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Rereading Classic Science Fiction

By Aharon Robbins (Intel) (11 posts) on July 13, 2008 at 1:06 am

Hey, it's a blog, right? So here's something not related to software, Intel, or anything technical.

As a result of giving my teenage daughter the classic Dragonrider books by Anne McCaffrey, she has become an averous science fiction reader.  The problem is keeping her supplied with enough things to read that are also appropriate for her age.  To this end, I recently pulled out a volume of collected books by Isaac Asimov: The Foundation Trilogy, The Stars Like Dust, The Naked Sun, and I Robot, all in one volume.

And of course, as a voracious reader myself, I reread these volumes, after not having read them in probably close to 20 years.

I found it interesting how some of the stories have held up better over time than others.  What really struck me were some of the social conventions that would never show up in modern day novels.  For example, in the Foundation books, cigarette smoking is taken for granted; it is something that is as casual as sipping a soft drink or chewing gum might be today.  I guess that's really the way it was in the late '40s and early '50s when those books were written.  Also, the idea of media moguls, where one person controls the newspapers, no longer really applies.  Even more out-of-sync is the idea that people would still be reading newspapers after 10,000 years of human history!  But as those books predated even television, such things shouldn't be surprising.

Also interesting was the clear expectations for how atomic power would change the world; that didn't happen, nor do I think it really will.

I Robot, on the other hand, held up better; the psychology related stories are more human, and thus more constant, than technology related stories. The same for The Naked Sun.

I've had this experience with other works, of course, such as one of stories in The Ship Who Sang that talked about a "Dylanist" as someone who uses music to influence society (written in the late '60s, of course), but the differences here struck me even more.

We don't often realize it when we read current SF works how much they reflect the times in which they are written.  I also suppose that when we're younger (I did a lot of reading in my 20s) we're not attuned to such larger things either.

All in all, it was fun to come back to these classic works, although with a different perspective (getting older does that to you, I guess).  I have, in general, become more analytical and critical in my reading, even of relaxing fiction kinds of things.

So, it's back to the boxes in the basement to see what else I can give my daughter... Wish me luck. :-)

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Comments (9)

July 13, 2008 7:43 AM PDT Ric

Great post Aharon! Being a huge Sci-fi book fan, it never ceases to amaze me how well really great works from the genre hold up. You can look at almost anything from the top 4 Niven, Clarke, Benford and Bear and be amazed everytime you read it. Some stuff I will revisist over and over until these eyes close permenently. Good to see your daughter benefitting from dads wise reading habits ;-)

July 13, 2008 8:28 AM PDT Howard Plumley

Jules Verne, HG Wells, Aldous Huxley, EandO Binder then Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Cordwainer Smith then Neal Stephenson, and the list goes on. BUT Parental explanation of why some utopias are not, would be adviasable.

July 13, 2008 9:10 AM PDT Randy V

Sturgeon and Philip K Dick hold up well. "Rite of Passage" by Alexei Panshin may be something she can relate to.

July 13, 2008 10:05 AM PDT Jon

Your comments about the media are interesting. Media moguls are very clearly still around - Rupert Murdoch has a degree of influence far greater than anyone ever had in the past. The newspaper concept might survive better than you think, even if the dead tree format dies.

July 13, 2008 2:38 PM PDT Fred Kiesche

Take a look at Baen Books, especially their online Webscription service. They have a Free Library section that has a number of books that both you and your daughter might like. For example, how about James Schmitz who has a teenaged girl for a heroine in a number of tales. Many of Heinlein's YA novels are coming back into print. For example, Baen just came out with Farmer in the Sky. And there are other authors who are currently writing that are worth exploring: John Scalzi, John Wright, John Varley (now, don't get me wrong, I do read books by people who have a first name other than "John"!).

July 14, 2008 1:30 AM PDT Aharon Robbins (Intel) Total Points: 1,030 Status Points: 0 Brown Belt

Thanks for all the comments! Especially the recommendations for other authors / books. She's already read some of my Heinlein YA books (Double Star, Space Cadet, maybe others). Another group of books that all my kids are into are the original 19 Oz books by L. Frank Baum. They have really worn them out! I used to go to the library a LOT in high school, during summers of college, in graduate school, and afterwards. I read a lot of junk, but also a lot of great stuff. Growing up in Israel, my kids have it harder; they're more dependant upon what we have in the house or buy when we visit the US for English language reading material. Ah well. There are tradeoffs everywhere. Thanks again to everyone who responded. I'm off tonight for 2 weeks vacation, visiting family in Atlanta and Seattle. All the kids are expecting a trip to the used book store with Dad! (Me, I can't wait for that lovely Seattle Summer weather!)

July 14, 2008 5:52 AM PDT Knut Grunwald

I would suggest Alan Dean Foster. The Commonwealth and the Spellsinger series. The Spellsinger series is fun to read (The first 6 are better than 7&8), but not very science fiction. The Commonwealth/Flinx series is also not hard science fiction, but has some nice concepts.

July 14, 2008 12:08 PM PDT Josh Bancroft (Intel) Total Points: 3,504 Status Points: 3,004 Brown Belt

Ooh! There's a ton of great books in this thread that I need to go track down and load up on my Kindle! (newspaper of the future?) I'm an avid sci fi reader, too, both the classic stuff, and modern stuff like Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross (who, incidentally, release most of their books for free under a Creative Commons license, so you can download and read it for free - the idea being that for most authors, your enemy isn't piracy, it's obscurity). Doctorow and Stross and others have done a lot to influence my idea of our connected future, and what I'm working on now to make it all happen. Plus, they're great stories! :-) There are great sources for free ebooks out there, and sci fi is almost always well-represented as a genre. Feedbooks, ManyBooks, Baen, Tor, Creative Commons, the Internet Archive, and Project Gutenberg are all good places to start (too lazy to link those all up - just Google and you'll find them). Now, off to find more sci fi books to tickle the geeky parts of my brain! :-)

July 17, 2008 5:29 PM PDT Mark Ross

A lot of these suggestions aren't going to be fun reading for a teenage girl. Personally, I love the new stuff from Stross and Stephenson and Doctorow, but I've got years of background to help me digest these frequently dense books. And I personally think that Gene Wolfe may be the greatest living writer working in any genre - he is certainly the best ever in the SF field. But I have found that you can't recommend these books to everyone. They require a certain level of background knowledge These books also don't share much in common with Dragonrider, which was basically a romantic fantasy. And don't get me started on HG Wells, Jules Verne, and Huxley. That's more like a prison sentence than a fun summer read. Whoever recommended that either has not been reading SF recently, or just wants everyone to go through the same pain they did. There are a few recent series which can match Dragonrider for accessibility and fun: The Temeraire series by Naomi Novak, starting with His Majesty's Dragon is one of the most enjoyable series in many years. A guaranteed winner for any intelligent teen (or adult, for that matter). Anything by Lois McMaster Bujold. Anything at all. Her SF series about Miles Vorkosigan is fast-pased and extremely addictive. Very well suited for teenagers. Her more recent fantasy novels (starting with the Curse of Chalion) are more adult, but deeply enjoyable. Jhereg (and sequels) by Steven Brust. SF that looks and feels like fantasy. A Man of His Word by Dave Duncan - first book in a series, very enjoyable. Everything by Duncan is good, but I would start here or with the Kings Blades or Kings Daggers series. Fun, rollicking, swordsplay adventures. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman. Starts to drag towards the end, but the first novel (The Golden Compass) is great. Enders Game by Orson Scott Card. For a long time, this was the most common entry into SF (not counting fantasy like Harry Potter). If someone has only read one SF book, chances are, it's this one. And it's a pretty good book. RiddleMaster by Patricia McKillip - hard to describe how good this is. The Chrestomanci series by Dianna Wynne Jones - young adult, very enjoyable Archangel by Sharon Shinn - more on the romance side, but SF background, much like Dragonrider. Divine By Choice by P.C. Cast - You probably won't like this one, but she probably will. Funny horse-centric romantic fantasy. DragonHaven by Robin McKinley - anything by McKinley is good, but some may be too adult for a normal teenager.

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