscure in parts, and I've been reading SF for many years. The remainder have tended to be a little more difficult to get into, and I'd imagine a new reader of SF would want to focus on readability over complex science.
John F. MacMichael,
Thanks for the heads up about The Dragons of Babel, I hadn't known Swanwick had a new novel out, let alone one set in the same twisted world of the Iron Dragon's Daughter.
I should also second a couple of other books. First Dune, which I finally got around to reading last month. Not only does it have strong female characters, but, unlike some other SF, there is a good amount of economics in it. Also, a novel about a substance found in a desert region that is vital to world transportation has a certain timeliness.
Second, Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem. Well worth reading.
Women are just too different from men to like either the NFL much, or Sci-Fi.
20% of NFL fans are women. I think there's more women who like the NFL than men who read romance novels...
in anime, the two films you must see to become otaku are Akira and Ghost in the Shell.
there are so many good scifi novels i can't narrow it down to two.
;)
but i think....Neuromancer, Ringworld, Dune, Enders Game, Mote in God's Eye and Snow Crash would be good choices.
Bucknell's Ragamuffin has a strong female heroine in Nashara, and of course Richard Morgan.
Woken Furies would be my personal choice.
lol
Andre Norton before she went to fantasy. The female characters are spare, but determined.
Starship Troopers. The book is set in the twenty-fifth century, but that doesn't matter. That it is scifi is irrelevant. It's a masterpiece of using scifi to explicate ideas which are relevant today.
Ditto Anderson's "Star Fox". And some of the Flandry stories.
Unfortunately, some of the ideas would make, say, Orwell and Rebecca West very happy. Their ideas about pacificists, for example.
HeatherRadish,
Heh...I think that you are 100% right! We definitely need more NFL women!
Tom West: One other recommendation for a reader new to SF: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Oh yes, Connie Willis! I'm not sure a novel set in the middle of the Black Death is the place to start SF though. To Say Nothing of the Dog is fun, but might be difficult for someone lacking experience with time travel. But the anthology containing "Firewatch" and "Blue Moon" ought to work.
Isaac Asimov always had strong female characters and wrote some of the best SF that had strong romantic plots that I have ever read. I am thinking mostly of Currents of Space and A Pebble in the Sky but also Robots and Empire and Prelude to Foundation all of which are stellar.
I think what would be best to start with is more dependent on age than on sex. Greg Egan would not be a good starter at any age; he requires too much prior SF reading experience.
I started reading SF in 1958, and at first found it confusing because I did not understand the so called "tropes" or conventions. Sometimes I might buy a book and fail to get it the first time around, and then come back in a year and fall in love with it (Anderson's Orbit Unlimited.) I
In general, any early Heinlein is good starter SF. So is any Murray Leinster (the Med Series eg) and, oddly enough, the very oldies like Ray Cummings Brigands of the Moon and Wandl the Invader, both of which hold up despite coming from the 30s. Poul Anderson I mentioned, and the Flandry series make rousing space opera.
Apparently Doris Egan's Ivory Trilogy and the late Jo Clayton's Diadem series have not yet been mentioned.
I believe both are out of print but scroungeable.
Great word "scroungeable"... I was trying to look it up but drew a blank. I do understand the meaning though and like it - so it should be a valid English word!
I bow to your unrelenting enthusiasm here...especially since you have mentioned heretofore unmentioned authors... heh.
20% of NFL fans are women. I think there's more women who like the NFL than men who read romance novels...
Most of the women at NFL games are probably like men at the ballet - being dragged along by their spouses and wishing they were anywhere else.
Now, you don't see women at sci-fi conventions reluctantly accompanying their husbands or boyfriends ... because sci-fi nerds don't have wives or girlfriends! Most of them couldn't score any poon tang to save their lives.
City by Clifford Simak.
Also, how could so many folks rave over Ursula K. LeGuin and not mention probably the greatest anarchist novel of all time, The Dispossessed?
I'm not a fan of political anarchism, but it's very interesting I think that LeGuin's father, anthropologist A. L. Kroeber, wrote the ethnography published as Handbook of the Indians of California, in which he described the real anarchist civilization of the Indians of the lower Klamath River in California, that you can read about here.
John Costello,
I may be wrong here... but I always thought that Heinlein was too advanced (SF wise) to be a good starter read. I'm sure if I'm wrong, you and others will correct this notion. Me, I always considered him great for advanced reading (after getting a love for SF)...
Someone above mentioned Michael Crichton. I don't know if he's normally considered sci-fi, but he is brilliant and his books are tough to put down. A timely novel of his to start with is State of Fear, because it deals (skeptically) with Global Warming/Climate Change.
Also, regarding Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon may have been the first accessible and entertaining door stopper of a book. I got the first volume of his subsequent three-part prequel and couldn't get into it after 100 pages so I gave it away.
While I do know a good many women SF fans (including my own girlfriend) I do acknowledge that the genre tends to appeal more to male audiences.
That said, one thing I'd recommend to a woman who was curious about SF and into English literature or history is Harry Turtledove's Ruled Britannia. I gave it to my sis-in-law, who's nuts about Elizabethan England, and she loved it.
A lot depends on knowing what the person already likes.
Peter,
If I remember correctly, the men that do consent to go the the ballet only go for the wine break and want to leave shortly thereafter. Now I can't say about the other (wimps)... there are men that sacrifice all for their loved ones... (Damn, I hated the ballet and the stupid dance shows that I was "dragged" to"). But... I went to remain civil!
Tempting as it is to dive into the taste wars, I haven't the time. I second the pseudo-nominations of RAH's "Podkayne of Mars" and "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" -- the latter of which drew more of my 35-45 year-old acquaintances into SF as their first read, than any other book.
I probably don't read enough SF anymore to contribute much, but what the hell. I agree with those who've said that Heinlein's women tend to be more pneumatic than 3 dimensional, and I can't imagine that that would appeal to many women. (Though I agree The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is great). A somewhat dated, but entirely non-space-operaish recommendation would be Earth Abides.
My wife loathes all SF, but loooved C. McCarthy's The Road. I slogged through it, and while I can admire his writing, I couldn't stop thinking throughout, "No, that's totally implausible! You can't logically posit a world where human beings are the sole survivors!" I guess it's just an unbridgeable gap.
I might have missed it, but I am amazed that this far into the thread nobody has at least mentioned James Tiptree, Jr. Brightness Falls From the Air is astonishing, and both my wife and sister-in-law stayed up most of the night reading it because they could not put it down.
Tiptree is not for kids, but she wrote fascinating SF that seems like it ought to appeal to women.
I might have missed it, but I am amazed that this far into the thread nobody has at least mentioned James Tiptree, Jr. Brightness Falls From the Air is astonishing, and both my wife and sister-in-law stayed up most of the night reading it because they could not put it down.
Tiptree is not for kids, but she wrote fascinating SF that seems like it ought to appeal to women.
I might have missed it, but I am amazed that this far into the thread nobody has at least mentioned James Tiptree, Jr. Brightness Falls From the Air is astonishing, and both my wife and sister-in-law stayed up most of the night reading it because they could not put it down.
Tiptree is not for kids, but she wrote fascinating SF that seems like it ought to appeal to women.
I might have missed it, but I am amazed that this far into the thread nobody has at least mentioned James Tiptree, Jr. Brightness Falls From the Air is astonishing, and both my wife and sister-in-law stayed up most of the night reading it because they could not put it down.
Tiptree is not for kids, but she wrote fascinating SF that seems like it ought to appeal to women.
Oops. I have beclowned myself with a triple post.
Yes, we females are interested in relationships so the science fiction that is all ideas (Arthur C. Clarke for example) can leave us cold, not eager to read another. It is not that we cannot understand the science (I'm a nuclear engineer for goodness sake. I wanted to grow up to be Hazel Stone from Heinlein's The Rolling Stones and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and others or to be Trek's Scotty.)
In spite of the awful movie, I highly recommend Douglass Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Nancy Kress explores how society may change with genetic engineered off-spring. I love Zelazny's short story A Rose for Ecclesiastes. His Eye of Cat is a truly wonderful tale of alienation. Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake also explored possible consequences of genetic engineering.
FWIW, I loved Farmer's Riverworld and went on to read everything I could about Captain Sir Richard Frances Burton.
Piers Anthony's Cluster Series has some great erotic sex between creatures which are basically gas jets.
Tunnel in the Sky can still break my heart. It is very much the tale of relationships and change.
First of all, I have to admit, I haven't read through all the comments so please forgive me if I reiterate previous suggestions. I'm presently surrounded by five kids and two neighbors, etc.
I'm female and have been reading primarily sf & fantasy since I was around 8 years old. Love it. Personally, I prefer multi-viewpoint novels that are heavy on political conundrums (see George R. R. Martin's Ice & Fire series, which is technically fantasy).
Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin is probably one of the best books for a woman or girl to start on SF. It's what I got my mother started on. And my sister. I would recommend this novel to almost anyone. It's told from the perspective of a 13 year old girl. Also Emergence, by David Palmer. Both wonderful coming of age novels in an SF background.
And anything by CS Friedman. Love her work. Have everything she's written. Anne McCaffry is also excellent for women, as is Melanie Rawn.
Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars. I actually prefer the newer version that had his original ending as opposed to the original publication which had the "happy" ending. And I have to admit, I love almost all of Heinlein's novels. He is truly the Grand Master of SF. Also To Sail Beyond the Sunset. (I did say I loved Heinlein?)
I agree with Ender's Game. Great novel. Maybe not so appealing to females, but great novel. So are the sequels.
Agree with Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Verkosigan novels. All are excellent.
Looking through the comments I see some excellent novels mentioned that would not necessarily be ones that I would recommend to women who were not currently reading SF. When talking about women and SF, keep in mind that women are more involved with people (the CHARACTERS), and men may be more about the technology and the action. A lot of women love CJ Cherryh because she goes into the mind of the character - but I'm one of the ones that don't read her because I want to have things happening - I can't stand to have pages and pages of what the character is thinking.
"Comments above notwithstanding, I would strongly suggest not beginning with Neal Stephenson, Gibson, or Greg Bear; the first *I* find almost incomprehensibly obscure in parts, and I've been reading SF for many years."
Actually, I think intelligent women who don't like SF often think it too simplistic, for reasons similar to those with which SF is often excluded from the rest of the "Literature" community. In both cases, there is a great deal of obliviousness to counter-examples.
So for such a woman, Bear especially would be a great intro, as he often features female leads, appealing (and developing) characters, and what SF does best: offering the mirror to our own experience of traditional literature, with the added element of techne, corresponding to the greater role techne plays in the lives of those looking in the mirror.
Since great SF is often about creating an alternative world, I'd recommend multi-book cycles:
Bear's Eon Cycle or Le Guin's Hainish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainish_Cycle
The ultimate prelude to Asimov’s Foundation series (setting the stage for the existence of that whole universal timeline) is his The End of Eternity, which enunciates perhaps the best defense of space colonization for the future of humanity anywhere….
“Suppose Eternity had never been established?”
“Well?”
“I’ll tell you what would have happened. The energies that went into temporal engineering would have gone into nucleonics instead. Eternity would not have come but the interstellar drive would. Man would have reached the stars more than a hundred thousand Centuries before he did in this current Reality. The stars would then have been untenanted and mankind would have established itself throughout the Galaxy. We would have been first.”
“And what would have been gained?” asked Harlan doggedly. “Would we be happier?”
“Whom do you mean by ‘we’? Man would not be a world but a million worlds, a billion worlds. We would have the infinite in our grasp. Each world would have its own stretch of the Centuries, each its own values, a chance to seek happiness after ways of its own in an environment of its own. There are many happinesses, many goods, infinite variety…. That is the Basic State of mankind.”
There are a lot of good recommendations here, including several of my personal favorites.
However, I would add some comments.
Robert Heinlein: One of the biggest names in SF (and a personal favorite) but be careful. Heinlein was very prolific. Some of his books are SF masterpieces, others are a amongst the worst books ever written in any genre.
His Hugo Award winning novels are a good place to start:
-Double Star (1956 Hugo Award) would make a great gentle introduction to SF. Not too heavy on the science, with a character driven plot.
-Starship Troopers (1960 Hugo Award) is a phenomenal book, but very controversial. If you are trying to introduce a very liberal friend to SF this would not be a good first choice.
- Stranger in a Strange Land (1962 Hugo Award) is the Heinlein book guaranteed to annoy the hell out of your very conservative friend. It is also more literary than Heinlein's other works. It would be a hard first SF read, but might be a good choice for someone with literary pretensions.
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1967 Hugo Award) is a good read and introduces many of Heinlein's philosophical views in a less 'in your face' kind of way.
Iain M. Banks is one of my favorite SF authors. The fact that he is also a very successful non-genre novelist might help sell a reluctant friend on trying a taste of SF. The player of Games, consider Phlebas and Use of Weapons are all stunning novels, but as mention above, The player of Games is probably the best choice for a SF neophyte.
For my money Ender's Game is the best all-round choice as an introduction to SF. A previous post describes it as facile. I would say that it is a a great story told in a very straight forward style.
The author, Orson Scott Card, is a somewhat savage critic of dense, impenetrable writing and literary pretentiousness . Ender's Game definitely stays true to Card's writing philosophy.
If your friend is attracted to the kind of novels that find favor with English professors (or is simply a wanker), you might suggest 'The man in the High Castle' by Philip K Dick. You could spend decades discussing this novel without reaching a conclusion as to what it is actually about.
The genera is too broad and people's tastes too varied to suggest a generic 'starter novel'. When it comes to taste in literature, people's individuality utterly overwhelms there membership in any particular group. Some of the above recommendations for 'starter novel', including your own recommendation of William Gibson, makes that abundently clear.
Stay away from any of the following as starter novels: any Gibson, any Heinlein (or imitators), any Neil Stephenson, any Arthur C. Clarke, any Asimov, 'The Mote in God's Eye', 'The Dresden Files' (not even SF for crying out loud, morally repugnant to some, blatantly chauvinist to others, not a superior example of writing or theme), militant SF ('Forever War', 'Downbelow Station', any cyberpunk or derivative genera, any post-cyberpunk (sorry Stross), 'Tactics of Mistake', etc.), any hard sci-fi (sorry Benford), most New Wave, any New Wierd, and that goes double for Philip K Dick or any other artist straddling those genera or defying easy categorization.
For women looking for starter reading in Sci-Fi, I'd go with Conni Willis's 'The Doomsday Book' and 'To Say Nothing of the Dog', Bujold's Vorkosigan series, Niffenegger's 'The Time Traveller's Wife', Ursula K Leguin's 'The Left Hand of Darkness', and David Brin's 'Glory Season'.
For men looking for starter reading in Sci-Fi, the first thing you have to consider is that they probably aren't traditional geeks and so adjust your recommendations accordingly. I'd go with Frank Herbert's 'Dune', Orson Scott Card's 'Ender's Game', Ian M. Banks 'The Use of Weapons (not my favorite Banks, but the favorite of most people who like Banks), and Silverburg's 'Lord Valentine's Castle (again, not my favorite Silverburg, but the favorite of most people who like Silverburg).
I'd say that statistically speaking, regardless of gender, the single best recommendation for a starter novel you can make is Orson Scott Card's 'Ender's Game'.
My wife really likes the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. But she particularly liked his "Path of the Fury."
She also really liked John Ringo's Prince Roger series ("March Upcountry", etc.) She also liked his Posleen series.
Wow... quite a recommendation there... Men or Women.
Well, your starter novels leave much to be desired by both sexes, but your enthusiasm in your recommendations are reasonable...
The more I see people generalize about women, the more I think of the numerous women I know who simply don't fit into stereotypes, find them puzzling, amusing or offensive.
As for the best introductory SF - well, I'd start by specifying that you really do mean SF, not swords and sorcery fantasy, which is quite a different beast.
For the assumed generic female novice:
CJ Cherryh
CS Friedman
Andre Norton
Frank Herbert - the first three Dune books. The last three are generally quite poor.
Kage Baker
Ian Irvine - neglected in the US, but one of the best in the last 25 years, with a really nice Darwinian view of the universe.
I'd actually start with Ian Irvine, who has the richest worlds, and some very well-drawn and strong female characters.
xxyyxxyx,
Great unknown yourself...
Yes, I would actually like to see a study of women that like/dislike the science fiction category. Lacking this study, what would you presume?
Actually, I would love to hear from those here that think that it makes no difference regarding the SF subject - Men/Women are equal with SF literature, movies, etc. I can understand that my generation is "out of date", but can you make the case that it is different today?
The distinctive thing about sci-fi as a genre is that the the main characters are not people at all, the central characters are IDEAS. The people that sci-fi authors include are simply props to help the ideas come to life. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that a sci-fi novel with fully developed human characters is not truly sci-fi at all.
I notice that much of the "sci-fi" being recommended for women is actually fantasy or even swords-and-sorcery. That's a genre more amenable to women I think.
Best sci-fi I ever read was Vinge, "A Fire Upon The Deep". The human (and alien )characters were nothing you could connect with, but there were enough incredible ideas for three novels.
Surely short stories are a better bet? Three somewhat different ones, from differnt eras...
"View from a height", Joan D. Vinge
"A thing of beauty", Norman Spinrad
"Mitochondrial Eve", Greg Egan
I confess to only scanning this thread but I noticed only one reference to one of the most prolific and imaginative sf legends--Robert Silverberg. LORD VALENTINE'S CASTLE is a superb entry point for anyone, or his ss "Nightwings." I saw no mention of Harlan Ellison--"'Repent, Harlequin," Said the Tick Tock Man" is irresistable. Van Vogt's SLAN or VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE. Personally, every summer, I relax into Heinlein: DOUBLE STAR, the overlooked CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY, the almost unknown THE UNPLEASANT PROFESSION OF JONATHAN HOAG, TUNNEL IN THE SKY, the surprisingly good HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL, THE PUPPET MASTERS, STARSHIP TROOPERS, all provoke the imagination and are narratives in which STUFF HAPPENS. There is movement, not ponderous dwelling on relationships while the crab monsters are materializing.
I'll second James Tiptree, Jr.'s Brightness Falls from the Air -- a tremendous achievement.
Slow River by Nicola Griffith hardly feels like sf at all -- it slips the near-future society in under your nose.
Ursula Le Guin's Eye of the Heron or (even better) The Lathe of Heaven are good introductions to her work.
I'll also second the nomination for City by Clifford Simak.
Despite the comments above, I have the good fortune to know several women who would not be out of place in Heinlein books. Those of you who think his female characters unrealistic haven't met the right women. (I wouldn't be surprised if our own gracious hostess was another such.)
Many of Michael Crichton's books are excellent threshold books that fool the reader into thinking they're not reading sf.
I've given Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang to several friends of mine (mostly female) who uniformly adored it. A pity she doesn't write sf novels anymore.
Someone above mentioned Zenna Henderson; I'll second that, especially her books about The People.
Stay away from Storm Constantine -- much as I like the first few books in the series, they're odd birds.
I'll second Connie Willis as well.
And finally, a vote for Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre.
Okay, I'll go be quiet now.
Deagle,when you ask about studies of women who dislike SF, I can't call one to mind, and I imagine that most if not all of the evidence is anecdotal. I know plenty of women who enjoy SF, and the connecting link seems to be an interest in the sciences/technology, although I am sure this is a result of my limited data rather than a universally valid connection. There is a younger subset of anime geeks, who often combine computer sciences or math with SF.
XXyy...,
Yes, I suspect you may be right about the younger set at least... I actually doubt that the SF crowd is really 50-50 gender wise or even close.. I'm sure that there is a study somewhere though (and of course I would doubt their accuracy anyway). Too much politics come into play these days...
If I were trying to ease a stereotyped romance-reading girly female into sci-fi, I'd probably start her on one of Patricia Kennealy's Keltiad books (if she's of the everyone-must-be-beautiful subspecies) or Bujold's Vorkosigan books (if not).
About the only other one I can think of that hasn't been mentioned is Julian May's Metapsychic Rebellion series. And Lyda Morehouse's Angel books ... maybe.
"Since it (intelligence) correlates with lower levels of testosterone."
I don't know about that, but I can kind of see many women avoiding men smarter than them. A woman is likely going to be the physically weaker one in a relationship so to be the intellectually weaker one as well might put her at too great a disadvantage. Plus some smart guys I know actually treated their women pretty badly and badly in ways that were not fun or exciting. (As in the smart guy doesn't like to go out and the guy publicly humiliate his girlfriend or spouse when they do go out)
I read Kage Baker's very first story when it was in Asimov's. In my experiences with her on SF forums, and e-mail, she's quite pleasant. She was on the Food Network once on some show about Victorian Christmas desserts or something.
Okay, everyone's gone home or is asleep...
The very first SF novels I ever read (at 8 y/o) were Heinlein's Time for the Stars, Tunnel in the Sky and Citizen of the Galaxy, and Andre Norton's The Time Traders. I was hooked.
The BEST SF novels that I would recommend to rookies are Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough for Love, Herbert's Dune, Isaac Assimov's Foundation Trilogy and I, Robot...I find that a lot of the SF I like tend to be the classics, or the older novels. I love Niven & Pournelle, particularly Niven's Lucifer's Hammer. I also enjoy all of the Fuzzy novels, in particular Ardath Mayar's Golden Dream.
There are numerous other novels and authors - what I usually do is find an author I like, then read everything I can find that they've written.
I also tend towards speculative fiction, rather than just science fiction. Personally, I enjoy multi-viewpoint novels more than singular viewpoint. I also enjoy action more than internal musings. I get bored by characters who angst over every decision they need to make. I realize that some people think that women LIKE all that angst going on. I'm not one of them.
What can I say? I like to be entertained.
Favorite authors:
Heinlein
Asimov
George R. R. Martin
Andre Norton
Melanie Rawn
Kate Elliot
C. S. Friedman
Sarah Douglas
Roger Zelazny
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Anne McCaffery
Lois McMaster Bujold
Michelle West
Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle
David Eddings
...and numerous others.
Basically, every person is different in their likes and dislikes. You can make generalities based on gender - but that doesn't always follow through. If you are trying to "lure" someone to the "dark side" of speculative fiction the best thing to do is to take into account the types of literature they already enjoy and direct them towards a novel that is comparable.
Well done Megan. You got 150 plus comments and who knows how many hits with this. I checked the links and "the feminists" didn't seem to be "mad". Hi5.
Probably too late to do any influencing to the thread but...
This pains me to say, but I would advise against starting off with the Acknowledged Grand Masters Emeritus of Science Fiction (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein) as they are generally too deep for the introduction to the genre. And yes, Herbert should also be excluded for the exact same reason. Leave them until after they are hooked in and can't walk out the door without a novel in their bag and THEN hit them with the classics.
Much like cyberpunk should be excluded for being an extraordinarily violent genre. While girls may like seeing Molly work her blades in Gibson's first trilogy, to simply force someone to leap into the heavy blood and gore that the vast majority of CP authors rely on would be a serious error. The sole exception to this would be Pat Cadigan's "Synners". I'd rate it a high read for anyone that can get their hands on a copy. (Speaking of which, for those who enjoy cyberpunk, if you haven't tried Jeffery Somers' "The Electric Church" and "The Digital Plague" yet, you really should. Also add to the list Richard Morgan's "Thirteen". They're all that damn good.)
A specific author to steer clear of is Laurell K. Hamilton. Her initial books are wonderful noir-style preturnatural detective work, but the later books devolve into heavily descriptive sex scenes with the barest thread of plotline holding them together. Unfortunately, they've become bodice rippers with vampires and it's ruined a very good series concept.
Now, for my starting lineup, I would say:
John Scalsi, "Old Man's War", is something that should not be missed. Period.
David Weber, "In Fury Born", was originally released as "Path of the Fury" and now expanded with a long and very accomplished prequel. Simply extraordinary.
Frank Beddor, "The Looking Glass War", is a very well done adaptation of the Alice In Wonderland story aimed at the Young Adult market.
Staying in the YA-specific market, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga is another must-read. Trust me on this. Or trust the legions of teenage girls that go bonkers over this series.
The above-mentioned Mars books (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson are exquisitely detailed. For near-future SF, they are near the top of any list you would care to make.
And finally comes a hard SF series, the Uplift saga by David Brin. He escapes the common trap of being heavily detailed with the scientific descriptions while giving just enough basic information of his creation so that it can be easily grasped.
Mercy... You must have them coming out of the woodwork after you...heh! You sound like a SF lovers dream.
My bet is that you are the unusual one and you have to fight them off...heh.
Dream Park by Larry Niven
Its a murder mystery/adventure set in an amusement park in the near future.
Start with E.E.'Doc' Smith. Dated, sexist ( unless you look close and then SO NOT! ) written in the 20's and... this is the birthplace of it all. Every theme that anyone ever will write he did first.
What an interesting thread. Over the years I have tried, and failed, to get the various women I have loved to read all manner of science fiction. Gibson or Heinlein, Clarke or Asimov, Dune, Riverworld, Ringworld...Hell, I'd have settled for the Hobbit.
Now I am re-reading a lot of it with my young boys as they are growing up and I am beginning to see the female point. A good deal of what is recognized as top drawer science fiction is not terribly well written and lacks three dimensional characters. The idea of giving characters actual motives rather than plot points is pretty rare. One of the reasons Heinlein's juveniles work so well is that we don't expect them to have characters with any but the most superficial inner lives and they don't.
I don't think women are put off by the details of the science - after all there is an entire sub-genre of chick lit which is devoted to shopping - rather they are not particularly impressed with the idea of technical ingenuity as a high value good.
I am interested that no one has mentioned Philip Pulman's The Golden Compass series. Here are books which bridge the gap between science fiction and fantasy and do, in fact, have well drawn characters. While they have been marketed as tween/teen interest, they can hold adult - male or female interest.
Finally, as I sit in front of my screen, if you want to read a 99 year old piece of brilliant science fiction here is a link to E.M. Forster's, The Machine Stops.
http://emforster.de/hypertext/template.php3?t=tms
Starter Scifi for women eh? I think most of the classic Scifi wouldn't work. Start her on a good contemporary writers more approachable books. Something like Charles Stross's The Merchant Princes or John Scalzi's Zoe's Tale(soon to be published). That way if she likes the author she will read deeper into his/her more complex works.
you're reaching for stars with this approach. I say toss the novices to China Mieville and maybe they'll be impressed with his head-shot.
I always think of Isaac Asimov as the Godfather of SF. Simple, futuristic fables in a way.
Also, I enjoyed Kurt Vonnegut's, The Sirens of Titan. I would suggest it for a someone who doesn't know much about SF, like myself.
For short stories, how about starting women on Harlan Ellison's A Boy And His Dog?
Snicker. :)
Left Hand of Darkness is Sci-Fi; Earthsea is, emphatically, not. It's fantasy.
I'm not sure that "being girly" is the only factor. I have quite a few female colleagues who do not have stereotypically girly tastes in literature or movies (they hate chick flicks). But they're amazingly resistant to Sci-Fi. I did get them hooked on watching BSG, but only after we watched a few episodes.
Charles Stross's books "Singularity Sky" and "Iron Sunrise" both have a female super-spy character, Rachel Mansour, and "Iron Sunrise" has a teenage girl as one of the lead characters.
LORD VALENTINE'S CASTLE is a superb entry point for anyone, or his ss "Nightwings."
Silverberg is great, but he's not a sci-fi writer. Unless the science in question is psychology.
So I open the comments to my readers: what are good "starter SF" novels for people who think they don't like SF? (Male, female, or both). I hereby unnominate the entire oeuvre of William Gibson, but nearly anything else is fair game.
My brother seriously likes Iain Banks at the moment, Player of Games he suggests as a good starting point for his Culture series. Personally, I liked Douglas Adams' HHGG series but I know that's an acquired taste... easy SF for introductory purposes would be Titan by John Varley, if you want classic SF anything by Asimov, Bradbury and Clarke (ABC). If you wanna impress with edgier stuff I suggest Ursula Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven or Left Hand of Darkness.
And Megan, regarding that need to write bad scifi: join the club. You should consider trying the 3-Day Novel Contest this Labor Day weekend, or the NaNoWriMo in November.
"Iron Sunrise" has a teenage girl as one of the lead characters
Put me down as one who HATES sci-fi with teenage girls as one of the lead characters. Talk about pandering to your (mentally teenage) male audience. Snowcrash was especially grating in that respect. And given that the "teenage girls" in question are usually male fantasies and bear zero resemblance to any actual teenage girl who has ever lived, I doubt that female readers will identify with them.
Walter Miller's philosophical novel "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is categorized as SF. A very dark and yet funny book.
I am a huge fan of Mercedes Lackey. A little on the fantasy side of SF but easy to read. Also Piers Anthony, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Jacqueline Carey; all easy to read and all are have a main character that is female.
I would say the answer is certainly the NFL fans, even though there are four times as many SF fans. It's highly likely that many of the SF fans are "40-year-old virgin" types with NO sexual experience.
This is such a ridiculous, out-dated stereotype. It may have once been true to some degree, but it's simply no longer the case. In fact, in your hypothetical 25 NFL fans, you're likely to find quite a number of SF fans as well.
What's this about NFL fans and SF fans?
Go Bucs!
Yay X-Philes!
And that's 38-year-old virgin, thankyouverymuch.
I can't believe more people are not recommending the woman SF writer, Octavia Butler. She is great and as a grand vision like Asimov does.
How about the Chanur series by Cherry? Alien spacefaring culture, mostly female, not too heavily science-oriented but increadible tension-building scenes. It is on my "Desert Island" list...
I'll add Sharon Lee's and Steve Miller's Liaden Series for anyone who wants to stress the 'outer space'.
And I'm doing my best to not start arguing about what is or is not SF. That argument will continue forever.
Wow, with all the comments I might not get read. But my recommendation? I'm not female, but I think that out of Orson Scott Card's work, the Earth-something series would be best for women because of its many soap-opera-ish qualities: the complex interpersonal dynamics, the role of women in the men competing for rank, the adaptation of women to a new environment they don't normally live in, ... basically, a lot of involvement of issues relevant to women.
The books are:
The Memory of Earth
The Call of Earth
The Ships of Earth
Earthbound
Earthfall
Warning: a lot of it is lifted straight from the Mormon Bible.
I'd like someone else's opinion on this. I remember my female friends really devouring these books.
Btw, what makes Ender's Game uniquely good for women? It's basically a bunch of stuff relevant to men, and there's no romance really.
Enchanted by Orson Scott Card. Enough of a romance to be an easy entrance. Good mix of scifi/fantasy.
Ender's Game is better, maybe, but perhaps not for the uninitiated.
My wife, who never reads science fiction, picked up Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (I think the subtitle is important) after listening to me rave about it, and she liked it. The depiction of a child in distress, among other things, worked for her.
Almost anything by Julian May.(female author)
The Many Colored Land series is one of my very favorites. Not hard science fiction but more fantasy It has adventure, romance, time paradox, colorful descriptions of clothing, food and places, super mental powers, elements of mythology.
David Brin: The Uplift series. Funny with a bit of hard science but also a lot of personal interactions and political intrigue between "uplifted" chimpanzees, dolphins, space aliens.....also romance.
You have plenty of good suggestions, so I'll just suggest avoiding Dune for an intro to SF, especially for a younger reader. Good story, but the pace is awfully slow and the amount of detail could be a bit much. If your reader's not looking for something that immersive the last thing you want is to give them the impression that SF is boring. I really like SF and Dune bored me so much I'll never touch a sequel.
Gah! I just realized I typed "prologue" instead of "epilogue" in my last comment. (With respect to The Speed of Dark.)
Greg Bear has been mentioned.
While a lot of his writing is utter dreck, his Darwin's Radio would be an excellent introduction for this purpose. (The sequel is worth avoiding, though.)
I cannot believe Heinlein's Number of the Beast was recommended for this purpose with a straight face.
If a trial was being conducted accusing Heinlein's depictions of women of being nothing more than adolescent male fantasies, this book would be exhibit #1.
I've got a long list. Here's what comes to mind right off.
Give her the Daniel Keyes short story Flowers for Algernon. Have tissues handy.
If she's young, try RAH's juveniles. I'm trying to time introducing my daughter to them. I want her old enough to understand them and young enough to identify with the mostly male viewpoint characters. Tunnel in the Sky would be good.
I second the motion on the Chanur series. Any of C. J. Cherryh's SF, other than Hunter of Worlds. I think that book was either a literary exercise way over my head, or just something she had to get out of her system. Also try Merchanter's Luck. Save Cyteen for when she's really hooked.
Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. I would also recommend The Dispossessed as a stealth anti-collectivist dystopia that even got past the author.
Try Roger Zelazny's Doorways in the Sand.
Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel is a classic.
I think Rudyard Kipling makes a good gateway drug to SF. The Man Who Would be King is my all time favorite story, though it's hard to read more than once because of the sense of impending doom. On the other hand, I re-read Kim every few years. On the gripping hand, if she's too PC to read Kipling because of his reputation, perhaps you need to rethink your relationship.
I hereby unnominate the entire oeuvre of William Gibson, but nearly anything else is fair game.
Actually, I've been successful recommending Pattern Recognition to a few non-SF fans. The tone of the book is almost sweet most of the time and it's not nearly as confusing or edgy as all of his other work. In particular I've gotten positive responses from women. I think the heroine is appealing in a way that, honestly, few of his other characters are. I'm not sure it (or anything else really) qualifies as a good "generic" starting point though but it definitely has appeal outside the genre and is a defensible choice IMO.
Anything by Ayn Rand. Her master race SF porn is the best.
thanks for all the recommendations... however, while I agree that "Doc" Smith did the first treatment of a lot of SF themes, he did not do the first treatment of "billiant scientist's masterwork turns out to be a monster" and then I realized that after 173 comments about women and SF no-one has mentioned Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Wow. What an omission.
So here's my choice for starter SF for women: the book that is arguably the first work in the genre, written by a woman and for women readers.
I just caught myself starting to re-read The Man Who Would be King again. I have to be more careful.
I think it's a little insulting to ask what is good starter SF for women because it assumes all women like to read the same thing.
Someone who likes Carl Hiaasen might like Android's Dream by John Scalzi, but hate something more traditionally female like Jovah's Angle by Sharon Shinn. A woman with a strong interest in environmental ethics might enjoy Karen Traviss's City of Pearl or David Brin's Uplift War but not either of the books mentioned above.
It also seems many of the recommendations here have their SF reading stopped sometime in the late 70' or early 80's. Since the mid 80's at least there has been a nice size sub market of SF written by and for female SF readers. Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books, and Anne McCaffery's Pern books come to mind as early examples.
If you do even a little bit or research you can find loads of books, from almost all of SF's sub genres, that women willing to try something in a genre they have not read before would enjoy.
Bellwether - Connie Willis
Say Nothing to the Dog - Connie Willis
Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
Dust - Elizabeth Bear
Ship Who Sang - Anne McCaffery
Dragonsong - Anne McCaffery
Merchanter's Luck - C J Cherry
Archangel Protocol - Lyda Morehouse
A Thousand Words for Stranger - Julie Czerneda
Contact - Susan Grant
Finders Keepers Linnea Sinclair
The last two are SF/Romance that works in both genres. SFR and Paranormal Romances are selling like gang busters. Many are just standard heaving buxom stuff re-worked, but some most of by Sinclair's books are fun as SF.
His Majesty's Dragon Naomi Novik
This is Fantasy not SF, but it would be a good "gateway" book for someone who likes history. It's the Napoleonic Wars with dragons. Think Anne McCaffery and Patrick O'Brian's love child.
On last thing about Heinlein. I'm a woman who has been reading SF since I was ten. 99% of what I read is SF, and I've read my share of "Classic", "Golden Age" as well as contemporary writers. I gotta go with the don't give Heinlein to a female first time SF reader. His women are wretched cardboard cutouts. I know Heinlein was married, and I've heard he based all his later female characters on his wife, but they all seem to me to be the sort of dream woman a guy who had never really met a woman would think up alone in his parent's basement reading comic books while living on Cheeto's, Oreos and Mt. Dew.
Deagle:
What exactly are those 12-inch "action figures" with removable clothes and brushable hair? Those are dolls. ;) They had Amidala dolls for the PT, as well as 12-inch female Jedi "action figures" (dolls.) Not to mention the adorable Leia and Padmé doll sets they're selling at Disney right now.
SF may not have been doll-friendly in the past, but it's certainly evolving. And thank goodness--if I had a daughter, I'd be buying her action figures by the tons instead of those awful Bratz dolls...
Second The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. This is one of the very few Sci-Fi novels that explicitely target women rather than men. The first half of the book is any girl's dream fulfilment fantasy, and the second half is a major tear-fest.
The book is very well written, too. This something I noticed: women sci-fi writers write better than men, on average.
I need to disagree with whoever recommended Dune and/or anything by Isaac Asimov. Dune is VERY scifi and takes a little time to get into, and Asimov has a very idea-oriented writing style (I found when I read the Foundation series that it irritated me - just as I began to care about a particular person, it would jump hundreds of years into the future and never look back on them at all). I wouldn't use either as the book or books to get a woman who is not interested in scifi to read scifi.
Here would be my recommendations for women:
-Enchantment by Orson Scott Card - it's light on the scifi elements and heavy on the fairy tale and human interaction ones. (Ender's Game might be a good follow up.)
-Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler - the main character is a strong female who goes on to start her own religion in a post-apocalyptic world... the sequel to this (Parable of the Talents) is also good.
-Kindred by Octavia Butler - again, a strong female main character who lives in the modern world but randomly gets transported to the past every so often and has to deal with issues of racism and sexism.
I'm not sure what to recommend for men but Ender's Game seems to be pretty universally liked, and OSC is one of my all time favorite authors.
Also, Dean Koontz and Stephen King often have some scifi-ish themes and are worth checking out if you're hesitant about diving into idea-driven scifi territory.
I wouldn't give a SF newbie the Foundation books but someone who liked to read mysteries, esp mysteries in unusaly settings or time periods would enjoy Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel, or the Naked Sun, esp if they were warned to read them as late 50's early 50's period piece sort of books. What drives both those plots is the mystery of how the bad-guy got around the three, robot ethical laws, not the robotics nuts and bolts.,
"Or we can try to convince them that they are making a tragic mistake, because what they are looking for in a romance novel or a good mystery can also be found in the SF section."
And thats the real rub for feminists. The romance, wherever written, usually involves men, the most hated of all objects.
John Varley: any, but start with Steel Beach.
Neal Stephenson: Zodiac for true newbies, and Snow Crash, a mind-blower and a paradigm shift comparable to:
William Gibson: Burning Chrome (short stories, including Johnny Mnemonic) and the Sprawl novels. It's cool to disparage Gibson now, but he changed the genre.
Anne McCaffery: the Pern books before they became a franchise.
Julian May's excellent Galactic Milieu novels only, her other stuff leaves me cold.
Bruce Sterling: any
Poul Anderson: Ensign Flandry series.
Gordon Dickson: the Dorsai series for the military fans.
Frederick Pohl: I'm rereading Gateway right now.
Norman Spinrad: ALMOST any, but Little Heroes rocked, and Russian Spring and Other Americas (short stories) were nearly as good.
Larry Niven: Dream Park series and Ringworld series, as well as the short story collections.
Joe Haldeman: Forever War and (especially) the Worlds collections.
Spider Robinson-all the Callahan stories and their many offshoots.
All the Asimov recommendations crack me up; Susan Calvin was indistinguishable from all the other robots!
You liked Crytonomicon but could't get through 100 pages of Quicksilver?! I sentence you to 5 years reading nothing but Jackie Collins.
Finally, I can't understand the disparaging of Heinlein. He's the reason a lot of us started reading SF, and even if the post-Stranger stuff is less than what was expected, they were still better reads and more entertaining than half the crap on the shelves now. And from all reports, his wife Ginny WAS the super woman that appeared in a lot of his stories.
"All the Asimov recommendations crack me up"
In my case I didn't recommend him in general. I just know that my sister liked the Robot mystery novels and that Mystery readers are largely women.
To be honest I'm tempted to repeat the tired old saw that women are fairly individualistic so you should really know what the woman likes in the first place before recommending any SF. There probably are women who'd love the Foundation trilogy and Virginia Woolf reportedly liked Olaf Stapledon who is not a great prose writer and does virtually no characterization.
If we are to generalize the things women are most likely to read (going by a Harris Poll) are
Mystery, Thriller and Crime - 57% read at least one in the given year.
Romance - 38%
Religious and Spirituality - 32%
Biographies - 31%
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=891
So I think recommending something that mixes mystery with SF was perfectly sensible. On reflection things like "A Canticle for Leibowitz", although being set in a monastery it has few women, also makes sense.
If by "us" you mean men who read SF than I think your are right. If my "us" you mean women SF fans then I think you are way off the mark.
No insult to Ginney Heinlein, by even when I started reading SF as a pre-team I thought there was something forced and artificial about Heinlein's female characters, and now at almost 50 I feel the same way, but I still have some trouble putting my finger on just what the problem is.
I think the biggest thing is that they are women the way men want women to be, not women the way they are. In all honesty they are women the way men who like and value women not men who hate or oppress them, what women to be, but they are still women defined by the men around them and how they fit into those men's plans, not by their own plans, goals and thoughts.
When I went back an re-read some Heinlein I had first read as a teen, Moon is a Harsh Mistress for example, it seemed to me that even when the female characters did the same thing I might have done in any given situation they did it for reasons that just didn't add up to me. Usually they were thinking about what the male characters would think of their action, and that's what why they act, not just because something needs to be done. They solve a problems and save the day to impress the menaround them, or because that is what the me aournd them expect them to do, not because saving the universe is a goal they would pursue on their own.
I started reading SF almost 50 yrs ago with Asimov's now horribly outdated Lucky Starr series. I then started looking for more SF, I even dug into my grandmothers' storage for my dads' collection of 1940's and 50's SF mags(any one for a safari across Venus in a girdle?)
I have read most of the genre's from S&S to milfic to hard science. What drives me is the character and the society. I love David Weber, I can barely follow the science, but then I don't try to do so, the story is so much more fun. I'll even admit to reading what some of you call drek, give me a good story and I won't be too picky about the writing.
Oh, by the way, I'm an almost 60 y.o. woman and, except for my dad, none of the men in my life have *ever* read SF and that includes my science geek husband, or famous name NFL star cousin.
Since the mid 80's at least there has been a nice size sub market of SF written by and for female SF readers. Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books, and Anne McCaffery's Pern books come to mind as early examples.
Those are fantasy rather than sci-fi.
This something I noticed: women sci-fi writers write better than men, on average.
I'm having a hard time thinking of any women sci-fi writers. There is more required to be sci-fi than being set (allegedly) in the future. Maybe we ought to try to decribe what the genre is/is not before recommending any books.
"Star Wars" was not really sci-fi - it's a timeless morality tale of good vs evil, complete with brave knights rescuing the princess from an evil emperor. The ray guns and spaceships are merely eye candy. The same story could easily be set in classical Rome, medieval England, or the American Wild West.
"The Left Hand Of Darkness" is not really sci-fi, it's an exploration of a popular theme of sixties feminism (the notion that gender is a social construct) set in an imaginary world.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" is pure sci-fi. It explores several scientific themes, from evolution to the development of artificial intelligence to space travel via what seems to be a worm-hole.
One of the very best is an early Piers Anthony book, "Sos the Rope". My wife...actually my whole family, loves that book. It is a fantastic first book of a trilogy which, like most trilogies, get's somewhat weaker as it goes on. But "Sos the Rope" is an outstanding work.
If done well, it could make an awesome movie.
Nancy Kress's trilogy Beggars in Spain, Beggars Choice, and Beggar's and Choosers have very strong and interesting female protagonists, and Spider Robinson's Stardance trilogy also has incredibly great female characters.
Someone needs to mention Charles Sheffield as well. He really makes aliens come alive, and would be a great starter collection.
This vilification of Heinlein is getting way out of hand. Citizen of the Galaxy and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are truly some of the best unknown works ever written. Heinlein's style is distinct, in that he writes almost exclusively in the first person, which makes it hard for the reader to get inside the heads of some of his characters.
Nancy Kress's trilogy Beggars in Spain, Beggars Choice, and Beggar's and Choosers have very strong and interesting female protagonists, and Spider Robinson's Stardance trilogy also has incredibly great female characters.
Someone needs to mention Charles Sheffield as well. He really makes aliens come alive, and would be a great starter collection.
This vilification of Heinlein is getting way out of hand. Citizen of the Galaxy and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are truly some of the best unknown works ever written. Heinlein's style is distinct, in that he writes almost exclusively in the first person, which makes it hard for the reader to get inside the heads of some of his characters.
Both Bradley and Margery's writing have hand waving SF under pinnings as good as half the SF men were writing at the same time, Like Farmer's to your scattered Bodies Go, or even Hubert's Dune, which is really historical political fiction with some ecological science, late 60's drug propaganda and space ships tossed in for trimming.
You seem to be using a very narrow and dated set of criteria for what makes SF. If you used the definition you applied criteria you applied to Star Wars to most Heinlein's juveniles, and many the early books in Asimov Robot series they wouldn't be SF either, since the Heinlein are basically coming-of-age-in-an-environment-of-hardship stories and the Asimov books are who-done-it mysteries if you look at what is really the conflict driving the plot.
I believe Connie Willis has won more Hugos than any other living writer. I have not done a tally for a while, so that may not be true these days, but it still is an indication that people who buy the rather expensive membership to WorldCon, the World Science Fiction Convention, think she writes SF.
Two of her most popular books deal with time travel, which might be improbable, but most people would put solidly inside the SF field. Andre Norton wrote juvie SF, Zero Stone, Time Traders, Star Born, that were at least as good as Heinlein. I think you would be hard put to say that CJ Cherryh's space operas are not SF, or most of Nancy Kress's novels.
Both Bradley and Margery's writing have hand waving SF under pinnings as good as half the SF men were writing at the same time, Like Farmer's to your scattered Bodies Go, or even Hubert's Dune, which is really historical political fiction with some ecological science, late 60's drug propaganda and space ships tossed in for trimming.
You seem to be using a very narrow and dated set of criteria for what makes SF. If you used the definition you applied criteria you applied to Star Wars to most Heinlein's juveniles, and many the early books in Asimov Robot series they wouldn't be SF either, since the Heinlein are basically coming-of-age-in-an-environment-of-hardship stories and the Asimov books are who-done-it mysteries if you look at what is really the conflict driving the plot.
I believe Connie Willis has won more Hugos than any other living writer. I have not done a tally for a while, so that may not be true these days, but it still is an indication that people who buy the rather expensive membership to WorldCon, the World Science Fiction Convention, think she writes SF.
Two of her most popular books deal with time travel, which might be improbable, but most people would put solidly inside the SF field. Andre Norton wrote juvie SF, Zero Stone, Time Traders, Star Born, that were at least as good as Heinlein. I think you would be hard put to say that CJ Cherryh's space operas are not SF, or most of Nancy Kress's novels.
Both Bradley and Margery's writing have hand waving SF under pinnings as good as half the SF men were writing at the same time, Like Farmer's to your scattered Bodies Go, or even Hubert's Dune, which is really historical political fiction with some ecological science, late 60's drug propaganda and space ships tossed in for trimming.
You seem to be using a very narrow and dated set of criteria for what makes SF. If you used the definition you applied criteria you applied to Star Wars to most Heinlein's juveniles, and many the early books in Asimov Robot series they wouldn't be SF either, since the Heinlein are basically coming-of-age-in-an-environment-of-hardship stories and the Asimov books are who-done-it mysteries if you look at what is really the conflict driving the plot.
I believe Connie Willis has won more Hugos than any other living writer. I have not done a tally for a while, so that may not be true these days, but it still is an indication that people who buy the rather expensive membership to WorldCon, the World Science Fiction Convention, think she writes SF.
Two of her most popular books deal with time travel, which might be improbable, but most people would put solidly inside the SF field. Andre Norton wrote juvie SF, Zero Stone, Time Traders, Star Born, that were at least as good as Heinlein. I think you would be hard put to say that CJ Cherryh's space operas are not SF, or most of Nancy Kress's novels.
More empirical (or rather anecdotal) about what women like in scifi:
Enders Game (most overrated book ever although most beloved by women. I can't get on a plane and not meet some kid who claims it is her favorite book)
The Fifth Element (most underrated movie ever)
BSG v2 (excellent)
Farscape (although this comes from a Ren Faire chick so that might not count. Also excellent but you need to like the muppets)
Well done Megan. 200 comments. I still am at a loss to see what "the feminists" are "angry" about (although I can see some fuel in the comments that talk about "starter books" for women.)
The biggest problem with Heinlein, before or after Stranger, is that the major action occurs between the viewpoint character's ears. If you like it, it's hard to describe to a third party. That also means there isn't any way to film it. That's why the film "Starship Troopers" was so very bad.
>Tiptree is not for kids
She was probably the second female SF writer (after McCaffrey, before Gunn, maybe the same time as Le Guin) I read. I think anyone past 12 years of age can handle Tiptree.
>Silverberg is great, but he's not a sci-fi writer.
Funny; that's where the bookstores put him.
>what are good "starter SF" novels for people who think they don't like SF?
I think any of the first seven Dragonriders of Pern books by Anne McCaffrey are good starter SF novels. (After #7 it just seems like the rest are padding). I would also recommend any Octavia E. Butler, David Brin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Norman Spinrad, Bruce Serling, or Jonatham Lethem.
As for a good starter SF short story collections, Tiptree's collections, both Dangerous Vision collections, and the Essential Ellison.
If I ever run into a woman who enjoys Barry N. Malzberg, I would just melt.
>Silverberg is great, but he's not a sci-fi writer.
"Funny; that's where the bookstores put him."
Well, there you go! I'm convinced!
"I'm having a hard time thinking of any women sci-fi writers. There is more required to be sci-fi than being set (allegedly) in the future. Maybe we ought to try to decribe what the genre is/is not before recommending any books." JohnO
TR: To me it's stories where scientific or technological advances effect individuals or society.
"Left Hand of Darkness" is science fiction because the characters wouldn't exist if it weren't for advances in genetic engineering and communication technology. "Star Wars" is basically a fantasy in that the characters/world could exist, almost entirely unchanged, in some magical faerieland.
Still if you want more clearcut examples than Le Guin's...
Katherine MacLean - Psychology/Sociology, but she treats it pretty much as a science. My Dad has a collection by her and he has almost nothing by women. Many of her early stories almost entirely revolve around some new technology or sociological method effecting people's lives.
Elizabeth Moon - She has a bachelor's in Biology. (Her first degree was in History) "The Speed of Dark" concerns a futuristic treatment for Autism and an autistic computer programmer.
Joan Slonczewski - She has a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from Yale and also did post-doctoral work. She was awarded Howard Hughes Medical Institute funding for undergraduate biological sciences education. She has written six, often feminist, science fiction novels. At least some of the time they do make use of biophysics. Her best known book might be "A Door into Ocean."
James Tiptree, Jr. - Research psychologist who had a published paper on the response of rats to new stimuli. Not all, but a fair amount of her stories concern a scientific advance or discovery effecting people.
Nancy Kress doesn't have a science education, AFAIK, but was married to scientist/SF writer Charles Sheffield. "Beggars in Spain" and "Nothing Human" are science fiction by any reasonable definition. In both the characters are effected directly by genetic engineering and technological change.
If you used the definition you applied criteria you applied to Star Wars to most Heinlein's juveniles, and many the early books in Asimov Robot series they wouldn't be SF either, since the Heinlein are basically coming-of-age-in-an-environment-of-hardship stories and the Asimov books are who-done-it mysteries if you look at what is really the conflict driving the plot.
Nonsense. Heinlein and Asimov wrote hard sci-fi, at least in their early years. Their later stuff was dreck. No, Asimov's robot books are not "who-done-its". They are an early effort to come to grips with AI. In some cases Asimov used the plot device of a mystery to to help explore that concept, but that's peripheral to the main point of the stories.
I think you would be hard put to say that CJ Cherryh's space operas are not SF, or most of Nancy Kress's novels.
How exactly is space opera to be seen as science fiction, other that that both are (often) set on places other than Earth?
Hubert's Dune, which is really historical political fiction
Say what?
"In both the characters are effected directly by genetic engineering and technological change."
I should clarify that. In the two books I named by Kress "genetic engineering and technological change" pretty much drive the story. If you don't have the "genetic engineering and technological change" those two novels essentially have no story. This fits John W. Campbell's dictum.
"How exactly is space opera to be seen as science fiction" JohnO
TR: They might not be explaining it enough because it's not just the fact that Cherryh writes space opera that makes them SF.
Take "Cyteen." The novel imagines a world of behaviorally programmed clones and how a society with rampant genetic castes works. One of the main characters is herself a clone who, "Boys of Brazil" style, is trying to be raised to be exactly like who she's cloned from. This might sound a bit cliche, but there's more to it than this. In some of her others the economics and physics of space civilization are quite important. It's usually not space opera of the "light sabers and magic" variety. (Some characters may believe in the supernatural, and be treated with sympathy, but this is more like how real people believe in it)
"Left Hand of Darkness" is science fiction because the characters wouldn't exist if it weren't for advances in genetic engineering and communication technology.
The characters exist, as all characters do, because the author wanted them to exist to explore certain ideas. As I say, Le Guin wanted to discuss contempoary feminist ideas about how gender was a social construct. There is no sci-fi element involved. What makes science fiction "science" fiction is that the ideas explored are outside ourselves. Scientific, if you will.
Science has shown that those early feminst ideas were completely wrong. Gender is not a social construct. TLHOD is a dated feminist tract in the guise of a science fiction novel.
In the two books I named by Kress "genetic engineering and technological change" pretty much drive the story.
Haven't read Kress. But in Le Guin genetic engineering and technological change are inconsequential to the story.
Is anybody making a list?
I think any of the first seven Dragonriders of Pern books by Anne McCaffrey are good starter SF novels.
I rest my case. People have some odd notions as to what constitutes science fiction. I suspect that Tolkien is sci-fi as some here define it.
We're checking it twice.
"But in Le Guin genetic engineering and technological change are inconsequential to the story." JO
TR: I think that's overstating it. For the most part I think I'm moderately strict on what's SF. There are several things listed that I would not count as science fiction. Even Connie Willis strikes me as often bordering on historical fiction. She wants a contemporary perspective on older eras so voila a time-traveler lands in a Victorian comedy-of-manners. Granted this is a bit unfair, but I could see the argument. In fact I could even see an argument for saying the current BSG is not really science fiction as it's intended as "us in space" and the scientific advances are as minimized as they can be. To the point of really stretching plausibility.
Still to me if you take the SF element out of "The Left Hand of Darkness" it doesn't work. It's not as "core" in the genre as something like C. L. Moore's better stories, but I don't see it not belonging in there at all. It's not simply a feminist tract, it's also about the interplay of an advanced technological federation with a primitive society. And also a different species of humans. I don't think the book would have been saleable as a non-SF feminist novel.
First off, Harry Dresden has been around for a lot longer than Harry Potter, so comparing Dresden to Potter is kind of backwards. Potter is more of a younger Dresden than anything.
I've been hearing some really good reviews on Anne Aguirre's Grimspace. She's a fairly new author, but I haven't heard anything bad about her novel yet.
Megan, are you going to list bodice rippers that are good "starter bodice rippers" for males?
Second on the writings of Elizabeth Moon, and especially starting with The Deed of Pakesenarion.
Moon came out of nowhere about ten years ago and hit a stellar grandslam homerun with her first book.
Paks is the not the brightest lightbulb in Fantasy, but by the end of the trilogy even this crusty old guy was considering her his absolute favorite female character ever.
A must read for every girl who dreams of being the hero instead of the princess.
No one has yet mentioned Tamora Pierce. Her "Lady Knight" aka "Protector of the Small" quadrilogy has been loved by every young female I know who's read it. It's more light medieval fantasy than SF, but it will grab even non-readers. I read the first three to my daughter at bedtime, and she couldn't get enough of it.
Seconding previous recommendations ...
Lois Bujold: Most of her recent books have very strong romance-novel elements, with enough fantasy/SF content to keep them out of the romance racks. But they're also far better written than your standard romance novel. "A Civil Campaign", "Paladin of Souls", "The Hallowed Hunt", and "The Sharing Knife (trilogy)". Better for adults. Her Vorkosigan novels are great in general but may not appeal instantly to female novices.
Heinlein: "Have Space Suit, Will Travel" and "Citizen of the Galaxy". Better for teenagers.
Anne McCaffrey: "Dragonsong", "Dragonsinger", and after that, the rest of the Pern series. Better for teenagers.
Elizabeth Moon: "Remnant Population" and "The Speed of Dark", for adults. The Herris Serrano series ("Hunting Party", Winning Colors", etc) and "The Deed of Paksenarrion (trilogy)" for all ages.
C J Cherryh: lots, but the "Pride of Chanur" series, where the protagonists are intelligent female lions, should appeal to many women.
Nancy Kress: "Beggars in Spain."
Vonda McIntyre: "Dreamsnake."
Esther Freisner: "Nobody's Princess" and "Nobody's Prize." Better for teenagers.
And for women who like broad (!) humor about sexual stereotypes, the "Chicks in Chainmail" series from Baen is hilarious. Not for the easily offended, though.
The movie Starship Troopers was great. It worked as a parody of a war movie and as a genuine war movie at the same time. The effects and and set pieces were excellent, and the violence was shocking for its time. A little intentional camp and some wooden acting by Ridgewood NJ's own Casper Van Dien didn't hurt much at all.
Granted, I never read the Heinlein book. Then again, a lot of readers have unrealistic expectations when they see movie versions of books they like, because they forget that only so much of a several-hundred-page book can end up in a 120 page screenplay.
Pattern Recognition is a good book too, but I don't think it counts as SF.
People have some odd notions as to what constitutes science fiction.
For crying out loud, what earthly use is an arbitrary set of criteria to judge what is and is not SF? If it's published and shelved under SF, that's as good, accurate, and meaningful criteria as anything else (which is not to say that it is good, there is exists accurate, or meaningful is meaningful).
I'm waiting for the next debate... what is literature, followed by how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
As a side note... Baen Publishers has a "free library" at their website where you can download hundreds of some of their very best books for FREE, induding some of the top female authors.
Just go here:
http://www.baen.com/library/
Included in the list of books is "Sheepfarmer's Daughter" by Elizabeth Moon, which is the first book of the Deeds of Paksanarion trilogy.
If it's published and shelved under SF, that's as good, accurate, and meaningful criteria as anything else (which is not to say that it is good, there is exists accurate, or meaningful is meaningful).
Come off it. If you want to consider swords-and-sorcery to be science fiction then knock yourself out. I'm not going there and I suspect most other people think the same way.
Heck, let's just recommend that fine sci-fi author Robert E. Howard, or H.P. Lovecraft!
The movie Starship Troopers was not just awful because most of the action took place between the character's ears. There were a lot of reasons.
Hell, the MI was less well-equipped than our grunts of today, their tactical formations resembled that of eight-year-olds playing soccer.
What does anybody think of Murray Leinster and his Murgatroyd stories?
IMO, Leinster could explain future technology so clearly that a kid might end up saving his allowance for a trip to the hardware store.
The Rim stories? Same as the old stories of adventures in the South Pacific prior to, say WW II, where there was so much distance that any strange thing could happen, and rival empires prowled and skirmished.
I've never cared for the "if it's shelved with the SF" view myself. In many stores I go to H. G. Wells's best known works, and I don't mean his non-SF novels like "Kipps", are not shelved with SF.
To be science fiction the results of some technological advance or scientific discovery do have to be important to the story. A story about an elderly woman discovering new plant species is more SFnal, as I view the term, than the D&D books I find in the local SF section.
Still to me if you take the SF element out of "The Left Hand of Darkness" it doesn't work.
It's been a while since I read it but the genetic part, IIRC, was that some super-race seeded the galaxy with human type lifeforms. This included the hermaphodite humans in the novel. Of course that detail was very tangential to the plot. She could have simply posited that they were created by God and the narrative arc would not have been altered. The cental storyline was the Earthican human male trying to figure out how to relate to a hermaphodite.
I don't think the book would have been saleable as a non-SF feminist novel.
Exactly my point. The SF elements were a (pardon the expression) beard. The point of the story was to allow Le Guin to make the argument that gender is a social construct. That's an interesting and maybe even worthwhile argument to make, though I think it's been proven wrong. But it's not sci-fi.
Dune by Frank Herbert
If you're not going to classify Anne McCaffery's Pern novels and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels as SF, why not? If you read the "first" novel timewise, both series are about abandoned colonies.
Pern genetically engineers the "dragons" to fight "Thread", as they can't expect help without indenturing their descendants. Darkover is, I think, a crash landing that is re-discovered centuries later. It's been a while since I've read those books.
So, if they are not SF, what are you defining as science fiction? I've seen other comments saying that certain books (like Dune) aren't SF. Your definition, please?
I actually prefer the term speculative fiction instead of science fiction, as fantasy and science fiction tend to be commingled in the book stores.
Tax Lawyer, I don't believe we've been engaging in the vilification of Heinlein. Most of us are fans of his, and for good reason.
We've merely been stating that he probably isn't a fruitful first exposure to SF for a skeptical female.
Diana, a very good point. How the heck did we miss Frankenstein?
Bookstores commonly shelve SF and Fantasy together (sometimes with horror as well) because all are "speculative fiction", and because the people at the bookstore haven't necessarily read the frigging books.
To be Science Fiction, science and/or technology must play a prominent role in the story. Silverberg and Butcher don't qualify. (And don't get me started on The Dresden Files. The main character has the ability to immediately solve the mysteries he encounters during the first two books simply by using the basic skill that makes him a wizard, has every reason to use the skill, and it is pretty damn inexplicable why he *doesn't* use the skill when faced by the mysteries. It's an interesting world, but the consequences are not thought through.)
Terry Brooks' Shannara series happens on a post-apocalypic Earth, but if you aver that it is SF rather than Fantasy because of this, I will be obliged to laugh at you.
OTOH, a large part of Michael Flynn's Eifeheim takes place in medeival Germany, but it is clearly science fiction.
"She could have simply posited that they were created by God and the narrative arc would not have been altered." JohnO
TR: This is close to an argument of "I don't want it to be science fiction, so it isn't." If you say "God or magic could've done the same thing and the story'd be the same" you'd be eliminating alot of SF. You could say "Flowers for Algernon" would be about the same if it had a non-permanent magic spell make a mouse and a retarded man smarter. Or that the narrator of "The Time Machine" could have just been whisked into the future by God.
However I really think those stories, and this one, would be pretty greatly altered by doing that. God or nature simply creating a valley of hermaphrodites would be quite a different story. "The Left Hand of Darkness" is about a whole planet and also how someone from an interstellar society relates to it.
There are millions books that everyone can agree are not science fiction. There are thousands of books that every can agree *are* science fiction.
What purpose on God's green earth does it serve to have massive (and often incredibly unpleasant) arguments as to which of the thousands of books in the gray area are science fiction, and which are not?
I'm sorry, but there is no master authority or scientific principle to test against. What is Science Fiction is simply a matter of consensus.
For the most parts, arguments as to what is or isn't SF come down to simply: "What *I* say is SF is SF." Given that we're geeks, we like to clothe it in rational argument. "This is what I *and everyone else* says is SF, so it's SF." Or we make up some rules to decide what is and isn't SF that happens to match our personal opinions. Or we combine consensus and principle. "I and everyone else know that SF must have {technological change/rocket ships/whatever}"
These, in the end, are all geek social dominance and exclusion displays. Most of us get past them by high school, but it often lies just below the surface, waiting to pop up again, and like such displays in any social group, it doesn't make the group look pretty. (See Science Fiction Writers of America many years back for this at its worst.)
So to avoid embarrassing ourselves, could we just let people's personal definition of SF stand without public comment?
Go to any SF Con and you will find someone sitting in a corner of the ConSuite weeping about the "death" of Science Fiction or bitching about how no one is writing "real" science fiction. Mort of these same people are also muttering under their breath that in influx of women readers and writers has "ruined the genre".
My experience is that most of these people, and they are almost always middle aged men, read lots and lots of SF in the late 50's and early 60's but stopped reading with then late 60's early 70's new wave of experimental/literary SF started showing up in the stores. They don't read the genre widely any more, other than to pick up new novels still being squeezed out by the same people they read back in their 20's.
They use the same very narrow and dated definition of SF that JohnO does. They care more about the idea that was the spark of the story than plot, character, or even basic stuff like good use of language. They want nuts and bolts stories, the sort that Clark, and Asimov wrote in their prime. Those sort of stories tend to be short sweet fast reads and focused on one clever idea hook.
That sort of story is not being written any more for two reasons, first they tended to work best in a short story format and due to the realities of publishing/writing economics it's not possible to make a living as a short story writer these days.
Second most of the reading public wants more character, and plot in there fiction these days, so most SF being written today, even the SF being written with a serious science base, is character driven not idea driven.
Sort of folded into the above issues is the fact these old school SF types tend to discount any story that does not have nuts and bolts science at its heart. They don't count fiction that had biology as the science at it's core as real science base SF. They discount people like Nancy Kress, who write big idea fiction with the ideas coming from medicine rather than engineering.
They also tend to not like books with women as POV characters or romance / interpersonal relationships as part of the plot. They snark about writers like Anne McCaffery and shows like Star Trek, and Star Wars for not being "real" SF while at the same time they think fondly of people like Poul Anderson, or Edgar Rice Burroughs who also basically wrote flash bang adventure fiction with ray guns and hot chick and cute alien babes not nuts and bolts stories.
Yes,if you use the very strict definition of what is SF a few people here have suggested then Dune is not SF.
I've read Dune five times. I just read it again a few months ago for a SF discussion group I'm in. It really hit me then that for a book that is such a classic in the genre there is very little real science in the book at all other than the fooling with a fragile ecology will lead to disaster stuff.
What drives the plot Dune boils down to the struggle between several aristocratic families, and a semi-secret semi-religious organization, for political and religious/philosophical control of an empire. All SF elements are just window dressing that decorate that plot. The same story could have been told in several different time periods in European history from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance.
Also, I just read About Last Night and saw this interview with Sarah Hall, who wrote Daughters of the North. I have no idea whether it's any good, but the writers at ALN seem to like her, which is a powerful recommendation.
From the interview:
As good as The Left Hand of Darkness? Beats me. But it's definitely on my list.
Gene Wolfe's "The Knight" and "The Wizard" are really great and a good intro to scifi/fantasy and his work in general.
And why not start with Tolkein?
Mfitz, there's no surprise that Heinlein's characters thoughts and reactions don't match up with yours, as they were written 50-70 years ago. I doubt they'd be the same as your grandmother's, though...
At least they had emotions, unlike Asimov's cardboard cutout characters!
This is close to an argument of "I don't want it to be science fiction, so it isn't."
Umm ... no. It's a lot more like an argument of "Science fiction has to have some minimal definition, or we may as well call Howard's Conan stories science fiction".
And that's not a knock on Howard or on the fantasy genre, which I like a good deal. It's simply pointing out that labels have meanings.
If you say "God or magic could've done the same thing and the story'd be the same" you'd be eliminating alot of SF.
Umm ... no. Perhaps you'd be eliminating a lot of stuff better described as fantasy, but you'd not be eliminating a lot of SF. "The Book of Skulls" is a top-notch read. It's just not a top-notch sci-fi read.
What purpose on God's green earth does it serve to have massive (and often incredibly unpleasant) arguments as to which of the thousands of books in the gray area are science fiction, and which are not?
Sorry, Tom West, I had not realized that anyone was having a massive (or incredibly unpleasant) argument about anything. If your feelings are that sensitive then the internet might not be the best place for you.
Shorter Mfitz --- "Nyah nyah, I don't like you".
That's nice. FYI, you pegged me completely wrong.
"Umm ... no. It's a lot more like an argument of "Science fiction has to have some minimal definition, or we may as well call Howard's Conan stories science fiction".
TR: Umm yes. I don't think science fiction is just anything. To be science fiction the element of real or speculative science can't be removed without changing or destroying the story. Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish stories aren't pure-core, but if you remove the speculative biology and interstellar communication they don't work. What bothers you, I reckon, is that they're more about sciences you may not recognize or appreciate. (Like anthropology)
"Umm ... no." JohnO
TR: Umm yes. Most things done in a story by science you can make be done by "some new magic spell" if you're set on doing that. That goes for life to. I could say that when you go to the "land of the stars" and come back time will pass different because the stars are magic or time-warping gods or whatever. If done in real life it's because of the time-dilation effect of relativistic speeds. That I can think magical explanations for Relativity or germs doesn't mean any SF story about those is no longer SF.
Also as I believe in God if you're going to cut-out anything that "could be done by God instead" you're going to cut out everything. By the most widespread definition God is omnipotent and can do anything science or technology does.
Sorry, Tom West, I had not realized that anyone was having a massive (or incredibly unpleasant) argument about anything.
As to massive, thankfully the comment thread has wound down before the screaming started.
As to unpleasant, for crying out loud, look at your comment following the reply I quoted!
More to the point, no-one asked for your (or mine, or anyone else's) personal definition of SF. Why would you think it appropriate to butt-in and start disqualifying other people's recommendations as not SF?
Certainly one can do so, but it's not very polite. And more to the point, it's downright embarrassing to SF lovers everywhere because this sort of argument is just so inevitable and pointless, and helps reinforce the popular belief that SF readers are a bunch of impolite, pedantic geeks. After all, the comment doesn't say anything that people don't already know (I suspect most people know Tolkein has very few space ships), so the purpose of the comment is merely dominance/exclusion.
Of course, as you point out, it *is* the internet, so I shouldn't expect standard politeness. It was just we had gotten so far in the thread before it showed up, my hopes had risen...
No insult intended.
I just came back from a Con where this exact same discussion came up and I was only trying to define the demographics of the segment of SF readers who always seem to start the discussion. It's a subset which includes my husband, who I am rather fond of by the way. I did not mean that as a value judgment and only wanted to point out that although that group is rather vocal, at least at Cons here in the mid-west, they are only a subset of SF Fandom / SF readers, and I think not really in touch with the majory of SF readers think and feel about the genre today.
I'm no expert, but I think we're going to have to bite the bullet. Dune ain't sci-fi. Even the ecology stuff only has a minor role: one way that Paul builds rapport with the Fremen. If you look at the later Dune series and "Duniverse", yeah, it matters, but not if you look at Dune as a self-contained book.
And to be honest, while I was all hyper and fanatical about it at one point ... I just don't think it's good literature, either. The human interaction in it is just ... bizarre, and seems like it would scare off a neophyte sci-fi reader, esp female. I really think reading it a young age gave me a distorted perception of human interaction that tainted me later on.
Does anyone think the definition of sci-fi excludes the Memory of Earth series I mentioned earlier? There is the good case that "Since it's from the mormon bible, it can't be sci-fi". And a lot of it is pure "these people are called to a voyage" and thus not science-dependent.
However, from what I remember, it talks about the Overmind, and its ability to record all of civilization, which gets it into a digression on data compression, and thus the extent to which human lives are genuinely different.
I'm trying to come up with sci-fi-specific elements, and I'm coming up dry otherwise, so who knows?
"Since it's from the mormon bible, it can't be sci-fi".
TR: I haven't read it, but I don't think that has to be a disqualifier. A great many SF works make use of a mythos or religion. Unless scientific advances aren't important to the story at all, and it's just a straight-up retelling of "The Book of Mormon" with spaceships, it could count.
On another matter "Dune" never really felt science fiction to me and it's kind of overrated. Although I think the character interactions being weird is defensible because they were NOT normal people and I don't think the story ever claimed they were. Most of them were aristocratic products of an elaborate system of selective breeding. At best they'd interact as "normally" as the Hapsburg royal family.
As mentioned before:
- Philip K. Dick
- SF that is picked by the Library of America has gone from being SF to being literature. It's a bit like reading Raymond Chandler in detective fiction or Charles McCarry in spy fiction: you're not reading genre fiction any more you are reading literature
- William Gibson (of course)
- Ursula K. Leguin
- Left Hand of Darkness, Word for World is Forest, the Dispossessed, Earthsea
- Octavia Butler
- Iain Banks- again, literary science fiction, although some of his stuff is very sadistic
- my (female) partner (a literature major) really liked China Meiville
- probably James H. Schmitz, for the strength of his female characters as the exemplar 'Science Fiction from the Great Years'
- Arthur Clarke
- Childhood's End
- most of his other novels seem too fascinated with the tech, characters too flat etc.
Generally SF doesn't appeal to women: flat characters, stereotypes, too much tech and action (Heinlein has 'strong female characters' but his stuff is very male-oriented and has some very traditional roles for women eg his obsession with childbearing and childrearing).
I think the later Heinlein appealed more to women, because in part of the sexual content and the greater 'talkiness' of the books. Thinking I Will Fear No Evil etc. But I can't see women (who don't normally read SF) particularly liking Starship Troopers, or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (the latter of which I consider one of the top 20 SF novels of all time).
A big part of SF was, historically, sublimated adolescent male sex drive (planet destroying weapons, armour clad heroes, gorgeous heroines) and women don't generally gravitate towards that kind of literature: they don't read Tom Clancy, they read boddice-rippers, when they are slumming it.
The Isaac Asimov Robots stories (especially Dr. Susan Calvin) maybe but generally his prose is wooden.
CJ Cherryh is a great writer, but I think far too tech and dark for a new reader to SF.
Stross I see as classic bloke's fiction: techie, overloaded with ideas. I've read about 6 of his novels in 6 months, but I don't see the appeal for someone who is not immersed in tech. It's kind of the SF version of the comic xkcd, where the jokes are really only funny if you are inside the field (at which point, they are hysterical).
Lois McMaster Bujold certainly appeals to men, and A Civil Campaign is of course based on Jane Austen, but I'm not sure women would find any particular merit in it. I've read Barryar at least 15 times, but I've never lent it to my partner.
Amazed not to see Catherine Asaro on list of female SF authors: Phd in Physics.
James Tiptree Junior of course (Alice Shelton) and an excellent biography of her out, too.
It's unfair to call Poul Anderson just a space opera writer. Anderson invented a lot of the cliches of the genre, (reptilian aliens based on the Sassanid Persian Empire etc.), and series like Flandry and Nicholas Van Rijn (let alone Tau Zero) are at a deeper level. Three Hearts and Three Lions is still a great fantasy novel. I don't think a sceptical female reader would necessarily like them.
Better than Harry Dresden for fantasy detective fiction are the Randall Garrett Lord Darcy novels. My mother, who is much more of a mystery person than a SF person, loves those.
See also Zenna Henderson: The People stories, which my mother adored.
Also John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids, Midwich Cuckoos.
On 'Ender's Game' yes it is supposedly brilliant.
Card's political views, particularly on homosexuals, make me not want to read it. Ditto his 'liberal plot against America' stuff. I realize that Card's religion is informing his views, and that his beliefs are sincere, but because of them I really don't want to engage with his writing.
Cue discussion about whether we should read authors whose political views we very much disagree with: well I read Pournelle. But Pournelle is not a bigot, and is not a knee-jerk libertarian-- his novels are much more pessimistic than that.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is a very good science fiction (anti) war novel.
On Frank Herbert, I liked Whipping Star, Dragon in the Deep (Under Pressure) and Dosadi (unsatisfying ending) more than I liked Dune. I admire the sweep of Dune, spotted the historical reference pretty quickly (rise of Islam: see also Cook's Dread Empire fantasy series) but somehow it didn't grab me.
I don't see someone new to SF, particularly a woman, liking any of the above.
I've just run into this link and don't have time right now to read ALL of the recs already given, so I may be duplicating one already given--but I HAD to contest the complete "unnomination" of William Gibson. I'm a lifelong female SF fan and have enjoyed quite a few of Gibson's novels but I would especially recommend for this list "Pattern Recognition" which has a very cool uber-techno female protagonist. I recently recommended it to a male SF-fan friend and told him that I loved it even though he might find it too "chick-lit"-ish (though probably only when compared to Heinlein).
Whether any specific science fiction author will appeal to someone who isn't usually drawn to science fiction is another matter, and highly idiosyncratic. Connie Willis, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Octavia Butler all write good science fiction with strong female characters. Each of them will appeal to a different audience, which will include both women and men. Of course, there are also many men out there writing interesting science fiction with well developed female characters. Currently, I'm enjoying reading Tim Powers; I don't find any of his characters to be particularly stereotypical, but he's probably a bit much for a first introduction to science fiction.
Zenna Henderson's science fiction stories, which someone already mentioned, are also excellent. My mother, who generally disliked science fiction, really liked her work, as do I. (But, I am a science fiction aficionado. A female one.)
I noticed that many of the people posting comments were men who seemed to be guessing about what women might like. I haven't read all of the comments, but to those who recommended Heinlein: As a woman, I find Heinlein's works to be extremely chauvinist. When I was thirteen, I didn't pick up on this and enjoyed many of his works, both YAs and more adult fare, but I'm more than three times that, now, to the point that I find many of his books painful to read.
To Valuethinker, who stated, "I've read Barryar at least 15 times, but I've never lent it to my partner." Please, consider sharing your love for this author with your spouse. Both my husband and I love her work; it was I who introduced him to her books. I have reread everything in the Vorkosigan Saga more times than I have read any other single book.
I'm not sure if this one has been mentioned already (I just scanned the posts quickly) but I would recommend Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "The Martian Chronicles," and "The Illustrated Man." Bradbury's writing style is so vivid that it's hard not to get swept up into the story.
I also loved Connie Willis's "The Doomsday Book," which had a strong female protagonist. The science fiction elements are crucial to the story but a lot of the story is set in Middle Ages England (Black Plague years), so it would attract readers of historical fiction or "cataclysmic event" fiction. I know that's not a real genre but it should be :)
Whoops, left these out:
"Vectors" by Michael Kube-McDowell mixes sci fi with some New Age concepts and a love story. I bought this book on a whim and loved it.
"Darwin's Radio" and "Darwin's Children" by Greg Bear, and "Finity" by John Barnes were all excellent. The Kay-Mitch connection in "Darwin" was a little unbelieveable but it works out in the end. "Finity" might be a little confusing for new sci fi-ers but it's well written and worth the effort.
I feel obligated to mention "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adamns...I mean, who doesn't love paranoid androids?